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Suggestion on Loot rolls: No "need" if you cant use the item.
shadomen
Member, Neverwinter Beta Users, Neverwinter Guardian Users Posts: 8 Arc User
Pretty basic suggestion...
Don't allow people to roll "need" if they cannot use the item.
Thx!
Don't allow people to roll "need" if they cannot use the item.
Thx!
Post edited by shadomen on
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My question would be what about people like me with 4 60s at 10k+gs and i want to play my cw but the group needs my DC so i get punished because i help the group out in what they need?
fair enough.
If one believes in the Need before Greed system; why stop merely at one's class defining Need? Why not check and see if they already have a better item equipped? Why stop at Equipped, check their inventory, check their bank, or even check their alts. What about items stashed in their mail? Maybe they already have a huge stock of Astrals and could buy the item -- shouldn't it go to the person who might make an alt in that class someday, but hasn't the game-wealth to buy the gear others already have; they 'need' it more than the wealthy players do.
This is a terrible slippery slope, and I refuse to get on it. I'll work with whatever loot distribution system the devs devise, but this idea that class restricted loot should only go to the classes they match is fundamentally bad -- it's inherently capricious, arbitrarily unfair, and divisive.
The real problem is why the loot from a group run does not consistently divide out equitably to everyone who participated; and do so through a system that can't be exploited for individual gain. The best suggestion I've seen to date is individualized private loot drops containing a mix of items.
Don't worry, the coefficient of friction will be much improved by the stalks left over from the construction of that dreadfully pretentious straw man.
Ultimately the best loot system I've seen in an MMO was in City of Heroes, you got your loot added to your inventory and no one was informed when or what loot others got.
In fact when they added a system message to show what others got in preparation for Issue 9's inventions system, there was a massive uproar on the forums and they dropped the addition.
It's a solution, and it's easy, but it also leads to the problem that loot remains in the corpse, because you would also have to reduce the vendor sales value to zero (gold is precious at sixty). Other MMOs that use this system have an option to turn unwanted loot into materials.
And I actually like being able to buy gear for my alts without having to drag them through dozens of dungeons. The fact that items can be sold in the AH is a corner stone of the economy. Take that away and it removes a major aspect that allows free players to get Zen by just playing the game.
The only issue is the antisocial behavior it encourages, but I think there may be better approaches that won't remove the ability to sell and buy gear from the AH. (e.g. everyone automatically rolls and the winner gets an item for their class, and everyone else gets a consolidation prize, e.g. five health potions or a kit, or some crafting materials).
Recap= The loot system stimulates the economy, AD is the means to transfer the items, and AD can be converted from zen by in game transaction BUT zen is acquired by spending real world money, PWE needs to take their cut of the pie. Since AD is generated by dailies or some cash package while being controlled, AD has the value of gold bullion like in the real world while in game gold has NO VALUE what so ever aside from pot/kits and if you just got loot because you happened to be present...well there would be no point for AD or the AH.
Yeah, it sounds confusing by what I am trying to say. There is a reason that the "My class was present, therefore I am the only one entitled" doesn't work and you get butt hurt over pixels. Because of the AD/Zen/AH triangle. If you got your class items just because you where present, AD/Zen/AH would be moot and this game wouldn't be F2P.
Best loot system is just Roll/Pass, where roll is the same as Need/Greed so everyone gets a 20% chance for the item but you cannot call dibs with Need. You lose out, well if your wizzy needs the new hat there happens to be the AH.
Second loot system, tokens. Like the Manticore/drake/Pegasus. Then just turn the loot into a vendor for what you need. Everyone gets the same amount of tokens, no more squabbling because people feel entitled just because they can use it...FORGETING 4 OTHER PEOPLE HELPED YOU GET IT, LIKE YOU DIDN'T FORGET ABOUT THAT SINCE ITS 1/5 FOR YOUR CLASS WHEN IT DROPS NOT TO MENTION THE NUMBER OF SLOTS YOU NEED TO FILL. Which is why a token payment system is better.
