Goblin Squad Member
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2. Are there items that can't be threaded? For example, does a stack of raw materials count as one item, or can such bulk goods even be threaded?
No time to hunt the link, but one of the devs's said that only equipped items can be threaded. That sounds like no bulk goods, no crafting materials, no second spellbook...
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Goblin Squad Member
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Hobs brings up a good point. I propose a slight modification to the currently presented looting system. Stay with the only loot non-threaded items, but give us a full list of all the items, but limit how many we can take before we are full, or otherwise unable to take. The currently presented "random loot from the list of un-threaded" could lead to not getting access you loot desired that lead to the kill in the first place. As hobs stated, if you catch a miner mining ore you desire, you kill miner but happen to NOT get the ore in the random list of lootable gear, then you killed him for nothing.
Also, side note, there was mention in a blog a while back that assassinating someone COULD loosen or remove some/all thread like a death curse, is that still on the table as a chance or special skill or is that gone since other "perks" of assassination has been announced? I am just curious for both assassins and potential targets. That kind of knowledge would need to be known to all so plans can be made both in defense of and in planning the target of an assassination.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Also, side note, there was mention in a blog a while back that assassinating someone COULD loosen or remove some/all thread like a death curse, is that still on the table as a chance or special skill or is that gone since other "perks" of assassination has been announced? I am just curious for both assassins and potential targets. That kind of knowledge would need to be known to all so plans can be made both in defense of and in planning the target of an assassination.
My memory is fuzzy, but I believe the comments regarding assassins breaking threads was specifically referring to the threads that are used to bind to respawn points, not gear, since they are from the same pool of threads.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Dario,
Yes, threads for respawn. In that way, assassins striking during an siege could cause a settlement leader or key figure to be bounced even further from the battle. If leadership skills are needed to perform formation fighting, assassinating the commander of the formation could be a very effective way of gimping your enemy, and with his respawn occurring further away, the battle might be over by the time he returns.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I agree, there should be choice in what unthreaded items you get to loot. The same goes for inventory items.
As Milo pointed out, if I'm killing that miner for iron ore, and all I get is a rusty shovel, then I killed him for nothing.
The Devs want us to have a meaningful purpose for when we kill, and I agree with that. Than the results of our killing must also be meaningful.
Thieves don't burglarize a jewelry store and look to take the silver, passing up diamonds and gold. They also don't do any sort of ini mini mo (funny in 46 years I never wrote that) to eave it to chance what they will steal.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I also agree. Too disappointing and pointless any other way.
So, if that were true, would the looter get to take one, some, or all of your items?
It has often been written that you can only loot a portion or fraction and the rest would be destroyed. At first I had always found several problems with that.
First, a "Portion or Fraction" can mean anything from 1% to 99%.
I had always wondered why the rest needed to be destroyed, if the bandit had the carrying capacity to take it all?
The answer to that is that the economy needs a raw materials / item sink.
Then it dawned on me, another agenda, and one beneficial to bandits who use SAD on a regular basis.
By having "The rest destroyed" the merchant / traveler is presented with a hard choice. Either voluntarily give up some, through negotiation, or risk losing all. Bandits stand to gain less in killing the merchant, than he or she might gain from the SAD as well. Until we know what a "Portion or Fraction" is, we won't know. But the agenda seems pretty clear.
Bandits should offer a SAD, and Merchants / Travelers should accept the offer.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think that a straight percentage of goods, set by the bandit, and/or cash demand should be the way SAD works. If the merchant is carrying a lot of different goods, the negotiations could get quite lengthy otherwise.
It will be interesting to see exactly how goods are transferred from the merchant's carrying medium to the bandit's medium. What if the bandits can't hold all the goods? Will wagons (if there are wagons) just transfer to the bandit's control?
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Goblin Squad Member
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I think that a straight percentage of goods, set by the bandit, and/or cash demand should be the way SAD works. If the merchant is carrying a lot of different goods, the negotiations could get quite lengthy otherwise.
It will be interesting to see exactly how goods are transferred from the merchant's carrying medium to the bandit's medium. What if the bandits can't hold all the goods? Will wagons (if there are wagons) just transfer to the bandit's control?
The wagon question has been something brought up before. Realistically, it would make sense for a bandit to kill the merchant and take the wagon. Horse/oxen aren't loyal or tied to a particular person, they follow whoever is guiding their reins. After all, look at the type of situation where bandits either are looking for supplies for themselves, for a contract, or the strip a competitor to their employer, it would make sense they will try to take as much as they can. If you have a wagon, or better yet, why not a caravan of wagons, why not dispatch the guards and then take the wagons. I REALLY REALLY REALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! want wagons to be able to "switch" ownership. Maybe tie the "thief" flag to it, but I am willing to take that.
