Improving PvM loot

[Old Man of UO]

Monster loot has been in need of adjustment for some time now, and it has always bothered me that you could take 5 minutes to get a monster low on health and someone else walks in for the killing shot and get half the loot. Loot quality of lower level monsters is somewhat awful, and the current system of loot distribution on corpses discourages people wanting to share the kills. Currently, the more people who damage a monster and get looting rights, the less loot we find. Some people like to solo for the challenge, others so they don’t have to share. I say let them solo the peerless if they want to, but give us a reason to want to have others share in the kill. I propose that we change the system to encourage sharing the loot on monsters. Here is one way (and certainly not the only or even the best way):

1. Reduce number of items for all monsters, NPC’s, etc. significantly. What I mean by that is a high-end monster would have max of 5 items, and low end would have max of 1 item. Leave the gold amounts the same.

2. Increase the intensity of items, so that there is less “junk” but not so much that everything would spawn artifact level items. Balanced correctly, combined with the reduced item count on a corpse would give us about the same chance at something really good as we have now.

3. Encourage player cooperation by giving a loot bonus when damage is received from more than one player. Of course, this would need to be tested and balanced, but one way to do that is:

a. Add 500 luck to the loot for every player doing at least 1/(n+1) damage, when “n” is the number of players doing damage. For example, if four players damage a target, there is a +500 luck boost for everyone doing at least 1/5 damage to the target. Eventually through randomness and various weapon damage ranges, there would be a maximum luck that would be added to the average loot, meaning it wouldn’t be necessary to place a hard cap on the luck. The more players doing damage, the higher quality the loot drop. This luck would be added to player luck and honor.

b. Increase the loot count by 50% for every player doing at least 1/(n+1) damage, when “n” is the number of players doing damage. In the above example with four players each doing at least 1/5 of the total damage, the total loot drop would be 15 items, instead of the max of 5 items, about 4 items of much higher quality per person. The more players doing damage, the higher loot count on the corpse.​

Overall, this would improve the loot drop on monster corpses while reducing the amount of junk we have to sort through. Something needs to be done with loot quality since fewer people are hunting lower level monsters, and this also encourages people to work together.

Higher quality loot over all, and a great reason to ask others to join in on the kill.

 

[TheScoundrelRico]

Monster loot seems fine to me, as it is...la

 

[Tina Small]

In the interest of creating conditions that are more conducive to hunting with others, how about also boosting the spawn rate? I see that as almost as much of a problem in many locations as the crummy loot. Who wants to hunt with someone else when you can hunt solo and still find yourself spending a good portion of the time waiting on stuff to pop up?

 

[Heartseeker]

Please!!!

Make it more usefull if not uber.

 

[Omnius]

meh, increase the minimum intensities on runic hammers and sewing kits.

 

[Old Man of UO]

meh, increase the minimum intensities on runic hammers and sewing kits.

What does that have to do with PvM loot?

 

[deadite]

I agree... we need a de-junkification of the loot tables in a big way.

 

[Nexus]

I agree... we need a de-junkification of the loot tables in a big way.

I disagree we need a massive nerf of the loot tables so that player crafted is always better runic or not.

 

[Old Man of UO]

I disagree we need a massive nerf of the loot tables so that player crafted is always better runic or not.

Why? You should be able to get equal quality from either crafting or PvM loot with equal chance. Same rarity and property intensities.

 

[Nexus]

Why? You should be able to get equal quality from either crafting or PvM loot with equal chance. Same rarity and property intensities.

Because if player crafted was superior to Loot items, then we'd be headed back towards a true player driven economy. The rare piece from Doom or when they turn Treasures of Tokuno would draw a premium of course like Vanqs did in the old days but for the most part it would facilitate distribution of gold among the players.

 

[Old Man of UO]

Because if player crafted was superior to Loot items, then we'd be headed back towards a true player driven economy. The rare piece from Doom or when they turn Treasures of Tokuno would draw a premium of course like Vanqs did in the old days but for the most part it would facilitate distribution of gold among the players.

