Suggestions regarding loot lock and griefing.

**alleryn** · 03-29-2017, 09:06 PM

tl;dr: add some / commands to the chat box to give players options to not lock mobs to themselves; add an automated system to detect groups/individuals who lock mobs without doing significant damage; extend the functionality to players who kill non-elite mobs without opening the corpse.

--Context--

The March 25, 2017 update changed the looting rules for bosses/elites. Prior to this update, anyone could loot a corpse of a boss/elite. After the update, the first group/individual to attack locks the mob and only members of that group can loot it.

The looting rules for "normal" (non-elite) corpses changed as well, so that any player could access a corpse once the original looter closed the corpse.

The March 29 hotfix also changed the behavior of non-elite corpses, so that if they are unopened for 90 seconds anyone may loot/bury/etc.

Some reasons for the changes to boss/elite looting were discussed earlier. Summarizing the posts below, the old loot rules incentivized large groups, which took out much of the game's challenge, made feedback for balancing purposes less useful due to content being too easy, and caused too much proliferation of loot (full posts below wrapped in spoiler tages to save space):

Spoiler:

https://forum.projectgorgon.com/show...p?219-The-Zerg

Originally Posted by Citan

Some low-level dungeons, I honestly don't care if you bum-rush them with a million people. If a high-level player wants to organize a bunch of newbies to kill Gajus? I can't really bring myself to give a crap. It's not important in the scheme of things. But if you're doing high-level content in groups of eight or ten, that's a bigger problem, one that we're aware of and that's on our to-do list to fix.

My current plan is to basically use EQ2's system: hunting groups have a max of 6 people, monsters become "loot-locked" (and XP-locked) to the first person or group that attacks them, and a little icon shows that the monster is locked. There are simple level-range restrictions on the group, as well, to keep a level 100 from carrying a group of 50s. This system works well for keeping the game's challenge level up. But it has down sides, mainly that you HAVE to group up in order to share loot and XP from a monster -- casual "nearby grouping" stops working. It also opens up some dumb abuse situations, like "high level guy runs to boss and keeps him perma-locked for hours just so that you that can never kill him", but in practice that's pretty easy to fix. We first disincentivize the abusive situation as best we can (e.g. after the third repeated boss kill, you get literally nothing from it), then if people continue to be dicks just for fun, we ban them.

But as I said in the Big Dev-Info Roundup post, these plans will come later this year. The main hold up is that I need the GUI revamp to be done first. I don't currently even have a way to show a little "locked" icon overtop monsters. I could hack something in, but I'd just have to re-code it again in the new GUI. So that's wasted work, which I try to avoid.

In the mean time, please try to exercise a little self-restraint. Yes, you can abuse the limitations of the alpha and run a dozen people through a dungeon. But you should understand what you're doing: you're twinking yourselves. There are literally no dungeons in the game right now where a group of more than 6 should be needed -- and most dungeons are balanced for a group of 3 or 4 -- so if you have more than six, you're playing on an "easy mode" that is only going to be available until I can change it.

Why should you care? Because once you twink yourselves, your feedback becomes worthless. You don't really know how hard or easy things are, so you stop being able to help me balance content. Plus, the combat metrics generated by oversized groups are worthless, so I can't balance it that way either. I know that there are level ranges where it's hard to level, and dungeons that need work, and skills that need improvement at certain level ranges... but I don't really know where they are exactly, and I need your help -- your untwinked help -- to find and fix them.

The game isn't finished yet, but stuff like this won't be a problem forever. In the mean time, I'd like people to use their sense of restraint. It's not hard! Try it.

Edit: here's the big dev info roundup. It's from August, so it's a bit outdated in a few places, but it may fill in some gaps for new players: http://projectgorgon.com/blog/entry/...-info-round-up

Originally Posted by Citan

Well, no system is perfect, but I actually found the opposite. As a templar in EQ2 I routinely helped out others, just for the sake of being nice, and because of the locking system, it was understood as a nice gesture instead of an attempt to steal a kill.

In Gorgon right now, you can "help" somebody, but if you do more damage than them against a solo creature, you stop being a helper and start becoming a kill-stealer. And since XP is split right now, many players will resent your "help" because you're inevitably slowing down their leveling.

I guess the bottom line is that the current system is obviously not going to cut it in the long term because the loot system heavily rewards mega-groups. Mega-groups are actually really boring, even if the rewards are good. It's not healthy for the long-term of the game. The best system I've seen is EQ2s. If you have other systems to propose, that's cool and I'm all ears! But we can't stay with the exact system we have now forever.

https://forum.projectgorgon.com/show...-March-10-2017

Originally Posted by Citan

We're still gathering feedback on the new dungeon, but one change is clearly needed soon: we need to lock down group sizes and looting rights. Right now, we're incentivizing everyone to group up into clumps of as many players as possible. That doesn't just sap the challenge from the dungeon, it's also just a lot more boring.

I mentioned recently that we were waiting on this change until the new GUI was done, but I've changed my mind -- I'm implementing it now and it will be in the next snapshot build. (The GUI display will be rudimentary, but good enough for now.)

Here's how it will work:

Hunting groups will be capped at six players instead of 10.
When fighting elite and boss monsters, only the first group that attacks it will be able to loot it.
The monster will become "locked" to the first attacker's group, with a little lock icon visible to other players and groups to let them know.
Each member of the locked group will get their own share of treasure, just as they do now, but no one outside that group will be able to loot the corpse.
This applies to elites and bosses only! Looting rights for other monsters will continue as they are now.
This only affects loot. Things like XP, combat wisdom, and curse removal remain as they are now.

That's it. It's actually a pretty small change, all told. It doesn't change other game mechanics, because right now I'm mostly concerned about the proliferation of loot.

This change is really important for group dungeons like Labyrinth and Gazluk Keep, but I'm also eager to see how this affects druid events. Right now, it seems that druids group up into mega-groups, sometimes with over a dozen people killing the same hapless monster, even when it would be much faster to split up. If druids start grouping in more sensibly-sized groups, several of the events will become much faster -- possibly too fast, it's hard to tell. That's information I need before adding the next batch of druid events.

We'll take it slowly and see the ramifications of this change, then make other changes as necessary. We’ll be watching our metrics, of course, but -- as always! -- we will need your feedback.

--Difficulties with the New System--
The main complaints with the new system seem to center around mobs being tagged and then not killed. This can happen for a number of reasons, including:

Inadvertent/don't understand loot system
Miscommunication
Hitting mob to stun/disable to avoid it without intention of killing (e.g. passing through area during druid event)
Hitting mob to gain looting rights and then pulling it to a stronger player to kill it for you.
Hitting a mob to deprive other players of the ability to loot it, just to upset them.

Of these, the last two are the most serious, and would almost certainly be categorized as griefing.

~~For some reason i am unable to upload the full content of my message in a single post. I get an error saying it contains more than 6 images, so continued below.

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