Loot only drops for you if you're in a certain proximity of the creature that was killed. So if your friend is 2+ screens away and kills a boss, you won't receive any loot, or Exp for that matter.
So therein is another reason for even random parties to stick together, both for more loot drops and Exp gains from monsters killed by teammates in your proximity.
All and all I feel this is a nonissue due to the proximity concept.
I know for a fact that this isn't the whole story. In the videos the Yogscast made, Simon died on the skeletion king and got ported far away, as Lewis killed the boss. Simon could then go in later and pick up the loot. Here is the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FutNsZVjawo
This is probably an exception though. Although even if the proximity is one screen away or a little less, it can still be a problem as rare items could drop from a random barrel that you missed and that some guy behind you opened right after you passed it.
And overneathe, I see your point, but there has to be some way to come to a mutually beneficial solution to this, mutually being both kinds of players... Or maybe there isn't, maybe you need such a strong motivator as loot to help randoms stick together.... Merh, your point is a good one, I'm a bit torn on this matter now
Separate loot tables force people to stay really close together, and can perhaps make the multiplayer experience quite claustrophobic and possibly infuriating when played with the "wrong" people.
When they announced separate loot, I rejoiced.
Have you ever played a Sorcerer or any ranged class in D2. You never get loot, at all. Unless you stand in the fray, which is not a place for ranged characters to be. People grabbed up everything before you ever get to see it, and most melee classes argue that they are in the thick of things, thus deserve it.
It was aggravating and the system was flawed.
No thank you. Separate is better.
Please read my full post (I made an edit to clarify this issue).
I am NOT arguing against separate loot tables. One of my proposed solutions is an optional shared loot table mode (maybe only for invite only games), but this is a proposition, not a declaration.
Well my post is rather about your second, and edited point.
However, I must disagree. I do not play games like this in competition with my friends, we play it cooperatively, each trying to make sure each other gets the most out of the game. In games I've played where there are more then one things to be done at once, we usually split up tasks as well. Say there is a long and wide corridor with bookcases along the right and left side. What we would usually do in such a situation is to each go to one side and rummage through each side separately, and then meet at the end and continue. This would be in the case that there is not a disadvantage to splitting up like this.
In the case of diablo 3, this becomes: You both run on the same side and rummage through the same stuff, to make sure you don't miss a crafting scroll. Then, if you feel particularly collecting-horny, you then both run up the other side going through the same process again.
The essence of the problem here, is that we cannot help each other with loots. I wouldn't want my friend to miss a rare drop even though I did all the work, in fact I don't care about that at all, but I have no way of making sure he doesn't unless he comes over and checks the mobs himself. In essence, we loose the ability to work as a team. A proper team can split up tasks, adapt and go in different directions if necessary (like exploring different parts of a dungeon to progress faster, just look at what Simon and Lewis does in the yogscast videos, and how Simon suffers as a result as he is lagging behind in Xp from Lewis who just happened to go through more mobs on his own), something which is seriously discouraged in D3 at the moment.
And in any case, why would you compete with anybody? This is not a zero-sum situation, both parties benefit equally from getting loot from each other. If your friend has a drop that might be useful to you, he can give it to you. If you have a drop thats useful to him, you can give it to him (powering him up, and thus enhancing the strength of your team, which benefits you), this is a cooperative affair, not a PvP match.
I posted this on the new D3 forums, but I've long forgotten my login info on the old battle net forum, so it would be nice if someone could repost it there (as long as this is a valid problem and is not solved by any mechanism I do not know of). You don't have to give credit if you don't want to, I'm quite worried about this problem and I just want to try to maximise the chances of it being adressed.
Ok, thank you. Here we go:
Short version:
Separate loot tables force people to stay really close together, and can perhaps make the multiplayer experience quite claustrophobic and possibly infuriating when played with the "wrong" people.
Possible solutions I could think of:
- Make separate loot tables and option that you can turn off in the menu, and cram both loot tables into one dropfest extravaganza visible to both players.
