An introduction: you can call me Doctor Loot

[Ehmadeus]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
The only things exciting about random loot at the moment is multiple or odd slot colors to use as crafting blanks and the occasional cursed/mastercrafted/wondrous crafted item that happens to have a useful affix. A solid affix with two slots or a rare slot will also pique my interest.

- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
A large number of the one-handed weapons are hard for me to find a reason to keep/equip. I'm working my way into more melee lives, so that opinion may change.

- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.
My main character is currently using three non-named items:
>Crafted feather fall ring of resistance +4 with yellow and colorless slots containing topaz of deathblock and diamond of vitality +20 augments with master craftsmanship added. (ML13)
>Ogre Power +6 gloves with Topaz of fear immunity and diamond of charisma +5 augments
>Health +6 belt with a green slot containing a sapphire of false life +25.

Secondary characters are using stat items and deadly items.

Note: trying to add in-line comments to a quote is an amusing effort.

[Urist]

We need more augments with more stuff on them, especially Healing needs to be on a yellow like yesterday.

And make it easier to obtain the specific one/s we want, too. I can see absolutely no reason why, for example, +1-3 stat augments shouldn't be purchasable using just plat.
Is it my imagination, or is it far far easier to acquire ML16-20 augments, than ML1 ones?

[redspecter23]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

So in the name of listening rather than blathering on and on, I’d like to ask you all a few questions as a sort of pulse-check on the state of loot. Go on and fill up the thread – I’ll check back in after the weekend (and a bit today, as schedule permits), with head-nods, follow-up questions, and answers where necessary.

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

(In the future, I’m planning some similar question sessions about named loot and named loot systems, BTW.)

Besides the diversity issue, my biggest loot with random loot isn't so much the loot, but the undocumented and completely ignored nerf to ability tomes in both drop rate and min chest level required. Something was changed with U19. We were never told and all attempts at communication on the forums have met with a giant brick wall from Turbine. Is it an accident? On purpose? Will it be fixed?

I think most weapon types and equipment are served adequately right now. There will always be some types of weapons that have fewer named versions. We could probably use some more Dwarven Axes. A compelling reason to actually choose a shortbow over a longbow would be nice.

For non-named loot my character wears, deadly is pretty much a staple on my melees now as should be obvious. I have a con 10 of 45 hp set of boots I've been wearing at endgame. If I were ever able to pull an elusive +11 stat item with a decent suffix that suits my toon, I'm sure I'd try to fit that in. As far as loot gen weapons are concerned, they are all boring and generic currently and even while leveling a new toon recently, I stuck with named rapiers from level 8 to cap. I'm sure you've already gotten the idea, but loot gen weapons are a huge pile of boring right now. Feather's recent post detailing some upgrades is a step in the right direction. Healing amp and parrying (no, riposte is not the same) on equipment are the two abilities I miss the most and are very useful. I'd like to see them come back.

[Fefnir_2011]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

So in the name of listening rather than blathering on and on, I’d like to ask you all a few questions as a sort of pulse-check on the state of loot. Go on and fill up the thread – I’ll check back in after the weekend (and a bit today, as schedule permits), with head-nods, follow-up questions, and answers where necessary.

Nice to meet ya! Speaking of items, I hope you're wearing your Fireproof Undaroos of Asbestos Guard, and your +5 Cold Burst of Trollbane, you'll need both in great supply to brave the forums.

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?

I'm bored with it. Most of my end rewards are the same thing. Variety is great, but also meaningful variety. Before MotU, I only checked items for guild slots, and otherwise always took renown. in the post-MotU, pre-loot bork, I kept an eye out for any rare/unique weapon permutations, because even if it wasnt optimal, it was fun to have options. Now, I don't bother taking ANY items because there's 200 more just like it on the AH.

- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?

