Green Monster Games - Curt Schilling

Going on from the last post, I also don"t like DKP. For one thing, whatever system you use, there will always be one or two folks who understand the math behind the system and can exploit it to have an advantage over others.

The other thing is it takes away from the fun.I wantto kill something,I wantto loot it andI wantthe chance of seeing ifI getanything cool. (That"s not me pushing how I personally want more than anyone else, its me suggesting the majority of folks want to feel the game is about them).


This is what I like about the Dungeons and Dragons Online loot system. You kill the big bad, it drops a chest.Everyone gets to open and loot the chest. It generates some loot for everyone, but everyone can only loot the items generated for them (it can be class specific). Now you might get some trash or you might get something hot.


I"m not sold on the DDO system and I"m not 100% advocating I"d like to see it in Copernicus. I"m just holding it up as an example of how it could be done differently.

I"d suggest the standard "kill it, assign it/roll for it, loot it" system is one of the least fulfilling and disappointing mechanics in todays MMOs. Lets think outside the box - is there an alternative ?

Flight said:

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You have to pimp out your tanks and your main healers... To get ahead

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This is a game mechanic problem in and of itself.

What if boss drops were just one-shot enchants that can be applied to whatever item you want? Say its the boss" soul shard or something and it has x effect on y gear slot. Limit the number of Boss_Z enchanted gear that can be equipped at once (or not) and call it a day. You can then always get an upgrade to whatever sort of gear you want and cannot be cock-blocked in the process. Just an idea.

GuyJantica said:

What if boss drops were just one-shot enchants that can be applied to whatever item you want? Say its the boss" soul shard or something and it has x effect on y gear slot. Limit the number of Boss_Z enchanted gear that can be equipped at once (or not) and call it a day. You can then always get an upgrade to whatever sort of gear you want and cannot be cock-blocked in the process. Just an idea.

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Because we like items.

Ever played City of Heroes where there is no loot, only "enhancements"? Boring. I realize you"re not saying there would be NO loot, but still, boss loot is the most fun.

I want to pick up something solid, equip it, and say "that looks badass".

To expand on the talk of the DDO system:

You could have mobs drop items based on your class, but still have a rare threshold for a better version.

I"m not sold on Diablo style purely random stats, and the endless runs for "perfect" stats; but having a normal and superior (X% better stats) version of lots of drops gives both the immediate always drop gratification, while still leaving room for farming and intermittent reward psychology mojo.

Ayeshala said:

Fuck these "systems".

Games should have a scripted Loot Director that follows each player"s progression and assign loot directly to individuals according to their class needs/current equipment/# of times they"ve done a specific encounter/performance during said encounter/whatever else you can think of.

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you get a sword of mega fire!
You get a staff of burninations!
You get a .. DUN DUN DUN.
TANK!!!!!!!!!
FUUUU..

Grave said:

Because we like items.

Ever played City of Heroes where there is no loot, only "enhancements"? Boring. I realize you"re not saying there would be NO loot, but still, boss loot is the most fun.

I want to pick up something solid, equip it, and say "that looks badass".

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Understandable. Maybe enchanting the base item could transform it to look like another item (mesh/texture replacement). They make the art for the set, but you control which just dropped for you. I could see something like that working... at least aesthetically.

Agraza said:

Tokens aren"t even 5% of current 25 man loot income, considering the prices of emblem equipment. Naxx is some 62 purple drops not counting trash, and only 16 emblems. Ulduar will be a similar story. They simply help mitigate bad chance and keep people hooked to an IV of consistent character improvements.

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That"s pretty fuzzy math right there. If you"re going to count every drop, you have to count every badge - unless every person is getting 62 purple drops? Naxx is some 62 purple drops and some 25 x 16 = 400 badges. The dropped loot is usually better though and covers more slots.