Terrible comparison for loot. City of Heroes had a decent loot system, but the loot wasn't exactly class specific. Sure, a controller got better use out of a hold duration and blasters got better use of the damage but it dropped like rain. The first enhancements you got where useless with the Invention system, Hamidon duals where useless, single origin where useless. The skittles buffs/heals (forget their name) where pretty useless, but that was because they dropped so often and you chewed them up fast there was no reason to squabble with your team. The IO salvage was the only thing of value, but that stuff dropped so often and you could easily just slot a mix stuff and still get the 95% damage 40% accuracy 40% recharge 40 End/Reduc and never have to reslot the powers again (unless you wanted the set bonuses, but a mix of power enhancements for the power itself was more useful then 5% running speed). The loot itself became useless once you slotted it cause you only had to slot once, the system was nice because there wasn't a really greedy community like NWO so it doesn't matter if someone knows what you got.
What are you talking about? Any item that can be 'Need'ed or 'Greed'ed on can be used by every class. They can all sell it for gold if they have to which everyone likes.
I used to think WoW had the worst player community, but NW is quickly winning that award and its not even released yet.
Rolling Need on a blue item that you can't use while that player helped you in the dungeon run is a spit in the face. Some dungeons take a very long time. If you want to farm items to sell, then do a guild run specifically for farming.
This is just so disrespectful, it frustrating that people are actually arguing for it. Its greed in its purest form.
I don't think this was the intent of the loot system in NW and the Devs already acknowledged its a problem that is going to be addressed.
The fact is your philosophy is morally bankrupt, selfish and unjustifiable. To back up my point, the Devs are addressing which further proves you wrong.
I strongly disagree here, why?
1: most the items that seem to drop are only for TRs (seriously about 85% of the time it's TR items) they walk away from dungeon with a Purple item or 2 everytime.
2: It's COMMON COURTESY. if your class that you're on and not your alt can't use the item and the class that can use that item is in your group, don't roll on it. if you want items for your alts, TAKE THAT CHARACTER.
In a game where the auction house driven economy is at the very least a significant part of how many people play, how on earth is this a straw man? Care to explain, or just drop a pithy one liner against a position you disagree with? I'd be quite curious to hear some detail on your reasoning so I can call it pretentious (or choose your dismissive descriptive) and then use my own pithy one liner to dismiss it without argument. That guy backed up his position with a rational argument. You, on the other hand, are offering a glorified "Nuh-uh!"
1) My experience is quite different... I find a host of fighter items dropping when there is usually one or both types of fighter gone from my party. Sorry to say, it seems like you just have bad luck, and you can't really fault the loot system for that.
2) It's only common courtesy if it's an option - otherwise it's just forced and no choice. No choice = no judgement, no guilt, and therefore, no courtesy or discourtesy. You are playing with discourteous players if they are rolling need on things they aren't. I've had both good and bad groups. This isn't a problem with the loot system, it's a problem with the goobers you're playing with.
Also, another person pointed out an example earlier... I'm working on gearing up a control wizard and a great weapon fighter, but I have a geared cleric. Because I am a courteous player, I will willingly hop on and play my cleric, ahead of my other two classes, since they are by far the more needed class in most situations. When I do this, I make it clear I will roll on either GWF or CW items and not cleric ones because I simply don't need the cleric loot. Are you suggesting I deserve to be punished for trying to give the group what it needs, for being courteous to those I'm playing with? Are you suggesting I should say "Sorry, I have a cleric that would complete this group just fine, but I need GWF loot so I'm sticking with my GWF and leaving the group high and dry on the cleric front"?
Then again some people may say they NEED the paltry sum of gold they get from selling the unusable epic to the NPC vendor.
I strongly, and respectfully, disagree in turn.
1: If there's an imbalance of classes and items in the random loot generation, that should be fixed by the developer. It is wrong to try to address it by jury-rigging the rewards from runs.
2: It is not "common courtesy". Saying it's so doesn't make it so; it only makes it clear that's one poster's position on the matter. As I noted in my first post to this thread, I have never read a compelling ethical argument for this. Most people seem to just say it's obvious to them. Well, it isn't to me, and I daresay not to many others. I presented my arguments why I don't believe this is courteous or fair at all, and I would be happy to read and respond to a rebuttal that didn't reduce to saying it's that way because everyone I agree with says so.
