Autoloot on Low-Rates

[hirundo]

Hi,   

I'm interested to hear what people think about autoloot on LR servers. Are you for or against it, how much does it matter to you, and why

[Gene]

With autoloot always. I've already grew tired of manually picking things up, whether as a melee or ranged class.

>Most people just complain about it because they don't have a hunter class or don't have any plans on creating one, that's their fault.
>Most of these people are the ones who also suggest arealoot instead of autoloot because they mob bb/grimtooth/etc, so it matters only a little for them.

Autoloot grants benefits to all classes and hunters are the best pvm class to have, if you can't beat them, join them.

Think of hunter classes as merchant/rogue classes, you will always want to have one on your character line up.

[meisterkun]

Well I'm on the neutral side about it. Autoloot certainly will make your life easier but no autoloot has its own merit too.

Without autoloot enabled, Whitesmith is the best PvM class imo. I once played low rate server without autoloot enabled and immediately realized the power of Whitesmith. Nearly all the peoples use Whitesmith to farm their things since huge STR + Enlarge Weight Limit + cart + Greed totally trounce any Sniper advantage has in PvM.

With autoloot enabled, I think it's up to your preference to choose Whitesmith or Sniper. You choose either melee with massive weight limit or ranged with small weight limit. (In case there is no Gym Pass in the server.)

[Playtester]

Autoloot ruins a lot of the official feeling for me, but I learned to live with it.

Reasons:
1. Unbalances the classes (ranged classes and Alchemists benefit more from it than others)
2. Classes that could contribute to a party by picking up loot can't contribute at all anymore (greed is a good party skill)
3. Makes looter mobs pointless (I think they are part of the official feeling)
4. Causes inflation because people are more likely to take everything with them

[AnimaRagnarokOnline]

I'd vote for no autoloot.

I mean with rates that only drops 1~4 items per kill, I think it's that horrible to pick things up. If you will talk about MR/HR servers, that's another thing. Imagine manually looting through 100% item drop rates. Talk about picking through trash.

Anyways, autoloot creates players who depends on the function, which in turn makes it harder to implement official or close to official server rates or features due to massive outbursts that autoloot should be enabled. [ Opened a few number of servers with autoloot, had to turn it on at a later point due to demand ]

[Neffletics]

I'd vote for Greed to be available to any 2nd job class. But it has to be modified in such a way that the player who damaged the monster the most will at least have 10 seconds to pick up his loots.

[ZoeyRO]

In my opinion, Autoloot function should be there in servers. Gives an option for players who want autoloot and those who don't want autoloot. But for me I would like to have the autoloot function 

[Nekoruchii]

I would prefer @arealoot for low rates until 20x then higher to it, I don't mind having @autoloot for 21x and above. That's just in my point of view though.

[Yozakura]

At above 5x drop rates, by all means, go for @autoloot. It's tedious to pick things up manually when you have 3+ 100% drops each kill. At lower drop rates, especially at 1~2x, I'd completely be against it.

[Blinzer]

Discussed and rediscussed. Autoloot is superior game design.

[Minabe]

Discussed and rediscussed. Autoloot is superior game design.

On high rates.

[Blinzer]

On high rates.

A repetitive task which is consistent throughout a game and adds nothing to the gameplay is not going to become good game design just because everyone has to do it 100 more times. It becomes worse.

The game is fast paced, having to stop and pick things up every 5 seconds is annoying. The better the player is, the more they're taxed for being good because they have to completely stop their pace just to pick s*** up. I'm not denying that it somewhat closes the gap between ranged and melee(maybe solves like 40% of the problem?), but it's not worth pulling someone out of the zone for such a low % of problem fix when sniper is still going to prevail, meaning everyone will just farm with sniper anyways and you solved nothing. What's actually happening is that you're adding +2 seconds to every monster kill someone does as a global tax for playing the game.

[Minabe]

Doing Tripper's job.

[Blinzer]

Why are you implying exploiting fw +autoloot+ranged is being good?. Those 2 seconds won't matter to a melee class that has to get close to the monster anyway. You also imply monster will always drop things, which would be wrong even on a high rates with adjusted drops. Not all features are required in all servers, a mechanic can't be good/bad by itself.

You're absolutely right. No mechanic can be good or bad by itself. Let's use a practical example to make this situation clear then.

To clarify right off the start, a monster not dropping something strengthens my point, because the "no autoloot" balancer doesn't come into play for whatever reward is established.

