Suggestion on the individual loot system

[mouseman]

Alright, I personally love that each player get his/hers own loot. It adds fairness to the game character-wise and the lag won't play such a big part of the game. Anyway, I have some suggestions how to improve this even further.

One big problem with individual loot is this: when you play a character that kills a lot monsters off-screen, you'll miss a lot of loot. This happened to me a lot playing mythos, and I hated it. Always running around searching if I missed something and if your party split up, you have to check their kills too to be sure you're not missing a godly item just because you wasn't there.

And you don't know what other people are getting which is kind of annoying especially if you're playing with a party full of friends.

There's one or two things we can do about this.

1) There could be notices like "an unique dropped" and arrows pointing to the direction (green arrows for sets, golden for uniques etc).

2) All the players could see the loot, but just pick up their own. If it isn't your loot, then there would be a name after the item's name, like "Unique Ring (mouseman)". When you press alt, you could only see the item you can pick-up, but if you press ctrl+alt you could see all the items. If you hover your mouse cursor over the items, you could naturally see them.

I think the 2) option would add much of the interconnectivity to the game a pure individual system is lacking. You could still be pissed that someone else is getting nice loot, or be happy of your own. And this way someone could notice you if you're missing your own loot. Maybe you could even click a toggle button on the party screen, similar to HC loot button, that would enable other players picking up your loot, if you're playing in LAN and sharing items anyway.

What do you think? I don't see any reason why they shouldn't implement this kind of a change to the game as it only improves the gameplay and brings the party more together. It good for the immersion, too.

[Rifts]

I really like your first idea and the second one isnt to bad

[TheSakari]

Stealing other peoples loot is too much fun. Why would they want to take that out?

[mouseman]

Well maybe you could bring back the competition over loot this way:

If both of my suggestions applied, it would look something like this:

The player who gets the loot has a golden arrow pointing to his loot. The other players see an unique ring with the players name on it. BUT what if they also saw a timer? :) Like "unique ring (mouseman, 00:30)" and counting. After a while, it would be public property and up for anyone to grab.

Normal items, like potions, scrolls and white items would have smaller timer or no timer at all. I really like how this would bring the players back to the same party.

What do you think about the third suggestion?

[Operational]

How about making it so that only creatures that you have done damage to or are in your immediate area drop loot?

[Kaeros]

I think that from a clean-looking interface perspective, Option 2 is out. Reason being:

If you're fighting with five other players and you kill a boss, everyone's respective loot is going to drop at the same time. A huge pile of items is going to fill your screen, and here's the kicker: you will only be able to interact with 1/5th of it.

Two problems with this. The first problem is that out of all those items, you have a 20% chance of seeing what you want and an 80% chance of seeing someone else with what you want (Thus, 80% frustrating and 20% rewarding). Secondly, you would have to go through the trouble of filtering through all the items to get the smaller percentage that is your own -- Entirely too time-consuming for such a fast-paced game.

Keep in mind also that, even though it will be an optional feature, items show their text automatically now. No alt-key is required.

Your first suggestion is much more feasible. I could very easily live without it, but I would certainly take advantage of it if it were an optional feature.

[phaolo]

I agree to the personal loot as I thought the same. I'll add these things:
-each player gets his loot and can only see\access that loot on the ground
-you can turn off that option in game\player and share loot (with warning\consent)
-I like the set\unique "alarm"


Looking for drops, collecting and hyper-clicking after the start levels is VERY annoying and wrist-breaking. Maybe is horrible for Diablo lovers, but:
-I'd like an integrated Atma stash or an high expandable inventory going to high levels
-would be nice something like a loot filter (option), to remove all drops under a certain item type (no more daggers at level 99 if you like). Better nothing that those piles of junk (that cover uniques).
-nearby drops are listed inside a "drops window", so you can look\pickup them easily. This is hard I know :P


p.s: I'd also like a map custom comment system to trace the useful points on the map and maybe the road

[Felix]

It should be possible to see all loot, and only have it reserved for like 5 seconds or something. Make all others loot grey for 5 secs or something.