In fact, I think it can be horribly unjust and unfair. Put it this way. Five people work for possibly an hour or more to achieve a dungeon victory. The single predominant thing of value that drops happens to have a class assignment that matches just one of them. Let's say it's something that has a high sale value on the Auction House; say, enough Astrals so that anyone on that team could sell that loot and then buy an item that actually upgrades a piece of their equipped gear. Why should they not all get a fair chance at receiving it? Why only the one class? Just because they won the invisible lottery that happened to put that one item in the loot drop? No. It's absolutely unfair. The other players worked hard too, and deserve and should demand an equitable reward for their effort. Not just automatically be required to allow someone who may already have that item, or one better, equipped, or in their inventory, or easily accessible to their character, have it because their class name was attached to it. There's no way to define 'need' in a way that's fully consistent and fair, and thus it's no justification to deny other people a fair and equitable chance for their rewards.
If we want to talk about whether it's fair to transfer items and wealth from one alt to another, that's yet another story. The fact is we can; and in the manner most people play the game, the 'character' has no mind or will to have need or greed -- people, the actual players behind them, do. It is not the character who deserves a share of the reward for being pixels present during the event, but the -player- for being logged into the game and participating as a human being with volition and intent in the run, who could have been doing other things with their time. What the player chooses to do with their reward after the fact is irrelevant.
The whole system is broken beyond changing how need and/or greed is rolled, or how the items bind or not. Every player who contributed to a victory deserves an equitable share of the reward. If the loot system doesn't perform this function, it's badly designed or badly implements; possibly both. In my opinion, everyone should be rewarded their own loot independent of what others on the team receive. None of this rolling and bickering over who deserves to have what at the exclusion of others. It's wrong.
If you cant use the item, if you already have that item then you cannot need.
AND all items you press Need and win = Bind on Account (therefor no selling on AH)
What I said is not a philosophy, it's a fact: Everyone can use gold in some way, therefore, everyone can get SOME use out of ANY class item that drops. There's no 'moral bankruptcy' or 'selfishness' here. Furthermore, there is no 'proving me wrong' here. Since everyone can use gold no matter how it's gotten, then everyone can gain benefit from items that drop in a dungeon whether their class uses it or not.
See, the OP said that the item is 'useless' since a Cleric couldn't use a Guardian item for example. That is false. The item can be translated to gold at the very least so, not 'useless'.
Now it you want to talk about Courtesy or Good Will that is something outside of what I've been talking about. I'm only talking about facts here.
The problem with these sorts of rules is they must exhaustively search equipped items, inventory items, banked items, mailed items, items on alts, items stored as auctions, and even items on secondary accounts to be executed fairly. Otherwise, if you're only checking equipped items, then someone will take off their good gear just as the loot drops, or whatever is required, just to make sure they qualify for 'need'. And binding 'need' gear is also a bad idea -- there are a lot of player who'll roll need on a nice piece of gear even if they end up throwing it away afterwards, just for the laughs at denying it to someone else.
The whole system is ridiculous. Don't try to patch it endlessly; just replace it with a fair one.
lol@ the thought that you are trying to distribute things equally.
There is a very consistent standard in every MMO I've played that people who can use the item need it, and if you are selling it to greed it. There is a reason the rolls are called "Need" and "Greed".
Now if you joined a group, and were upfront to everyone that you are going to need on everything...I don't have too much of a problem with that. I certainly don't prefer it but at least accept your honesty, and people can leave before wasting their time.
Unfortunately that I have never come across that. What happens every time is that nothing is said until the end boss drops an item someone needs. 3 people pass/greed, the person who needs it needs it....then people like you also need it.
It isn't about equity...it is about you trying to get ahead.. It is really unfortunate how common that is in this game.
Strictly speaking, the current system is "fair" in the sense that everyone in the group has a 20% chance to get an item, provided everyone rolls "need". This is an unbiased system where everyone has an equal chance.
