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Looting? Your thoughts.

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Zeliop
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Looting? Your thoughts.

I was curious to what everyones thoughts are in regards to looting?

Dudesoft
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As a hero; no?

As a hero; no?
As a villain; of course! ;)

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Dudesoft wrote:
Dudesoft wrote:

As a hero; no?
As a villain; of course! ;)

I understand this from a social perspective, but how would a "Hero" then be able to acquire those items normally given to villains during the course of their looting?

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Gangrel
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For me, I prefer the lack of

For me, I prefer the lack of "loot" mechanism that some MMO's use (City of Heroes, Final Fantasy 14), where you dont actually have to do any clicking to pick them up. I am even not averse to "run over the body" form of looting that Tabula Rasa used.

However, I *DO* dislike the fact that City of Heroes prevented higher level characters from getting *anything* from mobs that were "too low level" for them. Sure, you might not get XP from doing it, but I feel that you should get *some* loot from it. It gives the characters a reason to go to lower level areas... instead of just viewing the zone as a time delay going from A to B. And yes, I know that the AE gave a method for the level capped players to get the low level items that they needed, but this took then just took them back out of the game world.

Now granted, it all depends as to how the crafting system is set up, and how the loot tables are setup, but if loot is going to be split into level groups, then I feel that street sweeping *should* be beneficial to everyone who does it, even if it is just low level crafting components that are needed for crafting stuff of all levels.

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1) I reject your reality.... and substitute my own
2) Not to be used when upset... will void warranty
3) Stoke me a clipper i will be back for dinner
4) I have seen more intelligence from an NPC AI in TR beta, than from most MMO players.

Darth Fez
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If the question is asked in

If the question is asked in the spirit of, "Do I have a problem with the fact that this bear dropped a breastplate or a pile of coins?" No. No, I do not. Any game involves a measure of handwaving and I'd rather that any mob drop potentially useful items than to require a spreadsheet to figure out which mobs, where, and of what level drop that kind of item.

In terms of how we loot, I agree with Gangrel. I adored CoH's means of handling it. Coming to CoH after playing WoW for years was almost an epiphany. No bags? No loot juggling? Yes please!

I'm content to leave looting purely in the realms of game mechanics. So long as it works and does its job I don't require there to be an in-game explanation for how it works. I think this is particularly vital to a superhero game because individual heroes and villains will approach such things differently. E.g. I may explain my character's "income" by way of donations from citizens who want to support him, rather than, "Hey, that gang member dropped five bucks as he ran way. Niiice! Free donuts!"

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Gangrel
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Well, CoX did involve loot

Well, CoX did involve loot juggling, because if your bags were full, you missed out on picking *anything* up that would have gone into it. So to continue to pick stuff up, you had to go and sell/destroy stuff that you didnt want just to *stand* a chance of picking stuff up.

I am sure that there is a mechanism that can be used to sort this out (maybe an overflow bag, where if you did have full bags, you get a window up on the side, which lists what they are. You then have the option to ignore the loot (so it gets destroyed), or you clear a space in your inventory to then let the new item drop in). After 1-5 minutes (or whatever acceptable window the developers choose), if you haven't done anything with the loot that is in the overflow bag, it just "vanishes" (older items to the top of the window, because they are the 1st to go).

I wonder how many purple recipes were "missed out on" due to people not having the space for it to even drop into....

Quote:

1) I reject your reality.... and substitute my own
2) Not to be used when upset... will void warranty
3) Stoke me a clipper i will be back for dinner
4) I have seen more intelligence from an NPC AI in TR beta, than from most MMO players.

Darth Fez
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True.

True.

I was too busy bathing in the rosy glow of nostalgia to be too particular about the details. :P

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Gangrel
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Darth Fez wrote:
Darth Fez wrote:

True.
I was too busy bathing in the rosy glow of nostalgia to be too particular about the details. :P

Don't worry about it. That is why I open my mouth sometimes to point out that not everything in the past was as good as you thought it was (or to maybe point out what are obvious problems in my view at least).

This also probably explains why I feel that there will be no "magic game" that pushes the whole MMO genre forward in one go. It will stand on the shoulders of its predecessors and just execute stuff *better*. Even WoW was a total fluke in terms of how well it took off, but yet it really just refined the concepts from previous games, and tweaked them to work better.

And yes, it even looked *outside* of the MMO genre for new features (Pet battles are *obviously* taken from Pokemon, and are quite successful from what I can gather).

Quote:

1) I reject your reality.... and substitute my own
2) Not to be used when upset... will void warranty
3) Stoke me a clipper i will be back for dinner
4) I have seen more intelligence from an NPC AI in TR beta, than from most MMO players.

Darth Fez
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That fairly well describes my

That fairly well describes my view on it. There's no point to reinventing the wheel in order to move forward.

As much as a WoW is a freak in terms of its success, a good part of why it remained a success is that the folks at Blizzard did a lot right.

As for loot systems (and the crafting to which it is inevitably linked), such things can be robust without being unduly complex. Big ultra double plus necessity: a solid system to sort loot by various categories (level, rarity, type, alphabetically, etc.).

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HarvesterOfEyes
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I dislike "loot" in general.

I dislike "loot" in general.

If a game has to have random loot drops I would prefer to see a system like LoTRO now has were everyone gets a drop appropriate to their character. Scarce random drops that force you to implement a loot system encourage strife among players.

One of the best features of CoH (prior to inventions) is that there was very little in the way of "loot". Your character was what you made of it from the available options, and everyone ultimately had the same options.

Get yourself right; the world has enough problems.

Gangrel
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Infact before Inventions

Infact before Inventions there was *no* loot at all...

Well, there were inspirations, and TO's/Do's/SO's dropped from mobs AND were purchasable from the contacts. Everything was available to everyone (unless you were flat broke that is).

Ok, slight lie... There were hami-o's.

They were loot that was available from just one source, and *not* everyone had the option to get them... because they were permanently limited in supply at the start... (unless you were *very* lucky to know a lot of people who killed hamidon enough to get the Hami-o's required to finish your "uber build".... but that is another story).

I do feel that "spec appropriate" loot is a good idea, and thankfully LOTRO is not the only game that does it (World of Warcraft does it as well for Raid bosses), however, without knowing how TPP will implement crafting/character enhancement, this is just high level thinking of pro's and cons.

Quote:

1) I reject your reality.... and substitute my own
2) Not to be used when upset... will void warranty
3) Stoke me a clipper i will be back for dinner
4) I have seen more intelligence from an NPC AI in TR beta, than from most MMO players.

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What if the bags had no limit

What if the bags had no limit to the amount of items you could hold? *audience gasps*

It sounds nuts, but what is so game breaking about not having to constantly manage your loot?

Cube world did this and i feel they executed it really well.

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Just Hami-O's at the

Just Hami-O's at the beginning and on low pop servers like Protector, where I started, there was no getting them at all.

I really preferred it that way.

The other extreme was realized before the game shut down [curse NCSoft a thousand times] where even the best IO's could be had by almost anyone with a little work. That took us nearly full-circle because again nearly everyone had the same options [with the caveat that you had to have the time to farm inf or a patron].

As far as how to do build-specific loot, of course that depends on game design and what sort of things are "drops". I don't want to get to detailed without knowing more specifics about TPP. If it were CoH recipes, seems pretty clear that out of the universe of all recipes "Pet Buffs", and "Ranged DPS" don't go to someone with only melee offensives.

Shouldn't be hard to extend that to different designs.

I'd even suggest having a user setting for "build specific drops only" or "everything" as to what set the drop is drawn from.

Get yourself right; the world has enough problems.

Gangrel
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Just having a quick look

Just having a quick look through Cube World... although the game gives you "infinite" storage space, you are limited to just one stack of per "item".

I believe that also opening and closing your inventory when it is *stupidly* large, can cause a performance hit... I have seen this happen in Eve Online and when you access station hangers with a *lot* of different items in them. There is a noticable lag spike that happens (although this has since been at least been mostly fixed, I believe it can still be a problem for those who have have 1000's of seperate stacks in their hanger/ship hold/etc etc)

So there could at least be that aspect to look towards to see if it is worthwhile giving one so much storage it hurts (ideal for the packrat, you never know when you will need the "gizmo of sleepiness"... whilst also making it *easy* to actually track what you have (and to find it/remember what you have/where it is).

Quote:

1) I reject your reality.... and substitute my own
2) Not to be used when upset... will void warranty
3) Stoke me a clipper i will be back for dinner
4) I have seen more intelligence from an NPC AI in TR beta, than from most MMO players.

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I don't want "loot" in the

I don't want "loot" in the traditional sense - it's one of the things that I hate about certain other Supers Games. CoH had it right - enhancement drops and crafting supplies that have a chance of just appearing in your storage.

Leave the LEET LOOT to Champions and Diablo.