*scratches head*

It currently IS a player driven economy. I don't see armor or weapons from loot selling for anything even close to what runic made armor or weapons are. I'm not talking about turning loot into artifacts, just improving the over all quality and reducing the amount of junk that we get. I don't understand your explanation at all I guess.

But, my most important point was completely missed by everyone... change the system to encourage cooperative play, rather than going solo without punishing anyone who prefers to solo.

 

[Restroom Cowboy]

Agrees with the OP. Unless you are whacking away at an ancient wyrm with a journeyman LJ, most if not all the loot is outdated and useless.

 

[Old Man of UO]

Agrees with the OP. Unless you are whacking away at an ancient wyrm with a journeyman LJ, most if not all the loot is outdated and useless.

Heh... I remember doing just that. Of course, the ancient wyrm almost always won. It seemed then the risk was worth the chance to improve what I was using. Now it doesn't so much.

 

[RavenWinterHawk]

Monster loot has been in need of adjustment for some time now, and it has always bothered me that you could take 5 minutes to get a monster low on health and someone else walks in for the killing shot and get half the loot. Loot quality of lower level monsters is somewhat awful, and the current system of loot distribution on corpses discourages people wanting to share the kills. Currently, the more people who damage a monster and get looting rights, the less loot we find. Some people like to solo for the challenge, others so they don’t have to share. I say let them solo the peerless if they want to, but give us a reason to want to have others share in the kill. I propose that we change the system to encourage sharing the loot on monsters. Here is one way (and certainly not the only or even the best way):

1. Reduce number of items for all monsters, NPC’s, etc. significantly. What I mean by that is a high-end monster would have max of 5 items, and low end would have max of 1 item. Leave the gold amounts the same.

2. Increase the intensity of items, so that there is less “junk” but not so much that everything would spawn artifact level items. Balanced correctly, combined with the reduced item count on a corpse would give us about the same chance at something really good as we have now.

3. Encourage player cooperation by giving a loot bonus when damage is received from more than one player. Of course, this would need to be tested and balanced, but one way to do that is:

a. Add 500 luck to the loot for every player doing at least 1/(n+1) damage, when “n” is the number of players doing damage. For example, if four players damage a target, there is a +500 luck boost for everyone doing at least 1/5 damage to the target. Eventually through randomness and various weapon damage ranges, there would be a maximum luck that would be added to the average loot, meaning it wouldn’t be necessary to place a hard cap on the luck. The more players doing damage, the higher quality the loot drop. This luck would be added to player luck and honor.

b. Increase the loot count by 50% for every player doing at least 1/(n+1) damage, when “n” is the number of players doing damage. In the above example with four players each doing at least 1/5 of the total damage, the total loot drop would be 15 items, instead of the max of 5 items, about 4 items of much higher quality per person. The more players doing damage, the higher loot count on the corpse.​

Overall, this would improve the loot drop on monster corpses while reducing the amount of junk we have to sort through. Something needs to be done with loot quality since fewer people are hunting lower level monsters, and this also encourages people to work together.

Higher quality loot over all, and a great reason to ask others to join in on the kill.

What higher quality do you really need?
Slayers for monsters. They are almost free.

A bronze runic makes nice weapons.

Jewelry drops are pretty good.

What are you looking for exactly? Monsters ,in theory might pick up weapons of people they slay, so you would get a hodge podge of junk.

 

[Stupid Miner]

I disagree we need a massive nerf of the loot tables so that player crafted is always better runic or not.

The best way to keep crafting always in demand is to give crafters more runic-only properties, like velocity and balance.

 

[Restroom Cowboy]

Heh... I remember doing just that. Of course, the ancient wyrm almost always won. It seemed then the risk was worth the chance to improve what I was using. Now it doesn't so much.

right O!

now if only the devs. will pay close attention to that statement when trying to reincorperate risk vs. reward.

 

[phantus]

Loot and crafting need to be remade across the board at the same time.

Monsters should have loot appropriate to them. Animals should not have gold on them. Peerless should drop tons of crap. Lizardmen should drop the weapon they are carrying. Etc etc etc

 

[GalenKnighthawke]

I've come to have mixed feelings on this.

