Hi all, Really looking forward to the launch of the new servers. I think the new loot system is going to be a lot of fun. I had a couple of thoughts last night that I wanted to run by you all though. Considering how an item is classed as a mob's 'common', 'rare', 'very rare', etc drop, I wonder if that will be reflected in the possibility of another mob dropping that item. For example, An Undead Knight of Unrest (lev 28 mob) is very likely to be in the same loot table range as A Froglok Shin Lord (lev 30 mob). The Undead Knight of Unrest can drop either a Bloodstained Mantle (common) or a Bloodstained Tunic (uncommon). The Froglok Shin Lord can drop either a Silver-Plated Bracer (common) or Ghoulbane (rare). The two mobs share only one item classed as 'common' - The mantle and the bracer. I wonder if this means that The Knight of Unrest could never drop Ghoulbane as it is classed a rare drop and the Knight has nothing in his loot table to match this, rarity wise. (Side note on Ghoulbane - Will be pretty exciting to see a random rare mob carrying this baby if that is the way it is going to work!) So yeah, basically I wonder if rarity of items is going to be taken into account when determining which rare mobs can drop it or whether it will be completely random. Can't wait to find out, either way!
Or you'll find out if a prior insider community manager is now an officer in your guild.. You probably have a pretty good idea what to expect if you're in that guild
Them not giving more information on the ruleset makes me think it's likely gonna disappoint a lot of people once we see the level spread/loot pools for mobs. I'm not buying bags or anything until a few days in when some more info is out.
Drop tables don't have a concept of common, uncommon, rare or any level of rarity. Each item is just set with a percentage and slot that determines how often it will drop for a given drop slot. I would guess that when they randomize the loot they will just be looking at combined drop tables with all items and looking at that entire list to determine what drops.
The whole common/uncommon/rare thing is a vague estimate from the P99 wiki. Mobs don't have categories of loot rarity. There's nothing in the item code for Ghoulbane that defines it as a "rare drop," it's just that the Shin Lord's drop table has a smaller chance to drop the sword than the bracer. I imagine the random loot code emulates the approximate rarity of items in a similar fashion.
You could probably spend all day pondering as to how exactly this is implemented and still be wrong when you finally log in. One thing that I know, is that however it was implemented, people are going to try to exploit it. We won't find out exactly what that looks like until loot starts dropping though.
I feel like you've contradicted yourself here. If a mob has a 10% chance to drop 1 item, a 30% to drop another and a 60% chance to drop a 3rd, then one is common, one is uncommon and 1 is rare..
Sure you could say that but the loot system doesn't consider that at all and it just looks at the chance to drop for each item. Also there is more than just a percentage chance to drop on items as some items share the same drop slot so you can only get one of those items and some have their own drop slot so you can get them with other items as well.
I think his statement was along the lines of not all rarities are the same across the board. A rare for one mob may be 1%, uncommon 30%, but then another one a rare may be 30% if the difference was the % based then the rare 30% would be the same as the uncommon 30% but if each item was instead placed in a Rare or Uncommon flagged etc, the one rare at 30% would be in the same drop tier as the 1% rare.
Personal guessimate is that there is a master list of all rares in an expansion. Each time a mob spawns, the game queries all monsters +/- a certain range (like +/- 2 levels, so a lvl 30 mob pulls all the 28-32 monsters) and randomly selects one. Then that monster's loot table is used to generate the loot. For example, if you kill the froglok shin lord, it randomly selects one of the 29 rares from 28-32. Lets say it picks "an avenging caitiff" from Mistmoore. Now, that froglok shin lord either has the crested helm or the crested spaulders, based on existing drop rates for that creature. This is how I believe it will work, based on what would require the least amount of work. No need to code in rarities of items, or do complex math regarding drop percentages, just randomly pick a mob and that's the loot. The work involved is just organizing a couple of database tables (rare, raid trash, raid bosses) and then writing a small function to randomize the loot. Each expansion requires a few more tables, that's all. The drop percentages are all done, the only work is compiling the database.
Apparently people are desperate to find a formula that will allow them to do a stupid, mind numbing grind camp with a guarantee to get what they want. I'm sure that a large number of really dumb plans are going to be formulated based on the results of the RNG during the first 3 days
