PlaneShift

Gameplay => Wish list => Topic started by: Falcon Avian on July 29, 2010, 11:44:27 pm

Title: Higher looting chances.
Post by: Falcon Avian on July 29, 2010, 11:44:27 pm
I've killed 132 maulbers today and only have half the talons I need. Shouldn't take this long for 6 talons. Many monsters are like this with only a very minute chance of looting about 5-10% (I may even be too high with this statistic), I believe it should be raised to about 50-75% of getting something.
Title: Re: Higher looting chances.
Post by: Geoni on July 30, 2010, 01:50:25 am
How does one kill 132 maulbers in one day?
Title: Re: Higher looting chances.
Post by: Trikitiger on July 30, 2010, 02:11:13 am
I was thinking that if you need items for a quest, and they drop off of monsters, that the looting chances are higher for that item. For example, the Diseased Rats have the same chance of something being on them to loot (very low, 10-20% chance... Again very low), but if I needed 10 D.R.Bloods, I don't want to waste 10 hours to do it. Though the problem is this idea is that people would abuse the system and use the higher looting chances from the quest to get more items than they need. Though a boost is needed for some monsters, but not much, maybe an extra 5 percent for some. Too much and you have abuse, and too little and you get complaints (like this).
Title: Re: Higher looting chances.
Post by: Vakachehk on July 30, 2010, 03:12:24 am
I like the old mobs strength, and loot probability before 0.5 came out. I also liked the PP, but oh well if you want everyone to use magic... well sure then.
Title: Re: Higher looting chances.
Post by: Trikitiger on July 30, 2010, 04:19:05 am
Quote from: Vakachehk on July 30, 2010, 03:12:24 am
... if you want everyone to use magic... well sure then.

In the words of Kurora, "Magic is for whimps. Cheap tricks, all glamor; there's no real strength in Magic." X3
Title: Re: Higher looting chances.
Post by: bloodedIrishman on July 30, 2010, 05:31:23 am
Quote from: Falcon Avian on July 29, 2010, 11:44:27 pm
I've killed 132 maulbers today and only have half the talons I need. Shouldn't take this long for 6 talons. Many monsters are like this with only a very minute chance of looting about 5-10% (I may even be too high with this statistic), I believe it should be raised to about 50-75% of getting something.

TRY HARDER
Title: Re: Higher looting chances.
Post by: Earowo on July 30, 2010, 06:42:55 am
Quote from: bloodedIrishman on July 30, 2010, 05:31:23 am
Quote from: Falcon Avian on July 29, 2010, 11:44:27 pm
I've killed 132 maulbers today and only have half the talons I need. Shouldn't take this long for 6 talons. Many monsters are like this with only a very minute chance of looting about 5-10% (I may even be too high with this statistic), I believe it should be raised to about 50-75% of getting something.

TRY HARDER
only 132? please, i can kill 300 with my eyes closed :o
and truth be told, it does take a long time to loot things, it always seems that when your going for somthing specific, you never get it, but once you dont need it anymore, they fly right at you, anyways, a possibility for somthing to work on, is, when you get a quest needing certain item loots, is a temporary loot chance probability so you are more likely to get the specified item, the extra loot chance could then go away when the quest is finished, might be hard to impliment, but tis possible..
Title: Re: Higher looting chances.
Post by: LigH on July 30, 2010, 09:41:47 am
I can only agree. Trying to raise again some of my underdeveloped characters, and realising that even Sword level 15 (with Strength 100) and Quality 180 swords is not yet enough to even scratch an Akkaio rogue without going to Aggressive stance (where the rogue kills the char faster than the other way). The only opponent in or near Akkaio this char can kill are Forest Arangmas. They give only 1 PP per kill, and with a looting chance around 10%, it gives hardly enough money to train the Sword skill alone, not to mention the additional Stats training and the additional weapons and armor one needs today since repairing became so incredibly hard.