First, we establish the impact of manual loot vs autoloot. Sniper, on average, will take 3 extra seconds to loot an item while grinding at the highest efficiency. Melee classes would take 1 second.

Second, we establish grinding efficiency. Taking into consideration damage potential and how melee classes have to walk up to a monster to kill it, sniper kills monsters at least two times faster than any class other than whitesmith using CT with an ice pick, which we can safely exclude due to the nature of the skill(1.5k zeny per CT does not work in low rates). 5 seconds/kill is a safe estimate to give to a sniper, so we can assume your average kill rate to be 10 seconds/kill for a melee class(even though in the levelling stages it's much more than that for a melee class).

5 + 3 = 8
10 + 1 = 11

8/11 = 72%
5/10 = 50%

This means if I choose to go melee class EVEN WITH this balancer, I have only successfully balanced 22% of the 50% gap I needed to balance, aka ~40% of the problem(20/50=0.40). The cost is that now my players are taking 60% more time to kill monsters because you added 3 more seconds to a 5 second/kill average. The rate of people who are going to feel compelled to farm with a melee class because of this is virtually none(except fools), so the net result of what you have done to your players is make them waste a whole bunch of time doing the exact same thing they did before: farm with the much better class.

Funny thing is, I never did any calculations of this and estimated 40% "blind".


As a last thing I'd like to say, fly wing "exploit" is very good game design. It trains your reflexes and your ability to quickly aim at something, and directly rewards you without making you waste any time. Those who don't have those reflexes and aiming capabilities fall behind really fast, a clear indication that the concept is based off of raw skill and nothing else(all time wasted between kills is the player's fault). You should think twice before trying to dumb down a game just because something appears "silly" in the world, and focus on what the execution consists of. Vanilla Ragnarok has a nature to it, and in that nature there is a balance within itself. If you truly want to fix these problems, then you have to take them at their root: fix the melee classes that are s*** in pvm by making them good in pvm, and nerf sniper in pvm accordingly. These peasant config changes will not save you.

[Minabe]

Doing Tripper's job.

[Blinzer]

Are you listening to yourself? Besides you're admitting Snipers will be faster anyway so your point is moot (while also implying no one will ever grind with a melee class lol).
Now you're just trolling.

P.S: Please don't write such long walls of text, they accomplish nothing and only waste both yours and my time.

If snipers are way faster anyways, the only thing that changes with no autoloot vs autoloot is that you're wasting time picking up items. I don't understand how you don't see that.

Restate why you think no autoloot is better than autoloot. All of the reasons, all of the scenarios. I'm listening.

[Minabe]

Doing Tripper's job.

[Playtester]

While autoloot makes playing more comfortable, it causes a lot of problems with balance, inflation, solo players and exploits. Sure big servers have to grant autoloot or no players, but they all fight with these issues. Everybody making a Sniper to hunt items rather than partying up. Much higher inflation. Many players are just playing Asura -> Get Loot -> Die -> Go to Healer -> Repeat to get endgame stuff rather than working together or getting actual playing skill.

As a just for fun PVM player I always run into the same issues with autoloot. For me it's mostly noticable from the elite "I don't party up with you because I can do it much faster myself" attitude of most players on such servers as well as the fact that I sometimes need over an hour to find a party despite 500+ people online. When I go to a server with no autoloot, even if it has 10 times less players, I can actually find a party faster.

I don't even find picking up items that tedious on private servers because of how reactive they are. On iRO it's much more horrible because of >1 second delay from click to pick up.

Some issues here can be solved better than by just enabling autoloot. Keeping drop rate at 1x for common items and instead buff brewing/forging for example, so that you still don't need longer for your weekly WoE stuff, but also don't have to pick up so much after each kill.
Or make autoloot substract zeny based on the value of the item looted, so it can be used for item hunting but not for earning money from NPC sales.

[Blinzer]

Mostly bc it promotes kamikaze playstyle since you don't have to survive the fight to get the loot (which is why there's so many multiclienters using Champions in servers with dungeon warp, let alone Snipers), among other things wich may seem small but add to the feel of the game (like looting monsters or greed). Part of the problem could be solved by making miniboss / MvP drops un-autolootables. I do get that there's a problem with the massive ammount of some items having to be farmed (and autoloot playing a big part in it) but i don't think it is the answer to the farm grind, which should be changed (bc who wants to spend that much time on "the eternal grind" to waste it all in 1-2 hours) to make it optional or at least more interesting.

