Friday with(out) Means - Oct. 14th, 2011: Pumpkins Incoming

its unfortunate that there will likely end up being another point bot(s) put in place for this encounter. tarasque? yeah, its needed there because the drop rate on stuff is sadistically terrible.
S42? well, not sure when the last time it ran was, so a lot of good it does anyhow.

point is, people have been screaming for the devs to add an ingame loot distribution system for years. I would like to know how loot distribution was originally intended by developers? there is no ingame mechanic for loot distribution, they are all third party. was it originally intended to follow the philosophy of anarchy? if so, why are there rules against ninjalooting, if no ingame system exists for loot distribution because its all "anarchy?"

time and time again, the devs have had opportunity to develop an ingame loot distribution system, one that reflects equality across the board, but instead the opportunity is squandered again and again.

don't get me wrong, I like point bots over flat rolling when it comes to vary rare loot, and a large investment of time, but not having a rolling system ingame is one of the big turn offs for new players. course, dozens upon dozens of new players over the years could just be pulling my leg about it...

At the start of AO there was no such thing as crying about loot. You went about and scavenged as best as you could, hoping for stuff, and using the alphaloot system that teaming opens up.
Then, all this other nonsense came about, and people really should just get over themselves and learn to get along. My old org had the best loot distribution system ever. Noone's copied it because everyone's afraid of it and think there's some kind of bigbrother thing going on, but mostly people are just unable to see beyond their own little bellybutton and that causes no end of problems.

And. Equality. What equality exactly? How do you measure equality? One bit for each person? How about the guy who gets the monsterpart. What if the mob drops only one item? Drop only tokens that can then be turned in for a piece of loot of your choice? Personally I find that such systems take away from the social aspect of the game and just boils everything down to an even more singleplayer experience.

So, loot distribution systems? Use the ones that are there, or make one up, it's a game about people, after all. If you don't want to play with them, don't complain that it wasn't your turn to loot the boss according to alphaloot.

^^ nice troll. gotta teach me the art sometime.

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Originally Posted by Mastablasta

At the start of AO there was no such thing as crying about loot. You went about and scavenged as best as you could, hoping for stuff, and using the alphaloot system that teaming opens up.
Then, all this other nonsense came about, and people really should just get over themselves and learn to get along. My old org had the best loot distribution system ever. Noone's copied it because everyone's afraid of it and think there's some kind of bigbrother thing going on, but mostly people are just unable to see beyond their own little bellybutton and that causes no end of problems.

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What loot distribution system was your org using?

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Originally Posted by SoapTarder

^^ nice troll. gotta teach me the art sometime.

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Troll? Not at all. It's not like AO is full of "oooh rare item" that drops from mobs and that you want to click need/greed on all the time, like in other games. Hell, healing potions are considered warranting need/greed rolls in most other games.
But hey, offing any kind of argument as "oh you are just trolling" is the easy way out. Gogo Tarder!

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Originally Posted by Demoder

What loot distribution system was your org using?

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An organic, weighted system. Everyone would have a wishlist on our forum and a thread with their loot rewards. Officers of a certain rank would be loot distributors, and every time something someone wanted dropped, the question would pop up "who wants this" and people would answer with whatever they felt like. Perhaps that day they felt that someone else should get whatever, so they'd not say anything.

The officers would then do a quick vote, or hold a short debate for consensus if it was a very rare item, like say Burden. In the voting/discussion officers would take into consideration what and when someone had looted something the last time, their general attendance at org activities compared to others, their time in the org, how much CRU they'd donated, how much time they'd spent helping other members of the org for instance, and various other things that might come to mind. Sounds awfully complicated, but when you are a group of people who all know eachother, who take 5 seconds to look over a forum overview of who posted last in the rewards thread, then I can't recall any time that we ever spent more than a few seconds distributing loot.
And noone was ever unhappy about it. Never. Not once were there complaints about how someone got something and that was unfair. Everyone worked for the good of the org and for eachother.
Every 14 days we'd hold an org meeting, and during that time, combined armor would be awarded to people who wished for it, based on the same merits as raid loot. Meaning that at the end of every AI raid, if bots had dropped an officer would grab them, and hold on to them in the org bank toon till it was needed for building something for someone. Org bank which would grow from our tax (which was 40k) would also be used to buy viral bots that might be missing to build a piece of combined armor.