Weapons for divines who have a focus on casting. Also, the new loot is doing a good job of taking us away from the Big 5 (khopeshes, greatswords, greataxes, longbows, wraps). It'd still be nice to see named weapons for things like maces, scimitars, shortbows, great club, etc... that are on parity with the more popular weapon types. The problem with randomness in weapons is that it's artificial variety that mostly adds luck of the draw aspects to looting. Variety is good. Lottery playing is bad.

- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

Cursed Bracers of False Life +30, Cursed Ring of the Archmagi, Cursed Item of Stat +6: love these because now I can get my +6 int item on at level 9
Red slot Weapon of x Lore: The changes to spell lore means that the difference between Fire Lore III and IV is 1%. So now I keep Cannith crafted weapons with Red augments, and slot them with the appropriate spellpower for my level. I love it cause my caster sticks level with me now.

[BurnerD]

Welcome

I would really like to see more done with augments and crafting.

The base items with this level of flexibility should be ultra rare drops or raid loot.

1. It would be nice to have an item grow with you (more than just upgrading the augments now). Being able to upgrade base damage, crit profile, or multiplier would be neat
2. More unlockable slots as levels increase.
3. Being able to infuse spells into a slot (from a scroll)... rechargeable by the character or a npc... Item is upgraded with a spell holding slot.. can hold a charge of GH for example. Number of charges and level of charges could be upgraded....

Doing these things should not be easy or cheap. Rare drops from specific quests or raids, or collecting a large number of something would be possibilities. For the latter let's say you want to increase an elemental damage (acid for example). Via Cannith crafting you would have to crunch a random loot containing acid damage to get a augment fragment. Level 1 = 5 fragments, Level 2 - 20, Level 3 = 50, etc... The requirements per level should go up dramatically. This would allow you to increase damage of said weapon over a long period of time. Of course the bean counters would be happy because you could sell some of these also, but not everything should be store available.

Some thought would have to be given to ML adjustments as slots are unlocked and augment are improved, but a cap level item should have no hard limit. the amount of materials required at some point would become unrealistic to obtain, but it would allow obsessed players to continually modify loot. Maybe the number of weapons / items would need to be limited per character.

I'd also like to see aesthetic crafting for items as well so if you invest the time and effort for a special weapon you can spend some resources to modify the appearance.

[Darkrok]

As the new loot dev, could you please put some pressure on the appropriate people to fix some enhancements that break the named short sword Celestia.

See this thread for an example of specific details.

Wanted to bump that one first. Big issue for certain builds.

Tons of other good feedback here. I'd just like to echo that raid loot should always be superior in some way to random loot. Crafted should be better than random as well. Cannith Crafting desperately needs access to any new random items in the game - if I can get it in a random chest then I should be able to craft it.

Deadly was a huge mistake going along those same lines. It allows random chest loot to eclipse Cannith Crafted and raid items.

I've got quite a bit of random stuff I wear on assorted toons. Mostly what's already been mentioned here - high value stat items, healing amp, parrying, deadly, resistance, etc.

[BruceTheHoon]

Hello and welcome!

I haven't been playing much since the latest expansion, but I can at least tell, what bothered me about loot back then.

My issue with the loot has been, that it forced me to play the lottery. With so many random effects, the combinations desirable to me were just ground up into near infinitesimal dust of unlikely probability. I used to mitigate that very well by investing time and other resources into Cannith crafting, but that's been left to rot with the first expansion. Suddenly my custom weapons were, comparatively speaking, **** and the system to get substitutions was reduced to: "get extremely, incredibly lucky". The only loot I still enjoyed getting has been raid loot.

[slarden]

Welcome.

For me the biggest things missing from loot are healing amp items and parrying accessories. I loved the healing amp bracers of superior parrying when they used to drop.

Healing amp is important to conserve healer spell points in raids/quests and also for any self-healing character relying on cure serious/critical wounds. Repair amp would also be nice.

I like the EN, EH and EE versions of gear in gianthold but I felt there should be a way to upgrade items like there is in Fall of Truth. One option would be to upgrade a tier with commendations of valor. Maybe 500 Coms to upgrade EN to EH and 1000 coms to upgrade EH to EE.

