Varik Keldun

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So I figured I would make this thread because it popped up on the discord (ACWhammy) and this would be an easier place to gather feedback and keep it for reference.

LOOT
The biggest issue here is we don't know how the loot system is going to be specifically. The only thing I personally remember hearing is that the plan was to do something akin to blood omen 1 with the tarot card representing the items.

But some quick questions to ask for others to mull over and discuss their opinions.

What should / should not drop?
-Should everything drop? weapons, armor, potions, gold, resources, tarot cards, buffs. ect..
--or should things like gold / resources just auto add to your running total?

Who should / should not be able to take loot?
-Should it be first come first serve, round robin, everyone gets a copy of what dropped?
--What about power levelers / farmers / leaches who just sit and collect while others do the work?

How much loot should there be?
-Should there be a massive pool of RNG stat style items (Diablo / Path of Exile come to mind) to pick through?
-or should end mission reward where you know you will receive something valuable once your done and not worry about sifting through piles?

CURRENCY
The only questions here I can think of are..
-Should it be a gold(monetary) like item?(diablo)
-Should it be trade/craft type items(PoE)
-Should it be tradable between the different houses? (they may value things differently)

TRADING
-What should be tradeable?
--should things be account / character locked?
-Auction houses to sell goods?
-Real money markets?



My personal take on these things.
Loot -
To cut down on wasting time I would be more in favor of fewer items dropped as to not have to sift through 99% of the garbage that will just get passed up. Sure it is definitely something that many games do because of the RNG factor of finding top tier gear, and can make for diverse playstyles but this is also something that can be achieved through modifications / crafting. Monetary and crafting materials could be on their own separate inventory and gained through fighting, collecting, or end mission rewards.

Currency -
I do like the way PoE has their currency set - everything is used for something and can be upgraded / downgraded for the most part. It would be interesting if some of the things were used more by other houses but easier for you to get per se. Could add another dynamic to the game. That being said I am not against a pure gold or the like type currency.

Trading -
I have never personally liked account / character locked items, I would rather be able to sell it or give it to a friend after finding an upgrade or the like.
Auction houses should be a thing only IF the item base calls for it.
Real money markets tend to promote a Pay-To-Win attitude which I am against, but that also leads many groups to buy on SITE X and just get traded the stuff in game. Which leads to people being scammed / hacked / account stollen / account bans. So any implementation of a real money house would have to be done carefully and with some thought IMHO.
 
Loot -
As a person who have spend 1000+ hours in WoW and spend countless others in game with loot I can say for certain that there can never been enough loot, every time I find loot I get excited, wonder how good it is, can my alts use it, will this be useful to a friend or can I trade/sell it to others, should this be kept in a bank for a other faction ( might it be useful later for others )
TLDR: The more loot the better.

Currency -
I grew up with gold drops being there all the time, why not just keep doing that, it have been the industry standard for 30+ years, why rock the boat, it's a perfect system.
Common scenario: I don't need X item I found, you don't have an item I want, so I will not trade it to you, but with gold being a thing I trade my item, for an amount of gold we agree on, I then use that gold to buy something else I want/need.

Trading -
I am not a fan of soul bound items/account bound items either, I am much more a fan of the following: At level 4 I found a magical sword that help me level up for several levels, however now at level 10 that item is no longer useful to me do to I have found a much better item, why should I then not be allowed to give this low level item I used for several levels to someone else? or trade it.
I am a huge fan of the concept of Auction houses and they should be linked to all Hauses/factions, it would simply improve the gaming experience for everyone involved if there was cross haus trade.
 
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Loot:
I prefer Diablo-like loot with random affixes on specific item types with different rarities and custom pre-set gameplay changing features for unique/legendary/whatever it is called rarity items. Item sets are welcome as well. Loot should also be instanced for each player.

Currency:
Gold with useful gold sinks. Path of Exile's system was born out of Diablo 2's endgame trading system where people traded rare items that were valueable because the gold was not useful at all and could not provide the services that these items were providing like respecs or crafting specific items. At the same time Path of Exile's system shows that such a system is a complete clusterfuck and requires unnecessary amount of investment and management. What should there be is the possibilities that the PoE currencies provide but for a common cost that is the in-game gold.

Trading:
Should be limited to the party you are currently playing with and only items obtained during that play session should be tradeable. If you have open trading then even if you do not have an in-game auction house and real-money-transactions then you are going to have those through third party sites which leads to people farming rare items to sell them for either in-game currency or money which leads to over-saturation of the market with farmed items which leads to decreased drop rates which leads to worse experience for anybody who doesn't want to engage with the whole trading side of the game which is the majority of players. Finding a rare item should be a cause to celebrate and you should not feel punished for not farming currency instead and participating in the trading game where you can find items like the one you found dime a dozen.
 
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What should / should not drop?
-Should everything drop? weapons, armor, potions, gold, resources, tarot cards, buffs. ect..
--or should things like gold / resources just auto add to your running total?

Thanks for opening the topic!
Items like weapons/armor and tarot cards should be more special than a regular drop. Perhaps they can be "found" in chests or other places or "awarded" for completion of missions or defeating bosses. They can also be crafted. Then they can be upgraded/modified as well. They can be sold or traded.