- Give a player some kind of warning when a rare item drops out of his/her sight. This might have some annoyances associated with it as well, depending on how well it is implemented UI wise.
-Third, qeue up all items that drop a certain distance away from you on the loot table of your next mob
- Fourth, "other options". This would be stuff like, implement an item or mechanic that makes rare loot from your loot table drop next to you when it is dropped at a certain distance away from you. Make a "thing" in each levels that gathers all rares that are dropped far away from you. . These kinds of solution feel a bit more scruffy, but they might be a good solution if you make them properly.
Edit: This post is NOT an argument against separate loot tables per se. I think separate loot tables are necessary, but I see the above as a potential problem that might arise from its current implementation. This problem however is NOT enough to justify forced shared loot tables.
Long version:
Overall I find separate loot tables to be necessary to be able to enjoy public games properly, but there is one major problem with it in its current implementation.
I usually play games with a friend that plays quite differently then I do. In WoW, I spend time reading the quests and finding lore, basically spending some time looking at the lore. He, however, tends to speed through things as fast as possible no matter if It's new content or not, and catch on about the lore as I tell him about it and as more cinematic events happens.
If we would play Diablo 3 together, I just know that we would split up often, especially when it comes to just barely going outside eachothers frames. And herein lies the problem. As loot tables in Diablo 3 are separate, he wouldn't be able to see when a mob he just killed, and that I just cant see, just dropped a rare/legendary item that I might want. This is even a problem when destroying environments, as a crafting scroll, a quite rare item, might drop for one of us.
This would be extremely frustrating for us both. Having the feeling that we cant even explore slightly different forks of a dungeon without the risk of missing an important item would feel quite cramped. The feeling that a rare might just have dropped in front of you, but that you cannot be sure as your cooperative partner is somewhere over yonder would really be infuriating for me.
Also, in large public games this could become quite frustrating, as it would be best for all to move as a large blob (as boring as that is), with the obvious problems of keeping that blob together with a collection of random people included.
So what can you do about this?
Well, I can think of a few solutions:
- First possibility, make separate loot tables and option that you can turn off in the menu, and cram both loot tables into one dropfest extravaganza visible to both players.
- Second, give a player some kind of warning when a rare item drops out of his/her sight. This might have some annoyances associated with it as well, depending on how well it is implemented UI wise.
-Third, qeue up all items that drop a certain distance away from you on the loot table of your next mob
- Fourth, "other options". This would be stuff like, implement an item or mechanic that makes rare loot from your loot table drop next to you when it is dropped at a certain distance away from you. Make a "thing" in each levels that gathers all rares that are dropped far away from you. . These kinds of solution feel a bit more scruffy, but they might be a good solution if you make them properly.
So, what do you think? Any ideas? Have I missed anything that blizzard has already done to help this? (from the yogscast beta videos that did not seem to be the case).
I thought that was pretty awesome.. the slimes on the other hand were pretty much fail.. hello WoW.
I can't really imagine a way they would make slimes look non-wow like... I mean, it's slime! What can you do to make slime stand out?
Make it a cubic instead of round?
An important point being missed here is also that there are communities (like Sc2mapster), where you can advertise your maps. As the time of writing this the custom map system has been improved vastly with the addition of many new different ways of finding custom maps, but even before that, tournament for specifics maps were organised, and maps were advertised for, independently of the blizzard pop system.
I personally took part in several custom map tournaments for the maps bounty hunters and smashcraft, tournaments who I found through the Sc2mapster community and then advertised it to my friends.
This was pretty much how it was done before Sc2 as well. Amidst a large list of custom games with unfamiliar names, I personally also turned to other websites to find cool maps. Heck, there was no way to advertise any single player maps before other than doing so through other channels then the main game itself.
