Loot Rules, Okay?

Posted by Stropp on January 14, 2008

One of the decisions the designers of Mythos made for their game was that when loot dropped from a kill, each character in the group received a loot drop specific to that character. When you make a kill in Mythos, wether solo or in a group, whatever you see on the screen after that kill is for you alone.

There are no rolls for need or for greed. There’s no need for a long drawn out discussion on who needs what. No need for complicated point keeping systems. And importantly, there’s no such thing as a Ninja Looter in Mythos.

This got me to thinking about the comparable loot systems in most other mainstream MMORPG’s, like World of Warcraft.

Anyone who has spent any time in WoW knows that the best gear drops in instances off of the boss mobs. From the lowest level instance to the highest level raid encounter, that’s where players get geared up.

The gear that is dropped is usually randomly generated from a loot table for the particular boss you are fighting. The loot table generally contains gear for all of the classes, and is often given a certain chance of dropping. Some items are far more likely to appear than others.

Just to illustrate, go and have a look at a web site that provides an item database like Thottbot. You’ll notice on some of the item stats that there is a percentage drop. For instance, the Rod of the Sun King has a 7.2 or 29.4 percent (depending on how the data was collected) chance to drop when you knock off Kael’thas Sunstrider.

Even if that rare item finally drops, it may be highly sought after. Rogues and Hunters for instance often compete for agility items, while Druids, Shamans, Priests and Paladins could be after +healing gear. Depending on the guild, the loot system they use, or just the roll of the dice, the player might find themselves disappointed time and time again.

I’ve read forum posts where players have attempted certain instances dozens of times hoping that a certain elusive part of their  Tier n set would drop. When it finally happened, they were out rolled, out bid, or ninja’d out of the item. It would be a bitterly disappointing experience.

This is where the Mythos loot system beats the old style free for all loot systems. When a player sees that final set piece lying on the ground, or hears that tinkle of a powerful gem, they know it’s theirs. There’s no worrying about someone else winning the roll, or simply just running off with it. They can simply pick it up, equip it, and happily go on to the next thing.

Reducing frustration, happier players, foiling ninjas. This can only benefit players.

Just hypothetically, how could this be implemented in World of Warcraft?

Simple. In fact the mechanics are already in there. When a group of players defeat a boss that is supposed to return a quest item like a head, all of the players can click on the corpse and loot the quest item. There’s no reason this mechanic couldn’t be used to randomly provide a loot table item to the player as well.

For a game like World of Warcraft there could be some negative consequences to this sort of system. The reward for running the WoW endgame is high level gear. To be able to get into a high level instance a player must have equipped his character from a lower level instance.

The faster players can equip their characters, the faster they will run through the instances until they exhaust all the content available, get bored and quit.

Competition for gear between raiders ensures that it takes longer to gear up, and slows down the progress through the game. There are exceptions to this. Some guilds will make sure their core players get the best gear first, and there’s some logic to this. However, it still slows down the non-core raiders.

Personally, I’d like to see the Mythos loot system implemented in more games. I hope there are developers out there that take some notice.

I’d like to hear your thoughts on this. What do you think about the Mythos loot system?

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