Seeking info: No Loot Containers in SWTOR?

I just received some startling news today.  According to multiple sources, the loot container system, as announced by the developers (in a forum thread that disappeared), did not make it into the game.

In normal mode raids, loot is automatically assigned to a random person that can use the item.  It doesn’t matter if the item is an upgrade or if the person already has said item, it randomly goes to them.  This can not be turned off.

Hardmode and Nightmare modes allow this feature to be turned off, making the loot system identical to WoW.

What the #!$% happened to the loot container system we were told about?  If it was subject to change, I never read anywhere that they weren’t being implemented.  What happened to everyone in attendance getting a bag, and in that bag you could find a piece of loot or some tokens?  What happened to the idea that everyone putting in the time and showing up has something to show for it?  The current system is GARBAGE and I can not believe that we haven’t seen more outrage over a system that randomly passes out loot to people.

Loot containers were one of the reasons I was sold on SWTOR.  I thought the idea was a major step forward in promoting the enjoyment of raids.  Now I’m completely uninterested in raiding and will likely cancel my account if all I have to look forward to are raids that are no better than WoW’s.  What’s the point?

If I sound pissed off it’s because I am. I was looking forward to something this whole time just to learn at the end (when I’m level 50) it isn’t true.  I don’t like feeling deceived.  I don’t like idiotic design decisions.

Can anyone provide me information on the SWTOR raid (operation) loot system?  Do I have my details wrong?

  • normal raids handout gear randomly to the raid. as in gear has your name on it as you loot it. this means if your a BH, you will get BH usable gear. you WONT receive gear you cannot use. by the way, companions can use tier gear. (my Blizz has around 17k hp and 1200 aim..) In hard and Nightmare loot is regular like in wow , with a Need and Greed system.

    in all honesty its the same exact thing as loot containers, except its One chest full of loot. basically everyone’s chances are rolled and you may or may not get gear.

    normal mode is pretty damn easy and for pug groups this is a godsend as it will stop ninja looters.

    the only thing my guild wishes is that a ‘/roll’ feature was in the game.

  • @Vundal: Loot containers gave EACH person in the raid a bag, and each person had a chance to open that bag in their inventory and get an item or tokens. That’s not the same thing as you just described. Everyone got something for their time, not just one or two people who get the item randomly assigned to them (or win the roll or whatever in hardmode/nightmare).

  • I was watching a raid on twitch.tv last night and when they looted the boss I watched them kill it had everyone in the raid’s name, with a random piece of gear under their name. The streamer got some DPS boots which were an upgrade for him, and one of his raid members with the same class got a pair of DPS boots.

    As I understand from what I saw everyone got something for downing the boss, and it’s a random piece gear that’s usable by their class. I think a few people also got some random tokens as well.

    You won’t be a Trooper and get Consular gear, for example, but you’ll get some sort of Trooper gear.

  • @Keen Everyone in the raid gets something, it’s just that it is randomly assigned to you. As long as you participate in the raid, you get something for your time. I kind of like this system.

  • Sorry to triple post, but I should point out in my first post I meant to say the second person in the raid with the same class as the streamer got DPS belt, not boots. So each of them got different gear for the same class. They didn’t have to roll against each other for equipment they can use.

  • keen its pretty much the same thing. everyone will reveive tokens for each encounter and everyone has a chance that they get a T2-gear-instant-token or a T1-Item with their name on it (nomral mode). Loot in swtor is way too easy to get to rage on it ^^ Just be happy not to be one of the release-testers who werent able to open loot boxes. That was rly worth raging on!

  • @TheRedComet: I’d love to see the video if you can find it. That’s why I posted this, because I’m reading different explanations everywhere and people on ventrilo are telling me different things.

    So let me make sure I have this right.

    1. 16 people on the raid. A boss died and was looted.
    2. 16 items appeared with a person’s name under each item.
    3. Every one of those 16 people got an item.

    That right? Seems like RagingGerman is saying the same thing.

  • I found the video:

    http://www.twitch.tv/affinitibl/b/306220882

    PArt 2, 1:03:00 in is when they loot the boss.

