Originally posted by Ayadori

I think the single most ridiculous thing in MMOs is the ability to loot Plate Armor from turtles, swords from evil birds and so forth. Talk about immersion breakers ...

 

theres also the other question, if X mob just dropped that sword of awesome death dealing.. why the hell weren't they using it in the first place.... kind of question...

Originally posted by moxfactor

Originally posted by Thane

i'd say it began in diablo :)

 

portal to town > sell crap

no, that tradition came from Nethack/Moria/Angband type games.

Diablo just made a nicer looking icon replacing / for flail or , for amulet or ] for armour when that D you fireballed to death splashed the dungeon floor with a jumble of what lookes like censored swear words.

Diablo hardly adds anything new to gaming, graphics merely made it popular with a wider, less literate audience, just like movies based on books, or dubbing over subtitles.

Nethack doesn't have grey items. To my knowledge, every item in the game has a purpose. Even rocks can be thrown or used as sling ammunition, even blank pieces of paper and gemstones are useful.

Originally posted by moxfactor

read and agree with most of it.

 

one suggestion i've had over many years since UO and was successfully but limited-ly introduced by WoW is the concept of breaking down loot into components (ala WoW's Enchanting prof.) but make it widescale.  using WoW as a medium, all loot is at least white quality, and all loot can be broken down to simpler components, or even materials, which could then be used for crafting.  which would allow sellers to still sell it to NPCs for a price if they want, or be broken down into stackable parts and sold for even less to NPC, or sold/traded to crafters perhaps for higher than NPC price.  FFXIV has the loot and player market part down, although the console-friendly UI bogged down the entire system to unplayable, same goes for SWG, albeit bogged down due to over-intricacy of resource collecting.  WoW's Enchant is the closest playable system in this sense, and really IMHO should be the basis for crafting/loot in a good MMO.

Not just FFXIV but also FFXI. Neither of those had grey items; all of the insect wings and goblin masks had some use and could be sold to other players rather than vendors. For that matter, I think all of the FF games dodge the grey bullet although they then have the other problem where lightning elementals drop money and potions. FFVIII dodged that problem too with the SeeD Rank allowance, but that was horrible.

Earthbound also averted the whole business by not putting any money on enemies and instead having your father deposit money in your bank account to help you out with saving the world.

I'm going to go with the slot machine lever + time sink reasoning.  The chance at getting something better keeps you looting, and full bags make you stop what you're doing to go to town and unload, which takes time and slows down your leveling. Two birds with one stone.

So... will GW2 make us do this?

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<blockquote><i>Originally posted by nomss <br><b><p>So... will GW2 make us do this?

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<p> May have to wait for next year to find out

Originally posted by Elikal

I think the reason was to avoid the absurdity that wolves or deer drop coin. So they dropped wolf paws and antlers and you sold those to some NPC. Would it be better if wolves and deer dropped coin? I dunno.. *shrug*

What annoys me MUCH MORE is this: I kill some humanoid, he wears tons of armour, gear and weapons, and I can loot NOTHING of that! I want to be able to loot everything I can see! It's not so much a matter of greed (that too), but a matter of realism.

Possibly a matter of realism,  but if we went the realism route, in a SW game, after your jedi was done slicing his opponent in half (and his armor that didn't really protect him much at all),  would you really want to loot that gear?

I think grey items are okay,  I mean,  it makes sense that some items that you find may not have a purpose or use to you,  but a use to some vendor somewhere.  Much like in a fantasy game you may loot a gold necklace that has no value to a warrior other than its weight in gold, and a vendor would pay you happily for it.   Not that it really matters in the end though,  its just another way to get money without money actually dropping.

I think it would be cool if the "grey" items would be broken equipment that the mob would realistically have on it.  Torn Armor, shattered swords, etc, with a chance of the actual armor and weapons dropping in tact once in awhile.

Of course, the broken equipment would only be cool if it could be broken down into its base components by crafters and used to make something else.  One of the smartest crafting things I have seen was the ability to break down dropped weapons and armor in DAOC and get wood or metal of various types out of them, which you could craft things with or just sell to vendors.  If they want time sinks...you'd have to spend the time to get your crafting high enough to break down the items, but you could also make decent money from them, instead of trying to auction junk no one wants or selling wilted flower petals and rat tails to vendors for next to nothing.  Now, I do have to comment that while I liked the ability to break down items into base components in DAOC...the crafting otherwise was extremely tedious.

Vender trash = more work for my pets.

I'm not complaining. It will be interesting to see how your companion goes to town and comes back.

You gotta have a rhythm of "action/buy-sell/ponder" in an MMORPG, to my mind.  So long as greys are useful (e.g. in early levels) they're find, but one would prefer a threshold option (ignore if not green or yellow or blue, etc.)

I can see where you are coming from, but I think there is more to it than what first meets the eye.

First off, I think even gray/useless drops get you a pretty different kind of feeling when looting than just pure money: you see the loot window pop up, you got an item but hey it's not useful. But I think this also builds anticipation and makes it more fun when you get a drop you can actually use.

It is in fact a psychological thing. One poster compared it to a slot-machine, I think that's pretty accurate.

Money is the same thing all the time on the other hand and it doesn't make sense for some monsters to drop money (although they often do anyhow).

Secondly, this function isn't just used to sell grays, you can also stockpile the less common items in it that are not relevant to your class. 

While playing RIFT recently I got stockpiled with greens and other not so common items fairly quickly, it's handy to sell these as well.

They could also improve this system to let it put items in your bank for you etc.

Can't say I agree with selling gray stuff. Everything you loot should be useful and worth something.

I've always wondered why "junk loot" was in games, but very early on i realised that one mans junk is anothers gold. Mid-High level players may deem it all as junk and a useless bore breaking off to sell it all. However i do prefer this sort of system as not only can you get junk to sell and it all adds up (as another poster has said) but you also get some stuff that although useless to you could be priceless to someone else.

I'm happy for this kind of system to carry on in the genre.

I think it gained popularity in D2 where you made so many trips back to town regularly that having something to sell each time was valued.

Grey items on mobs have next-to-nothing to do with monetary value.  In most MMOs I've played, dead mobs with loot on them (thus mobs that won't despawn for a long time) cause the respawn rate of the mob to slow down noticeably.  Once the mob is looted, the dead mob despawns, and the live mob returns at it's usual respawn rate.  This can be invaluable in high-spawn areas, dungeons, or other areas where you might want a little influence over the respawn rate of the mobs.  So while you're fighting your next mob, the respawn of the previous one doesn't jump you.

This isn't to say I don't agree with the article.  Finding only money on the mob would certainly have the same effect: holding the corpse from despawning and slowing respawn.  But, Greys and money allow you to loot the corpse of cash and still keep the dead mob on the ground to slow respawn.