Well then emblems can get you 5 items at worst and 16 items at best per naxx clear, except you still can"t buy anything with 16/25 emblems. Whereas dividing the 62 drops equally nets everyone 2.2 items per clear. That"s 2.2 vs. 0. Over 2 runs it"s 4 vs. 1. Over 3 runs it"s 6 vs. 1. It isn"t until 4 weeks into Naxx that you can get a second of the cheapest emblem items available, minimum 3 weeks if you clearall25 man content each week.

And you do have the option of granting all 75 of the epic drops from all 25-Man content to 1 player, whereas you cannot get more than 24 emblems.

Emblem gear is insignificant, and very few of them are best in slot.

The only thing that bothers me about tokens is that they do not fit the lore in the least. They don"t even try to pretend it makes sense. It"s a convenience for the players that I appreciate, but one that could just as easily be situated into the framework of the story. Maybe they should take an iota of that misspent enthusiasm on quest text and better fit the game"s mechanics into the storyline.

I"d rather tokens generally all be a kel"thuzad"s phylactery, eye of sapphiron, heart of magic, onyxia"s head, etc. I see no need for a plethora of generic raiding currency. They improve the fair and consistent distribution of loot to keep players hooked, which I sense is Blizzard"s goal, but they could come close to that and still make some sense with more handcrafted quests/recipes.

Agraza said:

The only thing that bothers me about tokens is that they do not fit the lore in the least. They don"t even try to pretend it makes sense. It"s a convenience for the players that I appreciate, but one that could just as easily be situated into the framework of the story. Maybe they should take an iota of that misspent enthusiasm on quest text and better fit the game"s mechanics into the storyline.

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Item Identification imo. Token drops for weapons/armor can just show up as "a mysterious relic" or something like that. You take it to an NPC and they "identify" it for you, but actually just let you pick what you want. Lore side done.

Grave said:

Because we like items.

Ever played City of Heroes where there is no loot, only "enhancements"? Boring. I realize you"re not saying there would be NO loot, but still, boss loot is the most fun.

I want to pick up something solid, equip it, and say "that looks badass".

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I agree, to a point. CoH is boring for other reasons. The itemization system isn"t terrible. Plus you don"t have to fucking right click on corpses. Glee!

But yeah. I"ve posted at length about it before (my rant against random loot ->
), but all you really need to do is allow players to select the loot. Add triggers (hardmode etc...) that increase the amount of loot you can select. Done.

No tricky gimic system where it tries to guess what you want. No badge/token/point system that sucks all the life out of the encounters (hi2u LDoN).

Several benefits of this system include specialized loot. I"m very dissapointed that after 80 levels my Tauren Shaman still can"t wield a giant fucking totem as his main weapon and squish dudes. In a loot select system, Kel"Thuzad could drop a Tauren only totem weapon and nobody would ever bitch about it dropping 7 times in a row taking up a valuable loot slot.

DKP/loot council becomes pretty easy. Pugs can random and the winner gets to pick what he wants. The benefits are just ridiculous.

The only thing you lose is that "Oh my god I never thought it would drop omg omg omg!" feeling when you get awarded an item.

But I will -gladly- fucking trade it for over 1.5 years of BT and SWP and -never- getting either an Illidan or Felmyst tanking shield. And on top of that I can also do without the Price is Right "Bump-bum-ba-dooooooowwww..." music playing in my head when an item I want -finally- fucking drops after months is awarded to some chick the gl is fucking or some buddy-buddy of one of the officers like my goddamn FT5 orb from Tunare. "A sign of good faith to a new member!" my ass. Fuck you Sulas and your butt fucking friend Kondar wherever you are.

Where was I?

Oh yeah.

Pair this with the Job (not sub jobbing mind you) system as well for the ultimate in game addicting technology.

Grave said:

Item Identification imo. Token drops for weapons/armor can just show up as "a mysterious relic" or something like that. You take it to an NPC and they "identify" it for you, but actually just let you pick what you want. Lore side done.