    It seems I was wrong, counting the gear now it looks like only 8 out of the 15 people in the raid recieved gear, randomly assigned to them. Then a bunch of crafting mats/recipes and tokens that people rolled greed/need on.

    I’m not sure how it works now.

  • Ok, so loot dropped. It was randomly assigned to some of the people there if their class could use the item that dropped.

    Did everyone get tokens, or were those tokens randomly assigned to someone?

  • Way I understand it is this:

    8man raid

    Boss dies..

    Everyone gets tokens.

    4 pieces of loot drops randomly assigned to appropriate class.

  • Alright so I’ve determined from the videos that particular raid worked like this:

    15 people in raid.

    Everyone got 3 Tionesse Commendations and 6 Tionesse Crystals from each boss.

    For each boss, about half the people go gear which was randomly assigned to them.

    So as long as you are in the raid, you’ll atleast get some Commendations/Crystals.

  • Ya then on hard/nightmare instead of 4/8 people hereof random the raid leader chooses who gets it like wow.

  • Yeah this is apparently only for Normal. You can enable Master Looter for Hardmodes.

    But now I’m ready a thread where this is no /roll or /random command in game. Haven’t logged in yet to try, but if so that’ll make assigning hardmode loot a pain.

  • honestly, id rather have a chest / loot from the boss rather then a magical bag that could have nothing but commendations /crystals in it.

    really…its just in normal mode. normal mode is the raid finder equivalent. its amazingly easy and it can be skipped for the most part.
    stick with it. endgame is pretty damn fun

  • @Vundal: That bag would give you a better chance at loot than the current system, though.

    And beyond normal mode, I still want the bag system. If I want to raid exactly like it’s done in WoW, I’ll play WoW which has better raiding. SWTOR raiding sounded more appealing because of minimizing loot frustration.

  • They don’t care about gameplay quality, they care about holding subs to pay back on that $300+ mil creation debt.

    Look at what this game is modeled on from top to bottom, that is where it is going, only faster.

  • To be fair, a lot of the SWTOR raids I’ve seen have had some interesting mechanics I don’t really recall seeing in WoW.

  • Well, with my jaded gamer glasses on I would say the reason it didn’t go live is close to the same reason the color matching system for armor didn’t either. The color matching, while being an awesome feature, also makes it grossly obvious just how much they(and every other game) recycles art assets.

    The loot bag issue, again, while an awesome feature, will drastically cut down the amount of times someone needs to repeat specific raid encounters. Thus the quicker people are clamoring for more raid content. It’s an artificial slow down, just like the excessively large space ports and empty hallways where you can’t use your speeder.

    I like the game, but I’m not an idiot, I have sense enough to see when I’m being herded.

  • So I stopped by the Tionese armor vendor on the republic fleet just now. Earlier I mentioned everyone gets 3 Tionese Commendations and 6 Tionese Crystals.

    Well the cheapest Tionese gear costs 24 Commendations and 37 Crystals and is an off-hand lightsaber. Most of the gear costs around 39 Commendations and 60ish Crystals. The most expensive things, lightsabers, are 72 Commendations and 37 crystals.

    So just to get the cheapest thing you’d have to kill about 8 bosses, so that’s what 2 raids? Then for most of the gear you’d need to kill 13 bosses for each piece of gear.

    Just thought I’d share.

  • Well I wasn’t big on SW:TOR raiding to begin with because my RL prevents me from any kind of fixed schedule, but this just about kills ANY interest I would have in doing it at all. Random loot assignment? I’d almost rather go back to DKP. 😛

  • I have cleared all 8 man normal mode and now am almost all cleared on 8 man HM operations. The way you explained it in this blog is correct. On normal mode the loot is randomly generated and only select people get gear or tokens for gear. Everyone does NOT get gear. The only thing that everyone gets are tionese crystals and Tionese commendations for normal mode. It happens quite frequently that a person will get a columi or rakata token even if they already have the item and even if others do not.

