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Popular loot philosophy is wrong
UknownAspect
Member Posts: 277
The idea of progression in popular MMOs at endgame is attaining appropriate gear through tiers of content. Obtaining gear by either getting boss drops or using special currency.
I believe that this is an outdated system that causes a lot more problems than it solves.
The Community Toll:
Loot Ninjas, constant arguments over who deserves what, and a never ending discussion on what gear is BiS.
The Economic Toll:
A system of progression based entirely off of luck and the only judge being the game's internal system.
The Gameplay Toll:
This system completely nullified the crafting aspect of any games with this system as it makes crafting only a stepping stone and irrelevant after that.
Proposed Solution:
Instead of having boss drop specific gear, have bosses drop special crafting items. These items would of course be boe and would be used to funnel more player control of both the economy and the quality of their items. This would revitalize the crafting community, force players to cooperate, and reduce the frustration of being stuck in a content tier due to unlucky drops.
For people that want the gear, but don't want to do the content, they can do other content to make money, and then buy the proper materials or items. Specialized crafters can customize the stats using various items to create "made to order" gear.
The equalizing factor in this system would be the flow of money. People who are able to do the best content at the most frequency will have the most money. Therefore keeping those that have worked the hardest at the top (as is the situation now). But this will also give the opportunity for people to get the custom made gear they want for their character, but give them multiple means of attaining that gear. This would allow for people with varying playstyles to be able to accomplish similar goals.
There is always the issue of player skill. And one could argue that this would allow people with terrible skill the ability to attain the best gear, but I don't see how that is any different than the system now. Skill and Gear quality are independent of each other, and finding a metric to reward one with the other is something game developers have yet to accomplish. But in the interest of broad playstyle accomodation, this system would be the best (imo).
MMOs played: Horizons, Auto Assault, Ryzom, EVE, WAR, WoW, EQ2, LotRO, GW, DAoC, Aion, Requiem, Atlantica, DDO, Allods, Earth Eternal, Fallen Earth, Rift
Willing to try anything new
Comments
That's a pretty good idea.
I'm still in favor of scrapping the premade gear, at least the majority of drops, and going Diablo style random loot generation. This solves the problem of grinding the same boring content forever just for one dumb piece of equipment that will just make you look like a clone of every other same class. It also keeps everyone from looking like clones since there would be a wider variety of gear to be warn just based off the statistics on the item.
The only reason I can see why they don't want to do this is because of balance for PvP. Curse PvP!! It's the bane of video gaming for me! You know what? Too bad! Luck of the draw. I was there, I got a lucky drop, now I get to reap the rewards!
DDO recently implemented crafting in that vein of thought.
They even have the special crafting items you can find from questing.
That's also how they did epic tier items, by using other one's and gating their setup with customizable slots and craft upgrades.
Pluss the end reward for one popular raid was crafting items that let you eventually build custom 'greensteel items' with the effects determined by your own material choices when crafting.
I kinda see your point. Not sure I entirely agree with the implementation, but there is valid and good merit to it.
As hence I just showed a game that uses multiple different methods/iterations of it, and I think they all work pretty well within the context of that game.
EDIT: Actually, since they implemented their latest crafting system, the auction house has been considerably more busy with people buying items, deconstructing them, and making custom ones.
Only complaint I have is the economy stops there because those items in DDO are all bound to player after being made.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
DDO? Kind of?
I have not played DDO recently, so I didn't know they had this kind of system, that is good to hear. But making the items bound to the player once they are made is no good imo.
A system like Horizons, where crafters could learn techniques that allowed them to add stats of a certain quality adds more merit to the crafter, which is something that would be good too. As this would allow crafting guilds to crop up and players could actually make a name for themselves and have merit outside of, "Hey look I killed this boss!"
MMOs played: Horizons, Auto Assault, Ryzom, EVE, WAR, WoW, EQ2, LotRO, GW, DAoC, Aion, Requiem, Atlantica, DDO, Allods, Earth Eternal, Fallen Earth, Rift
Willing to try anything new
Sorry. While I agree that end game is a bit too loot/gear centric, I disagree with the main drops being craft drops.
I have played a game where crafting materials were the only thing that dropped and it was horrible. Adventurers just got bored, there was no real reason to go hunt that particular boss.
On the surface it seemed there was - we get an item that can be used to craft. However in reality many do not craft and so are dependent on the crafters, so now the adventure has to wait sometimes for hours days for the crafter to 1. Have all the other material needed, 2. Actually craft the item.