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Or just do something similar to WAR: broken loot that needs to be repaired. The item could be used by a number of classes, but until you get it repaired it just has the promise of being usable. There"s some *really* nice Lost Vale repairable gear, and since when they"re "broken" they"re BoE it means you can sell them/deck out 40"s without top-notch gear.

I still like having the instant gratification of loot dropping off bosses, but in oldschool MC/WAR"s dungeons when you have set items dropping for classes not even in your group it"s a huge pain in the ass; there"s basically 3 hours gone (and, for us, usually the rest of the night) for little-to-no gain. Even just restricting set item drops to classes in the instance it would leave at best a 1/6 chance to get a set item, which doesn"t sound too terribly fast to me.

On a side note, I like in WAR how those that finish a PQ and do not recieve any loot have a bonus to their contribution/roll if they stick around and try the PQ again. I"m not sure how a system like that might work in raids/dungeon crawls for another game, but it"s a nice idea to reward the players that try the hardest.

The only problem with the system above is that, while certainly very rewarding to the player, it makes them finished with content extremely fast. If I could pick each drop I needed from every Naxx boss, how many weeks would I need to be done with the zone? 3-4? Then I"m likely canceling my sub until something new comes out because everyone else probably got what they needed as well (you could argue that this is happening now in WoW anyway, but at least it took a few months vs. a few weeks).

Just looking at it from a player standpoint, you could say that sounds fine, but companies want people to keep playing and paying monthly, thus they need a way to keep end game content enjoyable. Random loot has done this fairly well. I agree that the RNG can suck sometimes, but for every person that has a horror story like yours about the tanking shield, thousands of other guilds had no issues with it. A few people being screwed by it isn"t reason enough to say it"s absolutely flawed.

That being said, I do like the idea if there are enough other interesting things to do in between new raid content. Unfortunately, I"m not a PVPer, so I rely on raiding for the most part. Maybe if the game also had a really amazing crafting game with player run shops and stuff I wouldn"t get bored.

Cadrid said:

Or just do something similar to WAR: broken loot that needs to be repaired. The item could be used by a number of classes, but until you get it repaired it just has the promise of being usable. There"s some *really* nice Lost Vale repairable gear, and since when they"re "broken" they"re BoE it means you can sell them/deck out 40"s without top-notch gear.

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I actually like this better to replace badges instead of tokens. For example, maybe there"s a cool weapon that drops from a certain boss and you"ve had no luck getting it, but throughout the raid zone you"ve been able to loot "Shards of a Forgotten Blade" or something. After getting enough of these shards and maybe a few other items, you can go have that weapon (or one with similar enough stats) forged. Fits the lore, and helps people that are screwed by RNG.

Grave said:

it makes them finished with content extremely fast.

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Grave...use your head. First off, you"re terrible at Math. Second, design around the design.

For simplicities sake, let"s take the last boss and give him 3 BiS items for each class. He drops 3 items. A raid of 25 people will not be done with the content for...dun dun da dun...25 weeks. And considering most guilds typically roll with at -least- 5 extra"s, and you"re looking at 30+ weeks.

Even with WoW"s limited hybrid system that means my paladin may be looking for 9 items. It"ll take just ~me~ 3 weeks to get all that I want.

If you implented the job system, even with only 6 classes total or as many as 12 you"re -easily- looking at never having an item rot, ever. Even on sub bosses. Plus you don"t have to put up with assholes bringing their 1700 dps hunter alt and making the raid take even longer.

And if that still isn"t enough, throw in a few gimic item like WoW has done with Sarth. Beat the 3-drakes mode of Kel"thuzad and bam, you get your choice of a legendary frost wyrm mount, a companion pet that is a little floating ziggaraut that floats around you, or an illusion item that turns you into a lich for 10 minutes, but can only loot 1 of either per week.

knowing what you"re getting ahead of time makes the game even more boring than it is already (if that"s even possible).

more unknown, less already determined please.

As for shit to do between raids, there"s tons of idea"s. Housing is a -huge- fucking timesink. Designing/redesigning my base in CoH easily chews up hours a week.