    This system is not at all what I thought it was going to be either and I completely understand your anger.

  • There are too many inconsistencies on top of the Error 9000 dc’s and the latency bugs for mr to resub; plus the game is far too gear-centric.

  • I’ve quit the game but I do remember the Devs explicitly talking about the loot system Keen describes as I remember thinking I loved the idea and it helped me confirm my purchase of the game (I was on a decision knife-edge for the entire development period).

    I’d have been annoyed if I’d played it more only to find out this was not true at the end of a raid.

  • I can see how/why the raid looting would annoy/put off some people, but on the flip side what else is there to do at level 50, other than raid or PvP…

    I would like to see some more innovation coming out from the woodwork, but that being said I am very much enjoying my experience in the game. The quests are bareable and sometimes quite enjoyable and the main storyline is quite refreshing.

    I’ve not done a huge amount of instances if I’m honest, as I’ve been enjoying the PvP warzones (to get some valour, yes I spelt it correctly!) but I and my guild certainly plan to run the higher-end instances in the near future – and then run them again, and again, and again 🙂

    In my opinion there are currently no mmorpgs around that can give me a mix of PvE & PvP in a setting that I enjoy (until WAR goes F2P anyhow!), therefore for the foreseeable future SW:ToR will receive my coin.

  • Old System: You get a bag that could possibly have a token or item but would always have commendations and crystals.

    New System: You possibly get a token or random purple from the boss, but always get commendations and crystals.

    Where exactly is the design change here?

    I was pretty disappointed at first that I couldn’t assign gear to my guildmembers as the raid leader. But after I realized that normal modes were moreso a “prep” for raiding hard and nightmare. Normals are very pugable and the only serious challenge my guild had on our first run was learning to platform in an MMO. So if I have to deal with a re-designed token system(it really is the same thing) in normals but I get my master loot in hard/nightmare I’m 100% alright with that.

    Keen I’ve been reading you since Allods and you seem to have the same cycle with games man. It’s “I LOVE LOVE love love hate hate HATE HATE IT!”

  • I’m pretty sure what is implemented is the same thing as what you were hoping for, minus one intermediary and pointless step.

    What you wanted: Boss dies, everyone gets a loot box which contains commendations and a chance for an armor token or whatnot.

    What they provided: Boss dies, everyone gets commendations and a chance for an armor token or whatnot.

    You may very well get duplicate armor tokens for slots you already have in either system. There is a “roll” in the background as to whether or not you got an armor token.

    As far as I can tell, it’s the same thing minus the “Christmas present” feel of opening a loot box in your inventory?

  • @Mangus:
    1) With the bag system, everyone had a chance to get loot. Technically, everyone if the dice were hot, could get an item at the same time — everyone in the raid. Now, only half the people do at most and it’s random who gets them (or in hardmode I guess there’s master looter). Huge difference. It’s not hard to grasp.

    2) I never said I hated SWTOR. I hate the loot system. I also never said I love SWTOR. Feel free to read through the many, many posts I’ve done on SWTOR over the years and you’ll find apprehension, doubt, confusion, enervation, and excitement.

    @Devastator: See above. It’s not the same thing. A fixed number of items drop. If 16 people raid, less than half are hard-coded to get an item. The bag system would have made it possible for everyone to get something.

    It would be like playing against your own luck to get something, not playing against others.

  • @Keen:

    Except you don’t know that it’s not the same thing. Half the people in the raid getting a drop is anecdotal evidence, and is probably what would typically have happened in the loot bag system. For all we know, if “the dice were hot” it’s still entirely possible for every person in the raid to get loot from a boss, it would just be very very very rare.

    Unless a developer has unequivocally stated that 50% of people get loot from each boss (no more no less), we don’t have enough data to claim that as fact.

    Also, I’d gladly take a 50% chance at an item from every boss over a 1 in 20 chance like in vanilla WoW.

  • @Warsyde: From every boss kill video out there it’s always about half the people get something. In normals, it’s often the case that someone gets something they already have and the person who needed the item doesn’t get it.

