With Diablo III, the developers looked into fixing this problem. There appeared to be one quick and easy decision on this since it was revealed at the same time as the game itself. In this new installment, each player will be getting their own loot drops that only they can see and pick up. This stops the hustle to click on items first and allow players to play the game without worrying about fighting for drops.
While the system sounds simple enough, there has been a lot of discussion and debate on the intricacies of the system. There have been debates on whether or not there was any advantage to playing multi-player or single-player to get the best gear quickest. With multi-player, each player gets their own drops but can share their loot by picking it up and dropping it back on the floor. This allows every other player to be able to see it and pick it up. With four players in one game, this essentially increases the drop rate by four. To compensate for this increase, some have mentioned the idea that single-player drops would have a better chance of dropping better gear. However, this doesn't seem to be the case. cherubdown asked Bashiok this question about the separation of gear from multi-player and single-player. At first, his response was that there was better drop rates in multi-player. However, he soon recanted this statement and corrected himself.
Official Blizzard Quote:
Diablo: @cherubdown Sorry that was an incorrect answer. Drops don't change while playing in a group vs. alone.
In addition to the fact that there is no separation between the different modes, Bashiok also added the fact that Magic Find and other attributes will effect only the person's drops who is wearing the gear with those attributes. This, again, makes it so playing in a group will not give anyone an advantage to someone not playing in a group with MF stacked between the group.
Official Blizzard Quote:
I've gotten this same question wrong in the past, I don't know why it continues to confuse me.
Drops are not different in co-op. The fact that you're killing faster (which you will) in a group means more items in less amount of time, means we don't need to provide other incentives.
Your own drop modifiers will affect your personal drops, such as magic and gold find. But that's the same while playing alone or in a group.
Special thanks to Doomscream for finding this additional news on MF.
More item rolls in the randomized loot system. The 100 runs as a group of 4 = 400 runs holds strong
Thanks so much for answering that!! Sorry i am new here and didn't see it cheers
It's a joke
Do I need to put it's a joke in my jokes? (disclaimer I'm not trying to be a smart ass I swear)
True, but if it is a party of friends, then you wouldn't have to "trade", if you have a barbarian axe and your friend is a barbarian, you could just give it to him. You wouldn't have to "trade" per say. Does that make sense? Friends helping friends out.
Guess I'm the only one who was thinking along these lines. :/
I am worried about this system which everyone has his own drops and you have to actively pick up and drop items you want to make "globally available".
Not only I think this is a difficult system for newbies to grasp, but also I don't think many people will feel like picking unwanted items (especially if they are not unique or set) in the middle of combat just to drop and offer for unknown colleagues.
But I can't think of a better system. D2 style was simply frustrating when you were ranged and you had to get close to the boss just about he was in the final moments (and risk your life for it) just to se the items get picked up in the air even if they were perfectably suited for you and not suited to the picker.
If the items were yours for an ammount of time (like 30s) this could encourage players to stop battling and wait for other people's loot spoils, or just make players go back later to see if there were any good items left...
I really don't have a suggestion for a better system, but this one does seem flawed. I hope they find a better way to deal with it before the release or maybe in an early patch.
Better than somebody stealing a drop meant for you and then leaving the game. If anything, just communicate with your fellow player through chat. Blizzard said there will be an inspect feature so you should know if the item is an upgrade for that player.
There is not going to be any offline play in Diablo 3.
I meant more along the lines of it somehow being a different mode. It's all the same game, if you're playing offline you are just playing alone. You don't get any kind of bonuses to anything because you're playing offline. It's just like in SC2, you can use 'offline' mode, but it really just means you can't access most of the features of the game.
It's not 1 or 2 clicks, or just type something in a message. In early to mid-game any item could be useful, including non-magic armor or a rare low-tier boots. And I don't see people feeling like clicking once, opening their inventory, searching for the unwanted item and dropping it for every item that could be of use to one of the other players in any situation, or even making a full report about their equiped items and what kind of items they would like everytime they start a game, a new player enters the game, or he has an item upgrade. It sure does work when you are playing with actual friends, but I don't see that happening when you form a casual party just to make some specific quests.
And I should remember that when playing with actual friends, even D2 way worked fine.
In D2 people even got tired of picking up gold, which required only 1 click and no inventory space. I think that even players who have the best intentions on co-op will tire of all the picking, selecting and dropping in some time.
What if players are in a group, but playing in different areas? If I clear a dungeon while my buddy clears a different dungeon do we have sets of drops in eachother's dungeons? This may cause situations where people are doing a lot of roaming around in cleared areas for fear that they might miss something.
If your MF applies to drops from monsters killed by others then I can already see what is going to happen. Groups will consist of 1,2,or 3 characters designed for dealing massive damage quickly and 1 or 2 characters will be standing around holding as much MF as possible.
Not that these are necessarily bad things, strategically exploiting the game is part of what makes Diablo fun. But this situation is the kind of thing that the designers seem to be trying to avoid.
I too am very interested to see how they solve this situation, if they even choose to solve it at all.
I believe that from what they said, MF is not at the cost of killing power anymore. You can't have all magic find gear, it only appears in very certain ways that would otherwise be gold or some other trade based benefit anyway. I think that's how they are dealing with it. It's not Diablo 2, you don't have a whole set of gear that just has magic find on it.
http://forums.battle.net/thread.html?topicId=27800499814&sid=3000
Well, that's still gets something in the "lazy" part, why would someone hit the hotkey if he/she really didn't have to? Even though I find your idea more interesting than the picking and dropping.
In this event scheduled for the 27th are there any place for questions and/or suggestions? Could anyone from DiabloFans carry the question about the lazyness in co-op casual players and make that suggestion so they can implement it (even if a configurable feature) or even think about something better?
For instance 1 boss run in D2 might net you 2 rares and 200 gold to split between a party of 4. But now for the same boss run in D3 each person gets 2 rares and 200 gold effectively making each run introduce 8 rares and 800 gold into the economy. Unless the runs take 4 times longer to complete this introduces quite alot of inflation into the economy.
Isn't this quite a big problem??