PvP is a no-brainer. Release new maps on a far more regular basis and WoW wouldn"t be in the dire straights it is.

An in game card game works too similar to triple triad in FF...8? I believe. Or was it 9? Whatever. Semi-rare drop cards for every mob type in the game keeps the OCD types and even the non-OCD types bound for decades.

A more hands off material management style tradeskill system wouldn"t be bad. Managing production queue"s and making gathering more about controlling resource nodes as opposed to running in a giant loop in your favorite zone is fun.

WoW"s achievement system is also a step in the right direction. Just needs an "Achievement" store. If they took all that bullshit from the card game and put it in such that you could buy it with achievement points? Jesus fucking christ.

Several in game game"s (Similar to the card game above). Imagine the "new goblin arcade" where you can play tower defense games, gems, etc...etc...find some angle to make it work. Add that psuedo-steampunk or whatever nature to it to make it fit in WoW or whatever genre your game might be. "Magic!" can explain just about anything.

Anyways...

The best thing about half of these things is they can also be turned into a money sink so we don"t have to put up with stupid shit like reagents and durability/repair.

I agree with Dumar. Let"s expand on this generality with some specifics. Are we really satisfied with knowing that bosses will drop epic quality equipment? It doesn"t provide enough mystery. I think the loot table should be populated with uncommon and superior quality equipment of similar item level. We could go another way, and have all of KT"s equipment have random suffixes so my Wall of Terror of the Champion can be better than your Wall of Terror of the Elder.

You know you"re right. But there isn"t enough risk involved. There should be a roughly 7.5% chance when you bend over to loot him, he deletes your character. That way you random to see who has to check the loot instead of everybody diving for it at once. Knowing that nothing bad can happen when I check the loot on a mob just removes all sense of excitement.

Also, I don"t want the developers desiging balanced loot for me. That"s boring. What should happen is when we kill KT, someone in the game somewhere should get a popup window and it allows you to create the loot for him. So you could get a level 7 who doesn"t know what the fucks going on and just clicks cancel and you get no loot at all, or you get some vindictive asshole in a rival guild who makes your loot look like a penis.

But remember, this is Dumar"s ideal game, so there isn"t even a last boss. Just a huge wide open empty space and in order for there to be a castle in the first place you have to get a day job and start saving up cash to build one. Then you have to hire contractors to bulid it, along with creating the cash flow to hire staff to keep the castle occupied otherwise why even build it in the first place? You"d also need an HR rep or even an entire department because staffing that many people is way too much of a hastle when you gotta take health benefits into account as well.

Of course this is the internet and is anonymous so the castle will be shaped like a giant boob and will be a den of furry sex and raiding the last boss will require that your raid is outfitted with dildoswords and erotic pictures of squirrels as shields.

But hey, isn"t sandbox MMO gaming grand?

Zehn, I think you"re a really smart guy who"s thought about this a lot and is trying to prevent folks from being screwed the way you"ve been screwed in the past... and yet I still think you"re dead wrong with respect to your pick-an-item system.

You"re just not going to get the serotonin flowing in the gamer"s brain the way you will with a random loot system. And that"s what keeps people addicted and coming back.

Edit: Let me give a really recent example.
Just found out that EQMac has the old Hole plus Rampage AA. So shakerpaging is a reality on that server. At some point in the future I"ll go foraging in the Hole w/ my buddy"s War & friends hoping to kill Master Yael and get the Earthshaker to drop. To get it to drop could take a while (IIRC 7 day spawn? Plus competition Plus a loot table with crap other than earthshaker). I am now already looking forward to the rush when we finally get it - even though that"s months away. It"s not the same feeling knowing we go in - we make sure the WAR wins the loot - he gets to pick Earthshaker. Bam. Done. Dull. Boring.

The things that are most interesting, are those things that are difficult. Random loot adds to the difficulty of the game. Your system makes things too easy - I see Blizzard adopting it for its next MMO :-(