Lastly, think Shroud. People love the Shroud crafting mechanism that allows you to customize your gear with multiple tiers. Additionally, Shroud really supported the TR process by providing gear that could be used at level 11/12 and was still good at end game. It would be great if something like this existed for Epic TR. The main appeal for me was I loved not having to worry about switching all my gear every level.

Thank you.

[EllisDee37]

Oh, a lot of people have mentioned both augments and crafting, but just to highlight the holy grail:

Let us craft augments. For example, craft a shard of heavy fortification. Disjunct any blue, green or purple augment (all non-named augments should be disjunctable), add potential if necessary, and slap on heavy fort. Voila.

Instead of prefix/suffix, crafted augments would only be able to take a single shard.

Of course you'd have to add proper spell power to cannith crafting for crafting red augments, which currently tops out at a paltry 66. And then that opens the can of worms that is cannith crafting, which as a whole is about as out of date as its spell power shards.

[rimble]

This may not just be 'loot' related, but please keep in mind the 'searchability' of items as they are created. Finding things on the AH is really tiresome right now. 'Flaming' encompasses all of 'Flaming I' through 'Flaming VIII'. We can't search for augment slots. Things like that.

[RapkintheRanger]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

So in the name of listening rather than blathering on and on, I’d like to ask you all a few questions as a sort of pulse-check on the state of loot. Go on and fill up the thread – I’ll check back in after the weekend (and a bit today, as schedule permits), with head-nods, follow-up questions, and answers where necessary.

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

(In the future, I’m planning some similar question sessions about named loot and named loot systems, BTW.)

I have a couple of concerns:

1. Some of the random loot is better than stuff you had to work hard for. Dream visor anyone? Some other GH stuff that was top of the line is now less valuable than random loot. It seems backwards. you should be able to get good stuff and useable functional stuff from random loot, but top of the line?

2. I play a ranger. Paralyzing used to be such an important affix for a bow. At level 12 a paralyzing bow DC 17 was great. Now however Level 26 DC ranger enhancement has made those bows pointless.

3. There was always the second problem with paralyzing bows which has been eclipsed by the DC26 enhancement: but it was this... you can find "paralyzing" on bows up to 28 but they are still DC17. Which means that they are not effective at those levels and 2 they are still not as good as the arrow enhancement in the AA tree.

I really feel that the paralyzing in the AA tree should be weaker at lower levels and power up as you level up so that it scales with the saves of monsters. Likewise i think that you should be able to get bows (or augments for paralyzing bows) that have DCs that make them relevant.

[DrOctothorpe]

Just wanted to pop in and say thanks to everyone for the swift and voluminous response. Keep it coming. This is good stuff. I'm taking notes.

[DagazUlf]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?

Roman Numeral notation. Please get rid of this. It may save text space, but it makes the loot bland and dull and is really quite confusing for determination of what exactly it does.

[Desonde]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

So in the name of listening rather than blathering on and on, I’d like to ask you all a few questions as a sort of pulse-check on the state of loot. Go on and fill up the thread – I’ll check back in after the weekend (and a bit today, as schedule permits), with head-nods, follow-up questions, and answers where necessary.

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

(In the future, I’m planning some similar question sessions about named loot and named loot systems, BTW.)

Hiya!

1) The largest problem I have with random loot today is that at low levels it cannot compete with named loot, and at high levels the dual odds system kicks in (You need something that the creatures you fight are not immune to, or a boost that is slightly better than what you have on, and it must spawn on the specific item you want to use [this is where the Cannith Crafting was supposed to assist, but it turned into a system that required a lot of extra loot to drop to grind levels to access the tiers needed, different rant of that though]).

2) At low levels, false life and constitution, prr bonuses, as well as blood/healing amp type mods. Until people can crawl above the 100% fort the low health and 20 dmg crit hits from dual wielding scimitar users is a pretty extreme hole to climb out of.

