Looting proposal

This was heavily drawn from the proposals by Ristra here and Envy here, along with some suggestions earlier I made about the ransom process. There's been a lot of debate on the forums about this recently, so I thought I'd join in.

LOOTING AS A MINIGAME

STARTING CONDITION
There is a limited amount time to loot a corpse. Once the dead player has revived there would be no corpse to loot. Under normal circumstances, all of his items return to the player's body when he resurrects.

OPENING THE CORPSE
You get a paperdoll with a dead version of the player in a fetal position. I'm guessing this shouldn't be difficult because its just a pose for the original model. It would be fun if every NPC and monster could have something like this too. For monsters, processed items (hides, etc) that were revealed with some harvesting skill, could appear in the bottom slots beneath the name.


TIMER ON TAKING AND OPENING ITEMS
Item descriptions and numbers aren't shown, you just get the pictures, although when you click the item you get an approximate of its weight and the time it would amount to take the item, and buttons to TAKE and also to OPEN, in the case that its a container. Opening containers also takes time. The time would be determined by the amount of weight/mass the item has plus other factors: for example, clothes and armors would take longer, because they'd have to be removed. The developers would have to decide on appropriate times. A disturbance could reset the timer, or even close the loot window.


Clicking will tick town a timer wheel and when its done, it will affirm it, and either remove the item from the paperdoll, if its taken, or open the container if that was the player choice.


An opened container will have a similar process for taking items within the container.

RESTRICTIONS ON LOOTER

NOT TOO LAX CARRY LIMITS
This will have to be something the devs will have to balance well, because I know a lot of people feel carry limits can be tedious, and there's especially a problem when you don't have room for quest items. However, it should be kept in mind, that aside from limiting dry looting of slain players, it also has some other advantages; 1. it limits players from getting too wealthy too quickly through adventuring, allowing crafting to be profitable 2. encourages them to use more judgement.

ENCUMBRANCE PENALTIES GRADUATED RATHER THAN FIXED
The traditional system in RPGs is that an 'encumbered' state takes over when a fixed point of weight is in your inventory. This is in general very silly (and we don't want that), because it creates a 'Just one mint' effect, where you could be unencumbered, but put a feather in your inventory, and because it pushes you over the fixed point, you suddenly become encumbered.

But besides being generally very silly, it also helps to unbalance looting. If a looter could increase the penalties on himself by picking up more loot off a body than he needs, there's an added incentive to pick up only what he needs. Otherwise, it makes for a more difficult getaway, and makes it more difficult for him to face off attacks. This could in theory allow the developers to remove a hard weight limit entirely -- its just that carrying too much would ground you in one place, and prevent you from moving. That could also potentially allow unlimited slots for bags on your person to work. (You just need a scroll mechanism)


LOOTED WEARABLES ARE IN 'BROKEN' STATE UNTIL REPAIRED
Besides the fact that armor will likely be damaged in battle, many in the forums have pointed out that one persons armor will typically not fit another player. 'Breaking' looted armor until repair helps simulate that. It further disincentives taking armor. This penalty doesn't need to be congruent for the looter and the lootee. So, for instance, if the person who is slain keeps its armor, it doesn't need to be broken.

BELIEVABLE RANSOM PROCESS

EITHER VICTOR INITIATED OR THROUGH A MEDIUM
Honestly, its hard to object to the devs current ideas on this, because (as far as I'm aware) they haven't disclosed their ideas for how it will take place. Will you get a popup box asking you if you want a ransom immediately after death, no matter where the victor and the slain are in respect to each other? The main requirement that should be here is that its believable, rather than artificial. I see two options,

1. THE VICTOR FINDS SOME WAY TO CONTACT THE SLAIN PLAYER AND INITIATE THE RANSOM PROCESS. He can ransom back as many items as he wants.