Now imagine how long it will take for a casual player (spending at most 2 hours per week on leveling) to rise an intelligence-oriented char (e.g. female Xacha: physical stats at least partially below 70 - you can hardly cross hydlaa_east without stopping due to exhaustion) to a level where the Winch quest could be solved all alone (means: being able to kill Tefusangs for the hides required for a golden ring - or Dark Rogues even)...

As realistic as PlaneShift might have become – a game is meant to be fun!
Games the players don't enjoy to play are left, not played!

This includes the feeling of being forced to cooperate. Of course you may ask powerlevelers to get you required resources for quests. If you like to. But being forced to rely on generosity (that those players won't sell them for a fortune but give them awayfor a smile) makes you feel like a leecher, and thus even more a noob than you still are after months.
Title: Re: Higher looting chances.
Post by: Earowo on July 30, 2010, 09:43:40 am
i agrreee with ligh
also  a note
tefusang skins aint the only way for a golden ring

[hint ;)]
Title: Re: Higher looting chances.
Post by: LigH on July 30, 2010, 09:50:03 am
See ... I play for more than 5 years, I am even staff now ... and there are still secrets hidden from me. ;)
Title: Re: Higher looting chances.
Post by: Earowo on July 30, 2010, 09:53:29 am
someday i'll be even older then you are :3
Title: Re: Higher looting chances.
Post by: Bonifarzia on July 30, 2010, 11:57:25 am
Problems and summary: Hunting and animal parts

Title: Re: Higher looting chances.
Post by: Geoni on July 30, 2010, 07:09:21 pm
@LigH: You exaggerated about the female Xacha...unless you were running through East Hydlaa. I've made it from the entrance to the forest to the entrance of Gug without stopping due to exhaustion and her endurance is below 70 too.  I do however, agree that a "casual player" (something I used to be before giving up) caused it to be difficult to do the winch quests, especially the honorable way in since you had to obtain loot from strong enemies/monsters. Training should be something fun instead of something so bland, boring, and unrewarding. When it comes to looting and the chances of looting something, I think that it should depend on the monster. A ulber heart should be harder to loot than a ulber fur since to get to the heart it would take some hardcore cutting, and cutting to the heart and snatching it out before the entire body of the ulber fades should cause it to be more difficult to loot.
Title: Re: Higher looting chances.
Post by: LigH on July 30, 2010, 07:26:24 pm
Yes, Solita ran. -- To confess it, she was optimized for optimal mental stats while generating her...
__

P.S.:

I believe something changed. At least at the place where I am now, loot rates seem to be more credible again.  :thumbup:
Title: Re: Higher looting chances.
Post by: Tuathanach on August 01, 2010, 05:09:29 pm
Loot rates are appauling. If we are being realistic then you should be able to take its eye and hide and tail almost every time unless they were destroyed in combat.

I think animal parts should have a high drop rate. I also think if you kill a rougue who has attacked you with a dagger you should be able to loot it, it is logical it will be there when the rogue is dead.
Title: Re: Higher looting chances.
Post by: Earowo on August 01, 2010, 07:04:20 pm
thats what i never understood, you kill a rogue, and you have enough time to take his armour, but not enough to take the dagger, that isnt even in its hand anymore?
Title: Re: Higher looting chances.
Post by: LigH on August 01, 2010, 08:14:25 pm
Oh, there was a bug that removed the wielded weapon from the hand of that NPC if you looted the same type, so the next time it respawned barehanded... But that should have been fixed long ago.

Still ... I heard that developers lowered the loot rate because they are afraid that players are getting rich by looting.

Rich. Hah. By looting. Hah. Ridiculous. They don't know what training can cost. And ... why should get one rich if he can't buy anything from it? Not even guild houses are sold anymore...
Title: Re: Higher looting chances.
Post by: Sarva on August 01, 2010, 08:55:57 pm
I just ran a test on some one eye rats. I killed 20 rats and I got 37 lootable items. Of course if you are trying to loot a specific item like an eye or a tail or a hide you aren't always going to get one of those items but I was clearly getting something lootable on most of the rats I killed and many times got 2 or 3 lootable items per rat. Overall it looks like the loot rate is fine. It is ust that rats can loot a lot of things so the specific thing you want to loot isn't going to come up as often as you want it to.