3) Deadly of Accuracy items are really nice, the higher the better as it easily knocks a named item from it's slot. Solar of Heartseeker/Bloodletting/Ribcracking are may favorite non-named weapons [they stop trying to be cute with situational effects/weak bonus, and just add pure dmg for the power creep that's become so prevalent].

[Grailhawk]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?

First what do you think are the issue we can correct you if there not?

1. Some of it is better then named loot.
2. The numbers go to high. Deadly 10, +10 stat items the game wasn't ready for that.

- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?

Heavy armor needs love in general. We have returned to a point where robes are the only real option anyone uses.

It would be cool to see a few awesome one-handed axes that can give Balizarde a run for its money (aka axes with a great crit profile)

- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

+10 Deadly of Resistance 10
Convalescence of Parring
+10 Main stat item

[QuantumFX]

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?

That, with incredibly rare exception, it completely overshadows named loot of the same level.
That, thanks to things like greensteel, I have to leave the item descriptions turned off. Now, thanks to the new random loot, I can't gauge how powerful a random loot weapon really is.

- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?

I think that the removal of burst effects was an indirect and unfortunate nerf to weapons with good crit profiles. I understand the need to “Make other weapon types desirable”. But the current effects are insanely boring. <Damage> Burst should be something that builds off your new system. Perhaps drop the base damage by a die and add back the old on crit effect for the same level enchantments.

I also loathe the fact that my rogue and artificer are expected to give up serious inventory space for skill gear. Instead of **** like +15 Hide and separate +15 Move Silently gear, give me +15 Stealthy gear that gives +15 to both.

- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

Mainly the Wonder crafted items, A couple of my characters wear Convalescent of Parrying VIII bracers, and Deadly of Accuracy gear.

Note: I *really* look forward to the named items discussion.

Edit: You have my permission to be “horrible” at your job. Because “Being really good at your job” got us to this sad state.

[darkly_dreaming]

Aside from the overall lack of diversity, the change that happened which bothers me the most is tactics enchantments on the wrong (or should I say WRONG) weapon types. Like Vorpal on hammers and Stunning on rapiers in random lootgen.

Ok, on named loot becuase you know ... named loot is supposed to be special, it can have special, wacky, normally impossible to find enchantments.

You stab people with rapiers, you don't hit them over the head and stun them. You wack people with hammers, you don't slice their heads off.

Minor maybe, but it just doesn't sit well to me.

[Qhualor]

Happy Friday, everyone. I’d like to introduce myself as a bit of a new dev face on the forums. First, it’s about time I quit lurking, and second, I’m putting on an additional hat on the DDO team. What hat is that? In a word: loot. I’m here to listen to you and to keep my eyes on the big picture. Yes, that includes avoiding Ghostbane-situations.

So in the name of listening rather than blathering on and on, I’d like to ask you all a few questions as a sort of pulse-check on the state of loot. Go on and fill up the thread – I’ll check back in after the weekend (and a bit today, as schedule permits), with head-nods, follow-up questions, and answers where necessary.

- Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
- What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
- I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.

(In the future, I’m planning some similar question sessions about named loot and named loot systems, BTW.)

1) diversity is pretty much my biggest issue. Ghostbane practically in every chest and end reward list. We need more flavor. There's some things missing like many different types of bane and everbright is missing. Some of the random loot is actually BIS than some equivalent level named loot. I think this is wrong and invalidates named loot and takes away reasons for running certain quests.

2) I see a lot of the same named weapons like great sword, short sword and long bow. There needs to be more diversity in types of weapons. Dwarven axes and melee staves need some love. Also, a lot of the named gear can be underwhelming. There needs to be better scaling based on level range. Honestly, a min level 20 ESOS should be outclassed by level 28, but its not.