The "problem" is that there is no universally accepted standard, and most people are considerate and polite, so they will only roll "greed" unless they do need something for their current character. People with different moral and social standards, or different definitions of "need", will not do this, and that is the source of all conflict. It is a social problem, however, not a technical one.
WoW solved (or addressed) this problem in the Raid Finder by rolling FOR all players, and the winner gets an item for their class. The game won't tell anyone else who won, nor what they got. That takes out the potential for targeted whining of jealousy. A player only knows that their roll wasn't the winning one.
It's a bit like babysitting and an attempt at upsetting no one too much, I guess, but with so many different player personalities it is not necessarily a bad approach.
This reduces to it's this way because it is. Need and Greed have no clear and unambiguous definitions; what constitutes need vs greed is a matter of individual judgment where reasonable people can disagree - which is the source of the problem.
I see no compelling argument here.
How about this: players "need" absolutely nothing in a video game. It's all greed; and this talk of "class need" being a privileged position in terms of loot distribution is nothing but sophistry to justify a particular rule of thumb. What actual objective harm occurs to the player if they don't get that piece of loot they say they 'need'? None. Therefore it's all greed.
My honesty? I've said nothing about how I roll on loot in dungeons.
Again, "people like you" sounds vaguely ad-hominem; I haven't said how I act and interact in my groups; and I'd appreciate it if you didn't jump to conclusions about it based on arguments I present and comment on in forums posts.
Yet again. I am not trying to "get ahead", with the insinuation that my position in this thread is automatically in the wrong. You do not know how I work in parties; either with random strangers or my guild-mates. I personally believe I interact ethically and with the full foreknowledge and consent of the parties I'm in. And if you presume this is because I tell them it's going to be my way, whatever it might be, or the highway; you would be wrong.
I am not arguing that everyone should roll need whenever they want. I am arguing that Need-before-greed, whether enforced by a social rule of behavior or by game mechanics, is not ethically well justified as a solution to this problem; and that a fair loot system would remove any such need to worry about who deserves the valuable loot and who doesn't.
So in the end, you wouldn't really gain anything, other than an ineffective trading system.
I'm not advocating that everyone should roll need on all things.
Of course, the trading system may not be particularly effective; but that's rationale to fix the trading system itself, not to limit the loot system fix on its account. I'm also not advocating that the auction trader is the way to appropriately distribute class restricted loot.
Partly, I am making the case -against- the idea that it's wrong to want to roll on the main loot from a dungeon run regardless of one's class and whatever class restriction the item may have.
Mainly, I am claiming that the system which puts us players into the positions of trying to decide who is most worthy to even have a chance at an item is wrong and ought be replaced. No simple rule of thumb can readily identify who on the team is most or even appropriately deserving of a chance at a valuable item; one that could well be the predominant reward value from the entire dungeon. Not our perceptions of how hard they worked; not our reading the class restriction text off the item and comparing it to their class; nor our inspecting them and looking at the items they have equipped -- none of this.
The fair and equitable way is for the devs to modify the system to give each player an individual and privately awarded loot drop. Everyone played the dungeon, everyone gets something valuable. No one has to roll for loot. No one fights or argues over the one nice thing; no one recriminates because someone else's judgment of what constitutes need differs from their own.
I do not feel it would not even be all that out of scope to implement. Here's one possibility: bosses already drop tokens individually for players; let them drop a few more. In exchange, they would no longer drop rare or very rare items on death; instead, those would be in the dungeon delve chest, which would always be open in every run, but have a bonus item and tokens in them during the delve hour. All the normal white and green items would be instantly and randomly passed out to players as they're picked up -- there's so many of them, the law of large numbers can be depended on to parcel it out equitably.
Of course, the devs will do what they will do, and while we're sure to complain in the forums regardless, we'll have to live with it. But they have an opportunity to make a system that has absolutely no fighting over loot rolls and drops in it, and it will disappoint me if they squander it by just making class-restriction based "need before greed" mechanically enforced. That may well be better than the mess it is now, but is hardly ideal or even fair.
Not happening , thanks .
I wasn't referring to the loot itself, I was referring to how it dropped, i.e. the fact it went straight into your inventory without broadcasting what you got.