Interdictor
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[quote=Gangrel
Gangrel wrote:

However, I *DO* dislike the fact that City of Heroes prevented higher level characters from getting *anything* from mobs that were "too low level" for them. Sure, you might not get XP from doing it, but I feel that you should get *some* loot from it. It gives the characters a reason to go to lower level areas... instead of just viewing the zone as a time delay going from A to B.

If I recall correctly, when CoH was first released, "street-sweeping" was considered to be one of the main methods of levelling your character (thus the large number of "arrest X members of Y faction" missions from contacts). If higher-level characters were allowed to farm low-level zones for rewards then there wouldn't have been much left for the lowbies after a few level 40's would swoop by and depopulate the map of mobs in short order.

Now, as the game developed over the years this emphasis on street sweeping disappeared but the underlying reasons remain - you gotta leave something for the lower level characters to do.

I'm not sure how THIS game's world is going to be set up, if street-sweeping will even be an option, but there was a good reason for the lack of rewards from "grey cons" in CoH, and if this game is similar then I can see similar restrictions set in place.

Gangrel
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Interdictor wrote:
Interdictor wrote:

I don't want "loot" in the traditional sense - it's one of the things that I hate about certain other Supers Games. CoH had it right - enhancement drops and salvage that have a chance of just appearing in your storage.
Leave the LEET LOOT to Champions and Diablo.

That is the mechanism for looting, with it just dropping into your inventory. And I do like that mechanism (its far easier/faster overall).

I feel however that there are several enhancements to that method that should be taken advantage of (as has been previously mentioned, either a stupidly large inventory/salvage storage system, or an overflow bag).

But remember that "loot" also included invention salvage, and recipes... which CoX DID have.

Quote:

1) I reject your reality.... and substitute my own
2) Not to be used when upset... will void warranty
3) Stoke me a clipper i will be back for dinner
4) I have seen more intelligence from an NPC AI in TR beta, than from most MMO players.

syntaxerror37
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I'm all for the auto-loot

I'm all for the auto-loot just dropping into my inventory. Definitely something CoH got very right. add on an overflow tab to give you a chance when you fill up to not miss a rare drop and you're golden.

For crafting materials I don't think there should be a hard limit on the salvage as CoH had, but rather a stack limit on each unit, and the stack size should be generous, no less than 100.

As for the idea of build specific drops, I don't know if that would really be a good thing in the long run. Sure, it can be annoying getting a pet damage recipe on your blaster, but the drops that you don't use are money in your pocket whether sold to a vendor or to another player on the market. Not to mention just because the toon you are actively playing does not mean it wouldn't work on another one of your characters. Also, if there was a way to "break down" a drop into generic salvage your trash drops get recycled into something you can use.

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Gangrel
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The build specific drops is

The build specific drops is an idea.. but it is based *entirely* upon how the enhancement system works.

If it is like CoX, then I would have to say that the equivalent would be enhancements that your character can use *at that point in time*. Now, if the game had "untradeable" loot, then the build specific (ie enhancements that you can slot at that point in time) drops are more viable (World of warcraft has recently added the "choose another spec to get stuff for that build" so you can get tank gear if you are DPSing (or healing gear whilst Tanking for example. But that only works because there is a definite choice between tank spec and DPS specs and gear).

Stacks of components up to 100 (or 99, or 255, or whatever) is a good way to go. It prevents the *severe* micro managing that City of Heroes introduced... so even if you only had a 40 slot "component bag", that is 40 *different* stacks that you could carry...

Your last part about breaking down stuff into generic salvage... that is a crafting comment (and Tabula Rasa had something just like that in the finalised crafting system that it had)

Quote:

1) I reject your reality.... and substitute my own
2) Not to be used when upset... will void warranty
3) Stoke me a clipper i will be back for dinner
4) I have seen more intelligence from an NPC AI in TR beta, than from most MMO players.

Darth Fez
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In another thread I

In another thread I brainstormed a twist on the CoH crafting system (Quick recap: To explain, rather than having a recipe demand 1x Ancient Artifact, 1x Luck Charm, 1x Clockwork Winder, the recipe would require 2x Common Arcane Salvage, 1x Common Technology Salvage. Ideally the required materials will have to be from your level range.). This kind of system might succeed in removing the need to hoard lower level materials and thus reduce the likelihood of a bloated inventory. (Obviously crafting oriented players are likely to have bloated inventories, regardless.)

AT or spec appropriate loot, as Gangrel said, generally come from the likes of raids or task forces. WoW took the approach of having bosses drop tokens (e.g. a paladin helmet token, which could be turned in for a helmet with stats for a tank, a DPS, or a healer), a system which SWTOR emulated.

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Gangrel
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Darth Fez wrote:
Darth Fez wrote:

In another thread I brainstormed a twist on the CoH crafting system (Quick recap: To explain, rather than having a recipe demand 1x Ancient Artifact, 1x Luck Charm, 1x Clockwork Winder, the recipe would require 2x Common Arcane Salvage, 1x Common Technology Salvage. Ideally the required materials will have to be from your level range.). This kind of system might succeed in removing the need to hoard lower level materials and thus reduce the likelihood of a bloated inventory. (Obviously crafting oriented players are likely to have bloated inventories, regardless.)
AT or spec appropriate loot, as Gangrel said, generally come from the likes of raids or task forces. WoW took the approach of having bosses drop tokens (e.g. a paladin helmet token, which could be turned in for a helmet with stats for a tank, a DPS, or a healer), a system which SWTOR emulated.

Actually WoW does what you have said AND what I said.... depends on the raid/dungeon though. It is something that I cant remember off the top of my head right now, because it has been a few months since I last played, and I mainly did LFR. So at least there is flexibility that the developers can use. I have gotten both types from raids and level cap dungeons in the past.

The crafting system change, I think that needs more explaining, but that is a different thread compared to this one, more because you need to go more in depth to it.

Personally, I would prefer it (in general) if "low level" items had a use for higher level crafting... but ONLY if higher level characters could get them without resorting to something like AE rolls, or relying *purely* on the Auction House.

Hell, even if you could use the lower level stuff to make base higher level components (like WoW does with leatherworking and the upgrading the leather... although it is a long and arduous task, it is an option when you are in the "cross over period")

Quote:

1) I reject your reality.... and substitute my own
2) Not to be used when upset... will void warranty
3) Stoke me a clipper i will be back for dinner
4) I have seen more intelligence from an NPC AI in TR beta, than from most MMO players.

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I really found it obnoxious

I really found it obnoxious that you couldn't get drops off lower-level mobs and the rarity factor on drops for basic, low-level IO's was in some cases very high. Changing one of those two factors would solve the problem.

My preference is that basic, low-level crafting should not require high-rarity anything.

Get yourself right; the world has enough problems.

Gangrel
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HarvesterOfEyes wrote:
HarvesterOfEyes wrote:

I really found it obnoxious that you couldn't get drops off lower-level mobs and the rarity factor on drops for basic, low-level IO's was in some cases very high. Changing one of those two factors would solve the problem.
My preference is that basic, low-level crafting should not require high-rarity anything.

I think that with some balancing of the salvage drops could have made the system more amenable. And ideally, I don't see why we were prevented from getting drops off the "low level" mobs, even if we were herding up 30 of them and killing them all in one fell swoop.

the basic crafting should *not* require rare items.

For me it would go like this (stop me if you have seen this before). Quick CoX equivalent in brackets, it isnt meant to be an exact equivalence, but just to get the idea out there.

1) Common craft: Common components (TO's/DO's)
2) Uncommon craft: Common components, one uncommon component required (SO's)
3) Rare craft: Common components, two or more uncommon components OR one rare component (normal IO's)
4) Very Rare craft: Common components, two or more uncommon components, two or more rare components required (set IO's)

I lumped the Set IO's all together, because the bonus that they gave varied according to rarity and how many area's each enhancement was giving. This is more of a general high level overview.

This is how I feel it should work... now getting the drop rate sorted out properly is another matter ;)

Quote:

1) I reject your reality.... and substitute my own
2) Not to be used when upset... will void warranty
3) Stoke me a clipper i will be back for dinner
4) I have seen more intelligence from an NPC AI in TR beta, than from most MMO players.

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One important thing for you

One important thing for you all to know: the new enhancement system - which is being called Boosts, so it is the Boost system now - no longer will have origin specific drops. So that solves part of the 'drops you can use' problem, though not all of it. The alt-itis that accompanied our old game and hopefully will accompany our new game is also something to consider, as was pointed out below. I was always mailing enhancement drops among my characters.

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Gangrel
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So origin specific drops...

So origin specific drops... so basically DO's/SO's will be generic like TO's and IO's were? Is that what you are meaning?

If so, then that just smooths out a problem that CoX had, and as you stated, solves *part* of the "drops you can use" problem. Am glad to hear about this.

