Welcome to Project: Gorgon!


Project: Gorgon is a 3D fantasy MMORPG (massively-multiplayer online role-playing game) that features an immersive experience that allows the player to forge their own path through exploration and discovery. We won't be guiding you through a world on rails, and as a result there are many hidden secrets awaiting discovery. Project: Gorgon also features an ambitious skill based leveling system that bucks the current trend of pre-determined classes, thus allowing the player to combine skills in order to create a truly unique playing experience.

The Project: Gorgon development team is led by industry veteran Eric Heimburg. Eric has over a decade of experience working as a Senior and Lead Engineer, Developer, Designer and Producer on successful games such as Asheron’s Call 1 and 2, Star Trek Online and other successful Massively Multiplayer Online Games.



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  1. #1
    Senior Member alleryn's Avatar
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    Suggestions regarding loot lock and griefing.

    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 Spoiler:

    --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:
    1. Inadvertent/don't understand loot system
    2. Miscommunication
    3. Hitting mob to stun/disable to avoid it without intention of killing (e.g. passing through area during druid event)
    4. Hitting mob to gain looting rights and then pulling it to a stronger player to kill it for you.
    5. 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.
    Last edited by alleryn; 03-29-2017 at 09:54 PM.

  2. #2
    Senior Member alleryn's Avatar
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    Here is a selection of other relevant posts and comments on the matter (there are a lot of other pertinent comments in the linked threads):
    Spoiler Spoiler:

    I guess quotes count as images? Anyways, continued below again. Edit: oh now i see, it's because of the smilies... whoops.
    Last edited by alleryn; 03-29-2017 at 09:56 PM.

  3. #3
    Senior Member alleryn's Avatar
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    Spoiler Spoiler:

    --My Vision of Goals for the Loot System--
    What should the loot system look like? I'm sure everyone has a different picture (likely with a lot of overlap and agreement). Here's some of what i'd like to see:
    • For bosses/elites, Limited group size with each member getting a loot share. I wouldn't want to go back to the old system, for reasons outlined above. Mainly that it's easier to balance difficulty. I was a bit on the fence on whether i think there should just be one chunk of loot, or a copy for each member, but in the end i think the cameraderie of each member getting a share of the spoils suits my taste.
    • A fair distribution of loot when multiple groups are contesting a mob. Of course it's difficult to say what this means. Who should get what? Dibs/tagging? Seems to open the window for griefing. Most damage? Now people can kill-steal. I'll circle back to this later.
    • Perhaps most importantly, the loot system should promote a fun atmosphere and community. Ideally everyone should get the loot system they want when they want it, at least most of the time.

    --Proposals--
    So (finally) here are my suggestions:

    Part 1: Lootlock
    Add a /lootlock command with two settings: 'Tag' and 'Damage' (e.g. "/lootlock tag"). The command would apply when you are solo, or to all your group members if you are the leader of your group. For boss/elites, the setting would determine the loot functionality for any mob you (or your group) tag (in the current sense). The 'Tag' setting would be the current behavior in game; any mob your group kills would be lootable by your group. If you have 'Damage' set when you tag a mob, then whichever group deals the most damage to the mob gets the loot. The 'Damage' lock would need a different icon, so other players could see how the mob is tagged.

    The idea is that this will help differentiate the people who are trying to grief others by tagging mobs (with the Tag setting enabled) from those who are inadvertently tagging mobs, or just trying to be helpful. If you are just trying to help, you can switch your lootlock setting to "Damage" and you won't accidentally grief anyone.

    Part 2:Griefing detection
    With the lootlock command in place, we create a new method to help identify griefers. They will be groups or individuals who have "Tag" set, but they won't be doing significant damage to mobs. If the system automatically detects say 3 mobs in a row that you tag without dealing much damage (say under 5% of the mob's health over 30 seconds -- if another group kills it sooner, you wouldn't receive a warning. Also it would count any damage you are dealing, so if you are killing other mobs that wouldn't illicit a warning either), you would get a warning message, e.g. "[SYSTEM]: You are tagging monsters without damaging them. Don't expect other players to win your fight for you! Please type '/lootlock Damage' to avoid bogarting the mobs". If the behavior continues, the lootlock setting could be automatically switched, and increasing punishments could apply if the griefing persists.

    Part 3: solo mobs
    The changes to solo mobs are moving in the right direction, i think. It's great to be able to bury other people's mobs. But if they don't open the corpse, having to wait 90 seconds is quite a while. If people are farming just for the xp and ignoring loot and not burying, it can cause a problem. So we could extend the lootlock setting to apply to normal mobs too. Here we could add a third option "/lootlock Open" (or use a separate command "/lootsolo Open") to make it so anyone can loot your corpses. If people are killing mobs and not ever opening the corpses while they have lootlock set to Tag or Damage, they could receive a warning like above.

    Part 4:easing the burden on the server
    If it would be too expensive to have the server doing this check on every player, we could have a way to mark players who we think are griefing ('/lootgriefer alleryn') and the server could only run checks when it had a report (or 2 reports) on a player in the last half hour, or something like that.

    --Conclusion--
    This is what i came up with after a little brainstorming. It's probably not a very refined idea, and i'm sure some of you have better ideas either of your own, or ways other MMOs have dealt with the loot issue, but i wanted to put in my best thought of how we can keep loot fairly distributed and limit griefing. Thanks for reading.
    Last edited by alleryn; 03-29-2017 at 10:06 PM.

  4. #4
    Senior Member Crissa's Avatar
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    That seems really complex x-x

  5. #5
    Senior Member Tagamogi's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Crissa View Post
    That seems really complex x-x
    Yeah... I do actually like alleryn's suggestion, especially being able to set our own desired level of locking. I just think we also want something that is going to be reasonably simple to explain. Of course, I don't have any simpler or better suggestions of my own at the moment.

  6. #6
    Senior Member alleryn's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Crissa View Post
    That seems really complex x-x
    I'm not sure it's really any more complex than the current "/loot free" and "/loot open" group looting settings. I probably just didn't explain it all that well. Is there any part in particular that you think is too complicated?

  7. #7
    Senior Member Crissa's Avatar
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    Err, in that loot settings would be changed per user somehow?

  8. #8
    Senior Member alleryn's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Crissa View Post
    Err, in that loot settings would be changed per user somehow?
    Group leaders can already change loot settings within their group. I don't know that this would really be such a far cry from that.

  9. #9
    Senior Member Crissa's Avatar
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    I don't see how this helps the open world problem, then.

  10. #10
    Senior Member alleryn's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Crissa View Post
    I don't see how this helps the open world problem, then.
    As i see it the main problems are these:
    Quote Originally Posted by alleryn View Post
    • 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.
    Part of my idea is to make it easier to identify players who are doing this, by allowing players to "turn off" tagging. So, say i'm at a druid event and i'm low level or in a low level group. I/my group can't kill the mobs on our own. In the current system, there's no way to differentiate between players who are trying to help and those who are just trying to leech off of high level players by tagging mobs and trying to get the high level players to kill them for them.

    In the proposed system, the helpful players would have the option to set their tagging to a separate setting so that elite and boss loot behaves like normal mobs behave now (whoever does the most damage gets the loot).

    So if someone still has their tagging set to the new "first hit" system, but isn't dealing any serious damage, they could more easily be identified as someone just trying to leech.

    Does that make any sense?



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