[Spoiler Alert] Need for Party Looting (Chest) Mechanic

Hello, I been playing R12 and it has been great. Of recent, I noticed something that could have some improvement. Currently when a party member loots a chest there is no way for the other party members to see the value/loot of what was taken during that moment.

Real Life Example: A player (that shall not be named) managed to loot chest first during each Challenge Dungeon run within the party. It was decided to sell the whole loot and come back to divide the gold evenly. The player came back stating the sell total was 30,000 and divided that number among the party members and distributed. In actuality the loot was 91,750 value, essentially giving the players a 1/3 , keeping 2/3. This was repeated two more times. So out of 275,250 the player kept roughly 180,000 of that amount.

Obviously this will keep occurring in future releases via same type players above. I think if a game mechanic could be developed it would counter this (ideas below). Currently we have something that splits up the gold when we loot off of slain monsters. I don't think it is a stretch to apply it to chests. If a game mechanic does materialize for this, I would think an element of displaying the value to other party members is important as without you have half the story.

Here is a pic of loot value at vendor:
Challenge Dungeon Loot (Vendor)
Challenge Dungeon Loot (Chest)

I am not certain if the Devs already have a plan for this, but if anyone has a link please let us know.

Some benefits to having a mechanic like this would be any group of players could get together, form a party, and not have to wonder/question the real value of what was taken.

Game Mechanic Ideas:

1. Use the mechanic that exists, with the MISC option in chat tab, to display what was looted with value. It is understood that 1/2 of value is what you get for it at vendor.

2. More extensive = Make an option to make loot gold value on the spot and this data is passed too party members.

3. More extensive = Make a changing loot system where the loot will increase or decrease in size depending on size of party. Ex: If you have 4 party members then 4 cloaks will be available, 4 deeds (of smaller value), and so on. This will always equal the value of total if it was hypothetically one party member achieving loot.
- In addition if the party members would see what was pulled from chest if all items allowed to be pulled by one party member.

3b. Like above, but the chest is "instanced" to each party member. So the only way for the party member to get the loot is to actually open it and grab their loot. This would eliminate the need to see what other users are getting as each party member gets the same thing.

I believe even a simple game mechanic if developed will promote meeting new players as you can just grab 8 people, start a party, and not have to worry about things like fair splitting of loot at the end of your journey.

Please give me your comments and thoughts.

Edit:
Simple Idea to Achieve Goal:
- When the treasure chest is open the first time have the Wooden Storage Chest Loot gui box open up in front of rest of party members without "Take All" option. Kind of like a trade window of sorts. Basically this will give all party members the info of all loot and value and can be discussed on the spot what each one wants or how they want to deal with it. "

 

I agree! Up until now I think the groups running the dungeons were mostly known to each other -- had been working and playing together through many releases. But as it's obviously grown beyond that small group some kind of equitable distribution of dungeon rewards definitely needs to be built in.

And I will corroborate Bayridge's real life example, I was there for the first of the dungeon runs where this happened.

 

Most modern MMOs allow people to need/greed and roll for loot in a group. I know it isn't very immersive, but it is fair.

 

If there's a single very rare object I can understand a roll-for-loot kind of set up, but most loot can be duplicated so that each of member of the party gets their own chest-full (my personal preference -- but then i like opening treasure chests, lol) or just divvied up in gold automatically just like looting corpses (boring but fair). I would hate to do the need/greed and roll-for-loot thing every single time - that seems excessively mechanical to me....

But i am not a techy programer person so i have no idea how difficult any of this is to incorporate.

 

I like the idea of showing the current market price of the goods when looting chests, but nothing complicated like instanced chests or loot tracking or whatever. Rolling for loot is a fair mechanic and players are free to give up their share -- as I have often seen done many times already.

 

I would prefer the option to see the value of items, yes. However, I think there is something to be said for the party openly talking amongst each other about who gets which loot and agreeing on it AD&D style. This is not warcraft. That game for instance, and others that followed (and some before) all promoted the idea of running dungeons over and over and over as the main content largely in a group of unknowns.

I would hope our features here were more inclusive of the community type we are trying to build... And the "modern mmo" community is NOT that type of community.

 

let the person who creates the group set the rules for it, by rightclicking themselves.

options:
1. designate looter>party member names in a list. - designated member approves or declines.
2. roll for loot - anyone who wants in selects a need or greed option and then rolls between 1 and 100 automatically to decide who gets what piece. if you roll for one piece and there are three, you can't roll for the second, but you can for the third.
3. free for all - the way it is now. anyone gets anything - but SHOW WHAT LOOTED in either a loot channel or the misc channel.
4. convert to cash>split as loot is picked up, and auto split it up immediately.
5. set default mode>then have the options above. - this will default to your preference, and announce it to everyone, when you become group leader, or as they join the group.

 

Great comments, I did have an idea that would provide freedom of wills, yet total transparency. It is simplistic, yet no forced division of loot among party involved. I prefer we do something more creative than the same old same old roll and loot. That doesn't sound to me very appealing. I much rather would leave it to the group to decide if I had a choice.

The main idea is this:
- When the treasure chest is open the first time have the Wooden Storage Chest Loot gui box open up in front of rest of party members without "Take All" option. Kind of like a trade window of sorts. Basically this will give all party members the info of all loot and value and can be discussed on the spot what each one wants or how they want to deal with it.