I did a second round of one eye rat looting. In 20 rats I got

6 hides
3 tails
9 feet
5 eyes
1 meat

so again more than 1 item per rat
Title: Re: Higher looting chances.
Post by: LigH on August 01, 2010, 09:46:51 pm
Tuathanach killed 70 Maulbernauts to get 6 Talons. -- Happy helm crafting. ;)

What do Maulbernauts do that they have so few Talons left to be looted? Eat them off their own extremities?

Not to mention the risk of life killig a Maulbernaut. Or that half their hitpoints already eath all the mana required for the magical attacts required to hurt them at all.
Title: Re: Higher looting chances.
Post by: Maisent on August 01, 2010, 10:15:10 pm
Quote from: LigH on August 01, 2010, 09:46:51 pm
Tuathanach killed 70 Maulbernauts to get 6 Talons. -- Happy helm crafting. ;)

What do Maulbernauts do that they have so few Talons left to be looted? Eat them off their own extremities?

Not to mention the risk of life killig a Maulbernaut. Or that half their hitpoints already eath all the mana required for the magical attacts required to hurt them at all.

Wait wait, yuou can crasft helmets now?? oh my i missed a lot
Title: Re: Higher looting chances.
Post by: kaerli2 on August 01, 2010, 10:23:17 pm
Yeah, low-level mobs such as Rats drop like crazy; however, looting Tefus/Ulbers/... can get somewhat more frustrating...and the Expert Gladiators and Dlayos never want to drop anything even decent for me lol.

It seems that many of the more difficult mobs provide a negative reward for slaying them, even!  (In that the opportunity cost compared to easily killed mobs that are worth a lot (aka Tlokes) is greater than the reward you get for taking on the more challenging monsters!)
Title: Re: Higher looting chances.
Post by: Earowo on August 02, 2010, 06:54:13 am
i remember, in 4.03 almost every single monster was diffrent, some rogues were weaker or stronger, some trepors were weaker or stronger, some tefus were weaker or stronger, and even the loot rates were all diffrent, one rogue would give me nothing at all after 20  kills and a diffrent rogue would give me somthing almost every time,

I miss how things were back then, when it comes to the monsters, becuase you had strong ones for strong people, and you had weak ones for weak people, and medium ones for your average joe..

mabey it should be like then.

[not sure if the loot rates were as diffrent as the sstrengths, but it sure as hell seemed like it.]
Title: Re: Higher looting chances.
Post by: LigH on August 02, 2010, 09:57:48 am
@ Earowo:

In version 0.4.x, NPCs were even too different. And their skills were not part of the calculation for the opponent rating (Tefusang appears weaker than you - according to its strength, but is so skilled in its attack style that it deals 400 damage). To get rid of the rather unfair very randomized samples, they were rather normalized recently. Randomizing them slightly again would take some developer-work time again, because it will require much testing that the changes won't compromise the balancing again. So it may come, but not earlier than "soon™"...
Title: Re: Higher looting chances.
Post by: RlyDontKnow on August 02, 2010, 12:33:01 pm
Quote from: LigH on August 01, 2010, 08:14:25 pm
Still ... I heard that developers lowered the loot rate because they are afraid that players are getting rich by looting.

Rich. Hah. By looting. Hah. Ridiculous. They don't know what training can cost. And ... why should get one rich if he can't buy anything from it? Not even guild houses are sold anymore...

where did you hear that? o_O

Quote from: LigH on August 01, 2010, 09:46:51 pm
What do Maulbernauts do that they have so few Talons left to be looted? Eat them off their own extremities?
really... they don't have that low drop rates. they even drop more often than diseased rats :P

I think the general issue is that stronger monsters *seem* to drop a lot less as they're harder to kill.
if it takes a lot longer to kill a certain monster than another, you may get the feeling they they drop a lot less.