It made hunting that boss not very attractive.
Now if there was a way for the adventurer who got the item to immediately turn it into whatever weapon than I'm ok with it.
Venge
Yeah, DDO did that better there at least too. They only just implemented a crafting skill with their newest craftng system. With all the craft raid and eic items you just collect the bits and craft them on the character you want it for. Pretty direct.
So the principle you mention Venge can and has been addressed in this kinda system as well.
Though as I noted DDO kinda goes too direct. What with all the items you can craft being bound to player.
They really need to hit a happy medium o being either bound to account, or split so general item crafting isn't bound at all and raid items are still bound to account. Or tier it so you can unbind normal crafted items.
"The knowledge of the theory of logic has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners." - Thomas B. Macaulay
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel J. Boorstin
The problem I see with this is that many players just don't bother with crafting. I think if the rewards for a particular raid were indeed crafting components for all the more epic items, certain powergamers just wouldn't bother with the content at all.
I think it would make an interesting experiment in a game like WoW, where there are probably more players who want to raid for items rather than craft at all.
Bring out 2 raid dungeons side by side, one of them has bosses and quests that reward your averaged tiered set gear of average strength and the other raid rewards crafting component which allow people to craft items that are actually slightly stronger than the items the other raid rewards to player.
Blizzard could see which raid gets run more often.
WOW already has it.
If you look at WOTLK, for each tier of content, there is always one or two BIS (or close to BIS) items that were crafted. Each item would need drops from dungeon bosses (the orbs), and mat would go for a high price in the auction house.
The items themselves usually can also be bought & sold on the auction house.
I don't see how you can say popular loot philosophy is "wrong", seems like a majority of the player base favors the current popular gear grinding design that most modern MMO's incorporate into their end game design today.
Now me, I prefer a system like EVE's where my only limitation is the skill points that I train and the cash I have on hand. It is not however a superior system in any way, just a system that I prefer vs the other more popular design.
Another good system was DAOC's back when crafting really mattered, nowadays, not so much, it got converted more or less into a typical gear grinder long ago with the TOA expansion.
You offer another choice here, seems like I've seen games go this route before, again it won't be superior, just different and preferred by some portion of the potential subscriber base.
I think it was AC that had a system of loot drops with randomized statistics, and Lineage 1 (and 2?) had a system where a rare world drop could happen at any time, to any level, so even as a level 18 character you might get a random drop of some terrific bow or spell book drop. Just another design choice (though I prefer those also to the current popular model)
But that's just me, again, seems most players not only enjoy the gear grinding treadmill, they expect it and decry any attempts to step away from it, Perhaps its just how they were raised (in terms of MMORPG games)
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Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
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If the game doesn't implement a crafting skill then people won't care if they have to craft or not, because it won't be a time consuming grind that you have to build skill for, if you have the ingredients you can craft it. That makes crafting attractive and easy. It also allows for unique character builds if there are lots and lots of recipes (like there should be).
Not bad, but I'd dump any of the parts that have anything to do with crafting.
Eve has somewhat similar system in the sense that if you want good equipment you get player-made equipment. There are equipment drops, but all the best gear on all levels of the game is player-made. Crafting is somewhat complicated in Eve; there are waaay too many components in even simple equipment to make all of them on your own, so you have to trade for them. And an excellent system of trading in Eve makes it an enjoyable (for me) experience in itself/
As a born crafter I can say that every other system of crafting in every other game I've seen seemed so pathetically bland and useless, that I was eternally disappointed.
In my opinion no discussion on crafting is meaningful without lessons from Eve's crafting.
Great ideas OP. Great minds think alike! This is also my solution to this problem. I removed this because it think it could create a rather interesting conversation in it's own thread.
Problem with that model is that it kind of removes from the whole MMO philosophy of getting better at things over time.
I personally think it's a good idea, but being able to craft any epic weapon just if you have the ingredients probably won't look good on paper to most MMO developers, they need to think of ways to keep the player paying remember.
From what I've seen in the games I've played
that actually have crafting items that drop from bosses which get crafted into the best item in game
It doesn't stop the arguing over who gets what item... it just pushes the argument back a step... people argue over the crafting item... and then they end up having to find a crafter if they can't craft it themselves or have somebody in their guild who can.
adding another level of frustration if somebody runs off with the item >_>