    I’m not sure why people think competing against others in your raid for loot vs. competing against yourself (your own luck) is the same thing.

    PS: I don’t care if “normal” is just the “preparatory” raid. That may be the only raid some people see — myself included. Poor game design should never be rationalized away.

  • Ok, so if it was bags sometimes everyone would get loot and sometimes no one will get loot. And with the current system, you just get 4 items every time, that are randomly assigned. And everyone still gets tokens.

    I fail to see how this makes the system “horrible” whereas before it was “great”. It’s just more consistent, something that most people would like better, as opposed to sometimes killing a boss and getting nothing and sometimes getting everything.

    The only real issue with the system is your inability to pass something you don’t need to someone else. And makes it much harder to get that one last piece you need. But that would have been exactly the same with bags. Still, considering how much loot drops, and that it’s really meant as a way to gear up in pugs, I don’t think that is that big of a problem.

    The game has enough real issues without making them up…

  • @Coriolis: I could take it to an extreme just like you and say everyone in the raid gets an item. The extremes don’t matter.

    Even if, on average, half the people got loot, getting loot from the loot containers would have removed the link between the individual and the organization.

    Have you ever geared someone up to have them quit or leave your guild? With loot bags, that loot would have come from that individual’s bag, from that individual’s own participation, instead of coming from loot assigned from the guild to that individual.

    Ever brought someone not in your guild on a raid? I’ve both invited that person and been that person. Sucks being told you’re not prioritized for loot, and it sucks giving loot away to that person that would have benefited your guild. With loot containers, that thought process is gone. If that player comes, and gets loot, it’s from their own bag they earned by killing a boss.

    It’s very clear to me how different the two systems are, and it goes beyond the number of items dropped.

  • If you read the forums after loot containers were announced tons of people were whining that guilds WANTED to be able to assign loot so they could gear up their tanks/healers first for instance.

    I believe bioware listened to them and that’s why for hard/nightmare you can master loot assign loot.

    For normal ops (which is made for pugs) they auto assign loot randomly so that theirs no ninja looting.

    I think the system sounds find to me.

    if your casual you gonna only be running normal anyway.. let hardcore raiders assign loot like they want too in hard/nightmare.

  • If that’s the case, Bioware catered to the 1% instead of thinking about the other 99%.

    And if Bioware is so keen on listening to their players, why not let us enable loot containers?

  • This has nothing to do with what hardcore guilds want.. in the current system you still cannot prioritize loot in any way in normal mode (and yes, this is frustrating from a hardcore guild’s perspective).

    Everything you’re saying has nothing to do with the actual differences between these systems. Let’s review:

    Loot containers – 16 players, everyone gets a bag. Say the bags have a 25% chance of getting an item. Then on average, 4 random players will get 1 piece of loot. You cannot influence who gets what

    Current system – Boss drops 4 pieces of loot, and assigns them randomly to 4 people in the raid (of course making sure that it’s something usable by their class). You cannot “pass” on these pieces of gear, or influence who gets what in any way, shape, or form. If you bring in a pug and he gets assigned a piece, he gets it, that’s that.

    There is absolutely no difference between these systems other then the fact that the loot container system can randomly give more or less pieces of gear for the raid as a whole. Which is probably the reason they changed it, it would be stupid to kill a boss and get no loot.

    And yes, currently bosses in 8 mans usually drop 4 pieces of loot, 2 from the “best” tier, and 2 from the tier below. Which is frankly alot compared to most MMOs I’ve played. The 16 mans seem to be a bit more variable, and don’t seem to drop double the loot, which is an actual (although not terribly important) issue.

  • Read what I said. I’m not going to repeat myself.

    I’ll give you a hint: This isn’t all about the statistical averages and the number of items that your raid is given per boss kill.

  • Ok, here’s what you said:

    “Ever brought someone not in your guild on a raid? I’ve both invited that person and been that person. Sucks being told you’re not prioritized for loot, and it sucks giving loot away to that person that would have benefited your guild. With loot containers, that thought process is gone. If that player comes, and gets loot, it’s from their own bag they earned by killing a boss.”