The point Im making here is not that the popularity system was a good idea, as it turned out to make the most popular maps too visible, and it being too hard to find obscure ones, but this is not really a new thing. The point is that the mapmakers have always turned to other sources than an ingame tool to advertise their maps, and those channels remain open. I would propose that what would lead one to say that the map making community is "slowly dying off", is in fact that in the influx of people wanting to jump on this whole map making thing , alot of them found that it was just not their thing, and proceeded to whine about what they perceived to be the problem. The popularity system was never good, but it was never a mapmaking community killer, at worst it just limited its growth.
How did it suck all it did was make the game make more sense and it still had a shitload of drops. Seriously why would you want a crow to drop armor or a sword?
Crows steal shiny trinkets, super mutant undead crows steal shiny armor and swords.
Seems realistic enough for me!
Hi
I'm not really anything special, just a regular 18 year old person with a regular relation to diablo and a regular life according to some demographics.
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I know for a fact that this isn't the whole story. In the videos the Yogscast made, Simon died on the skeletion king and got ported far away, as Lewis killed the boss. Simon could then go in later and pick up the loot. Here is the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FutNsZVjawo
This is probably an exception though. Although even if the proximity is one screen away or a little less, it can still be a problem as rare items could drop from a random barrel that you missed and that some guy behind you opened right after you passed it.
And overneathe, I see your point, but there has to be some way to come to a mutually beneficial solution to this, mutually being both kinds of players... Or maybe there isn't, maybe you need such a strong motivator as loot to help randoms stick together.... Merh, your point is a good one, I'm a bit torn on this matter now
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Please read my full post (I made an edit to clarify this issue).
I am NOT arguing against separate loot tables. One of my proposed solutions is an optional shared loot table mode (maybe only for invite only games), but this is a proposition, not a declaration.
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However, I must disagree. I do not play games like this in competition with my friends, we play it cooperatively, each trying to make sure each other gets the most out of the game. In games I've played where there are more then one things to be done at once, we usually split up tasks as well. Say there is a long and wide corridor with bookcases along the right and left side. What we would usually do in such a situation is to each go to one side and rummage through each side separately, and then meet at the end and continue. This would be in the case that there is not a disadvantage to splitting up like this.
In the case of diablo 3, this becomes: You both run on the same side and rummage through the same stuff, to make sure you don't miss a crafting scroll. Then, if you feel particularly collecting-horny, you then both run up the other side going through the same process again.
The essence of the problem here, is that we cannot help each other with loots. I wouldn't want my friend to miss a rare drop even though I did all the work, in fact I don't care about that at all, but I have no way of making sure he doesn't unless he comes over and checks the mobs himself. In essence, we loose the ability to work as a team. A proper team can split up tasks, adapt and go in different directions if necessary (like exploring different parts of a dungeon to progress faster, just look at what Simon and Lewis does in the yogscast videos, and how Simon suffers as a result as he is lagging behind in Xp from Lewis who just happened to go through more mobs on his own), something which is seriously discouraged in D3 at the moment.
And in any case, why would you compete with anybody? This is not a zero-sum situation, both parties benefit equally from getting loot from each other. If your friend has a drop that might be useful to you, he can give it to you. If you have a drop thats useful to him, you can give it to him (powering him up, and thus enhancing the strength of your team, which benefits you), this is a cooperative affair, not a PvP match.
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Ok, thank you. Here we go:
Short version:
Separate loot tables force people to stay really close together, and can perhaps make the multiplayer experience quite claustrophobic and possibly infuriating when played with the "wrong" people.
Possible solutions I could think of:
- Make separate loot tables and option that you can turn off in the menu, and cram both loot tables into one dropfest extravaganza visible to both players.
- Give a player some kind of warning when a rare item drops out of his/her sight. This might have some annoyances associated with it as well, depending on how well it is implemented UI wise.
-Third, qeue up all items that drop a certain distance away from you on the loot table of your next mob
- Fourth, "other options". This would be stuff like, implement an item or mechanic that makes rare loot from your loot table drop next to you when it is dropped at a certain distance away from you. Make a "thing" in each levels that gathers all rares that are dropped far away from you. . These kinds of solution feel a bit more scruffy, but they might be a good solution if you make them properly.