2. THE SLAIN PLAYER INITIATES THE RANSOM PROCESS THROUGH AN ASTRAL MEDIUM. We already know that the person's body and his soul are somehow connected, which is what brings the body to the soul on his death. If not looted, all of his items will reappear with his body too. This would suggest, even if he were looted, his items would have some sort of astral connection to his soul. So say, the slain person is resurrected in a town and he contacts an astral mage in that town. The mage offers to retrieve the item in exchange for some sacrifice of equal value that would go to the victor -- a process of Substitution. He can retrieve as many items as he wants, but the cost goes up with each item. This might also make it possible to make an item soul bound before hand by paying the mage in advance, and this would automatically make the ransom. It would work like item insurance, but work only one time per transaction with the mage.

I'm assuming short of this, we're going to be experiencing some near-death experience with the Oracle who will arrange the transaction?

 

Excellent visual for a time based tool system @redfish. (is that @Chris playing a PSP?)

My area of concern is the "trust us, let us build our plan and try what we have." They like their current thinking and if I was a dev I would be doing the same thing, going with my gut. We should let them build it, they will even if we try to stop them anyway. From there, how can it be adjusted to something more desirable. This plan isn't all that far off. Only major difference is bring the loot process out to the forefront and making it a time limiter instead of a set count.

Both a count and time based are "dials and knobs" that allow the devs to tweak as needed. Which is part of why they are not going full loot.

The hurdle I see, depending where the loot process is performed, is the speed limiter. Obviously, the server is the authority but how much permission does the client have (currently).

Right now when we loot it's drag and drop. The way the will implement random selected loot based on a count and pass it to the players could be simple pop up with drag n drop. How quickly will the players be able to loot. Is it time based, which would be handled by the server. Or drag n drop based which would could be client base.

If it's client based macro/script could be used to speed the process. There is little to no harm here. They could be using a script on their end to auto loot for you anyway. But the issue comes in when it's a time based loot system and the client handles this. They would have to move that to the server side. Now we are cutting in dev time that they have already allocated to other areas. (which means "maybe a later Episode")

The transition from what they have on paper to something time based could be some minor adjustments if everything is server side already. Some UI changes and controls for the time and we are there.

I can live with full looting but I tend to agree with the devs perspective on this one. Dialing full loot back some can only help. The ransom system comes off more like an insurance system that gives the looter the gold.

No thanks. If looting gold was what people were interested in they could remove all looting and simple award the killer with gold.

 

IMO
Pirates - ruthless and they take their time killing and looting your booty.
Ninjas - get the job done, quickly, and normally don't care for material possessions beside their weapon.
I call pirate, all day!!! <];D

 

Is it just me or is this a way to make being looted in PvP more reasonable? I'm not sure what percentage of people in favor of Full loot PvP CARE if they find they've lost everything each and every time they die, I saw a lot of posts praising that exact state.

 

Sure, but that's not necessarily everyone who would want more open looting in PvP. A lot of people are also concerned that the whole situation with the ransom system will feel too artificial. Maybe that won't be the case, we'll have to wait and see with that.

This solution was (mostly) suggested by Ristra and Envy in earlier posts, its not new. Bowen suggested someone gather up all the looting proposals into one post. I was starting to do that, but figured I'd just do some adjustments to the original ideas.

 

I see. Well, just so you know, a system that lets my murderer GUESS which item to take, which bag to open, and only lets him get a LITTLE bit of what I have, is still enough to make me eschew PvP.

It's a simple enough equation for most of us. Getting killed and waking up to find stuff missing isn't appealing, and since this entire game, and every individual piece of it, is completely a'la cart, many of us will not engage in PvP that has a loot system.

For those who WANT to be looted, and to loot, I fully endorse them having a version that allows this. Just don't expect to see me in there.

 

A system like this allows the devs the latitude to adjust how much and what can be looted. Simply by tweaking the loot delay on a specific item or type of items they can make it so full loot is possible or impossible.

It also puts some tactics into play for the player that does not want to be looted at all. Know your bind points and how long it will take for your to rebind with your corpse to stop the looting process and you prevent the looter from having free pickings of your stuff.