Quote:

1) I reject your reality.... and substitute my own
2) Not to be used when upset... will void warranty
3) Stoke me a clipper i will be back for dinner
4) I have seen more intelligence from an NPC AI in TR beta, than from most MMO players.

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Among my beefs was that there

Among my beefs was that there were never enough luck charms. They weren't rated "rare" but they were.

There are other examples. You would have had to stop earning exp to farm enough of them to make the IO's for your level, and it would take a lot of farming. I'd rather have no crafting system than one that encourages such absurdity.

Get yourself right; the world has enough problems.

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HarvesterOfEyes wrote:
HarvesterOfEyes wrote:

Among my beefs was that there were never enough luck charms. They weren't rated "rare" but they were.
There are other examples. You would have had to stop earning exp to farm enough of them to make the IO's for your level, and it would take a lot of farming. I'd rather have no crafting system than one that encourages such absurdity.

That is something that *should* have been fixed by the developers, either by improving the drop rate, or by (as i suggested) sorting out the drop system so that at least salvage dropped from mobs that you had out leveled.

Quote:

1) I reject your reality.... and substitute my own
2) Not to be used when upset... will void warranty
3) Stoke me a clipper i will be back for dinner
4) I have seen more intelligence from an NPC AI in TR beta, than from most MMO players.

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I'll add my 2 cents. I

I'll add my 2 cents. I dislike the 'stop and click the body' looting method.

As for "loot", I wish there was a way to make it a bit less bizarre. Fallen Earth, at least, had loot that made sense. Its crafting was nice, too. You could substitute one kind of hide for another and recipes made sense. A bear didn't drop an armor chestplate. I also liked that you could park your character in a crafting place, set what you wanted done, and then log off for the night. When you got on in the morning, it would be done.

I also liked the idea of taking something apart and recycling its components, or upgrading something, rather than the standard MMO "use something for 3 levels, then trash it".

I know it's more work to have a craft and loot system make sense, but it would be nice. :)

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Yeah, if CoH had that, and I

Yeah, if CoH had that, and I parked my doofus at Wentworth's and went offline, the idiot would be across the street at Denny's when I came back.

I, too, hated that about CoH's "Boost" system, having them crap out after 3 levels.

Steve

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Part of what made CoH what it

Part of what made CoH what it was was the loot system or lack of it. No competition for drops and no visibility of what others dropped, with the side effect that people were often pleased you dropped something good.

I disagree on the highups killing greys for low level salvage, if I wanted that, I exemped on a TF/Ouro or used a level appropriate alt and bunged the results into my base for the highup to collect or generated a few tickets in AE, it wasn't difficult to obtain low level salvage.

Being able to deconstruct stuff for components would have been an interesting mechanic, but might have taken a lot of reasonably priced stuff off the AH.

And luck charms weren't rare, they dropped the same as everything else, they were just used in far more useful recipes than other stuff, hence the price, similar with alchemical silvers.

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Darth Fez
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Gangrel wrote:
Gangrel wrote:

The crafting system change, I think that needs more explaining, but that is a different thread compared to this one, more because you need to go more in depth to it.

Absolutely. It's really nothing more than an idea for a concept that hit me while I was writing a reply in that other thread. There's definitely work to be done to flesh it out.

Quote:

Personally, I would prefer it (in general) if "low level" items had a use for higher level crafting... but ONLY if higher level characters could get them without resorting to something like AE rolls, or relying *purely* on the Auction House.

Likely the easiest solution to this is to allow people to either 'down level' existing materials (level 50 common tech salvage -> level 40 common tech salvage -> level 30, etc.) or to have recipes require only a minimum level of materials (a level 30 recipe will accept any appropriate salvage that is level 30+). Granted, neither system would entirely remove AE farming escapades. They would, however, make it much more practical to have low level mobs stop dropping loot.

HarvesterOfEyes wrote:

My preference is that basic, low-level crafting should not require high-rarity anything.

I'm on board with this, as well. In the few hours, or even days, it usually takes to get through the lower level ranges the likelihood of obtaining enough rare items to craft the "good stuff" - which was rarely (punny!) good enough to justify the effort - is very, very small. Especially if you have my kind of luck. ("Common drop, you say? Ha! Double ha!")

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Minotaur wrote:
Minotaur wrote:

Part of what made CoH what it was was the loot system or lack of it. No competition for drops and no visibility of what others dropped, with the side effect that people were often pleased you dropped something good.

Agreed, this was something that was good overall. Although I tended to get annoyed when the luck seemed to favour one person far more highly than another. I remember being in a TF where i was the *only* player who didn't get a purple drop once... that was very disheartening, as everyone kept on linking what they got. Sure, it was bad luck, but even so.. there is only so far bad luck can go before it starts putting you off.

Quote:

I disagree on the highups killing greys for low level salvage, if I wanted that, I exemped on a TF/Ouro or used a level appropriate alt and bunged the results into my base for the highup to collect or generated a few tickets in AE, it wasn't difficult to obtain low level salvage.

Now, this is where we can be at logger heads until the end of days. For me, I am a very "single character" style of player. I rarely have a whole load of characters at various levels in the game, and being able to TF or do suitable Ouro missions is a work around, and some character builds found it hard to play when exemped (the stereotypical "level 50" build was lousy at low levels). And not everyone had an access to a base, and the mailing system was *not* really all that good for mailing stuff to another character (seriously, one item per mail?)).

Now, I might alt if, for example, there were limits as to "how much of the crafting" you could do on a single character. Games like WoW, Rift, Final Fantasy 14 (although in FF14, one character can be everything, it is possibly advantageous to NOT go this route). But if one character can "craft all" easily, then there is no real point in

So, as an example for TPP, one character might go "tinkering", another might go "magical research", another "physical training"... all as a way of "crafting their boosts"...

Quote:

Being able to deconstruct stuff for components would have been an interesting mechanic, but might have taken a lot of reasonably priced stuff off the AH.
And luck charms weren't rare, they dropped the same as everything else, they were just used in far more useful recipes than other stuff, hence the price, similar with alchemical silvers.

The deconstructing and then rebuilding to something more suitable is an interesting idea... it would need a *lot* of play throughing though to see if it is a valid tactic. The other suggested idea of "you can use a high level equivalent for a low level version" is interesting.... although I can see people say "but you might as well then just replace it with one version of something that drops through out the game". And I see their point with that argument as well.

The problem that I had with your solutions, was that the AE was *really* bad to search through stuff to find content, and some of the "farms" that were easy tickets rides were for very specific builds/concepts. I personally found it no fun to make my own content in (i tried, and got annoyed with it... that was when it first came out... but I just didn't have the patience for it)

There were not enough people around on my server to exemp for a TF when I wanted to run one, and my character was *lousy* for Ouroborus unless I was teamed up for it . Finding another player who was willing to take time out of their schedule to play for X period of time was hard as well. Stuff on Union server was rarely "pick up and join in on something", unless it was "incarnate" stuff, and even then, outside of peak hours... forget about it.

Before this looks like a wall of complaint: The good thing in City of Heroes was that the market was both cross faction *AND* cross server, so at least any server deficiencies were well hidden. The lower population servers had the high level servers supplying them with stuff... GOOD THING!

I think the main problem with what happened in City of Heroes, was that the crafting mechanism was dropped on top of a system that was inherently flawed to support it, and also (pre Ouro/AE), also made it very very hard for the "solo player" to get stuff by themselves (especially if the components were not on the market)

It *forced* them to team up, to even get the common stuff if they were too high level for stuff to drop. Sure, Ouro/AE helped to partially fix the problem... but there is nothing wrong, with letting "greys" drop salvage and only salvage, even if it is via street sweeping.

It is an option for those people who might well be used to *other* systems out there (and the CoX system was the "odd one out" compared to a lot of others).

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Quote:
Quote:

Now, this is where we can be at logger heads until the end of days. For me, I am a very "single character" style of player. I rarely have a whole load of characters at various levels in the game, and being able to TF or do suitable Ouro missions is a work around, and some character builds found it hard to play when exemped (the stereotypical "level 50" build was lousy at low levels). And not everyone had an access to a base, and the mailing system was *not* really all that good for mailing stuff to another character (seriously, one item per mail?)).

This is very much a playstyle thing, if you had a level 50 melee that's any good, you could do normal content in AE at +0-2x5-8 (the tanker without IOs). This was perfectly adequate to get some tickets, +4x8 was not the be all and end all. If I'd played a few toons a lot, I'd have constructed a second build for exemping, I did that for my permagranites for levels below granite.

I didn't have this problem as I had by the end about 10 bases that were basically mine to store stuff in, and email to get that stuff from one server to another between my hundreds of toons.

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The question if the loot you

The question if the loot you get should be random or specific to your avatar should revolve around if the world in have an Auction House economy. If it does, then it would need to be random otherwise you will find it very hard to sell your items.

I like CoX's way of handling drops, avoiding having to click a glowing corpse/arrested NPC to take its stuff is much preferred. Their system was the most enjoyable, and relaxing, out of all the game I have ever played.

