I agree with Crat, loot stealing isn't that big of an issue, especially if you design quests in such a way that someone can't "run in and grab an hour work's worth of loot". The system probably does as much harm as good because it allows people to act like jerks without real consequences, not to mention it makes for rather dull single-playeresque game play.

Why not just have a slightly laggy get with a pre-message, then have it block if multiple people are trying to get the same item?

Example:

You kill a completely harmless and utterly defenseless woman that only a total sociopath would even think of harming!
A completely harmless and utterly defenseless woman falls to the ground, dead.
You get 0.0010002001 exp!
The shattered corpse of a completely harmless and utterly defenseless woman contains the following:
a silver spoon
> get spoon corpse
You reach down to grab a silver spoon from the shattered corpse of a completely harmless and totally defenseless woman.
Ninja walks in from the east.
Ninja attempts to grab a silver spoon from the shattered corpse of a completely harmless and totally defenseless woman.
Ninja is trying to grab that, too. You can't both have it!
You stop trying to get a silver spoon from the shattered corpse of a completely harmless and totally defenseless woman.
Ninja stops trying to get a silver spoon from the shattered corpse of a completely harmless and totally defenseless woman.
Ninja says 'Sorry, I didn't see you. I guess I'll go north and kill some babies.'
You say 'Oh, no problem, make sure you take their candy.'
Ninja nods.
Ninja walks north.
> get spoon corpse
You reach down and attempt to take a silver spoon from a completely harmless and totally defenseless woman.
You get a silver spoon from a completely harmless and totally defenseless woman.

I'm not sure why some players take time out of murdering every NPC in sight to be slightly inconsiderate to other PCs, but you could block it with a minor edit to the get command, which seems to be a lot less trouble than separate loot lists.

[Edit: I realize that spam-reduction is also a motivation for this setup, but simply leaving the items in corpses would reduce spam, too.]

Barm, the whole private pile thing is an interesting concept. I've seen it in Runescape from kills, as well as dropped items, but they then timer to 'show up' after a period to be 'free for all'. It made me go 'hmmm..' for sure. But then that game is purely PVE (at least I believe so?).

Another option I saw in AQ was that the equipment or prize/trophy etc would go to some people in the group of those attacking. So the mob might drop some token, 3 out of 5 in the group actively fighting it might get the drop.

While I don't like to flat out take from those kinds of games, the approach and game design concepts I do find interesting.

Maybe we should split the discussion and cover loot stealing in it's own thread? There seems to be a lot of interest in it but really, I only mentioned it in tangent to a loot handling system and kinda wish now that I hadn't.

My bad, I'll stop tangenting before this thread gets deleted ;)

Thanks, Skol. Now that you mention it, I guess the system I'm picturing would be a text-version of Diablo's. Kill stuff and potions and coins fall to the ground.

It could be handy for things like offering gear to your friend. Meet at the bank, form a group, drop a bunch of junk on the floor and let him pick what he likes. When he's done you type 'take all', 'deposit all' and you're done.

One thing that bothers me is trying to describe items entering the pile that clearly wouldn't "fall" off a mob. You kill a timber wolf and he drops his pelt? That's some sword play. OTOH, players don't have a huge problem with corpses that contain 'vials of zombie blood'.

It's become central to the discussion because the tangent took more space in your original post than how loot drops does. Your basic premise was that you were thinking of making loot drop to the floor instead of a corpse container when a mob is killed, and that's really the end of that. All the rest of your post with the tagged loot and such only existed because you expressed concern (through our collective voice ;) ) about people stealing your loot. It therefore makes sense to be discussing that, as the original premise of dropping loot to the floor instead of to the corpse doesn't really require much debate.

You're right. I started a thread asking for general comments, not solutions to a specific problem. The swarm of conjectured ninjas caught me off guard.

Does anyone have a link to "KaVir's List" that Donky mentioned in #19?

I believe he's referring to this list.

Holy cats, I just set and spiked myself.

—

Hey KaVir, while I'm bleeding here anyways. Would you mind elaborating on your loot system?

Well there's not much to elaborate on, it's pretty simple. Each mob has its own loot list (which can include different weighings for different items, including "none"). When killed, the mob drops one randomly selected piece of equipment* from that list, which (if flagged in the loot list) may also be assigned magic bonuses based on various factors.

It's similar to the loot in Diablo2 (which was my main source of inspiration), except you don't get swarms of insects dropping breastplates.

* Actually the same system allows mobs to "drop" other mobs, but the original purpose was for magic equipment and that's still what it's usually used for.

Granted, it may not be a problem in all muds, but it's certainly not unheard of, especially on muds that have lots of extraneous junk in corpses to discourage autolooting. I've also known people who take great delight in screwing with other players that would do this just to inconvenience others. When you start talking about how you can "make a trigger to scoop up your stuff," you're no longer talking about aspects of game design , but rather player mud client scripting skills (unless the point of the game is to create the best script).