The pros are obvious: High-level PvM should more reliably have better loot. As it is now, it's often-times not worth it unless you have a lot of luck, which mostly means unless you are a tamer.

The cons however are also important. Basically, the "crafted stuff is always better than loot" system can be seen as a trade-off for crafters. Under the old system (no insurance, very rare good loot drops), crafters had a permanent, continuous market.

Now, however, though stuff can last forever, there's good-if-outside chances that a crafter could make him- or her-self a single item that can more than compensate for months, or years!, of working on those skills.

In other words, the current system (wherein loot mostly sucks) guarantees that crafting will never "die" in UO, though it's undeniable that it's been substantially changed.

Non-crafters get gold from kills and sell artifacts (basically loot with pre-determined properties). They use the gold to buy stuff from crafters, when the artifacts don't meet their needs.

-Galen's player

 

[HD2300]

Runics are a joke. While they are scriptable they shouldnt be better than monster loot.

You should not be able to get 7 chars x 23 hrs x 30 shards = 4830 tailor bods (or 19 BRKs) and 4830 blacksmithing bods per account per day.

 

[Uvtha]

Problem is that with insurane in play, no matter how you jack up the look, everything will suck in short order, and need to be jacked up again. I think eventually we are going to have to face the fact that items need to be looseable in some fashion.

 

[kelmo]

Have Crafters specialize to make good stuff. I mean serious good stuff and way specialized.

 

[HD2300]

Have Crafters specialize to make good stuff. I mean serious good stuff and way specialized.

I agree. Like ML craftables such as the pendant of magi etc. except that they cant be repaired or POFed. Just kill runics until they are unscriptable.

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

1. Reduce number of items for all monsters, NPC’s, etc. significantly. What I mean by that is a high-end monster would have max of 5 items, and low end would have max of 1 item. Leave the gold amounts the same.

Agreed here, although I would go even lower than that. As it is, I only pull PvM loot to use as BOD fillers or as resources (resmelting of iron items) and while this would affect my bottom line in terms of resource gathering, it make PvM as a whole better to have a magic item drop MEAN SOMETHING again. This would also help out treasure and SOS chests by giving them meaning again. As it is now, you can get FAR more loot monster farming mid-level creatures faster than by doing a single T-Chest. That's not how it should work. Treasure hunts should have a reason for people to group up again.

2. Increase the intensity of items, so that there is less “junk” but not so much that everything would spawn artifact level items. Balanced correctly, combined with the reduced item count on a corpse would give us about the same chance at something really good as we have now.

Not sure I agree here, instead go back to the 5 level tiered system that UO used to use, but apply it to the current mods and rebalance it accordingly. Only thing you have to figure out is what to do with pre-existing items. Once you do this, create a prefix-suffix system for item descriptors and use the top two appearing on an item to describe it in the title. Make sure the items are rebalanced in such a way that it requires all items of the appropriate type to reach the cap in a given mod.

3. Unsure on this one.

Other additions:

1. Slow down PvM. Damage levels in both directions are just too high.

2. Consider changing Damage Increase from percentage base back to a straight +x to damage

3. Hit Effects should have charges (hat tip to Crysta on this one), but they should be able to be replenished by a consumable item.

4. Increase potency of "small fish" to +5 to a specific stat for 3 minutes (instead of +1% for 18 seconds it is now)

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

Have Crafters specialize to make good stuff. I mean serious good stuff and way specialized.

I think the combination of Arms Lore and Embueing will do this.

 

[Sevin0oo0]

> Increase potency of "small fish".
- I like that! Another use for my fisher.

> Monsters ,in theory might pick up weapons of people
they slay, so you would get a hodge podge of junk.
- As sick as I am of trash loot, this does makes it
seem natural, and fun on ones with 100's of items.
I think some need an intensity increase.

 

[UOKaiser]

There fix for the worthless loot problem is SA imbuing as all worthless loot has a use.

 

[Uvtha]

There fix for the worthless loot problem is SA imbuing as all worthless loot has a use.

It seems to me, that if imbuing works like I imagine it does, that very quickly large groups of people will have perfect suits and weapons, and thus monster hunting will be aside from collecting gold for...i don't know what, rares and potions, pvm will be pointless.