 

It seems that a reminder about language is in order. No derogatory terms are allowed in the forum.

I have had to clean up several offending posts due to a violation of this rule. If you did not receive a personal PM from me that your content was moderated, consider this your official notice. If you have any questions, please PM me.

 

Pardon my language did not mean to offend anyone. To rephrase what I was saying... Looting was simple and worked great in ultima online prior to the introduction of trammel. Anything more or or less just complicates things.

 

For some it may have worked great but for others it was not a good system at all.

The devs have detailed their reasons for not wanting full loot and it touches many levels of game play.

To say it complicates things you still offer up nothing as supporting evidence for your case. No more than me saying "anything more than auto attack complicates combat so remove all abilities and keep it just auto attack". Complication is not bad when used in the correct situations.

 

Delayed looting is just a reminder of lag.

 

What are you talking about. Sounds like you are grabbing at straws.

How is it any different than Click > drag > drop. You can not select all and loot everything at once can you? Only difference here is Click > drag > drop > animation for looting > ??? > proffit

 

Whats your loot proposal for when I want to loot a dead NPC, monster, treasure chest, a dresser drawer in the protection of town guards(owned by NPC innkeeper lets say), and etc...??
Ill probably be looting lots of them. Because I want to get wealthy real real fast from looting quickly. I dont want to have some crazy limitations on my looting experience because we focused too much on PvP looting and didn't think about the fact that monsters and NPC's dont care about what they lose so we should be able to see their bodies on the ground for a good 30 mins or so and be able to loot away as quickly as possible! I like the drag and drop process, its soooo much fun! But... its 2014, perhaps we could do something just as efficient but funner. Perhaps you switch into first person view mode and you can control your hands and dig inside a chest or dresser and pour it all into your bag. Or for looting an NPC you just open their backpack in 1st person view mode and its just like looting a chest... I dunno maybe its easier to just use the good old fashioned drag and drop.

 

Looting should be universal, NPC and players alike, even stealing.

 

Hey --- I want to get wealthy real real fast from just sitting around and doing nothing.

I'd argue that making it easy to build up wealth really quickly through looting would be a really bad thing for the game. Making it easy to earn money that way, it would devalue crafting. It would make powerful and magic weapons and armor quickly accessible, creating super-characters and making magic too common. It would make everything in the game seem easily attainable, removing the sense that there are any goals you have to work towards. It would remove the specialness of valuable loots, like gems, by making everyone wealthy, thus not caring about items that were, in theory, valuable. It makes inexpensive weapons and armor unimportant to the game, because players will quickly move from one to another. In general, I think it would make the game much less fun.

Play any old school DOS game, and you'll see wealth buildup in RPGs used to be very slow, and it was the more rewarding for it. It took you a while to move up from a chainmail to a plate armor, and finding gems in your loot was a big event and something to be happy for.

At any rate, its up to the devs if they want to make the PvE loot system different than the one in PvP.

 

I think the OP is quite funny. Some good points though too.

 

I am talking about loot rules. I'm saying if NPC or monster or player dies anyone will be able to loot the corpse. You should be able to drag drop all items one at a time to your character. You should be able to drag pouches and containers from corpses.

If you have rights to loot the corpse then you will remain unflagged. If you did not have rights then you will be flagged if you decide loot.

By doing so your reputation will also go down.

 

Works for me, only I would like to see your character kneel down and take real time to execute the looting process. The real time required is dependent on the items looted and the locations taken from.

It could apply to stealing too. A cut purse is way more effect than someone attempting to steal a specific item. You have no clue what is in the money pouch you just pilfered. It didn't matter, you stole it because it was easier than taking the extra time to steal something more complicated like a necklace.

Oh and yes I am all for NPC's looting players.

 

Should be based on the NPC of course. A bear wouldn't be much interested in looting.

 

If you had some honey or maybe a picnick basket... heh. Yeah, you are right. That lich should loot you clean of reagents though.