PVE - NPCs looting players

[Pax Feydred]

In Ultima Online, Humanoid NPCs could loot an item from your corpse. I always waited around a minute after dying so I could see which one, if any, looted from me.

I always dreaded running back to my corpse and seeing a player there with a bunch of dead NPCs and a criminal flag from looting my corpse. If they didn't have the criminal flag and were waiting there, it usually meant they found an item on an NPC. 90% of the time the player would ask if an item was yours and either give it back or sell it back to you.

If no players were around and my "+4 int. Blacksmith Hammer of Vanquishing" was missing, I'd have to start killing NPCs to get it back.

[Bluddwolf]

I like the idea of Humanoid NPC mobs looting players as well. It adds a bit of realism to it, and could lead into a side quest of trying to retrieve your gear.

[Pax Hobs]

I recall the same from UO. I would have thought Bludd would like the chance of killing the monster and finding someone else's gear on it. ;)

[Debrio]

Cool idea, but what about other players waiting for a tough NPC to kill you, so they in turn can kill said NPC and get your gear without suffering any security penalties.

[Bluddwolf]

Debrio wrote:

Cool idea, but what about other players waiting for a tough NPC to kill you, so they in turn can kill said NPC and get your gear without suffering any security penalties.

That is fair game in my opinion, and would only apply to non threaded gear or inventory items anyway. "You have what you hold" is one of the River Freedoms. If a player does not want to lose gear, don't lose the fight.

[Lifedragn]

One big trap on this is the fact that 25% of your gear gets destroyed - which did not happen in UO. If an item was missing, you knew it was taken. In PFO you don't necessarily know that. A nearby mob may have your +4 Blacksmith Hammer of Vanquishing, or it could have just poofed and you'd be wasting your time trying to hunt it back down.

I'd be all for the NPCs being able to do some looting if it were not combined with the uncertainty of the item destruction. Or if you got a message of what was destroyed, so you do not go on wild goose chases.

[Bluddwolf]

Lifedragn wrote:

One big trap on this is the fact that 25% of your gear gets destroyed - which did not happen in UO. If an item was missing, you knew it was taken. In PFO you don't necessarily know that. A nearby mob may have your +4 Blacksmith Hammer of Vanquishing, or it could have just poofed and you'd be wasting your time trying to hunt it back down.

I'd be all for the NPCs being able to do some looting if it were not combined with the uncertainty of the item destruction. Or if you got a message of what was destroyed, so you do not go on wild goose chases.

But wild goose chases do happen, even in fiction. Do the Gods of Golarion really have the concern to inform someone their + 4 Hammer was destroyed, so as not to have him go on a wild goose chase?

[Pax Hobs]

Lifedragn, I think a server message stating what the 25% items were would be fine. At the same time, I agree with Bludd. Not that I assume you're asking for "easy play mode", but too often there seems to be a desire to eliminate any possible inconvenience in a game via game mechanics. There has to be a happy medium between removing easily eliminated nuisances that serve no purpose other than to be irritating, and eliminating natural risks of living in a more interactive, less "on rails" environment.

[Urman]

A message to the player upon the character's death listing what was destroyed might also be useful in reducing run-backs and therefore reduce corpse-camping.

[Lifedragn]

Pax Hobs wrote:

Lifedragn, I think a server message stating what the 25% items were would be fine. At the same time, I agree with Bludd. Not that I assume you're asking for "easy play mode", but too often there seems to be a desire to eliminate any possible inconvenience in a game via game mechanics. There has to be a happy medium between removing easily eliminated nuisances that serve no purpose other than to be irritating, and eliminating natural risks of living in a more interactive, less "on rails" environment.

I am not advocating it for an easy play mode. I am advocating for clarity of your options as a player. If you recover your loot and are missing an important item and have no idea whether it was destroyed or stolen, I doubt most players would spend the time to try to hunt it down. But if you recover your loot and know the missing item was not destroyed, more players are going to take the opportunity to hunt for their missing item. They know the reward is out there, they just do not know where it is.