I do not think low level mobs should award anything for defeating them. That will allow them to be around for the up and coming hero/villains. A better solutions would be to have a NPC trader that will trade lower items for higher quality items 5 to 1, 10 to 1, I don't think 1 to 1 would be good, and of course the trader should also allow the trading down of items, as well.

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That is another option.

That is another option.

The loot that is specific to your spec, was (at least from what I can remember from WoW) bind on pickup OR bind on equip (there is a window to trade to those who took part in the dungeon/raid), but it is at least something that could be considered.

For me, I rarely find area's "devoid of mobs" due to players farming the area... granted, this is all dependant on how the crafting system works. The reason why CoX didn't have this problem, was that there was *no point* in street sweeping for mobs... and for a long time, because there was no way to turn off XP, and there was also no crafting system, they made the problem worse.

If more MMO's had the "disable XP" option, then I am sure that their crafting system might at least *consider* the "low level mobs give you squat" option.

Hell, I finished most of the content in WoW actually getting *no* XP from mobs, just cash and random drops that I either vendored or sold on the market.
I took up gathering and crafting professions only WHEN i had hit the level cap... For me, it was faster for me to do it that way (easier to kill/skin mobs, less mobs attacking you due to you being "too high level" for them, that kind of thing)

I think that it is a general consensus that the loot should automagically appear in your inventory. It would smooth things out a lot.

Should the ones that are too low level give stuff or not? Open to discussion, and one that I feel will have people discussing to the end of time on.

If not, then there WILL have to be a mechanism in play at the beginning (well, when crafting is introduced, so I would assume when the game goes live) to ensure that it is possible for higher levels to be able to *easily* craft the low level items, without having to resorting to using alts as the only way to get the items (I honestly doubt that an AE equivalent function would be in the game at start).

I really have 2 questions though towards the general game design that would influence me either way (although I do have a strong preference for "they still give you drops even if they dont give you cash/XP"

1) How heavily instanced will the game be? Will it be along the lines of City of Heroes, where almost ALL the content is you running from instance to instance, and the outside world is essentially pretty scenery; or will it be more like other MMO's where the instancing is more used for dungeons and raids, and people can randomly help other players with their missions without necessarily being on the same mission? I have had this happen recently in Final Fantasy 14, where I was struggling on a mission, and a random high level came along and just helped me out... no need to suddenly team up, they just stood there and healed me, and dealt some damage on the mob. I got credit, they got some XP and possibly some loot (i know i got loot off this mob).

2) How does "mob tagging" work in the game? Will it be "1st hit to claim all" which some MMO's use, or will it be more "if you at least contribute on a mob, you can get XP and loot off it"?

The 2nd one is becoming more prevalent in games, or at least it is in the ones that I am playing... and I know that WoW has implemented this in parts (and so has Guild Wars 2 for that matter).

This prevents the "kill stealing" culture that people are worried about, and also means that people are willing to join in and help out. And if ALL participants can get XP/loot from a mob, then they will generally help out more. Yes I know that in City of Heroes the player base was friendly to help out, randomly helping out those in trouble, but I have a feeling that is because we were playing heroes, so we acted heroically. ((Interesting side note: In WoW, I have done the same, helping lower level characters that are struggling against mobs.... )) But there was also (at the start) a complaint of "kill stealing" that the developers had to come in to sort out (if i remember correctly), hence the XP relevant to damage reward.

I do like your NPC trading/exchange post idea. It has potential.

edit: In WoW, i tend to gather most of my cloth fabrics by running lower level dungeons solo. The gather skills, the mobs generally respawned fast enough that there was rarely a wait for "mission specific" mobs to spawn...

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Minotaur wrote:
Minotaur wrote:

Part of what made CoH what it was was the loot system or lack of it. No competition for drops and no visibility of what others dropped, with the side effect that people were often pleased you dropped something good.

I think this is a far more significant factor in forming the type of community we have than most of us realised at the time. That and not tying appearance to ability. The lack of competition or focus on accumulation of 'stuff' these two design triumphs gave us were key factors in fostering the atmosphere of cooperation and mutual assistance that we had in CoX. It meant your characters shone for what they could do and how they could contribute to the team, and not for how much junk they could grab.

I dearly hope that TPP replicates these two key design elements.

Spurn all ye kindle.

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Agreement with the "no

Agreement with the "no competition for loot drops". One of the things I severely dislike about STO is that they clearly WANT people to be competing for loot.

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The only concern I have with

The only concern I have with shared Exp, is how would it be shared? 1000 exp mob = 50/50. 100% to each, or damaged based %. I remember a MMO that had a system where it was damaged based, and it ran into people grieffing other, but nuking the mob, and you'd only get a trickle of exp from it. I wanna say it was DAoC, but it may have been EQ or UO..

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The mob sharing came up in

The mob sharing came up in another thread, where the focus was mission completion. If you help defeat a mob you get mission credit for it, even if you weren't the first to attack it or you didn't kill it.

The idea of sharing XP and/or loot from mobs you helped kill (unless you are part of a group, of course) is one that enthuses me considerably less and I believe is best avoided.

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I think CoH did the XP and

I think CoH did the XP and badge/mission kill sharing quite well, I'm not sure I see too much reason to deviate wildly from what they did.

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Minotaur wrote:
Minotaur wrote:

I think CoH did the XP and badge/mission kill sharing quite well, I'm not sure I see too much reason to deviate wildly from what they did.

Agreed.

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Minotaur wrote:
Minotaur wrote:

I think CoH did the XP and badge/mission kill sharing quite well, I'm not sure I see too much reason to deviate wildly from what they did.

Yeah, definitely +1.

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I am curious about Gangrel's

I am curious about Gangrel's question on instances. Will it but all 90% instanced mission (like CoX was) or more inline with other MMOs instances: dungeons and raids?

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General Havok wrote:
General Havok wrote:

I am curious about Gangrel's question on instances. Will it but all 90% instanced mission (like CoX was) or more inline with other MMOs instances: dungeons and raids?

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Something occurred to me that

Something occurred to me that is (via a somewhat roundabout route) related to looting.

We never hear much about meta-powers that aren't pretty directly applicable to crime or crime-fighting, but it seems logical to think there could be powers with other applications. I remember that we used to joke about Wall Man, whose power was materializing the impractically large concrete barriers that formed the base of the war walls. Consider a shapeshifter meta; such a character would likely have some form of mass scale tranmutational ability as a required secondary power. Could they use it to transform objects other than themselves? Wouldn't someone with that sort of power be a natural at salvaging/repurposing/recycling detritus? How about meta-geniuses who have no desire to use their alphatech in the field, preferring to work in a nice lab, building custom devices for others?

One way to explore this would be to have an organization of such metas, who do clean-up work after battles, salvaging the stuff left behind. PCs would earn credit with them by "tagging" enemies they defeat (in the same way they were assumed to tag them for mediport) and redeem that credit for components, completed devices, or whatever else the organization makes. This would make "salvage" essentially a currency, and avoid inventory issues in looting (though there would still be a crafting inventory, I suppose). There could even be "clean-up" missions, in which the organization calls on PCs for support in cleaning up dangerous sites, that award fabricator credit, rather than XP, cash, or whatever.

Another way might be to have actual PC powers related to transforming, combining, or otherwise modifying loot. These would need to be separate from, or a free adjunct to, combat-related powers. Maybe any character who takes a Gadgeteer pool, for example, gets a bonus power that allows them to tinker with tech salvage in various ways. Characters with magic/elemental powers might be able to break down or transmute certain types of salvage, too. The trick with this would be to avoid making any of the bonus powers "must-have" things.

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Kind of like a "public

Kind of like a "public service" rep, with an assortment of mundane public service missions available.
You'd have to be careful that it doesn't turn into a loot farm. Perhaps little or no benefit other than it's something to do.
Maybe it could be worked into the Day Jobs type of thing that CoH had.

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DeathSheepFromHell wrote:
DeathSheepFromHell wrote:

"Reply Hazy, ask again later"

As long as "later" is before the Kickstarter ends. This is one of the key issues that will determine whether I will want to play -- and therefore contribute to -- this game.

Spurn all ye kindle.

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Balance wrote:
Balance wrote:

Consider a shapeshifter meta; such a character would likely have some form of mass scale tranmutational ability as a required secondary power. Could they use it to transform objects other than themselves? Wouldn't someone with that sort of power be a natural at salvaging/repurposing/recycling detritus? How about meta-geniuses who have no desire to use their alphatech in the field, preferring to work in a nice lab, building custom devices for others?

Another way might be to have actual PC powers related to transforming, combining, or otherwise modifying loot. These would need to be separate from, or a free adjunct to, combat-related powers. Maybe any character who takes a Gadgeteer pool, for example, gets a bonus power that allows them to tinker with tech salvage in various ways. Characters with magic/elemental powers might be able to break down or transmute certain types of salvage, too. The trick with this would be to avoid making any of the bonus powers "must-have" things.