I'm all for tailor made gear, but not with a complete lack of item loss. It just speeds the already quick item end game to absurd levels. Items have to be lost or break.

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

Well, to be fair, once you embue something I believe you can no longer PoF it, so it will have a finite lifespan (even though you can repair it), the question is how quickly will things wear down given that.

 

[Sevin0oo0]

> Items have to be lost or break.
Maybe a possibility check made each direction.
This happens IRL in simulations, like SCA.

Breaks (0 durability) and drops in backpack or
goes poof? with Bonus against breakage if GM?

 

[canary]

...

Well, to be fair, once you embue something I believe you can no longer PoF it, so it will have a finite lifespan (even though you can repair it), the question is how quickly will things wear down given that.

Correct, at least thats how it has been presented.

 

[Uvtha]

Oh if thats the case then great, and I retract my statment.

 

[Fink]

What about a garbage filter on loot?

You set your parameters similar to how a Bulk Order book works and any junk items spawned below those settings will not be displayed when you open a corpse. Perhaps special settings for mod intensities, handy for the Artificer.

You can turn on/off particular items like peerless ingredients, carved resources, monster-specific loot, etc. Wonder if this could be written for KR by one of our clever modders..

Hmm, would need some provision for player's items swiped by monsters, perhaps..

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

While there isn't a KR mod that filters OUT loot (we cannot affect what appears or not in an ingame container), the main three UI skins (BB_Enhanced, Legacy, and Default_Enhanced) all have an addition that color-scales mod intensity from white (up to a certain intensity to light blue to dark blue as the item mod gains intensity to gold for 100% intensity. While it doesn;t filter out the actual junk items, it lets you look through items faster as you can use color ID to determine if you need to read the present mods or not.

 

[Nvnter]

Have Crafters specialize to make good stuff. I mean serious good stuff and way specialized.

Mythic is about to release an Expansion that will give you your wish.

People don't forget about Embueing. Lets see how game changing it is before asking for more crafting changes.

Patience Grasshoppers

 

[Nestorius]

Loot seems fine to me.

 

[Turdnugget]

I like Fink's idea.

The ability to set what requirements you'd like to see on things you kill...

If I am looking for jewels with 10+ skills, HCI, DCI, LRC at any intensity, I only see those kinds of things when I open the corpse. Same with weapons,ingredients etc...

Dunno how easy or hard it would be to code in.... but it sure would be nice to not have to look at crappy loot all the time in hopes of something good.

 

[Duskofdead]

I think a far more serious gripe about loot in PvM at the moment are the damage minimums required to qualify for either looting rights or possible artie drops from champs and such. If you are going to make fights to be like WOW instance bosses requiring group/team efforts, then reward everyone and not just the heaviest and best geared hitters who did the most damage or had the strongest dragon. If I'm there throughout the whole fight healing people, healing pets, curing poison, resurrecting the dead and in between all that trying to work in a little DPS, it's crap that I get oxygen on a stick for my effort. I have never received any form of drop from champs despite doing them about 2-3x per week for the last five or so weeks, because of the crappy reward restrictions.

I have also had Dreadhorn in my quest log for nearly the same length of time, despite having gone and participated in killing it multiple times, for the same reason. Didn't do enough damage, even though I was crucial to the fight in other capacities.

Long story short: if you're going to emulate WOW, don't half-arse it like the present system does. WOW gives everyone a chance at loot from bosses that are designed to required diverse parties to tackle. UO gives you the hard bosses but only rewards the tanks and tamers.

 

[Old Man of UO]

I think a far more serious gripe about loot in PvM at the moment are the damage minimums required to qualify for either looting rights or possible artie drops from champs and such. ... If I'm there throughout the whole fight healing people, healing pets, curing poison, resurrecting the dead and in between all that trying to work in a little DPS, it's crap that I get oxygen on a stick for my effort. I have never received any form of drop from champs despite doing them about 2-3x per week for the last five or so weeks, because of the crappy reward restrictions. ...