as for prices... I agree, the loot of high up monsters isn't worth enough compared to their strength at all :x
Title: Re: Higher looting chances.
Post by: Hangatyr on August 02, 2010, 01:37:40 pm
Quote from: RlyDontKnow on August 02, 2010, 12:33:01 pm
...I think the general issue is that stronger monsters *seem* to drop a lot less as they're harder to kill.
if it takes a lot longer to kill a certain monster than another, you may get the feeling they they drop a lot less....
It doesn't *seem* to be less, it *is* less. To get the amount of Talons to fullfill the request of Kelicha, I had to kill 150 Maulbernauts .. Getting 15 perfect talons and 5 or 6 hides. As some of it was 'multi drop', the drop rate is about 10 to 13%. But 10 out of 150 is a different story. It got proved last night as I helped Tuathanach to get his last Talon. Again I killed 15 to get one (1) single Talon.
Quote from: LigH on August 01, 2010, 09:46:51 pm
... What do Maulbernauts do that they have so few Talons left to be looted? Eat them off their own extremities?...
Yes, seems they prefer to eat themselfs or cannibalize their own breed.  ;)
Title: Re: Higher looting chances.
Post by: LigH on August 02, 2010, 01:47:43 pm
@ RlyDontKnow:

Of course there may be a discrepancy between "Any loot per kill" and "Specific loot per kill" (counted and averaged over ~200 kills of not too dangerous NPCs); might be that species with more different kinds of loot have more summands to sum up their overall loot chance. But still, there are also groups of opponents with less loot than others. I remember a day when it took more than 100 kills of Weaver Arangmas to get 2 pieces of Arangma Silk. Just for roleplaying purposes, mind you!

Just one example (I hope it is not too specific and rated as spoiler): Tlokes (Drones, Warriors, Queen) and Forest Arangmas are similar in strength and in diversity of loot, I believe. Still, the loot chance for Forest Arangmas just outside Akkaio used to be about 1/10 or less, while the loot rate of Tlokes near Shindrok's Crater seems to be between 1/3 and 1/5. And the loot rate for Clackers in a specific part of the arena shall be even higher, I was told...

So it probably takes a while for players to find optimal opponents. But the optimum depends on many factors: Stats, weapon skills, armor skills, weapon quality... The less experienced a player is (and I mean player rather than char), the harder it is for them to find their optimum. And new players who die too often or fight too many opponents without any progress (no damage on both sides) may not find this game worth playing already before they learn to roleplay...
Title: Re: Higher looting chances.
Post by: RlyDontKnow on August 02, 2010, 04:04:17 pm
well, of course theirs a big difference between "any loot per kill" and "specific loot per kill", you do get the feeling it takes ages if you just look for something specific

also it's true that some monsters drop generally less than others, but I think that's not such a big issue.
the bigger problem imo is that some parts just aren't worth enough (especially those of the very strong monsters like maulbernauts and maulberlords)

for the "die too often" - that's very true and we've been discussing this a bit. generally agreement was that monster strength should increase the farer you get from safe zones. e.g. if you just take a step into the sewers, you should only encounter one-eyed rats. if you then go deeper into them, they should become stronger the deeper you walk into the sewers.
however that requires - again - a big relocation of many monsters which isn't realistic given we only have 1 rules dev atm :/
Title: Re: Higher looting chances.
Post by: kaerli2 on August 04, 2010, 01:14:05 am
Frankly, you should get more valuable loot off of the higher level monsters:

* Maulber parts should be worth more than Ulber parts for one (and why are Ulber parts worth an utterly measly amount wrt Tloke parts?...in general, the pricing for the "old" mob parts needs to be adjusted wrt the "new" mob part prices)
* Expert Gladiators should drop more valuable weapons than Ojaveda Rogues when the random loot generator is invoked...this'll take some work though.
Title: Re: Higher looting chances.
Post by: verden on August 04, 2010, 01:24:11 am
I've thought the same thing about the animal parts that was mentioned above. With the prevalence of animal mobs now, those values could be balanced a bit higher to give a better step up to players. IMHO.
Title: Re: Higher looting chances.
Post by: novacadian on August 04, 2010, 01:52:03 am
Quote from: kaerli2 on August 01, 2010, 10:23:17 pm
It seems that many of the more difficult mobs provide a negative reward for slaying them, even!  (In that the opportunity cost compared to easily killed mobs that are worth a lot (aka Tlokes) is greater than the reward you get for taking on the more challenging monsters!)