While autoloot makes playing more comfortable, it causes a lot of problems with balance, inflation, solo players and exploits. Sure big servers have to grant autoloot or no players, but they all fight with these issues. Everybody making a Sniper to hunt items rather than partying up. Much higher inflation. Many players are just playing Asura -> Get Loot -> Die -> Go to Healer -> Repeat to get endgame stuff rather than working together or getting actual playing skill.

As a just for fun PVM player I always run into the same issues with autoloot. For me it's mostly noticable from the elite "I don't party up with you because I can do it much faster myself" attitude of most players on such servers as well as the fact that I sometimes need over an hour to find a party despite 500+ people online. When I go to a server with no autoloot, even if it has 10 times less players, I can actually find a party faster.

I don't even find picking up items that tedious on private servers because of how reactive they are. On iRO it's much more horrible because of >1 second delay from click to pick up.

Some issues here can be solved better than by just enabling autoloot. Keeping drop rate at 1x for common items and instead buff brewing/forging for example, so that you still don't need longer for your weekly WoE stuff, but also don't have to pick up so much after each kill.
Or make autoloot substract zeny based on the value of the item looted, so it can be used for item hunting but not for earning money from NPC sales.

Both of you bring up excellent points. Autoloot does promote a kamikaze playstyle(kill mob before mobs around you can touch you, fly wing out), and autoloot can definitely contribute to creating a bigger gap between the efficiency of solo play and party play because of this.

One thing I would like to mention. Inflation is mostly due to the poor design of the zeny value of misc items in later episodes, not necessarily autoloot(although it makes the problem come out faster). The excuse gravity used to try to counterweight this was awakening/zerks and gems/mastelas, but it has proven ineffective over the years as they added more broken values. As I went through all of the misc items and their prices, I noticed that for the first 150-200 monsters they put a lot of thought and effort into giving monsters an "average" zeny/exp per kill based on how strong the monster was, but as time passed it got sloppier and sloppier and became ridiculous. My guess is that they had to make people 'want' to try the new stuff somehow, so they pumped it with broken rewards so people would go there.

However, how would you feel if you had to pick up two items from every single monster you killed, and it took you a month of playing 2 hours a day to reach 99? Do you still think no autoloot is a better option then?

[Minabe]

Doing Tripper's job.

[Duckshooter]

I really like autoloot just for the sake of not picking everything up. Sure, it somewhat ruins the original feeling but most server do that anyway.
Something I also enjoyed was only autoloot for <1% drops so you wont miss the goodies but still have to pick up the rest

[Blinzer]

You're missing the point. A feature is as good as the overall balance (including it), if a feature unbalances the game then you either remove/change the feature or remove/change everything else. You're choosing to not remove nor change the feature, creating a lot more work to do.

Your example again is too general and not on point, you could lower the experience needed (or change any other part of the game) so that you'll still be 99 in a month, says nothing about the balance nor the original feel of the game.

the original feel of the game sucks dude

LOL

if autoloot really was the problem, inflation wouldn't on happen on servers without it

but it does

big plot twist

[Minabe]

Doing Tripper's job.

[Blinzer]

I never even talked about inflation. Either you've been trolling all this time or you really are that confused.

so if you're not talking about inflation and you're not talking about the extra time it makes you spend in pvm, what are you talking about

because autoloot does nothing else to change the game

[Minabe]

Doing Tripper's job.

[Blinzer]

It is clear you don't know that much about the real game; quite obvious after knowing you've never really liked it.

ahhhhh, you reminded me of the good times



i wonder where sniped is now


neways yea fuk u and s***, go suk a nut nerd etc.

can't be bothered to explain to you why idea discrediting is for scrubs, so i guess you're right

Spoiler

[close]

[Playtester]

Well there have been plenty reasons posted as to why autoloot is bad.

Also just because you know a server that didn't have autoloot and still had inflation problems doesn't mean that autoloot doesn't help against inflation. Fact is that every single "just sell to NPC" item somebody does not loot because he doesn't want to bother picking it up reducing the inflation a little. Of course there are many factors when it comes to inflation. How high is the vending tax? Where can players spend there zeny at NPCs? How much money do you get from selling to the NPC? Do player need to buy their WoE consumable from NPCs or can they get all of it on BG for free?

