Was in a mission group yesterday in PM, team consisted of an enforcer using a beam, 2 soldiers with novaflows, a trader with an ithaca, an MA and doctor (me, i use MA)
After clearing the main room area, we starting moving room to room hugging the right wall. We charged a room that had 2 spawns in it (the one that is like a small prison with 4 small rooms inside.) Anyway, once the fight was underway, after calming the add, the trader went into one of the prison rooms, and looted a chest.
He showed the group that he got a Ring of Power - High Energy, it was around q183, a pretty good loot. After showing the group the ring in chat, both soldiers were like "Wow!" After, he quickly said "I'm going to give it to my guildmate, I'm sure he'll be real happy."
I thought it was pretty bad that he just took a ring from a chest while everyone was fighting and didn't even offer it to either of the soldiers.
I know he could have just said nothing, and no one would have been the wiser, and he'd have smuggled the ring without a peep, but there's a problem here I think. All groups I've been in, chests have been a free for all, and somehow I think that's wrong.
EQ had a good solution where whenever anyone looted something from a monster, it would display a text message. If they did something like that for chest loots (and arguably boss monsters now too,) it would be a good step into stopping people from stealing. Sure it wouldn't have stopped the audacity of this gay trader, but at least he wouldn't have been able to smuggle something like that without us knowing.