So in all, a horribly socialist outfit that required that everyone trusted and cared about the others. Otherwise it couldn't work. Loot greed was a completely alien concept. Everyone knew they'd eventually get what they wanted, and if they didn't, someone from the org got it and would then be that much stronger the next time we went on a raid.

Officer loot is used fairly often, and it works fine, its just lots of orgs are just about getting as many people in so they open themselves up to people joining, grabbing loot and leaving cos they dont form any sort of friendly bonds with anyone...

There's also the fact that in relation to the Gauntlet this argument is kiiiinda moot seeing as how the loot table from the instance is exactly the same as the loot on the boss, the only difference being that tradeskill parts drop inside the instance and the boss just drops the completed bits (there is also one other thing the boss may drop but looting it isnt really that important outside of bragging rights [this is that 'really interesting' thing i was talking about in regards to gauntlet loot a while back - i'm still working on it so i dunno if it'll make it in for the first iteration of the boss but it will be coming]).

The only reason anyone would really consider worrying running a points bot for the final boss would be if they were reaaaaaaaally lazy and just didn't want to collect the tradeskill parts from the instance itself (something that *will* take some time to finish, if you're going for all three armour pieces and all of their upgrades) - Otherwise the rewards are the same, and if you've gone through the instance you're already well on your way toward crafting what the boss drops. =)

Im sure you will be delighted to know that Im very happy with these news. :p

I think this is excelent news. Hope it will be implemented in other pfs. One excelent step in the direction of fixing AO, sais I. :)

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Originally Posted by Kintaii

There's also the fact that in relation to the Gauntlet this argument is kiiiinda moot seeing as how the loot table from the instance is exactly the same as the loot on the boss, the only difference being that tradeskill parts drop inside the instance and the boss just drops the completed bits (there is also one other thing the boss may drop but looting it isnt really that important outside of bragging rights [this is that 'really interesting' thing i was talking about in regards to gauntlet loot a while back - i'm still working on it so i dunno if it'll make it in for the first iteration of the boss but it will be coming]).

The only reason anyone would really consider worrying running a points bot for the final boss would be if they were reaaaaaaaally lazy and just didn't want to collect the tradeskill parts from the instance itself (something that *will* take some time to finish, if you're going for all three armour pieces and all of their upgrades) - Otherwise the rewards are the same, and if you've gone through the instance you're already well on your way toward crafting what the boss drops. =)

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This is very reassuring to hear, ty Kintaii. *throws case of beer at funcom headquarter door while driving by* when you first mentioned a 17hour respawn timer on placeholder, I had nightmares of farming points for yet another raid. glad to see this probably won't be the case.

regarding the loot system you mentioned Masta, We also use that in our org, always have. we basically go with the rule that 220's get first dibs on endgame loot, then basically whoever's online and needs next has dibs. never really had a problem, and you're right, its the best "social" approach to loot distribution inside an org. outside of an org, it just doesnt cut it, unfortunately.

I still firmly believe that AO needs a better built-in loot distribution. AOC has a decent one. implementing it into AO would require an attitude adjustment by the general AO playerbase, but it would be a step in the right direction from what we have now. as much as I give props to the players that have spent hundreds of hours coding raid bots, its led to a system based on mistrust and su****ion between players. also, AO has NODROP tags all over the place, which suits the AOC loot distribution so well its not even funny.

again, thanks for clearing that up kintaii :)

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Originally Posted by Lusos101

Im sure you will be delighted to know that Im very happy with these news. :p

I think this is excelent news. Hope it will be implemented in other pfs. One excelent step in the direction of fixing AO, sais I. :)

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Ever hear of Sector 13, 28, 35 and 42? :p

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Originally Posted by Mastablasta

Ever hear of Sector 13, 28, 35 and 42? :p

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Yes I did. I have even been in some of them, occasionally. How bout you?

Each of the playfields you mentioned has specific loot on final boss only. While this new pf has loot in different mobs with an improved reward on final boss. Totally the same thing, rite?

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Originally Posted by Lusos101

Yes I did. I have even been in some of them, occasionally. How bout you?

Each of the playfields you mentioned has specific loot on final boss only. While this new pf has loot in different mobs with an improved reward on final boss. Totally the same thing, rite?