That's certainly a valid concern. I don't know if you were around when loot on a corpse was open to first-grabbers (a.k.a. script looters) but the current looting rights and instanced corpses were the result. It certainly isn't fair that group healers don't get equal looting rights.

When I go with my alliance group, we try to make it fair to everyone, even if they don't get looting rights... but that is hard to do in a champ spawning area.

 

[Gheed]

I like the idea of junk filters on corpses. But I think increasing intensities only delays the hard fact that eventually you will build a suit so advanced that it would be hard to find useful items thus loot is all "junk" again. It also undermines the up and coming imbuing system slightly. Even more of a reason not to mess with consumable armor.

Instead I think a system should be put in place to make use of items on corpses as well as runic throw aways and any other means of aquiring items that are underpowered or have the wrong combination of mods.

We already have a reward sytem... collections. For example: Wouldn't it make sense to be able to turn in all items undesired from a treasure hunt to the treasure hunter collections NPC?

Give point values based on number of mods and intesity of each mod. An item with 0 mods may get 20 points while an item with 5 max intensity mods may get 5000.

Change rewards to give different items at different tiers. But change the tier system to unlimited tiers. Say the max tier is now 8. In the new system once it has reached its max, tier 9 is toggled but tier 1 items are available again. So desired items push the tier up. If they are popular enough a new tier is reached and new items are available. Which keeps things more in demand. If demand is low the tier decays back to a previous tier and new items are available.

Supply and demand dictate the items available and with monster loot the driving force behind obtaining those items, its difficult to script. Works well with library donations as a max tier can be hit for the display but items will still cycle as new tiers are hit above the old max.

 

[Turdnugget]

A collection box would be like clean up Brit back in like 99 when they rewarded us with neon hair dye bottles, neon beard, beard change, phoenix armor and those sorts of goodies.

I wouldn't mind a collection box to throw junk in and accumulate points and get rewards... like resources, gold, better items etc...At least make it worthwhile to look in corpses.

 

[Old Man of UO]

A collection box would be like clean up Brit back in like 99 when they rewarded us with neon hair dye bottles, neon beard, beard change, phoenix armor and those sorts of goodies.

I wouldn't mind a collection box to throw junk in and accumulate points and get rewards... like resources, gold, better items etc...At least make it worthwhile to look in corpses.

Ya... it's amazing how many people don't even look in the Doom boss' corpses.

I remember when I first started playing, I would kill a monster after an epic battle (lizzardmen and ettins of all the things) and couldn't wait to see what was on the corpse! It was like opening gifts at Christmas. I want that feeling of Christmas again.

 

[Turdnugget]

I always check the champion's corpse... I found a decent bracelet that way... 20 EP, 13dci, 23DI, 11 poison resist.

It'd be nice if there was more incentive to actually sift through loot instead of automatically thinking, 'I didn't get an arty,scroll, replica, no need to check the body' ...

At least give us a filter so we don't gotta open a body and see a bunch of items and get our hopes up, then shoot them down when everything blows chunks.

 

[Old Man of UO]

STOP the bickering! I know some enjoy trying to get every thread locked. I think this topic is important, and think there has been some good input... take it to PM's or Spiels and Rants. SHEESH

 

[kelmo]

Fixed... Stay on target...

 

[Wilde1]

Agree with the OP, nice post.

 

[Dermott of LS]

...

I remember when I first started playing, I would kill a monster after an epic battle (lizzardmen and ettins of all the things) and couldn't wait to see what was on the corpse! It was like opening gifts at Christmas. I want that feeling of Christmas again.

The problem right now is that UO suffers from a HUGE bout of inflation. Not just gold inflation, but item inflation as well as modifier inflation.

Quite frankly there are simply too many items that drop on a creature (of about any power level) that have too many possible mod combinations (of which only a few are useful).

If you want the feeling of "Oh I might get something!" from a monster, the Devs HAVE to lower the quantity of items that drop at all.

It should be an event to get an item off of most creatures and even more of an event to dig up a Treasure Chest (or fish up an SOS chest). However, due to the sheer number of "magic" items that drop on even lower end creatures, this excitement is replaced by annoyance at having to "dig through trash" instead.