There is a stark difference between success being out there, but not knowing if you can attain it and maybe success is out there but maybe it is not. The first is what I want to see in the game. The second just makes players feel stupid which is not a good way to keep them around.

[Pax Hobs]

Options are good things. In fact, it's the lack of options that I worry most about in games. Some have become so predictable, so on rails, that the level of meaningful player choice and independence has been reduced to a negligible variable...you all end up in the same place regardless.

As much as a server message stating what was wiped would be fine with me, so would having to search for the looting NPC, only to discover that it did not have the item I sought. Tracking it down to know for sure could turn out to be one of those little side adventures that leads somewhere unpredictable and fun. To me, that scenario doesn't fall into the category of nuisance that serves no purpose. But like so many discussions on this forum, it's a matter of opinion along a continuum. What one player might see as a waste of time, another might see as an opportunity for unexpected adventure.

[Lifedragn]

I guess I have a number of assumptions here that prevent me from seeing much coming from it. My assumptions were basically:

1) You have no idea if the item was looted or stolen
2) You have no idea which mob looted you, if any mob looted you at all
3) The looting mob would remain relatively close to your corpse.
4) Your task boils down to killing all of the mobs near where you fell.

Which basically to me turns into a fairly mundane task done only for the hope of maybe retrieving an item. This just does not enthuse me. It adds a grind-like element to death. If I am going to start grinding goblins in an area looking for a lost knife, I at least want a chance of finding that knife. That is not fun.

Another alternative could be:

Having a trackable monster that may roam further from your corpse after it loots you. The mission statement evolves from 'find my item' to 'kill monster who looted me'. In this scenario you know a monster has looted something, but you may not know what. If you are able to track it down, you will be able to recover that something. This creates a more attractive mission scenario than randomly killing things hoping one of them drops your item. It engages skills, offers some known measure of reward even if you don't know exactly what item you are retrieving, and could possibly lead you into new areas of a hex that you had not intended on exploring before. In this scenario, I would forgo knowing what items were destroyed. But you would get a message stating "Your corpse had been disturbed!" when you get back to it and would know to try to use your tracking skill.

But if this type of scenario is what you are imagining when you think of the problem of NPCs looting a corpse, you need to spell it out. Otherwise others will not see the scenario you do and we may just end up with boring mob grinding. Which players will start skipping after getting frustrated by not actually finding their lost items reliably.

Either way it goes, if NPCs can loot items, I would like to see them using the items. The orc stole my flaming battleaxe... bring the ointment for treating burns.

[Arumvorax]

The Alpha reward level has:

an invitation to be part of our Monster Casting Crew, the only way to have a chance to play the monsters in Pathfinder Online. Which Ryan gave a little clarification as: "you'll be a "cast member" playing a monster during an event organized by the team"

I imagine any person playing a monster during an event will make the attempt to loot PCs that die.

I will speculate that monsters will have a flag that blocks the 25% gear destruction or the gear destruction flag will be PC only. If the monsters are able to loot a corpse, the looted item(s) need to be added to their loot table.

[Vereor Nox]

Oh I remember this from UO, I used to rage so hard when I would die and a monster I couldn't kill was camping my body. It made me very upset (mind you I was 10-13 at the time so I was quite immature and irrational)

Now that I am older I think I would value the immersion factor of that. Travel only with what you are comfortable with losing, and if you die and cant get your corpse back to get your items or kill the mob that stole from you, get help or cut your loses.

I would be in favor of this. NPC looting does add quit a bit to the immersion factor. I mean why is it we can loot NPCs but they can't loot us.

Hell in the future perhaps maybe GW could take it a step further, goblins fortifying themselves with arms and armor stolen from fallen adventurers.

[Pax Feydred]

If they could mark an NPC with a debuff symbol like a coin under their name, only visible to the dead player, that would take care of the question of which NPC looted.