I understand that want/need game wise for an item sink, but I really think there needs to be a way to loot specific items if not everything you can carry. Couriers where brought up in another thread and I think having the ability to see all inventory and take at will, will lead to counter couriers. Meaning receiving word of a courier, and sending someone to kill them and take the "package" for themselves. Threading will still minimize this, but it would add more flavor.
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Milo
I agree that wagons should have ownership but that they should be open to theft and a resulting Thief flag.
I suppose that each wagon would have to be considered like one of the merchant's bags or backpack for ease of transfer of SAD goods. There would still be the problem of wagons loaded with mixed good types, if you want to take any wagons with you.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Thinking about this topic some more, it has me thinking.
When we kill something, and proceed to loot it, this is how it could work:
1. Examine the corpse
2. Inventory items are revealed; unthreaded items are revealed; potential salvage is revealed (NPC Mobs Only); and coins (NPC Mobs only) are revealed.
You will notice that I excluded Threaded Items. I do not believe that it is necessary or wise for threaded items to be revealed. You can't take them anyway, and they are transported (magically) to the respawned person.
3. Looting coins and salvage from an NPC Mob is automatic and total (you can take it all, encumbrance allowing).
4. Looting PCs items should be a choice of the victorious. You should be able to see the full list of both Unthreaded Equipment and Inventory items and then choose what you will claim, up to your encumbrance capacity.
Anything left behind is then destroyed, after a timer runs out. There needs to be a timer associated with a husk, and one is mentioned in Dev Blogs. The purpose for a timer is that, looting from a husk that does not belong to you initiates the Thief Flag. That implies that there is at least one timer. If that husk remains, unlooted, then it will be removed (destroyed) along with the remainder of its items, inventory, salvage.
I really believe the system of looting needs choice. I also believe that the limit on what you can loot should be based on what you can carry away, and not some arbitrary "portion or fraction" that is a set percentage.
This latter point is supported by the lore of the land, "You Have What You Hold."
It will also encourage bandits, such as myself and my company, to be better organized. We will have to be prepared with our own transportation. Ideally, we may have to secure the traveler's transportation during our attack, and then have the skills to use it. We may even have our own members prepared to utilize the Traveler Flag, to haul off with large quantities of loot.
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Goblin Squad Member
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You should be able to see the full list of both Unthreaded Equipment and Inventory items and then choose what you will claim, up to your encumbrance capacity.
I'm not sure if you are suggesting that encumbrance capacity should be the only limiting factor. I'm fairly certain there will - and should be - other limiting factors, maybe even a hard limit of 3 items of equipped gear.
I really believe the system of looting needs choice.
I totally agree with respect to looting other players.
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm not sure if you are suggesting that encumbrance capacity should be the only limiting factor. I'm fairly certain there will - and should be - other limiting factors, maybe even a hard limit of 3 items of equipped gear.
What would be those other limiting factors?
Why would there be an arbitrary "hard limit"?
To use a simplistic example:
I kill someone and loot their husk. They have, unthreaded, a ring; a dagger; a short sword; and a necklace.
By what rationale could I be limited in take all four of these items?
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Goblin Squad Member
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Why would there be an arbitrary "hard limit"?
I'm not sure if you're asking me to point out where the limitations are discussed, or to justify why those limitations should exist.
The looting character can take a portion of the unequipped items in the victim's inventory, plus equipped items that are not threaded; whatever unthreaded items the killer does not make off with are destroyed.
Reading this again, it sounds like it's possible that all of your unthreaded equipped gear can be looted, but I don't think that's the case. I believe it's more correct to read that as saying that the victim's unequipped items plus the victim's unthreaded equipped items make up the victim's "vulnerable" items, and that the looting character may loot a portion of the victim's "vulnerable" items.
As for the justification, it's hinted at here:
In Darkfall, every item you carry can be looted if you die. Since killing a single, fully equipped character is a much better source of getting good gear than grinding your way through dungeons or doing the resource harvesting/crafting cycle, it quickly became the norm for small groups to prey on anyone who dared to leave the safe confines of a city wearing decent gear. The result was that players started to play naked characters with a concentration on spells instead of items to do damage and the whole player economy and PvE adventure content died.
In general, I don't believe the devs want to create a system where the best way to "gear up" is to kill another well-geared player.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Why would there be an arbitrary "hard limit"?
To use a simplistic example:
I kill someone and loot their husk. They have, unthreaded, a ring; a dagger; a short sword; and a necklace.
By what rationale could I be limited in take all four of these items?
The whole bandits cause an item sink and therefore are good for the economy thing?