I'm new here so excuse any misconceptions please...

I have thought about this idea a bit myself and often in COX thought a nice alternative to "crafting" would be something like this. Another power-set devoted to ancillary abilities like these. Crafting has always seemed like a rather tedious activity to me. It made the game more like work than play.

I also agree with others earlier in this forum that mentioned disliking how crafted enhancements would loose efficacy after three levels above their tier. While I understand not all good things should last forever this made an already tedious activity down right irritating...

So my thoughts ~

At least one if not a couple of ancillary power pools with such abilities included trying of course to keep the pool logically connected within itself as Balance suggested. So those people that aren't into the whole crafting tedium still have a method/mechanism to develop reasonable "Boosts".

Secondly, that the Boosts scale with the character as they level and to keep it from being overpowering it can have diminishing returns over time. So if they slot a Boost at level 5 it will continue to benefit them for a number of levels but later they may find/create/craft a Boost that appeals more at the higher level. Not all enhancements were valuable at all levels some were better earlier than later and vice versa the same conditions would still naturally apply as due course of the game.

Side note: I forgot how much I missed COX until I found out about The Phoenix Project in the last few days. Just listening to everyone in the forums talking about all of it has brought back so many memories. I loved that game and so miss playing. I sincerely hope the Phoenix rises! Sorry I know that was off topic...

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As with many, I see no

As with many, I see no problem with 'loot' auto-dropping into my inventory. Having to click-search will get tedious VERY quickly. However one thing that drove me NUTS in CoX was loot dropping from the wrong faction. Yes, there is a chance that the wizard might be carrying a tech thing because he may have JUST defeated a tech guy and looted HIM. However, having it be consistent drove me nuts.

Magic foes should drop magic loot 90% of the time, other stuff 10% and so on for each faction. This ensures that people who need a Magic Widgit will know to hunt magic foes and not waste their time. Also it seems more Genre.

I would also like to see the occasional drop of a new mission starting item. Example: I defeat some agents of TechnoTerror and one of them drops a radio. I listen in and discover their organization has a secret warehouse on the North side and I get a mission option to go there. These mission options would be exclusive to defeating foes...they would never come from a Contact. Kind of a motivation to take on as many different foes as possible.

I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...

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Comicsluvr

"As with many, I see no problem with 'loot' auto-dropping into my inventory."

I do. I get tired of getting to my destination and need to collect something and I can't because my backpack is full of crap.
Wouldn't be as bad if I had somewhere to put the extra crap, but I'd be out in the boonies and the only option was throw it away.

Steve

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snate56 wrote:
snate56 wrote:

"As with many, I see no problem with 'loot' auto-dropping into my inventory."
I do. I get tired of getting to my destination and need to collect something and I can't because my backpack is full of crap.
Wouldn't be as bad if I had somewhere to put the extra crap, but I'd be out in the boonies and the only option was throw it away.
Steve

Sounds like the problem is not auto looting, its a lack of warning as your inventory gets close to full.

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syntaxerror37 wrote:
syntaxerror37 wrote:

snate56 wrote:
"As with many, I see no problem with 'loot' auto-dropping into my inventory."
I do. I get tired of getting to my destination and need to collect something and I can't because my backpack is full of crap.
Wouldn't be as bad if I had somewhere to put the extra crap, but I'd be out in the boonies and the only option was throw it away.
Steve

Sounds like the problem is not auto looting, its a lack of warning as your inventory gets close to full.

Although the lack of warning is the *main* problem... the other thing is that with auto looting, you have *no* choice of what to take or what not to take... its only after you have picked it up that you can then remove it.

And with the CoX method of looting, if you had one space in your inventory, and nuked 10 mobs and they died at the same time... you would only get 1 piece of loot .

Now if there was a temp overflow "bag" for loot, so that you could still pick stuff up, but you at least had to decide what to keep or not.. (always handy when 4 or 5 mobs die at the same time due to you, but you had a full back pack!), then there could be less "wastage", and its a work around of the "auto loot full backpack" problem.

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Gangrel wrote:
Gangrel wrote:

Now if there was a temp overflow "bag" for loot, so that you could still pick stuff up, but you at least had to decide what to keep or not.. (always handy when 4 or 5 mobs die at the same time due to you, but you had a full back pack!), then there could be less "wastage", and its a work around of the "auto loot full backpack" problem.

Is it worth considering that if your bags are full, you get at least a partial value for any loot that can no longer be picked up? That would go some way toward alleviating the feeling of being cheated. Additionally, some kind of alert/interface if something rare (or uncommon, perhaps user defined) has dropped to provide the player with an opportunity to delete something else so there's room for the new item.

With both of those systems I should think that inventory management would become much more relaxed, removing the need to always check and make certain that there is some free room just in case something good drops.

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Darth Fez wrote:
Darth Fez wrote:

Gangrel wrote:
Now if there was a temp overflow "bag" for loot, so that you could still pick stuff up, but you at least had to decide what to keep or not.. (always handy when 4 or 5 mobs die at the same time due to you, but you had a full back pack!), then there could be less "wastage", and its a work around of the "auto loot full backpack" problem.

Is it worth considering that if your bags are full, you get at least a partial value for any loot that can no longer be picked up? That would go some way toward alleviating the feeling of being cheated. Additionally, some kind of alert/interface if something rare (or uncommon, perhaps user defined) has dropped to provide the player with an opportunity to delete something else so there's room for the new item.

The only downside for that system, is that it can be hard to gauge what is a "fair value" for the loot that isn't picked up. Remember, that generally speaking "vendor price" is normally far far below what the item can get on the auction house.

And if you base it on the "auction house" average, then it is not only going to put strain onto the AH servers, (without evne using directly) but also be *very* open to AH market abuse...

Quote:

With both of those systems I should think that inventory management would become much more relaxed, removing the need to always check and make certain that there is some free room just in case something good drops.

It is always something that needs to be worked out, and i *honestly* believe that there is going to be "one solution fits perfectly" system. There will always be detractors of *any* system as well.

Annoyingly, I think that this is why a lot of games tend to go with "fixed item price" (or minimal fluctuation, if you have "different vendors sell same item for different prices), for a lot of their stuff... which is normally *far* below the market rate for stuff... ((Although I will admit, it is sometimes nice to buy stuff for *less* than vendor price, to then vendor it off for a profit)).

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Gangrel wrote:
Gangrel wrote:

Darth Fez wrote:
Gangrel wrote:
Now if there was a temp overflow "bag" for loot, so that you could still pick stuff up, but you at least had to decide what to keep or not.. (always handy when 4 or 5 mobs die at the same time due to you, but you had a full back pack!), then there could be less "wastage", and its a work around of the "auto loot full backpack" problem.

Is it worth considering that if your bags are full, you get at least a partial value for any loot that can no longer be picked up? That would go some way toward alleviating the feeling of being cheated. Additionally, some kind of alert/interface if something rare (or uncommon, perhaps user defined) has dropped to provide the player with an opportunity to delete something else so there's room for the new item.

The only downside for that system, is that it can be hard to gauge what is a "fair value" for the loot that isn't picked up. Remember, that generally speaking "vendor price" is normally far far below what the item can get on the auction house.
And if you base it on the "auction house" average, then it is not only going to put strain onto the AH servers, (without evne using directly) but also be *very* open to AH market abuse...

I definitely meant that the compensation would be based on vendor price. Could any given item get more on an AH? Absolutely. However, remember that the idea is to take some of the sting out of having full bags and not being able to pick up any more loot at all. It is a "something vs nothing" comparison, not "something vs theoretical AH value".

Actually, this does open the door to another concern: do you delete items from your inventory in the hopes of getting something that can be auctioned off for a lot, or do you keep your inventory full to at least get a little something for all the "crap loot"? I'd rate that a relatively small concern, but one to keep in mind.

As you say, any system is going to have its detractors. Personally, I don't think it's the developers' job to create a system that babysits the player. If someone is that concerned that the loot they might not be getting sells for a high price on the AH, then the onus is on them to make certain there is always room in their inventory. Honestly, I don't see any means to make looting problem free for those people, short of providing an inventory so large that it may as well be infinite.

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Darth Fez wrote:
Darth Fez wrote:

Is it worth considering that if your bags are full, you get at least a partial value for any loot that can no longer be picked up? That would go some way toward alleviating the feeling of being cheated. Additionally, some kind of alert/interface if something rare (or uncommon, perhaps user defined) has dropped to provide the player with an opportunity to delete something else so there's room for the new item.