    This is wrong. Nobody can get prioritized for loot in normal mode in the current system. The game simply assigns loot to people. Doesn’t matter if it’s master looter or whatever. People assigned loot cannot give it to other people. There is no thought process involved in distributing loot in normal mode.

    Do you get it now?

  • Obviously I was referring to the hard/nightmare modes. Come on, it’s not that hard to grasp. Even so, I’m speaking about the game being different than it is anyway, meaning the normal mode would not be as horrible as it is currently implemented.

  • Okay, because that’s what I heard too, haha. I heard GW2 is just open bosses that can be attacked and everyone is rewarded for being there.

    Is that at least true?

  • “That’s what the events are for. Large groups, larger than most MMOs in fact, getting together to kick a giant boss’ ass with crazy mechanics and a giant chest that appears for everyone to loot afterwards.

    It’s really all there, the only difference is you’re not entering an instance to do it, which is precisely what MMOers these days have been complaining about so often. Not saying you have, I’m just saying in general.”

    I linked that from a mmorpg forum post, so i cant totally vouch for it, but i’ve read similar posts. I know you are pessimistic about the events system. I am too, but i have hope after seeing public quests in war, and Rifts in Rift, they do know how not to do it.

  • Keen, are you deliberately thick or just pretending to have moaning rights?
    What’s the difference if you have the current system (half raid gets gear) and a bag with 50% chance to get an item?
    You say with the bag system there’s a chance everybody in the raid will get an item. Correct. But are you aware that there’s a chance NOBODY will get an item? Are you aware that the net result will be exactly the same in both mentioned cases?

  • Yeah… GW2 is looking pretty amazing right now.

    I’m pessimistic about dynamic public quests, but open-world bosses are something I’ve done since the EQ days. I love them.

    @Tragabongo: Are you deliberately blind/stupid? Read what I said. It’s not all about the statistical probabilities of loot drops. If it were, you’re right in that both ways even out. It’s the METHOD, not the statistical end-result, that I care about.

  • @ Jay P.

    Sweet. That reminds me old school DAoC dragon raids. I never even got a thing from those raids, but they were a blast all the same.

    It was amazing seeing practically the whole realm from the entire server organizing itself to kill one giant monster.

  • This part is awesome, and explains what I wanted from SWTOR’s loot containers.

    In Guild Wars 2 we’re fully committed to the concept of rewarding players individually. This is more or less a quick way of saying that we don’t want to design a system where players argue over loot settings, turn to external “out of game” systems to decide who gets what upon downing a boss, or risk spending hours in a dungeon with nothing to show for it due to bad rolls or a ninja looter that hijacked all their treasure.

    In the case of distributing general monster loot or opening dungeon end-chests, this principle means that each player gets their own roll, so it’s alright if you are soloing and someone begins fighting alongside you. This won’t cause the loot you would receive to degrade in any way, as long as you actively participate in that combat. Likewise, when you get to the end of that big dungeon with your group, you each get to individually open the chest and receive your own personal reward.

  • keen whatever you do never make a guild, would hate to think people would join your guild, for you to only quit 2 months later.

    i am a lot like you i play all the new games, i see all the good in them. play then get to max lvl then its all bad.

    i would hate for anyone to count on me to run a guild hehe. got to play when you have fun then move on way to go.

  • I’ve made guilds and run guilds for the past 8 years. It’s not the players who depart, it’s the game which departs from the players.

    I’m not quitting SWTOR yet. I’ll persevere through yet another poor design choice. Sad reality these days is that I am usually one of the last few holding onto hope; the vast majority having moved on.

    Funny dynamic, guilds. Everyone expects the leader to stick around when the game sucks, but no one thinks twice leaving themselves.

  • What’s people’s impression of retention like in SWOTR then?

    I quit almost immediately but 3 of my friends who play it still love it and I don’t remember anyone in my Guild leaving before me. Looked like a good first month performance from my limited exposure.