No question, however my experience is that it helps to avoid the non-RP grind a bit. For tria and for stock in her wine brokerage business Venorel hangs with the Rogues of Oja for a while; then when delivering new cases of wine to Hydlaa she stops off at the Eagle Gobble settlement to hone her skills. If they all had everything she needed she would never leave Kisatol Gathoji's tent!

- Nova  ::)
Title: Re: Higher looting chances.
Post by: Falcon Avian on August 04, 2010, 02:17:45 am
Quote from: LigH on August 01, 2010, 08:14:25 pm
Oh, there was a bug that removed the wielded weapon from the hand of that NPC if you looted the same type, so the next time it respawned barehanded... But that should have been fixed long ago.

Still ... I heard that developers lowered the loot rate because they are afraid that players are getting rich by looting.

Rich. Hah. By looting. Hah. Ridiculous. They don't know what training can cost. And ... why should get one rich if he can't buy anything from it? Not even guild houses are sold anymore...

Actually Planeshift is going into a depression because more tria is going out of the game than in. And some people horde tria and quit like Narivis.
Title: Re: Higher looting chances.
Post by: Maisent on August 04, 2010, 06:13:55 am
Quote from: Falcon Avian on August 04, 2010, 02:17:45 am
Quote from: LigH on August 01, 2010, 08:14:25 pm
Oh, there was a bug that removed the wielded weapon from the hand of that NPC if you looted the same type, so the next time it respawned barehanded... But that should have been fixed long ago.

Still ... I heard that developers lowered the loot rate because they are afraid that players are getting rich by looting.

Rich. Hah. By looting. Hah. Ridiculous. They don't know what training can cost. And ... why should get one rich if he can't buy anything from it? Not even guild houses are sold anymore...

Actually Planeshift is going into a depression because more tria is going out of the game than in. And some people horde tria and quit like Narivis.

isn't Narivis Koios's alt? so that mean Koios quit?
Title: Re: Higher looting chances.
Post by: Earowo on August 07, 2010, 02:37:36 am
if he wanted you to know, he would have told you now, huh?
Title: Re: Higher looting chances.
Post by: sashia_mennar on August 16, 2010, 02:15:50 pm
From my youngest char's experience, the last (actual) version exclusively.

Rats and normal clackers drop loot like mad indeed. Somehow I supposed it had been done intentionally and in order to help new players or new chars to advance without experiencing too much frustration. After reading this thread I suppose I was somehow wrong to suppose that.

The stronger the mob is, the worse it loots, and it goes insanely far with the strongest ones, of the kind that, at the time being, can only be killed with magic. Were it not for some specific items needed for quests or craft, such mobs merely wouldn't be worth killing. Even the amount of PP one gets from these, is easily surpassed by killing middle-strength mobs in larger quantities. Also, gaining PP from middle-level mobs is much faster and means less time wasted on what it absolutely no fun, i.e. spamming same mobs with same spells for hours.

The most poorly balanced loot item so far seems to be lard. The amounts of it needed for cooking and baking training are HUGE while the drop rate is incredibly low compared to what's needed. No wonder current price for lard starts at 1000 tria apiece, but even if some crazy cook character - or its deadly bored player who has a rich Main - can invest a fortune in tria just in order to get enough lard for an ingame week of cooking (yeah, very realistic!), it doesn't mean the hunters that cook pays for lard get less bored with incessant hunting of the same mobs again and again for weeks.

Either the Devs want the cooks to stop cooking, or they want the hunters to die from boredom, or maybe they want a handful of low-quality sand cookies to cost as much as an average looted weapon does, which is incredibly realistic too I guess. Or I don't know.

I would also like to second anything Ligh had said in this thread considering loot and training cost issues. I have exactly the same problems, and solving these is absolutely no fun. Actually, quite boring and very disappointing.