Edit: This post is NOT an argument against separate loot tables per se. I think separate loot tables are necessary, but I see the above as a potential problem that might arise from its current implementation. This problem however is NOT enough to justify forced shared loot tables.
Long version:
Overall I find separate loot tables to be necessary to be able to enjoy public games properly, but there is one major problem with it in its current implementation.
I usually play games with a friend that plays quite differently then I do. In WoW, I spend time reading the quests and finding lore, basically spending some time looking at the lore. He, however, tends to speed through things as fast as possible no matter if It's new content or not, and catch on about the lore as I tell him about it and as more cinematic events happens.
If we would play Diablo 3 together, I just know that we would split up often, especially when it comes to just barely going outside eachothers frames. And herein lies the problem. As loot tables in Diablo 3 are separate, he wouldn't be able to see when a mob he just killed, and that I just cant see, just dropped a rare/legendary item that I might want. This is even a problem when destroying environments, as a crafting scroll, a quite rare item, might drop for one of us.
This would be extremely frustrating for us both. Having the feeling that we cant even explore slightly different forks of a dungeon without the risk of missing an important item would feel quite cramped. The feeling that a rare might just have dropped in front of you, but that you cannot be sure as your cooperative partner is somewhere over yonder would really be infuriating for me.
Also, in large public games this could become quite frustrating, as it would be best for all to move as a large blob (as boring as that is), with the obvious problems of keeping that blob together with a collection of random people included.
So what can you do about this?
Well, I can think of a few solutions:
- First possibility, make separate loot tables and option that you can turn off in the menu, and cram both loot tables into one dropfest extravaganza visible to both players.
- Second, give a player some kind of warning when a rare item drops out of his/her sight. This might have some annoyances associated with it as well, depending on how well it is implemented UI wise.
-Third, qeue up all items that drop a certain distance away from you on the loot table of your next mob
- Fourth, "other options". This would be stuff like, implement an item or mechanic that makes rare loot from your loot table drop next to you when it is dropped at a certain distance away from you. Make a "thing" in each levels that gathers all rares that are dropped far away from you. . These kinds of solution feel a bit more scruffy, but they might be a good solution if you make them properly.
So, what do you think? Any ideas? Have I missed anything that blizzard has already done to help this? (from the yogscast beta videos that did not seem to be the case).
0
I can't really imagine a way they would make slimes look non-wow like... I mean, it's slime! What can you do to make slime stand out?
Make it a cubic instead of round?
0
I personally took part in several custom map tournaments for the maps bounty hunters and smashcraft, tournaments who I found through the Sc2mapster community and then advertised it to my friends.
This was pretty much how it was done before Sc2 as well. Amidst a large list of custom games with unfamiliar names, I personally also turned to other websites to find cool maps. Heck, there was no way to advertise any single player maps before other than doing so through other channels then the main game itself.
The point Im making here is not that the popularity system was a good idea, as it turned out to make the most popular maps too visible, and it being too hard to find obscure ones, but this is not really a new thing. The point is that the mapmakers have always turned to other sources than an ingame tool to advertise their maps, and those channels remain open. I would propose that what would lead one to say that the map making community is "slowly dying off", is in fact that in the influx of people wanting to jump on this whole map making thing , alot of them found that it was just not their thing, and proceeded to whine about what they perceived to be the problem. The popularity system was never good, but it was never a mapmaking community killer, at worst it just limited its growth.
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Your head explodes.
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Thanks for the tip fellow pastafarian.
May the blessings of his noodliness and his divine pirates be upon you.
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But, but, I even have my own balanced song of medium quality!
Incidentally, I do make pretty good spaghetti sauce.
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Crows steal shiny trinkets, super mutant undead crows steal shiny armor and swords.
Seems realistic enough for me!
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I'm not really anything special, just a regular 18 year old person with a regular relation to diablo and a regular life according to some demographics.
Move along now people, nothing to see here!
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Finally, a monster with a justifiable respawn rate.