    • @Intruder313: A couple of months at most. I went in hoping for a nice RPG that I could play with friends. I mostly got what I wanted. Some of the zones were fun, some were tedious. Same for the instances. In the end, SWTOR has very little replay value. The volume of mundane side quests outweighs the story missions 5 to 1, and I have no drive to make alts.

      I want to see the end-game content. I was originally very excited because of their loot system. Like I said before, the loot system was what sealed the deal for me and made me buy SWTOR. I hate loot issues. I hate thinking about it, I hate worrying about it… in fact, I wish there was no loot. I wish we did content for the fun and challenge, rather than needing to do it to get the gear to move on to the next tier.

      Given the loot issues, my goal is to see the content and make my call from there.

  • I kinda agree. The commendations are a joke. First of all you need loads before having enough to buy anything, and then the stuff you buy is not nearly as good as the item you would get in a bag.

  • I should correct that and say “theorectically” fun as I can no longer play them due to the low frame rates and Error 9000 dc’s, but until they happened it was enjoyable.

    The 2 major problems I see with the warzones are first they are too small, allowing a pre-made to easily zerg shift between objective points, and second that there aren’t any truly randomized (likely cross-server)PUG queues to avoid the pre-made valor farmers.

  • I resisted the urge to buy the game initially but a few of my friends were in at launch and just seemed to be having a great time with it, so I gave in and picked it up about 3 weeks ago.

    I had a great time with my BH story line and really enjoyed being in the SW universe again. Then something happened. I was sitting at my pc debating what to do mod wise for my pistols and had started writing out numbers on a piece of paper comparing various combinations. After a short while I kind of took a step back and noticed I was just crunching numbers. All of the fun had gone out of the game for me. The crazy part is that I was only at level 19! What the hell would happen to me when I got to level 50?

    It was to much of a reminder of days past in WOW of gear grinding for items to enhance stats regardless of the content.

    SWTOR looks nice, and I really enjoy the sounds of lightsabers and blasters again, but I feel no involvement or investment in the world at all. I have not logged in now in 3 days since I have started exploring the Reckoning demo, and I have not thought much about what is happening in the area around me character. I know the content is the same and has not changed. I know no one has settled near me and opened a shop. The world just feels stale.

    I am not going to say it is a bad game, I think for those that want to play this style MMO it is not bad at all, definitely better then some other launches we have seen. For me, I think my tastes have just changed over the years to a different style MMO… one which I hope is still out there on the horizon.

  • I prefer a system that potentially rewards people who quit later on (your specified gripe with the current system) to one that potentially gives a raid few-to-no items in a full clear.

    In WoW, you play gem roulette in DS. For a full clear, you get 7 bags that have a common, rare, or epic gem in them, and 1 bag that has an epic gem guaranteed. Not only do you have to hope that your bags all proc epic, but they need to be RED epic gems for virtually every class/spec except for tanks. The random bag reward system is incredibly frustrating for raiders, and I would say the vast majority of them would prefer a better system.

    The PvP gear is done in a grab-bag fashion. You get roughly 100 warzone commendations for a typical match. You need 3 warzone commendations per mercenary commendation. You need 200 of each for a PvP bag. That means every 8 games, you get a bag. The bag may have a random token in it for pvp gear, or will have a few commendations.

    Talk to people who PvP regularly, and how frustrated many of them are with the system. There are people at rank 30 valor with almost a full set of gear, while people at rank 50+ are still missing a bunch. Getting several earpiece tokens in a row. If you get 5 champion commendations in an “empty” bag, and want a weapon (75 commendations), that means you need to play *120 matches* before you can purchase it. But that’s okay, only 13 other slots to go.

    I’m sure I’ll make some math errors here, but let’s try to break this down further. Let’s say you have a 50% chance of getting an item, and the other 50% of the time, you get 5 commendations. To simplify this a little, let’s say for every two bags you buy, one is guaranteed to have an item, and the next has 5 commendations. Your odds of winning an item are worse than this in game, but simply math makes for easy examples. To figure out what slot you get a token for, the game basically is just rolling 1-14. To make things easy on me, any time a new token drops, I’m going to say it’s in the next item slot (so first piece of gear is slot 1, 2nd is slot 2, etc).