Alright, let's just take the theoretical scenario: You allow autoloot but in exchange make every autolooted item reduce your zeny by the amount this item would give you when you sold it to an NPC. Inflation problem solved without giving players the inconvenience. It's questionable how well this would be received by the community, but in the end you could always say "Don't like it, don't use it." Besides, players who complain are just the ones that want easy money with no effort.

Now we have solved the inflation problem, but there are still the issues about balance. How do you balance Greed becoming useless? How do you balance looter monsters? How do you balance ranged classes having more advantage from it then melee classes? How to you prevent the problem of suicide kill tactics?

You can customize these classes of course.

I change Greed into a skill that says "Target: Ally but not self; When you use it, everyone in an 3x3 area around the target gets a buff for 5 seconds. If someone kills a monsters while the buff is active, the zeny deducted from the autoloot feature is reduced by 30%". That has a nice synergy with the system added above, gives greed a meaning again and is incredibly party friendly without allow AFK buffing. I even requires some skill to use as you need to time it right, so it makes playing more fun for the blacksmith.

I give looter monsters a special effect: When a monster is killed in a 21x21 area around a looter monster, autoloot will fail to work. This gives them a meaning again and yet you still won't have to bother picking up because if you kill the last looter monster autoloot will work again. I restored the strategy that it's important to kill the looters first too.

So what about ranged classes? Well, I'd add a system where autoloot fails to work when the monster is killed at range and there is no party member near that monster. Again encourages partying and even solo ranged classes shouldn't have a too big problem with it as monsters will go after them after the initial attack so they can just wait for the monster to draw near before finished it off.

So what about suicide tactics? I give autoloot a small delay and check after the delay if the target is still alive and on the map and only then transfer the items into the inventory.

It is possible to create a balanced, party-friendly system with (mostly) working autoloot, but whether such a system will be well received by players is still questionable.

tl;dr
Autoloot is not the solution, but no autoloot is also not the solution.

[xSanosukex]

autoloot really depends on the rate, you won't need autoloot on a server with official rates though when the rate are high like 5x then autoloot might be needed.

i was against at @autoloot back then xD but i just got tired of picking up all of the loots everytime i level or farm  on a private server stand point the only problem with autoloot is when a group / party hunts for an MVP and everyone has autoloot 

[Aswan]

I think having arealoot is the way to go. That way, range classes dont have an advantage over melees when it comes to farming stuff, but when theres a lot of loot you just have to click on one of the pirces and you get them all.

[Bue]

I think having arealoot is the way to go. That way, range classes dont have an advantage over melees when it comes to farming stuff, but when theres a lot of loot you just have to click on one of the pirces and you get them all.

giving everyone 'greed' could be chaotic too. (servers don't want to waste CPU cycles on X players performing a x by x area scan for items on the ground)

the real talk is that autoloot is too convenient to disable.

it is practically required for private servers to have it.

one of our quirks

[Zero.]

I think autoloot is a really good quality of life feature. However, it is far more than just a convenience feature and changes the gameplay a lot. Everyone has their own opinions for and against each and every feature and autoloot is no exception.

One perspective to look at is that RO wasn't designed with the idea of players being able to automatically receive all the loots. So when you implement something for the convenience of players then you need to modify the design in a manner that would still retain a close proximity to the original design.

Autoloot saves a lot of time and once you're used to it, even the thought of going back to picking items is repulsive. It's so good that people are less likely to concern themselves with inflation or how this puts ranged classes as well as hard hitters mad teleporting in an otherwise difficult map to solo, at a serious advantage. It's much easier to adapt to such change and ask everyone to do the same as well. But the biggest drawback of all is the exploitable factor. In pservers, people run bots mostly just to farm items rather than leveling. The ability to auto-loot makes AFK farming possible even without the need to use programs like opencore that is easily caught due to the fact that it is completely AI controlled. While being able to bot with simple macros and being able to monitor your progress at the same time, you can easily take control and avoid the possibly of being caught in the likely event a staff comes to check on you.

Now many people might propose ways to counter it or minimize the impact with a lot of security options that will eventually prove an inconvenience to those who play fairly as well. Don't get me wrong here, I like the feature of auto-looting as well. Question is, how far will you go to provide players a convenience feature? Will you ignore the cons and go about punishing players who exploited a feature you decided to keep or will you go the distance and cause other forms of inconvenience for the sake of convenience?