I got to play for 4 hours yesterday. The first time I've had the time to play in just over 3 weeks. Just how much of that 4 hours do you expect me to devote learning something that should be far more intuitive than it is?
I don't know if I like it or not, I can't figure out how to loot a damn thing when grouped. I'd like to figure it out but I have no idea what I am doing or really even looking at. Solo, sure, it's easy, just click the green arrow. If I group with someone who is using it as a group leader I will not have the option to opt out. The biggest problem with this is information on how to use this loot system is pretty hard to come by. And most of what I have seen assumes a level of knowledge that I apparently don't have. And their FAQs suck. One of the things I was trying to figure out is what the abbreviations AN and AG meant. I didn't find that out until this thread. Do you understand what I am saying here? I can't use something if I don't even know what the stuff on the screen means. Youtube video tutorial. They could do several, say, apprentice, journeyman and master. I'd spend a few minutes of my time learning it.
Your missing the point of the new loot system. With the changes you can handle looting of items without having to worry about downtime or destroying items that you don't need and can't sell to a vendor.
You're missing the point. The original loot system assuredly allowed one to NOT loot what one didn't want or couldn't sell to a vendor. Creating a system that does the exact same thing in a much more complicated and convoluted way which impacts people who do NOT want to use the system is an improvement how?
You're missing the point. I don't worry about downtime. Its generated as part of the natural flow of the game. It's a consequence of mob repop rate, kill rate, ability refresh rate, etc. There's plenty of time to loot all or pause and announce a more meaningful drop. Plenty. click, loot all click. /gsay <list loot> who wants it? click, loot all click, sell click, bank click destroy Seems pretty easy to me and not very much of it has to be done while grouping.
besides being able to loot what you want, not see what you don't all without having to stop casting/fighting to click on the corpse and loot?
I could already loot what I wanted. Someone always has to click to get loot. Further this system doesn't shove loot into the bank for me or into me tradeskill bag in my shared bank space, or parcel it to my trade mule. It does a little thing very awkwardly. A thing I could already do. Heck, things we all managed to do for 15 years. 'Splain the mount keyring? Extra points - use the phases "world class software" and "critically needed feature". Additional content? Why yes - there IS a need for additional content. It's good to see the team properly focused after the personnel/supervisory changes.
I'm having a look at the logs. Looks like the raid leader went LD. We were getting some big lag spikes during the event. I think it might be the case. The advloot took on rules of whoever was next in command, Main assist, or group leader or first person in zone? dunno. Whatever it was, looks like raid leader went LD, advloot grabbed the rules of next in line and bunch of items got randomed on. Whatever the case, that's still a bad potential problem. If for some reason several people go LD then it's anyones guess as to who's getting loot.
A couple of things to remember about the system at raids, if the master looter is out of the zone you can always wait to open the chest until they get back. Also if the master looter is out of the zone and someone else gets control of it, the master looter will get control again as soon as they zone back in.
Looking at and clicking things in the new system is actually more time consuming and distracting than looting a corpse when I choose. Honestly, it takes me about 3-5 seconds to loot only what I want off a pile of 10 corpses. Using Loot All like Battleaxe does is actually a longer process than simply speed right clicking things. I also had the option of left clicking quest items I needed to hand in or click and putting in an inventory slot I wouldn't have to search for. The new system just drops it in the mess of my bags, causing more delay when needed. The new system does automate some things. The old system really did work just fine and was not much of a slow down. Grouping with friends, we usually just each looted a couple corpses each here and there and let things even out. Any rare drops, we'd let everyone know and roll (or give to the person most in need). No complications at all. The new system might have an advantage if everything on the corpses already has preferences for everyone in the group and if the group stays in one spot for a long time. Otherwise, it requires significantly more clicks to accomplish anything. It's also a pain if your looting preferences change in different situations. Making preset preferences and loading them is effort I don't have to make with the old system. I can see the power and possibilities. I just don't see the user friendliness.
Last night the raid leader, who very specifically tried to turn off the ADV loot system, and tested it by killing trash outside the raid instance to make sure, broke open a chest. The loot system still activated, locking the chest, at 15 minutes, the loot system auto-rolled, assigned, and gave loot to someone who was AFK (his housemate was also in raid to confirm) I really hope CS will help with failures like this, people don't need 3 raid bracers.
Something similar happened to us last night too. Tried using the new system. Got about halfway through awarding loot on our first chest when the new loot system made me freeze up for about 60 seconds (I assume it was the culprit, first time in 15 years playing EQ I've had something quite like that happen.) When I unfroze, all the loot had been autorolled, and one of our keys had been automatically passed out because someone hit need on it when he saw it up for random. Thankfully it was someone who would have probably been awarded a key anyway. And, thankfully the rest of the loot was just sitting on the chest because no one hit need or greed. I doubt we'll be using it again any time soon.
I'll admit I am not prepared to use it until I figure out how to get it to do what I want it to do. I will not add anything to a list that I would want to loot solo, until I figure out how to switch between group where I don't care about loot and solo where I loot everything bar no drop, quest and rogue/shaman TS stuff.
This thread is diverging from the "raid" bias it was meant to have, but... Perhaps instead of always, need, greed, etc, it should have been set with a scale: 0 = never 1 = yes if als set to 1 or higher 2 = yes if als set to 2 or higher 3 = yes if als set to 3 or higher 4 = yes if als set to 4 You would then have a selection on the main screen to select your current mode. When solo, you'd likely turn on 4 (loot everything you'd ever be interested it). In groups, you'd chose one of the lower settings. There would also be a mode to not take any loot regardless of preferences. Rather than keeping multiple lists, you just adjust the slider to your current "greed" level. They could add some complication where it could cascade beyond your current mode if no one in the group wants the item at everyone's current mode. That would preserve some of the need before greed concept in the current implementation. It also needs a I want to roll on this button (or an always prompt me preference) for rare drops. No sense setting you need since you won't after you win it. Those should be decisions made at time of loot. Also allowing for the group to set guidelines like one rare for everyone before you can get a second. Raids I would assume would always be assigned without rolling in order to follow guild loot rules or open raid loot rules. for 99% of the loot that drops, need vs. greed makes no difference in the group game. It's rare items that matter in that regard and due to rarity, they really shouldn't be governed by persistent preferences (except when solo. boxing would obviously be a place you'd want to direct to the right place). And on raids, the only loot anyone should be worried about is the chest loot. And that should not be automatically rolled on based on whatever values someone had set at some random time in the past.