    Based on these rules, your first bag gives you a piece of gear for slot 1. The 2nd gives you commendations. The 3rd has a 93% chance of giving you gear in a slot you don’t have gear for yet, and the 4th is commendations. After the 5th bag, you have a 79.5% chance of having 3 pieces of gear, 20% for 2, .5% for 1. It continues, and I made a spreadsheet to show it (sorry if I confuse you with how it’s set up): https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AgyMiLcf1sK9dFhDZkxESXY3STB2M1VzaFprZnUtTmc

    The top graph shows the probability of having a certain number of items after a certain number of bags, and the bottom shows the % of people who would have at least a certain number of items. Out of a group of 1 million people:

    After 10 bags, over half the group will have at least 1 item duplicate.
    After 20 bags, over half the group will have at least 3 wasted items.
    After 26 bags, the first 100 people have 13 different items, and buy their 14th with commendations. The same number of people have 4 items and 9 duplicates.
    After 34 bags, 10% of the group will have 12 items and enough commendations to buy their last 2. They have 5 duplicate items. 10% of the group has 8 items or less, with 9 or more duplicates.
    After 46 bags, the first half the group cashes out their commendations and is done. 5% of the group has 9 items and 14 duplicates.
    After 52 bags, double the number of bags when the first 100 people finished, almost one third of the group still isn’t done.
    After 76 bags, 50 more bags than the first group needed to finish, 100 less fortunate people are still 1 item short, even if they cashed out their nearly 200 commendations.

    That looks like kind of a big problem to me. It seems like a disproportionate amount of wasted loot to avoid the risk of someone leaving. Your entire group gears slower, and if someone leaves, you’re still worse off.

    In a hardmode/nightmare raiding situation, the grab bags would leave at least several people with large gaps in gear. By allowing a masterlooter to distribute the gear, you allow people to essentially pool their bags together. Instead of having 2 earpieces in my bags, we can give me one, and one to the other person of the same class.

    In the grab-bag situation, someone who has a full set of gear will be getting a bag that is 100% useless. That is essentially the same thing as the boss dropping less gear, because the bag (which is the only form of loot) is now worthless.

    What about offspecs? If I dps and heal, or dps and tank, I need to have two sets of gear. Are my bags going to know this, and proc twice the amount of loot as everyone else’s? Obviously not. But that means that I either have to have weak gear sets for both specs, or focus on one, and have my second spec not able to perform well. In the current system, if extra gear drops that someone doesn’t need for their mainspec, they can pool it to specific people. All that loot that would be useless in a grab-bag situation is now going to directly benefit the raid.

    If nothing else, you can toss some of that spare gear to someone’s companion. The more possible ways of using a piece of gear, the more likely it will be useful (I know, obvious statement is obvious). It benefits the group most when everyone is elligible for gear.

    Yes, a person who leaves will be taking loot that could have gone to others with them. But a person that stays will not be “stealing” loot from others.

    You’re certainly entitled to disagree. I don’t mean to say that you’re 100% definitively *wrong*. But I hold a different opinion to the one you seem to feel incredibly strongly about. I think the current system is far better than the proposed one.

    All that said, the number of bugs (in raids alone) is astounding. Getting stuck in combat, not being able to get loot, bosses bugging out or resetting, people crashing, making them unable to log back in while the raid still thinks they are inside, forcing their guild to try to 7-man 8-person content…it’s quite frustrating. I don’t expect a brand new game to have the polish of WoW-85, but I also don’t expect to see problems that are more widespread than anything I recall from WoW-60 – and I remember crashing in Molten Core and appearing dead, 300 feet in the air above Stonetalon.

    It’s a new game. There will be bugs, there will be stupid mistakes, and there will be poorly implemented mechanics. I expect and tolerate these things. If I ignore the vast majority of what the game has to offer, and focus on the areas that are relatively bug free and fun, I’m still easily getting my money’s worth. But every time I experience or hear about another large set of issues, it makes me wonder how many people will still be around when the game is finally polished.

