Looting Rights - from R39

Not a bug, but worth understanding the mechanics of agro, loot award, damage velocity, and how they don't line up perfectly.

In the thread, https://www.shroudoftheavatar.com/f...s/not-a-bug-looting-rights.82927/#post-774671 ,

Draconious,

Your situation was certainly an interesting one - to lose agro, you'd have had to have let the other player do more damage to gain agro, and that damage might be enough to cause you to lose the claim anyway. The obvious game mechanic issue is the difference between agro and loot award.

Stating this is the "fairest way," does not take into consideration the agro factor. First, the game mechanic rewards loot based on damage, but assigns agro based on damage and focus. Focus you spent on healing is considered in agro, but not as part of the "work" performed to kill the monster. This is what the other player took advantage of. Second, the other player was doing more DPS, but the troll did not focus its ire on the other player (probably because of the healing spells you were casting). Also, recall, a third party addon that keeps track of damage done can allow someone to walk that fine line - ensuring they do just a bit more damage, but take no agro, and take advantage of the mechanic. Ultimately, it's a question of character, and, in this game, is morality anything more than the optimal game mechanic? That's a personal choice. Personally, I am not a fan of turning the game into a deterministic math problem by means of add-on utilities.

The rest is just pontification:
One extreme mechanic change would be to let first-hit parties always get loot. There's a tension between who got there first and who inflicted the most damage. On one end of the vector, let's put your case, where you were clearly engaged with a game mob, and on the other would be a team of low level players who couldn't quite beat the Ravensmoor troll down, but kept trying, tying it up for half an hour. Given finite game resources (the troll), who makes the decision that enough is enough? (there's a character-based solution in this situation too - try joining the party). Other games have solved this by divvying up experience with everyone who participated, removing player-to-player tension. Applying a meet-in-the-middle solution like yours might lower player-to-player tension, by giving a more clear cut DPS-based victory, but the real question is, is that best for this game? In a no-tension system and the current system, the game mechanics allow us to behave at the intelligence level of a virus looking for the next meal, but in this case, SotA adds a question of morality and character. Since these mechanics are fairly simple and consequence-free for the stronger party, they reveal a selfish streak in human nature, whereby we justify our own advancement over that of another, and often to our cruel delight. Morality is defined by the choice of the stronger party - either capability to take, treating you, a human, the same way we would treat game monsters, OR might and character (where character is non-zero), whereby we treat someone less skilled/capable than ourselves with respect. The current mechanic conveniently works out for both parties - you don't have to be the friend of someone who behaves in this manner, a person who consistently behaves in this manner will get a poor reputation and won't have many friends, and that person won't be here to get along with people, so he won't care.

 

I would just switch to friends or single player online, problem solved. Expecially if my plan is to farm boss type monsters...

If someone really wants to farm and play in multi mode he should be very well aware of that there might be always someone else lurking arround to out-dps you on your target.

That doesn't mean that i agree with such an behaviour, but that's how life is in quite many MMOs...

 

Upon reflection, I could have just played in Friends Only and avoided the situation entirely, getting less xp and waiting 10 minutes between spawns! None the less, it is only a game, my bad for thinking such morals could be introduced to a digital world!

 

or either one of you could have thrown the other a party invite, then you'd both have gotten xp and looting rights. you chose to compete rather than cooperate.