3) still wearing old gear passed down for heroic TRing. By mid levels they use a lot of the old loot from raids like VOD, Hound and Abbot plus GS is obviously great to use. TOD sets need to work again and updated. I'm not a fan of BTCoE loot. For heroic leveling I just want to pass stuff to alts, so I don't bother with slots either. Epic gear I don't mind if its BTCoE. I don't do a lot of epic questing since I've been on a TR train for all my characters for a long time now, so don't have a lot of epic gear. What they do have is old Chrono, VON and DQ epic gear so they have a lot of catching up to do.

[Kaytis]

I will add to the chorus. Genesai was one of the best loot designers ever. Take at a look at his rework of the carnival epic items. He had a thread on the forums dedicated to it. It was inspired and it is that level of thought and effort we need in named loot.

My advice -don't worry about over-powered random loot. It's actually not that big a deal -taking it away will only mean that new toons are SOL. Instead I would do this:

Give the same power, plus a little bonus of some kind, to named loot and lower the ML. That's what makes named loot nice: the same power as a higher level item plus some nice add ons.

Make Cannith crafting on par with current loot gen. This is a big ticket item, but it really needs to be done. In particular striding needs to be replaced with all flavors of speed, and at least +10 stat items are needed. There are plenty of other things needed too, those are just the ones that spring to mind.

Make interesting loot. The Roderick's Wand, Royal Guard Mask, pale green ioun stone are great examples. Even if the effects are just silly (like the Rodericks wnad) they are still fun and make the pastime more enjoyable.

If you are going to put random effects on items, MAKE THEM SYNERGISTIC. Don't just throw any old garbage on an otherwise decent +5 evo item.

Once upon a time, there were rare caster sticks that in addition to sp boosts and dc boosts, also had reductions in metamagic costs. These sticks were very rare indeed and it was like striking gold finding a good one. That's the kind of feeling you want people to have when they pull that one crazy good item.

There is an absolute truckload of named loot in the game, particularly from the old epics, that are utterly worthless now. It could not hurt to go back and boost those items, especially the epics which are nigh impossible to make in some cases. For the work involved they should be dramatically more powerful. See Genesai's work for ideas. You might want to pose to the forums a question as to what epic level items people still use and why. For me the last holdout is the ring of elemental essence, and that will be retired when I get my guardian ring.

Good luck. I suspect you are going to need it.

[Ralmeth]

Welcome! I'd be glad to add my two coppers.

Question: Aside from the diversity issue, what are the biggest problems with random loot, today?
Answer:
1) Named items should be better than random lootgen equipment.
2) There's way too much vendor trash. There should be some sort of formula involved that sets a range of how good a piece of equipment is, based on the min level of the equipment. For example, at higher levels speed items are pretty useless unless you find one with 25-30% striding. Stat bonus for higher level equipment that only add 1, 2 or 3 to a particular stat are useless. Armor and shields that don't have the highest or close to the highest plus aren't very helpful. Etc. I don't want every piece of random loot to be useful. I'd prefer less loot (just add more plat to chests), but when you do find something it should have a chance at being useful.

Question: What weapon and equipment types do you feel are underserved in named and in random loot?
Answer:
As someone who plays a S&B Paladin more often than any of my other characters:
1) A good devotion item that is not a weapon. It would be nice to see a good devotion item as a different item (ex. ring, helm, necklace, etc).
2) Healing amp equipment is very underserved. I feel like my couple pieces of healing amp equipment are glued to my character and limit my gearing options.
3) Useful shields, as most are junk. I'd really like to see some good shields with tactic effects, such as stunning & vertigo.
4) A good, general purpose elemental beater, something akin to smiting, disruption, etc.

Question: I’d love to hear about some of the non-named loot your character’s are currently wearing.
Answer:
Sure, currently my Paladin main is at level 21 (for reference), and I have a Cannith Crafted +5 Spiked Tower Shield of Bashing +8 with a blue augment slot that I regularly use. Also have a Vertigo version as well. I have a pair of back-up speed boots for when I don't have a haste. Oh, and of course a Deadly of Accuracy necklace. As for weapons, I keep some specific enemy type weapons around such as a generic smiting & disruption weapon.