Regarding item loot.

[SearyxTZ]

ok now serious no-troll reply to Holy Priest Papaver, Servant of Emperor Jesus Rogean

Originally Posted by Papaver [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

It has been apparent since the initial launch of EverQuest PvP in general and item loot in particular were neither well thought out, balanced, nor implemented up to the standards the community desired.

So my question to people that desire a red p99 server is, what would alleviate the majority of your concerns regarding item loot?

Just bounce random ideas around here.

For example, what if levels 1-45 were not lootable, but levels 46-50 were (assuming the attacker was also 46+).

Or what about guild based pvp? That is to say, no guildless characters are lootable, but people that are guild tagged are.

Or how about handing in a tome of discord to set an 'item lootable' flag on your character which would change the tint of the text of your name from pink to dark red (in which case, the attacker can only loot an item if they are also flagged as lootable)?

Or a flag for lootable set during the character creation process which cannot be changed later?

Personally I feel that item loot should be across the board for everyone-- with few exemptions like pvp areas in cities and in 'The Arena' itemloot-free (only pure pvp with no risk of losing items), but seeing as so many people feel so strongly against it, your feedback on what negative aspects are the most detrimental to the game at large would be appreciated.

So.... I've thought about this way too much. Both as a player and as a guy doing a crappy job of running a PvP server.


I LOVE item loot personally. I loved permadeath with full item loot.

Not everyone does though, and you need to be concerned about your population here. The reason for this is that it's just flat-out too punishing for some people. Too hardcore. Especially for melee classes in the classic era, who get royally fucked 9 times out of 10 for the first few months of classic no matter how good the player is.

The book opt-in item loot? Yeah, that might work. But what if someone who isn't tagged for it does work on you, then another tagged player jumps in for the killshot (and item)? It would still work, but you have to consider scenarios like that.

Here's a better idea that I wanted to implement on VZTZ: more NO DROP items. For melee in particular. As in "I could actually get a set of respectable NO DROP gear for most of my slots, as a melee class. It wouldn't be as good as the droppable stuff I wear in PvE, but I could get by with it".

Right?

The added bonus to this is that it incentivizes players to get that extra PvP set of gear -- giving players more to do and keeping people playing longer.

I see no flaws with this really and I think it's something Verant would have done back in 1999/2000 if they had paid any mind whatsoever to their red servers. Going to coin loot was just the lazy easy solution for them.