I mean it's meant so as to make a fair system out of Boss loot and in tight fights, but if a good item or rune drops for you when rest is ofscreen it should be your's if it's not claimed within a few seconds I'd say.

And I can easilly imagine running around trying to check up on all loot dropped instead of playing, wouldn't have to if it was a short timer.

They added the healthbulbs to incourage ppl to stay in the fight. Shared loot in open areas will as you described have ppl running all over the place checking or scavenging loot instead.

[CruelMick]

Alright, I personally love that each player get his/hers own loot. It adds fairness to the game character-wise and the lag won't play such a big part of the game. Anyway, I have some suggestions how to improve this even further.

One big problem with individual loot is this: when you play a character that kills a lot monsters off-screen, you'll miss a lot of loot. This happened to me a lot playing mythos, and I hated it. Always running around searching if I missed something and if your party split up, you have to check their kills too to be sure you're not missing a godly item just because you wasn't there.

And you don't know what other people are getting which is kind of annoying especially if you're playing with a party full of friends.

There's one or two things we can do about this.

1) There could be notices like "an unique dropped" and arrows pointing to the direction (green arrows for sets, golden for uniques etc).

2) All the players could see the loot, but just pick up their own. If it isn't your loot, then there would be a name after the item's name, like "Unique Ring (mouseman)". When you press alt, you could only see the item you can pick-up, but if you press ctrl+alt you could see all the items. If you hover your mouse cursor over the items, you could naturally see them.

I think the 2) option would add much of the interconnectivity to the game a pure individual system is lacking. You could still be pissed that someone else is getting nice loot, or be happy of your own. And this way someone could notice you if you're missing your own loot. Maybe you could even click a toggle button on the party screen, similar to HC loot button, that would enable other players picking up your loot, if you're playing in LAN and sharing items anyway.

What do you think? I don't see any reason why they shouldn't implement this kind of a change to the game as it only improves the gameplay and brings the party more together. It good for the immersion, too.

As far as I can see the best thing is what they are doing. When you kill something ......any drop for YOU you will see. If you miss it then tough having bells and whistles is not the answer. If you don't see it then its your loss. As far as what others get thats their business not yours.:crazyeyes:

[mouseman]

The current system favors melee characters over ranged ones. Melee character are always standing nearby when ranged characters might not seem what they're hitting with their javelins/arrows/spells. Specially area effect spells, like Corpse Explosion, kills a lot of people off-screen.

This is my main concern. It's frustrating to run around looking for what you've killed. This is exactly the kind of downtime they said they wanted to avoid in the game. It might sound good on paper but having experienced it in mythos I can say it doesn't work as well as intented.

[lumpor]

Instead of seeing everyones loot, it could also be a warning sign saying "mrTeabag" got a Dragonfagonlagon sword (which is a unique)! Then, you can ask him to trade etc. But if you have enough indiviual loot to satisfy your needs, and you're 8 players, there'll be ALOT of loot when you look at everyones loot, and you won't see anything- That's the downside with the suggestion

[voraginous]

Alright, I personally love that each player get his/hers own loot. It adds fairness to the game character-wise and the lag won't play such a big part of the game. Anyway, I have some suggestions how to improve this even further.

One big problem with individual loot is this: when you play a character that kills a lot monsters off-screen, you'll miss a lot of loot. This happened to me a lot playing mythos, and I hated it. Always running around searching if I missed something and if your party split up, you have to check their kills too to be sure you're not missing a godly item just because you wasn't there.

And you don't know what other people are getting which is kind of annoying especially if you're playing with a party full of friends.

There's one or two things we can do about this.

1) There could be notices like "an unique dropped" and arrows pointing to the direction (green arrows for sets, golden for uniques etc).