Perhaps combine the overflow bag with the super-recyclers--let's call them "Renewal, Inc"--and say that you tag whatever you leave in the bag for pickup by RI's cleanup crew. In return, you get a chit for each item in the bag that will allow you to purchase that item from RI at a discount--basically, the chit is a "recipe" that can be completed at an RI interface with nothing but credit, and returns the item in question. The chits stack with no limit except whatever is imposed by technical limitations, but don't count against your inventory. If you have to leave something good in the bag because of inventory restrictions, you can "buy it back" later on the cheap. If you don't want an item you have chits for, you can cash them out for a small amount of general credit instead.

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I was more worried about the

I was more worried about the "you would have gotten a purple drop, instead you got 5000 inf" equivalency. The only downside that I see is that the "rare drops" *rarely* vendor for anything worthwhile, normally equivalent to a random 10 mob slaughter (for example).

If this system *was* implemented, then in my mind, it would just be worthwhile *not* notifying people about stuff that *could* have dropped. I am sure that once you have been playing long enough, it would just add more pain to it, knowing that you missed out on the purple drop (going from the difference of a "normal inf drop" and the "inf drop + full inventory".

CoX's advantage was that it *kept* that knowledge away from the user. They never knew what they missed out on, they just knew that they were missing out on *something* by having a full salvage/recipe/enhancement/inspiration storage.

For all that you might say about the old style "click to pick up" loot system... the decision was on the player to loot the mob, and so all decisions were *entirely* in the players hands. They had the option to drop loot, to pick something up, to ignore it... to just destroy it if they so desired....

CoX just gave the user the only choice of "when to destroy/sell loot"

Not that I am saying that CoX players were babysat through stuff, but it was annoying sometimes to have to stop after every spawn to just clear out "extra stuff" that I never wanted, and my salvage got filled up *automatically* just by "bad luck" of the RNG and all the mobs dropping stuff.

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Perhaps the answer lies in

Perhaps the answer lies in the ability see the loot you would get if your inventory was not full and have the capability to drop/destroy/sell an item from your inventory as apposed to some of the new loot. That way if you happened across a rare item after being full, you wont miss out on the opportunity to get it.

Just a thought

Edit: This may have been what was referred to by the above post...if so, sorry about the repeat

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Gangrel wrote:
Gangrel wrote:

I was more worried about the "you would have gotten a purple drop, instead you got 5000 inf" equivalency. The only downside that I see is that the "rare drops" *rarely* vendor for anything worthwhile, normally equivalent to a random 10 mob slaughter (for example).

Then include rare drops in RI, but only if you have the chit. You left that purple behind, but you can get it back for 75% of the price a vendor would buy it for--which, as you point out, is generally very cheap for rare stuff.

Quote:

If this system *was* implemented, then in my mind, it would just be worthwhile *not* notifying people about stuff that *could* have dropped. I am sure that once you have been playing long enough, it would just add more pain to it, knowing that you missed out on the purple drop (going from the difference of a "normal inf drop" and the "inf drop + full inventory".
CoX's advantage was that it *kept* that knowledge away from the user. They never knew what they missed out on, they just knew that they were missing out on *something* by having a full salvage/recipe/enhancement/inspiration storage.
For all that you might say about the old style "click to pick up" loot system... the decision was on the player to loot the mob, and so all decisions were *entirely* in the players hands. They had the option to drop loot, to pick something up, to ignore it... to just destroy it if they so desired....
CoX just gave the user the only choice of "when to destroy/sell loot"
Not that I am saying that CoX players were babysat through stuff, but it was annoying sometimes to have to stop after every spawn to just clear out "extra stuff" that I never wanted, and my salvage got filled up *automatically* just by "bad luck" of the RNG and all the mobs dropping stuff.

I think the overflow bag handles this part; it's essentially the same as the click to loot bags, except it only comes up if your inventory is already full. It still puts the choice in the hands of the player, it just doesn't require their attention as often. If you add a way for them to recover items they had to leave behind later, so much the better.

Of course, we could take it a step further and make all item drops "chits" that you can use to claim the items or cash in, and do away with nitpicky inventory management entirely. That would mean the characters couldn't immediately use the cool new thing they just found, though. Ultimately, I'm not a fan of the "inventory management" aspect in the first place. We're talking about superheroes; they have super-strength to carry stuff, belts that inexplicably hold items larger than their innumerable pouches, the ability to conjure extradimensional spaces, or whatever. Is it really necessary to limit what they can carry around?

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Gangrel wrote:
Gangrel wrote:

I was more worried about the "you would have gotten a purple drop, instead you got 5000 inf" equivalency. The only downside that I see is that the "rare drops" *rarely* vendor for anything worthwhile, normally equivalent to a random 10 mob slaughter (for example).

Actually I did posit an alert of some sort that would allow the player to make room for, and thus keep, any rare (or potentially even uncommon, rather like how the threshold for rolling on loot can be set for groups in many MMOs) items that drop.

There are other wrinkles that can be added, such as individual bags for common / uncommon / rare loot, so that the various types don't automatically compete for space (does rare loot first 'overflow' into the uncommon and then common bags?). The basic premise remains that the player is always better off managing their bags themselves. For most players, ultimately, I think such systems will only kick in for those "oh, crap, I forgot to sell" moments.

I can see the benefit behind the "what you don't know can't hurt you" system. Is it a system that benefits the player? That's one of those questions that doesn't have only one correct answer.

Balance wrote:

Perhaps combine the overflow bag with the super-recyclers--let's call them "Renewal, Inc"--and say that you tag whatever you leave in the bag for pickup by RI's cleanup crew.

One problem I see with the Renewal, Inc. idea is that if there is a means for players to (relatively) easily purchase the salvage they need, it'd completely undermine the AH. Or am I conflating this idea with the other idea you'd posted about? If I am, that problem is misdirected and only one problem remains: you're adding another type of loot into the system. Is there a limit on how many chits a character can pick up? What if the player can't be bothered to turn in those chits? Can the chits be sold? Do they expire? Do the chits get their own overflow bag? What happens if my chit inventory is full?

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Double post (again) FTW!

Double post (again) FTW!

Balance wrote:

Is it really necessary to limit what they can carry around?

It is necessary for practical reasons. Having characters with potentially thousands upon thousands of items in their inventory is a bad thing. If nothing else, it'd likely lock up your character for a good bit while the server pulls up all that information, if you did ever open your inventory.

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Darth Fez wrote:
Darth Fez wrote:

One problem I see with the Renewal, Inc. idea is that if there is a means for players to (relatively) easily purchase the salvage they need, it'd completely undermine the AH. Or am I conflating this idea with the other idea you'd posted about? If I am, that problem is misdirected and only one problem remains: you're adding another type of loot into the system. Is there a limit on how many chits a character can pick up? What if the player can't be bothered to turn in those chits? Can the chits be sold? Do they expire? Do the chits get their own overflow bag? What happens if my chit inventory is full?

I don't think RI would sell everything; essentially, they'd be your standard vendors, unless you had a chit for something special. So, you couldn't buy a Luck Charm from them, for example, unless you had left one for them to salvage. No chit-trading or -selling, and there would be--as you point out in another post, and I mentioned in my previous one--a technical limitation to how many you could have, but it would be separate from, and larger than, your inventory for material stuff. Like I said, they're basically recipes, except their only crafting requirement is money. The most anyone could have in inventory would be one stack for each type of item you could redeem; the actual number in the stack is fairly irrelevant, unless they get so many that it hits the limit of the field holding the number. You could reduce it further by making the chits valid for certain types of salvage, but that gets us back into the relative value of different components of the same rarity, which is what I was trying to address.

Having an expiration date on them might make sense. You could think of them as coupons, or even pawn tickets. "Hey, we picked this up from one of your scenes, so you get dibs on it. If you don't claim it, though, it's going into our recycling stream next month." I think it would be messy, however, and probably not do all that much to clean up inventories.

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Through unforeseen

Through unforeseen circumstances, I dropped off CoH for about three months and I was happy that everything was still there where I left it!
I was annoyed at not being able to play, but I would have been really ticked if all my goods were gone.

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snate56 wrote:
snate56 wrote:

Through unforeseen circumstances, I dropped off CoH for about three months and I was happy that everything was still there where I left it!
I was annoyed at not being able to play, but I would have been really ticked if all my goods were gone.
Steve

He was referring to the "temp loot overflow" that would have an expiry date to be picked up. I have *yet* to find an MMO that actually went out of its way to delete someones inventory/storage just because they stopped playing for x period of time.

((Eve Online *does* have something like this, but that is all tied into the Corp Hangers, and the non-payment of the rent for the office, where anything that is in that hanger gets locked away *until* the rent that is due is paid...

Your own *personal* hanger though.. that doesn't get touched by this))

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Ah, ok. Thanks! :)

Ah, ok. Thanks! :)

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Gangrel wrote:
Gangrel wrote:

Now if there was a temp overflow "bag" for loot, so that you could still pick stuff up, but you at least had to decide what to keep or not.. (always handy when 4 or 5 mobs die at the same time due to you, but you had a full back pack!), then there could be less "wastage", and its a work around of the "auto loot full backpack" problem.