  • I don’t know what was included in the last patch, but PvP item tokens in the test server are supposed to be generic, that is they can be used to buy ant piece of gear. I would be surprised if raid gear didn’t go that way also as too many people would raise a ruckus over the disparity between loot systems.

  • @Ganatron: That only pertains to Battlemaster Bags, the pre valor rank 60 Champion bags still require a great deal of luck to finish.

  • Perception of the source of loot aside, the normal mode ops appear to operate the same as the loot bag system. (sure RNG could proc items for all but maybe they would have hard coded it so only half the bags had loot anyway making the two systems absolutely identical)

    Hardmode/Nightmare as far as I can tell only add the OPTION of turning master looter on. So you could continue to have the same looting option if you so choose.

    I would think having a human in charge of handing out the loot would help ease the RNG but maybe that’s just me.

    My WoW guild used a tier system for rolling that was fair for everyone:
    Tier 1 – If it’s an upgrade for your main spec and you haven’t won anything yet you roll
    Tier 2 – If you’ve already won something but it would be an upgrade for your main spec
    Tier 3 – If no one needs for main spec, but you could use for off spec

    Perception that the loot came from a bag or from the group seems to be the main difference. Personally I would much rather have the feeling that I’m getting something awesome from my peers than a random pinata bag that appeared in my backpack…

  • Keen to me: What kind of jackass compares MMO’s to a job?

    A few months later:

    Keen: What do you mean I’m not getting paid? I quit!

    I guess SWTOR really isn’t very much fun if you’re willing to quit because the reward system isn’t sufficiently enticing. Maybe I’m crazy, but if you’re playing a game for 20 hours a week or more, maybe you should pick one that is actually fun enough to keep you around even if you don’t get great loot for it.

    But then that would be the end of the MMO genre for you.

    • @Toxic: Wrong. It’s the method in which they deliver the reward and the process by which the player obtains that reward. This has nothing to do with the actual reward itself.

      I’m very interested in WHY and HOW we, as players, go about participating in the end-games designed for us. If I’m led to believe that HOW is going to be a certain way, then I’m going to adapt my own personal WHY. If you change the HOW, my WHY changes. If my WHY changes, that is easily a reason to keep playing or not.

      Note: I am still playing, but I am uncertain as to the future of the game given Bioware’s direction with end-game activities.

  • No Keen, not wrong.

    I’m saying you should play a game that is fun enough that the reward DOESN’T MATTER because the game is fun enough that you would play it even if there wasn’t loot at the end.

    You’re saying you want to quit because the rewards aren’t distributed properly. Clearly the rewards are a major part of why you find the game entertaining, since you are willing to quit over a fairly arcane dispute over the precise method the reward is distributed.

    Your WHY is the reward. Your WHY is not that raiding is just such a blast that it’s worth doing as its own rewards. If that was your WHY, you wouldn’t be willing to quit over the HOW.

  • @Toxic: But what is “fun”? For me, “fun” is found in the process. I think we’re saying similar things. I’m not doing it just for the loot. In a perfect setting, there would be no loot. However, since there is loot, and since the game forces me to care about loot to progress, the act of raiding is fun or not depending upon how I am forced to run through their scripted process.

    I -hate- loot driven incentives, but I have very little ability to change that so I am trying to make the best of what I have — what I thought I had turns out is something quite different.

  • Wow that was odd. I just wrote an extremely long comment but after I clicked submit my comment didn’t show up. Grrrr… well I’m not writing all that over again. Anyway, just wanted to say wonderful blog!

  • Over time, it becomes the same.

    50% chance to win a piece out of a chest vs 50% chance to win it out of a bag. Yes, there will be times that everyone in the raid gets loot. However, under that exact same situation, there could be times that EVERYONE in the raid gets NOTHING.

    This system is better. Period.

  • I love how no matter how many times I say it’s not about the statistical probability of getting loot, people always bring it back to that.

    Once again, it’s the HOW that bothers me.