2) All the players could see the loot, but just pick up their own. If it isn't your loot, then there would be a name after the item's name, like "Unique Ring (mouseman)". When you press alt, you could only see the item you can pick-up, but if you press ctrl+alt you could see all the items. If you hover your mouse cursor over the items, you could naturally see them.

I think the 2) option would add much of the interconnectivity to the game a pure individual system is lacking. You could still be pissed that someone else is getting nice loot, or be happy of your own. And this way someone could notice you if you're missing your own loot. Maybe you could even click a toggle button on the party screen, similar to HC loot button, that would enable other players picking up your loot, if you're playing in LAN and sharing items anyway.

What do you think? I don't see any reason why they shouldn't implement this kind of a change to the game as it only improves the gameplay and brings the party more together. It good for the immersion, too.

Both good ideas. You should definitely be able to see others drops, just not touch them. Players should also be able to release their drops so others can pick them up freely, or give them to specific players easily (don't wanna free up an item for a Barb and have some witchdoc run in and take it.. its better if you can specify the player you are releasing the item to.)

Perhaps an autolooter as well? It picks up items of a certain level that you can set (the way you set the level of items you roll for in WoW).

Also a toggleswitch that allow others to loot your stuff like corpses in HC

[Gamekk]

The #2 have already been brought in HG:L. And I think copying sucks and therefore it's a bad idea.

Most of the times, it's not about to lag or hacking that will get your loot, it's more about how much you're looking for items and reflexes and your will to click faster then your opponents. Just with experience and my reflexes and an average lag, I'd say i get over 4/5 of people's nice loot, just because they aren't aware, and that I've probably played more and wanted the item much more then he did.

I still have three words to suggest the best loot option ever :

FFA.

[Phyrexial]

Perhaps just have a little text box you can bring up that lists any items that drop for you? Then give it filters so it doesn't clutter up and read:

Potion
Potion
Potion
2 gold
1 gold
Sword
Potion
etc.

So basically every time an item drops that isn't filtered out by you it is listed. Could have a toggle on it for listing other player's drops as well. So with this system you could see at a glance all items that are dropped on the level you're on for you as well as having the option of seeing other player's drops listed.

By the way, perhaps it's just my paranoia but I think it's a terrible idea to even have the option to see the physical items drop for other players. Reason being that I would imagine it leaves itself open to someone finding an exploit or hack to enable grabbing of the items. If you never let the player see other player's items thats at least one more level of prevention.

[IdiotDK]

In guild wars, the chat box tells everytime an items drops.
Maybe in D3 they could make something like that. for magic+ items.

If is tells everytime an item drops. it would get very annoying.

[OutdoorsDude]

Bosses and Unique Monsters aside, a system where if you made the kill the item is only visible to you for 5ish seconds, then it is open to everybody, wouldn't be that different than now. I don't really see a way to split up boss drops like that...I'd say just let them be a free for all.

To see what dropped off screen, have a message pop up for certain items. In the options menu you could pick (unique, rare, set, socket, elite, exceptional, etc.) for messages so you're not being spammed.

[pjbenkis]

In my opinion, if you were off screen, you weren't in the fight, no drops for you. Same thing as with xp, if you are too far away, you get none.

[AlexanderM]

I don't really like the idea of a unique/set pointer, half the fun (for me) was watching for the drops. Having a pointer would mean I could stop watching, and simply keep killing (which has it's own appeal, but I'm set in my ways :crazyeyes:) I like the idea of a boss dropping a chunk of loot for each grouped player, but each player only sees their chunk drop, say four items, not 20 items with name tags. If this were the case, players should have some quick way to defer their loot (maybe a keyboard shortcut) and it would make the items visible to all the other grouped players. As for players only getting a shot if they dealt damage, this is iffy. If there are any heavy support classes, they could easily get gypped out of a lot of drops.

A short timer could also cause headache, imagine seeing an awesome item drop for you, but you can't pick it up because you spaced out and picked up bolts (Why is it always bolts?!) while running around, and while you're figuring out your inventory, another player grabs the item.