Something similar to what Mass Effect had, perhaps. If your inventory got full anything new that dropped went into an 'overflow' stack which you could then either liquidate or make room for in your regular inventory.

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Ultimately, there is going to

Ultimately, there is going to be some level of inventory management a player will be responsible for regardless of whatever looting system and features are implemented. Making the management as painless as possible is going to be key to the experience. Having convenient venders to sell "junk items" at, remote access to the AH, reasonable stack sizes, etc.

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syntaxerror37 wrote:
syntaxerror37 wrote:

Ultimately, there is going to be some level of inventory management a player will be responsible for regardless of whatever looting system and features are implemented. Making the management as painless as possible is going to be key to the experience. Having convenient venders to sell "junk items" at, remote access to the AH, reasonable stack sizes, etc.

Stack sizes would be a big boon and also probably ease the "inventory management" problem a *little* bit (if not quite a bit).

CoX's problem was that if you had salvage space for 50 items... that could be a *single* stack of 50 items, or 50 separate items.

Infact most other MMO's go for the "different items" way of counting, which gives you a great deal more storage space, and less overall panicking over running out of space. If the stack limit was 50 (for example), and you had just 10 of one item... even if you had *no* other storage "slots" available, you could still loot, quite successfully, items that you already had in your inventory and were not *already* at the stack limit.

As you say though Syntax, there will *always* be some form of inventory management... its trying to remove the "pain of it" whilst keeping the system simple that will help out.

Side note: an infinite storage space also brings up the problem of easily being able to find stuff within it. Hell, there are mods out there for WoW that add a "text search" facility to your bagspace (or bank)... just to make it *easier* to find that stuff...

This is when the "slot limit" for bags is theoretically 160 (using 4 x 36 slot profession specific bags, and your 16 slot backpack).

The bank vault can cap out at 7 x 36 profession specific bags and 32 slots *generic* slots.

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Many games sell extra storage

Many games sell extra storage so keep it fairly limited, was one of the first things I bought in CoH.

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Minotaur wrote:
Minotaur wrote:

Many games sell extra storage so keep it fairly limited, was one of the first things I bought in CoH.

True, but if the limitation is *too* annoying (as in, you can fill your inventory in 10 minutes of casual play), and HAVE to go and sell stuff, even if you are at max level, every 10 minutes. my response would be "screw that game", especially if the only solution is to pay real world cash.

Now, I know that Guild Wars 2 *does* do the selling of extra bag slots. HOWEVER, you still have to get your hands on the bags to put into those slots.

So whilst you might have 10 bag slots available on your character (up from the default of 5 IIRC), the amount that you can *actually* carry is just limited by the "size of the bag" that you equip.

I will have to check how Neverwinter and CO do it, because I have yet to play them, but do they sell "larger bags to go into existing slots" or "extra slots for bags to go into"... or if there is not "bag upgrading" facility, is it just a "base increase in the amount of storage"?

Only asking, because (as an example) Final Fantasy 14 has *no* option to upgrade your storage. But then again, quest loot goes into a dedicated "bag" (25 slots, items can stack), and you ahve 4 normal tabs (25 item stacks a page). And then there is the crytals tab (they are used in crafting).

And then there is your bank stuff... 7 tab of 25 stacks each, and a crystals tab as well...

So that is a *lot* of storage from the get go for *ALL* characters (bank slots is a "mission unlock" strangely enough...

Oh, and I have yet to even get onto the armoury....

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Gangrel wrote:
Gangrel wrote:

But then again, quest loot goes into a dedicated "bag" ...

I'd not mentioned this yet, but these days I consider this one of the 'must haves'. Games that make mission items compete with space for regular loot annoy me, especially if they're also designed around having trash items.

I do know that in Neverwinter you can find/buy (and craft, I think, but don't quote me on that) larger bags. I don't recall if there are extra bag slots to unlock, as well, though I want to say there are. And here's a tidbit I found on Perfect World's Neverwinter page: "Stock up, unlock and save on extra Inventory Bag Slots with this week’s sale. From now until March 23 at 10 a.m. (PDT) enjoy a 20% discount!"

I didn't run into many bag space issues in Neverwinter, but then I was accustomed to the 'go on quest/dungeon, return, sell stuff' paradigm from WoW. If I forgot to sell stuff after a quest or two, however...

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I'm not sure neverwinter is

I'm not sure neverwinter is the best example to showcase, they have that annoying requirement of running over gold to get it and to click on drops to pick them up.

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Darth Fez wrote:
Darth Fez wrote:

Gangrel wrote:
But then again, quest loot goes into a dedicated "bag" ...
I'd not mentioned this yet, but these days I consider this one of the 'must haves'. Games that make mission items compete with space for regular loot annoy me, especially if they're also designed around having trash items.

I will point out that so far (and I am up to level 36ish) in FF14, I have *yet* to have more than 6 or so stacks of "quest" items in my quest bag. (stack here, being anything from 1 to 8 items),

Your inventory also sometimes gets used for quest items, but those items are the ones that you can craft or gather. Which also means that you can purchase them.

And sometimes the armoury bags get used as well....

Quote:

I do know that in Neverwinter you can find/buy (and craft, I think, but don't quote me on that) larger bags. I don't recall if there are extra bag slots to unlock, as well, though I want to say there are. And here's a tidbit I found on Perfect World's Neverwinter page: "Stock up, unlock and save on extra Inventory Bag Slots with this week’s sale. From now until March 23 at 10 a.m. (PDT) enjoy a 20% discount!"
I didn't run into many bag space issues in Neverwinter, but then I was accustomed to the 'go on quest/dungeon, return, sell stuff' paradigm from WoW. If I forgot to sell stuff after a quest or two, however...

Only really fiddled with NW, so cannot say much about it.

However, with WoW, I only really hit "inventory issues" when I went for *extended* periods of time out in the open (or it was early in the levelling process). They have smoothed it out a *lot* and I believe that on most servers, bags are cheap enough to buy, without too much problems.

Later on in life in WoW, inventory size is rarely an issue, and because of the proliferation of vendors *near* most mission givers, you can generally sell your crap when you hand in.

That is another thing that could help a lot... making sure that you dont have to go *too* far out of your way to just vendor something. The Auction House mechanic, I have no problem if there are only a couple of locations in the game world. It helps keep people together.

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Gangrel wrote:
Gangrel wrote:

That is another thing that could help a lot... making sure that you dont have to go *too* far out of your way to just vendor something. The Auction House mechanic, I have no problem if there are only a couple of locations in the game world. It helps keep people together.

One approach that some games use - including WoW, in fact - is to provide players with the ability to craft or purchase means through which to access their bank, mail, or through which items can be vendored. Right at this moment I am not a fan of such an idea for TPP, at least in part because, as others have pointed out, doing a little inventory management isn't difficult. Besides, if the player care about their inventory at all then they'll remember to clear it up every so often. I feel it's appropriate for the developers to leave some responsibility in the players' hands.

Since I feel it's worth pointing out again, to the audience at large: for me the goal remains one of improving the quality of life somewhat, not in attempting to turn the inventory into some kind of self-regulating system the player only needs to remember once in a blue moon.

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Darth Fez wrote:
Darth Fez wrote:

Gangrel wrote:
That is another thing that could help a lot... making sure that you dont have to go *too* far out of your way to just vendor something. The Auction House mechanic, I have no problem if there are only a couple of locations in the game world. It helps keep people together.

One approach that some games use - including WoW, in fact - is to provide players with the ability to craft or purchase means through which to access their bank, mail, or through which items can be vendored. Right at this moment I am not a fan of such an idea for TPP, at least in part because, as others have pointed out, doing a little inventory management isn't difficult. Besides, if the player care about their inventory at all then they'll remember to clear it up every so often. I feel it's appropriate for the developers to leave some responsibility in the players' hands.
Since I feel it's worth pointing out again, to the audience at large: for me the goal remains one of improving the quality of life somewhat, not in attempting to turn the inventory into some kind of self-regulating system the player only needs to remember once in a blue moon.

I prefer the "craft or purchase" route. Infact with WoW, i have both on one of my characters...

I rarely use them, only really when i *remember* that i have them available.

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I actually play neverwinter

I actually play neverwinter and can tell you how that works, you start with a large bag and smaller ones are found around level 10 and level 30 out of 60. If you want any more, you have to buy them with real money $5/10 for different sizes and only apply to one character. Most loot does stack fairly deep (although weapons/armor etc don't) and you have separate fairly generous inventories for zone bounties, crafting stuff etc, but I do have to sell or mail stuff to my other characters every so often.

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I'll phrase my opinions in

I'll phrase my opinions in Terrible, Bad, Good, Great, Exceptional formats.

Terrible:Purple IOs in general.

Bad: Limited inventory slots. IO recipies.