So first of, as I reiterate, drop the NUMBER of items that a monster drops in terms of magic items. Resources, oddball items and whatnot are good, but magic items should be a LOT more rare in general. As it is, almost ALL normal magic item drops are little more than recycle fodder, only useful as raw materials or to fill "junk" BODs for free turn ins for possible better BODs.

Secondly, drop the number of possible mod combinations. I don't want to fight a Paragon and have the only loot be a ring with 1 Luck (actually happened this weekend). Tier the mods like they used to be... 5 levels. That way people can see that an item is actually a magic item instead of a random armor piece with 1 extra resist point above what you can get from an NPC shop. Then rebalance the mods accordingly within those teirs.

Then go so far as to bring back the use of item ID (and ID wands/staves) and the descriptor system (A Prefix Item of Suffix) and even with the new mods I think you'll end up with a more engaging system than what we have now.

 

[Draxous]

Fixed... Stay on target...

There you go!! I knew you had it in you! *nods*

To the subject at hand.


If high end mosters guaranteed awesome loot ALL the time... such as if you kill a dark father an artifact AUTOMATICALLY drops every time... as well the items all have max properties and intensities...

scale it according to creatures.

we would have ourselves a blast PvMing...

GET RID OF ITEM INSURANCE!

Allow crafters to CUSTOMIZE their items.


and you have a semblance of the type of item economy UO used to have. Where people would die... lose their stuff whether to other players or hell even monsters, because they too loot corpses... and the revolving item door would begin again where people who enjoy hunting would be out hunting and collecting stuff to sell to those who don't so much. Those who like PvPing would be looting their kills and surviving that route. ALL items at ALL levels would be obtainable for a REASONABLE price (deteremined by DEMAND not by supply... *cough*in turn screwing the dupers too*cough*)

And players from CASUAL to HARDCORE would be on an equal field with player professions re-emerging....


Basically... fixing one of the things the Developers got from games like WoW that has screwed so many players and this game by in large... over.

[/the end

 

[Phaen Grey]

If I can buy it off an npc vendor I should not be getting it as loot for the time and effort needed to kill mobs. Item intensity needs to be looked at and the mass quantity of junk needs to be reduced, its just a waste of time to even bother looking in most corpses.

 

[Old Man of UO]

...
If you want the feeling of "Oh I might get something!" from a monster, the Devs HAVE to lower the quantity of items that drop at all...

I agree there are way too many items being spawned on corpses, however they are much much easier to sort through with KR.

But, I don't agree with this part of your post. There are many ways to improve quality other than just increasing the mods. Ever find a "key" on a corpse? Perhaps a "brain" or "liver" or some other organ. Those could be used to trigger some other event, such as spawning a special creature for those in the party or immediate vicinity. Maybe the key would unlock a special treasure chest yet to be found, or boost the level of a chest, even a level 6. Dark Fathers spawning as the treasure chest pops? Pirate ships that spawn around you while doing an SOS? LOL That would be awesome!

There are many ways to come at this to bring the excitement back. It just takes a bit of imagination, and hopefully discussing it will bring out some good imagination that just MIGHT be heard.

 

[Maplestone]

Alternative suggestion:

Divide loot table into "per creature" and a smaller "per looter" portions, so that the total number of items dropped increases with the number of people who earn looting rights. The "per looter" portion uses that person's luck and the "per creature" portion uses some diminishing sum of the luck of all looters.

Allow smelting to be done without an anvil or add a 2-slot anvil-headed creature (so that a firebeetle-smelter can tag along with an expedition without having to repeatedly turn back) I'm a big fan of digging through the trash of other hunters.

In addition each creature should have a unique uncommon drop (many already do) and each dungeon should have a unique uncommon drop (so every dungeon matters as a hunting ground).

Have items beyond a certain threshold (say 400% total intensity) drop as "unidentified" (and unequipable), requiring high item ID to make usable. (gives the "oh, I found something!" sensation with a later "well, what is it?" end to the hunt)

(As always, I point out that no intensity of loot is ever high enough - any boost to loot will simply boost the expectations ... although a small trickle of inflation throughout the system is to be expected)