Some Variations of the idea:
-Variation 1 : Have it pop up minimized so that it doesn't distract from fighting for party members, preferably in local to the chest itself (preventing it popping up in front of a party member that is really not in the dungeon)
-Variation 2: (Advanced) Have a manner to turn into gold with a spell or cost to do it so party members could split loot on the spot in gold value.

 

I have ran this dungeon probably more than anyone in R12. The problem I have seen the most is the famous "loot sniper".

Loot snipers will focus on one thing: The chest after the mimic room.

Typically they grab all the loot, sell it, and rather than split the loot they divide the loot in their favor.

On 3 occasions I have been given 5500 gp of the 91,750 gp loot. Usually there are 6 people in my group or less when this happens.

I find this to be my only consistently bad experience in SOTA.

Personally - I would like to vote for a system that at least displays the loot that the looter has taken. So everyone in the party will know who looted the chest and the value of the items in the chest. This will at least positively identify the scammer so the community can properly handle it. So far - the community has done a great job in outcasting scammers. There has to be a unique way of conveying this data to players and I will think harder on it in the coming days.

 

So you would prefer that there is no auto-distribution of loot. Experiences like the one the op is referring to should be allowed. While painful to our pocketbooks and somewhat bruising to our egos (myself included), the event itself revealed something of what kind of people we are. If we make life all safe and tidy and pain-free we remove opportunities to learn more about ourselves and others..... hmmm

 

I'm not a fan of this... I think I'd rather know who the thieves are via their actions than allow the game to hide them so it's harder to know... Let them play how they want and let the players do what the players do best: create "do not party" lists and shout out "THEIF" and put them on KOS lists and... you know... be players

LONG LIVE/LOVE MMORPGS (even if this is an smorpg lol)! This has been an issue that was handled before the loot mechanics and I personally liked that more than the newer "wow" style of loot systems.

 

I remember a time when I used to go dungeon crawling with a group of players.....we used to split up and kill and loot as much as possible. At the end we used to meet up at one of the players houses, put all looted items on the floor and then split it.

The current loot system isn't broken.....in fact there is nothing wrong with it. In my opinion it is the players who feast on envy and suspicion who are broken.

Sorry I hate the suggested idea.

 

HEAR HEAR!

 

I like this idea. You get to see what kind of people you are playing with.

 

Hail OWL! and HEAR HEAR!

 

duke violation - and envy - read my post above. there is a free for all option there for the very reason you two protest. - if you dislike the other methods, insist on being the group leader, and just set it the way you like it.

this frees up the player, leader and not, to make the decision if they wish to play with a group in those configurations or not. - if they choose not to, they can just leave, no harm no foul.




also, having more options like this with a default per preference if you are leader, allows everyone to be happy with whichever system(s) they choose to utilize/play with, and will also discourage whiners to be policed by the community when we tell them "then don't play with X, if you don't like Y, and quit whining!"

 

Thank you for the comments, if you think about all you are doing is showing the party members what is in the chest/value, the same thing the person that opens sees. This idea/mechanic already exist in when we are in a party and you loot a dead monster. It shows in the misc tab what is looted and the gold distribution to the players. This is just an extension of that and having consistency all the way thru the process. Some of the ideas I put in first post were just ideas being thrown out there, I think a boiled down version is my last post (italicized below) which is simple and sweet and allows total freedom of the party to do what they want with total transparency. This in turn will promote new players joining in arms and more friendships being made in the game.

"The main idea is this:
- When the treasure chest is open the first time have the Wooden Storage Chest Loot gui box open up in front of rest of party members without "Take All" option. Kind of like a trade window of sorts. Basically this will give all party members the info of all loot and value and can be discussed on the spot what each one wants or how they want to deal with it. "

As far as "I think I'd rather know who the thieves are via their actions than allow the game to hide them so it's harder to know." The beauty of the gui idea below is it still shows you your "thieves"(ex: as if they run away with all the loot and never come back). Leaving it the way it is currently is truly what hides the thieves in my opinion as my real game example shows: before that player was "known" I am sure that person scammed many others before word spread, but with a simple game mechanic can be prevented.


Thurisazsheol post gives many choices to the player parties also which would be great, I was trying to think of something that is not too hard to program for the devs.

 

Um why are you all going into a Dungeons with people you do not trust to fairly distribute the loot? We have only done a few Challenge Dungeons, and we have used the loot for our guilds purposes, Hell I was the looter and really only got about 30 K out of 2 runs was given to individuals.

Players need to police themselves, Don't go in with people you don't know / trust, SORRY you got robbed :-(

 

Keep it simple. The more complex the suggestion, the less likely the devs will implement it.

The game already notifies you of what was looted and by whom from MOBs, and it auto-splits gold. The enhancement should be simply to extend that to chests, or other containers.

Long term, they could add enhancements like show current market pricing for all loot in that notification and in the loot window (for whoever is looting), which I think would be neat so you can decide right there if you really want to pick it up -- especially with encumbrance coming online in the next couple releases. And I really don't think they're going to add party loot control logic, at least for Ep1. But you never know.

 

My first reaction was to agree that everything should be transparent. I liked some of the suggestions.

But after thinking a bit I realised that I miss the old world mechanics where you rely on trust and camaraderie. Sometimes that trust is misplaced, and you get done in. You write a name down into a little black book and learn a lesson.

Remember that we're not only making a game, but we're also building a community. The sense of community doesn't come from forced trust (which is false), but from willing trust. We, as real people, need to learn to rely on our own instincts again and not be babysitted (babysat?) with the game mechanics making us feel treated fairly.

I want us to make our own decisions, not have the game make decisions for us.