Good: IOs in general. Proc IOs (additional chance for X% added effect).

Exceptional: Auto-looting of drops.

IOs were actually quite nice, the idea that you could push your character just a little further. The act of farming for the recipies for them even when you had the materials, sucked. The fact that you needed a new recipie each time sucked the most; I already know how to create a level 52 Recharge IO, why do I need to buy 20 more recipies?

The act of farming for purple IO recipes was so bad it drove me from the game entirely. I like putting effort in to improve my character a little bit more, make them a little bit better, but relying on a 0.0025% drop chance just makes me quit. The game became a grinding job, not a progression effort.

I liked Proc IOs a lot. Don't know why, but I just did; it was neat when my power did something entirely different occasionally.

EDIT: I also really like mission token systems like what the RWZ and such had; the idea that you could be assured that you could get what you were looking for, random chance be damned, with enough effort.

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Gangrel wrote:
Gangrel wrote:

Not that I am saying that CoX players were babysat through stuff, but it was annoying sometimes to have to stop after every spawn to just clear out "extra stuff" that I never wanted, and my salvage got filled up *automatically* just by "bad luck" of the RNG and all the mobs dropping stuff.

From the other perspective, I find it more annoying to have to stop after every single spawn to sweep the floor and check for drops than I do to have to open the inventory at the end of a mission and right-click delete stacks of junk, or stop off to vendor recipes every now and then. I also liked the invisible autodrop over "Hey, let me pause in my heroic rescue mission to check their pockets."

(That said, remote AH access was the BEST VET REWARD EVER. I was very sad when they stopped it working inside instances, because AH inside the base was a crafter's dream. I also bought all the salvage/recipe/AH/enhancement tray storage expansions, and had storage bases for salvage and IOs.. I think I might've been a dragon in a previous life.)

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for? - Robert Browning

Gangrel
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Oh agreed, the looting system

Oh agreed, the looting system is going to be a problem, and as i said, there is going to have to be a difference.

In terms of the AH remote access... never got it. Infact, I *couldnt* afford to get it... which was even more annoying, because one of the solutions for the annoyance for me was to fork out over £100.....

Which wasn't going to happen. I just gave up caring about the game and playing less often.

Anyway, flicking back to the main part... i found it strange in that your Hero would *automatically* "go through the body" to pick stuff up (ie the auto loot into the body) even if you didnt want to.....

As you said, "hey, let me pause to check their pockets"... well in my mind, it was automatic (because you had no choice NOT to do it....)

AOE looting/running over the bodies are other methods... but i have a feeling that if there is *something* in there that you dont want to pick up (for whatever reason) then you shouldnt HAVE to pick it up.

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1) I reject your reality.... and substitute my own
2) Not to be used when upset... will void warranty
3) Stoke me a clipper i will be back for dinner
4) I have seen more intelligence from an NPC AI in TR beta, than from most MMO players.

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@Gangrel - I still think that

@Gangrel - I still think that the option we came up with in the IRC chat (http://cityoftitans.com/forum/city-titans-chat) would work. Have the default be the CoX-style auto-loot, but the player can go into their options and instead set it to 'Auto-loot everything into a pop-up window, where the player can choose what items they want to keep' and anything not selected simply goes away. That way, people who don't want to think about their inventory/loot until after the fighting is over can loot without needing to think about it, and those who want to control what goes into their inventory can do so.

graff
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I really liked the way CoH

I really liked the way CoH dealt with loot, I don't care for having to go up and collect the loot off every defeated enemy.
I do think there was not enough slots to hold everything though and would like a higher amount of slots to keep stuff, it was problematic to have to go sell on a tf because ur inventory was full, so if some sort of system could be created or just a larger capacity to hold drops would work

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graff wrote:
graff wrote:

I really liked the way CoH dealt with loot, I don't care for having to go up and collect the loot off every defeated enemy.
I do think there was not enough slots to hold everything though and would like a higher amount of slots to keep stuff, it was problematic to have to go sell on a tf because ur inventory was full, so if some sort of system could be created or just a larger capacity to hold drops would work

Or just allow items that stack to only count as one inventory slot (like most other MMO's do it)

Quote:

1) I reject your reality.... and substitute my own
2) Not to be used when upset... will void warranty
3) Stoke me a clipper i will be back for dinner
4) I have seen more intelligence from an NPC AI in TR beta, than from most MMO players.

Grouchybeast
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Mendicant wrote:
Mendicant wrote:

Have the default be the CoX-style auto-loot, but the player can go into their options and instead set it to 'Auto-loot everything into a pop-up window, where the player can choose what items they want to keep' and anything not selected simply goes away.

Nice idea! I like that one.

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, Or what's a heaven for? - Robert Browning

Heavy Weather
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How about a warning that pops

How about a warning that pops up before your loot bag is full (you only have 5 storage slots remaining), so you have a chance to dump some loot?
Rather than having to find a Store or AH to sell stuff off, put in enough Recycling Bins that they are ubiquitous. Get the warning that you're close to full, stop at the next RB you run by and dump a bunch of loot. It won't pay as much as a Store or auctioning, but you're not just deleting junk.

The suggestion of starting missions with loot is a great one, and probably ties into the street sweeping thread. Go knock enough thugs heads, one of them will drop a radio, shipping manifest, receipt, etc, that will get you going on a mission or arc.

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Heavy Weather wrote:
Heavy Weather wrote:

The suggestion of starting missions with loot is a great one, and probably ties into the street sweeping thread. Go knock enough thugs heads, one of them will drop a radio, shipping manifest, receipt, etc, that will get you going on a mission or arc.

It isnt a strange idea either...

World of Warcraft does it for some "one off" missions/quest chains as an example (and also some other stuff as well, which for the completionist means that you *dont* just skip the mobs... you never know what they will give you!)

Quote:

1) I reject your reality.... and substitute my own
2) Not to be used when upset... will void warranty
3) Stoke me a clipper i will be back for dinner
4) I have seen more intelligence from an NPC AI in TR beta, than from most MMO players.

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If there is loot, I would

If there is loot, I would like for it to just automatically get added in my storage rather then have to run around clicking on every body. Be nice to sort of streamline that stuff and just make it automatic. And always sucks when the group is waiting for someone to catch up because that person was busy running around clicking on dead bodies to loot. But I think I would be okay with no loot.

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I don't mine loot, i just don

I don't mind loot, i just don't want to click on it to get it. I hope we have some form of inspirations in this game, especially being a blaster i loved my purples! also the invention system for CoX was perfect and optional which made it even more perfect. I don't know what CO is doing with their crafting and Mods but i couldn't get a grip on it and couldn't stand playing long enough to want to learn more about it, i really don't like that game!

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Just to chime in with my

Just to chime in with my thoughts here...something as close to CoH as possible would be best. Evolve it as needed, but functionally identical.

Don't have money to contribute just yet. Will ASAP.

The original Lady of Ysgard. -Virtue

Comicsluvr
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Minotaur wrote:
Minotaur wrote:

Many games sell extra storage so keep it fairly limited, was one of the first things I bought in CoH.

How about a compromise then? Players start with X amount of storage space (X being about as much room as you could fill going up 2 levels). They can use the AH for storage if they want (fair but inefficient), they can store stuff at their Base (also fair but they have to pay for the Base) or they can flat-out buy more storage space on their toons as a microtransaction or with Influence.

Players who vendor everything won't care one way or the other. If they want the extra storage, they can get it.

Players who feel they really NEED the extra space can pay for a Base or just unlock it with cash.

I like the idea of an overflow warning to tell you when you're about full. For me though managing your drops is part of the game. As much as I'd like it to not be TOO annoying, we can't encourage everyone to hold onto 500 of everything either. I'm sure a happy medium can be found.

I remember when Star Wars was cool...a long, long time ago...

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Best thing about loot in CoH

Best thing about loot in CoH is not having to slow down, or Stop to skin the critter, or harvest materials from the robot. If I have a 5-minute Buff, I can use it efficiently, by spending that entire time fighting opponents, rather than 'wasting' part of it on picking up stuff.

Be Well!
Fireheart

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Fireheart wrote:
Fireheart wrote:

Best thing about loot in CoH is not having to slow down, or Stop to skin the critter, or harvest materials from the robot. If I have a 5-minute Buff, I can use it efficiently, by spending that entire time fighting opponents, rather than 'wasting' part of it on picking up stuff.
Be Well!
Fireheart

I seemed to spend more time in CoH *emptying* out stuff from storage, because it just filled up so fast... more often than I normally ended up looting in WoW (AoE Auto loot is handy ;) )

In my own mind, if you have auto looting, then you need to have *enough* storage to not make it a hindrance.

Quote:

1) I reject your reality.... and substitute my own
2) Not to be used when upset... will void warranty
3) Stoke me a clipper i will be back for dinner
4) I have seen more intelligence from an NPC AI in TR beta, than from most MMO players.

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