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Ah, but sectors 13, 28 and 35 drop some bits and bobs, that you can tradeskill to get a nice item. Then there's the various specific loot for each sector. All of it drops in sector 42, and in assembled form from the various end area bosses there.
Sure, the other sectors are way easier, but then there's also the special s42 rewards.

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Originally Posted by Kintaii

There's also the fact that in relation to the Gauntlet this argument is kiiiinda moot seeing as how the loot table from the instance is exactly the same as the loot on the boss, the only difference being that tradeskill parts drop inside the instance and the boss just drops the completed bits (there is also one other thing the boss may drop but looting it isnt really that important outside of bragging rights [this is that 'really interesting' thing i was talking about in regards to gauntlet loot a while back - i'm still working on it so i dunno if it'll make it in for the first iteration of the boss but it will be coming]).

The only reason anyone would really consider worrying running a points bot for the final boss would be if they were reaaaaaaaally lazy and just didn't want to collect the tradeskill parts from the instance itself (something that *will* take some time to finish, if you're going for all three armour pieces and all of their upgrades) - Otherwise the rewards are the same, and if you've gone through the instance you're already well on your way toward crafting what the boss drops. =)

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THe point here is if people will get a chance even to run the instance, considering the portal is open for 5 mins on an 18 hour "lock out" (read it chance to get inside instance).

Its beast pre-instanced all over again for me.

Save yourself the trouble and just raise that portal timer. For not even minutes... but HOURS. Consider the timezone of everyone... when i log in at 7:00 PM (GMT-3 Brazil) there isnt even enough people to run inferno missions... taking almost an hour to do so... imagine if it will be possible to build a 6man group of reliable people to run an instance... in wich theres a chance of fail.


My suggestion...

Create a lock of 18 hours for the instance
Make the open-world boss a 18 hour spawn
Place holder spawn 3 hours
Portal available for 1 hour after PH is killed


Making the PH a 3 hour timer will give the server 6 runs during a whole day to the instance with only 1 of them giving a chance to the open world-boss, while others will be purely for 1 chance every 18 hours to solely run the instance.

Making the portal last 1 hour will give people a chance to form groups to go the instance and in case of a wipe a chance to get back and try again.

The point here is to give EVERYONE 1 chance during this 18 hours period to run this instance ONCE A DAY, and at the same time ginving a random chance of EVERYONE for atleast ONCE A WEEK get a taste of the open-world boss...


Seriously, took me 15 mins to think this thru.

in other news, when's the halloween stuff coming out? halloween is almost over in real life already >_<

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Originally Posted by Mastablasta

Ah, but sectors 13, 28 and 35 drop some bits and bobs, that you can tradeskill to get a nice item. Then there's the various specific loot for each sector. All of it drops in sector 42, and in assembled form from the various end area bosses there.
Sure, the other sectors are way easier, but then there's also the special s42 rewards.

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Our alliance runs S42 every 2 weeks, we flatroll the ACDC.. usually 3-5 people roll in it since most of the people in already have it.

We also run Sec 42 every every week with the Org Co-op, and also twice weekly on the raidbot. I've never known Sector 42 run as much as it does currently on RK1 :)

The problem is there is RK1 and RK2.

As far as i know sector 42 has not run for months publicly at all, no announcements for it either on an alliance chat im joined on aswell but this is on RK2.

It is pretty much the same problem as with many things when people say "your problem does not excist here on RK1" doesnt mean it is not there on RK2.
Many identified problems are apperantly not pressent on RK 1 and it seems that makes it hard to track a problem, specially if devs dont even know where to look and see no problem because they watched on RK1.

When people say there are certain problems it shouldnt be dismissed those problems can possible be on "that other dimension everyone forgot about".


Regardless im really looking forward to this halloween like i do every time every year and im like many others curious to many things mentioned in the dev blog and on the halloween introduction page.

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Originally Posted by Mastablasta

Ah, but sectors 13, 28 and 35 drop some bits and bobs, that you can tradeskill to get a nice item. Then there's the various specific loot for each sector. All of it drops in sector 42, and in assembled form from the various end area bosses there.
Sure, the other sectors are way easier, but then there's also the special s42 rewards.

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And then? Why are you lecturing about something that is common knowledge?What is your point? That the loot acquisition method in the new instance is bad? I said i liked it. What are you saying?

I think some people here are hating for the sake of hating.
It would be nice if people would stop doing that, and just try to be nice for a change.