Items that should drop should be stackable like craft materials, modification items. I do not want to play Tetris with my inventory.

Gold (if there is gold) or other types of resources should be auto-added to inventory.

Who should / should not be able to take loot?
-Should it be first come first serve, round robin, everyone gets a copy of what dropped?

Round Robin for most items. For stuff like common resources/craft materials, everyone should get a shared auto added to their inventory/resource pool.

--What about power levelers / farmers / leaches who just sit and collect while others do the work?

What about them? The community will decide how this will work once everything else is implemented. I don't think game design should be based around this aspect.

How much loot should there be?
-Should there be a massive pool of RNG stat style items (Diablo / Path of Exile come to mind) to pick through?

I know I'm in the minority here, but no. I think less is more. Weapons/Gear/Tarot cards should be limited in how they are found. Then they can be modified with items or during crafting.

-or should end mission reward where you know you will receive something valuable once your done and not worry about sifting through piles?

Yes!

CURRENCY
The only questions here I can think of are..
-Should it be a gold(monetary) like item?(diablo)
-Should it be trade/craft type items(PoE)
-Should it be tradable between the different houses? (they may value things differently)

I prefer barter system over gold. If there is a gold type currency then there has to be very good gold sinks as to keep inflation from going out of control. And please please do NOT implement taxes/fees as gold sinks. I already pay enough taxes and fees in real life I do not want to pay them in a game.

By different houses do you mean when different houses are introduced much later in the game? If so, we should cross that bridge when we come to it, but I want to say yes, items should be able to be traded over different houses. However, I'm sure some items may not be useable to some houses.

TRADING
-What should be tradeable?

Almost everything. Items that are purchased as part of microtransactions should NOT be tradeable.

--should things be account / character locked?

Items that are purchased as part of microtransactions.

-Auction houses to sell goods?

Yes, however how this is implemented would be grounds for an entirely new set of questions. Is no auction house fees realistic?

-Real money markets?

Absolutely not.

My personal take on these things.
Loot -
To cut down on wasting time I would be more in favor of fewer items dropped as to not have to sift through 99% of the garbage that will just get passed up. Sure it is definitely something that many games do because of the RNG factor of finding top tier gear, and can make for diverse playstyles but this is also something that can be achieved through modifications / crafting. Monetary and crafting materials could be on their own separate inventory and gained through fighting, collecting, or end mission rewards.

Completely agree with you here.

Currency -
I do like the way PoE has their currency set - everything is used for something and can be upgraded / downgraded for the most part. It would be interesting if some of the things were used more by other houses but easier for you to get per se. Could add another dynamic to the game. That being said I am not against a pure gold or the like type currency.

Yes I think the currency should have an inherent value, rather than just currency for the sake of currency.

Trading -
I have never personally liked account / character locked items, I would rather be able to sell it or give it to a friend after finding an upgrade or the like.
Auction houses should be a thing only IF the item base calls for it.
Real money markets tend to promote a Pay-To-Win attitude which I am against, but that also leads many groups to buy on SITE X and just get traded the stuff in game. Which leads to people being scammed / hacked / account stollen / account bans. So any implementation of a real money house would have to be done carefully and with some thought IMHO.

Agree with you here as well. Trading should be able to be done player-to-player as well as access to a trade hub/auction house. No real money trading should be implemented of any kind. A policy like this should be strictly monitored and enforced and anyone seen advertising for real money should be immediately banned, as well as anyone attempting to run a third party program that allows them to run the game and farm items while afk.
 
Trading:
Should be limited to the party you are currently playing with and only items obtained during that play session should be tradeable. If you have open trading then even if you do not have an in-game auction house and real-money-transactions then you are going to have those through third party sites which leads to people farming rare items to sell them for either in-game currency or money which leads to over-saturation of the market with farmed items which leads to decreased drop rates which leads to worse experience for anybody who doesn't want to engage with the whole trading side of the game which is the majority of players. Finding a rare item should be a cause to celebrate and you should not feel punished for not farming currency instead and participating in the trading game where you can find items like the one you found dime a dozen.
I don't think it's a good idea to punish the entire community to try and pre-empt people that wanna try and sell stuff for real money / sell gold or what ever, that small fraction of people will always exist in any game that gets big enough of a community.

Way to often you never find exactly what you are looking for, but others will, so banning trading for everyone because you wanna try and stop the less than 1% of people you think will ruin it sounds like a horrible way to try and " fix " this situation you are describing.

I would much rather prefer the dev team being on point and swing a ban hammer than I want a normal and healthy option taken away from everyone.
 
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I don't think it's a good idea to punish the entire community to try and pre-empt people that wanna try and sell stuff for real money / sell gold or what ever, that small fraction of people will always exist in any game that gets big enough of a community.

Way to often you never find exactly what you are looking for, but others will, so banning trading for everyone because you wanna try and stop the less than 1% of people you think will ruin it sounds like a horrible way to try and " fix " this situation you are describing.

I would much rather prefer the dev team being on point and swing a ban hammer than I want a normal and health option taken away from everyone.
I see it the other way around - allowing trade creates a variety of problems that the whole community gets punished for in order to satisfy a small amount of players that prefer to trade for items rather than find them themselves.