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Goblin Squad Member
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So, how does recovering your corpse work in this?
I guess that no matter how you die (PvE, self inflicted, PvP) your corpse will be lootable, anyone can loot (but may lose reputation unless they have looting rights) and the items that were not looted get destroyed (excepting threaded gear).
If noone loots your corpse before you return to claim it, all the items are still there for you to recover.
If it works like this, there is no point in returning to your corpse if you have reason to believe it has been looted. Is that a good or a bad thing?
@Bludd
The rationale behind getting a random selection of lootable non threaded items is simple to explain. You have been hitting this character with heavy objects or spells. This will undoubtedly cause damage to some items carried or worn
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Goblin Squad Member
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@ Nihimon
If I killed you to steal your gear, I would not need your gear to replace mine. The gear I had, did the job just fine.
@ Bringslite
If I steal one or more items, it is still taking the item out of the hands of the victim. They will still look to replace it, creating that item sink you are referring to.
What I have argued for is that bandits and thieves have another method of not returning items into circulation ( player market).
1. We could consume it, to maintain our hideouts ( stolen raw materials)
2. We could strip down the items into their component materials ( obviously with some loss).
3. We could have an NPC black market were the items are destroyed in exchange for coin.
All three of these methods remove the stolen materials or items from the player market.
3 I would totally oppose, NPC vendors as I have said in two other threads are just a coin fountain which turns items into conjured coin. They are yet another thing to be balanced and even worse they affect the supply and demand state of the economy
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Goblin Squad Member
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3. We could have an NPC black market were the items are destroyed in exchange for coin.
If the black marketeer offers less coin for the items than a player would, why not sell the items to players instead?
If the black marketeer offers more coin for the items than a player would, it would be profitable to craft items and sell them to black marketeers.
If there is a "fine balance" between the two, what happens when the economy is affected by inflation/deflation? You end up with one of the two situations i described above.
In my opinion, destruction of some but not all items (equipped items included) upon looting as described above is enough to provide an item drain. Such a system can be rebalanced if the drain turns out to be too small.
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Goblin Squad Member
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1. We could consume it, to maintain our hideouts ( stolen raw materials)
2. We could strip down the items into their component materials ( obviously with some loss).
3. We could have an NPC black market were the items are destroyed in exchange for coin.
All three of these methods remove the stolen materials or items from the player market.
We've had this discussion before, but 1 & 2 are not removing goods from the market. They are outside normal market channels, but they are still goods reducing the demand. If you didn't get them from banditry, you would have to aquire them through either by buying them, or harvesting them yourself.
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Goblin Squad Member
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3 I would totally oppose, NPC vendors as I have said in two other threads are just a coin fountain which turns items into conjured coin. They are yet another thing to be balanced and even worse they affect the supply and demand state of the economy
Killing Mobs is a coin fountain, which provides "conjured coins", so why should banditry and theft be any different?
As a matter of fact, banditry and theft have more risk then Mob farming, and should net more coin.
If I steal items, then sell them on the same market those items were heading to, how is the an item sink? All that does is change who the seller is, nothing more.
In order for there to be an item sink, those stolen items must have a way to be consumed. Bandits and thieves are in the business of exchanging what they steal for coin.
For us, banditry and theft is an activity that is being exchanged for Mob farming. Both need to be a coin faucet, otherwise what would be the point in banditry?
If your answer is, to steal items and then resell them, that brings us back to the "its not an item sink" argument.
If we have as Nihimon suggested as a motive, we steal to "replace our gear with better gear". I have already pointed out the flaw in that logic. If I could kill you with what I had, then I don't need what you had for equipment.
Another flaw in that argument. What if I have very good gear to start? If I can't find "better" gear to steal, than what would be my motivation to steal, after I have top level gear?
Only answer... Motivation = Coin!
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Goblin Squad Member
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@Bluddwolf
I can't blame a guy for trying, but really some of your points make little sense. The way that it has been described in the blogs is probably the best as an item sink system. Consumption or sale are not sinks.
We have been over this before as Dario pointed out. Is it necessary to revisit?
Both will make you coin, You will make coin as a bandit by stealing goods and selling to other players. When you have NPC vendors buying items though it introduces more coin into the system rather than just moving coin from one player to another.
It does not have to be a faucet to make you money.
Banditry is a sink because as they have stated many times over now that not everything non threaded will be lootable only a portion of this.
Banditry goes one of two ways
SAD accepted bandits get coin and/ or goods and make money
SAD not accepted or not offered one side loses and the winning side gets a portion of the losing sides non threaded items as their profit and the rest is destroyed.
Both ways provide you profit, if you fight there is an item sink. No need to have magic money coming into the system via npc vendors