Monday, April 25, 2011

Rift and LFD tool

Rift’s loot was not designed with the implementation of a cross server Looking for Dungeon system in mind. Mages can only use cloth, Rogues can use cloth and leather, Clerics can use cloth, leather, and chain, and Warriors can use everything. However anyone can roll need or greed on any item regardless if they can use it or even need it.

Itemization needs to be reworked. Gear types need to be specific to each archetype. Each class should only be able to use one armor type or receive a significant bonus for using their “preferred” armor type. This would encourage and reward warriors for using plate rather than leather and clerics to use chain instead of cloth. Why is this relevant; because the need and greed options need to be changed that’s why.

In WAR and now in WoW you can only roll need on usable items. This prevents other random people in your group from rolling need on items they cannot use in order to sell. HOWEVER you can’t just put restrictions on who can roll on the items in the current state of the game. PvE warriors have found leather to be better itemized for DPS and many healing Clerics have found cloth to be better than some of their chain choices. You have to change how stats are allocated along with how we roll on items.

In a normal MMO… well not normal anymore, in the past the community would police its population it’s self. We would ostracize players who acted in ways the community deemed inappropriate. The LFD system permits players to act in any manner they desire with little to no social repercussions. Logging on the forums and blasting them or trolling them on an alt isn’t practical. Therefore we need the game to implement restrictions on what players can do in dungeons in order to maintain some sort of civility among players.

Not every player is bad, in fact most are good. However those bad experiences will always stand out in our mind more than the good ones, which will eventually turn us sour on the game and the community. To be honest I would like to see this style of loot system become standard regardless of how the LFD is implemented.

I honestly believe that cross server LFD and WFs are bad for a server’s sense of community. I do however recognize that with a limited amount of people willing to participate in those activities it makes it difficult for some people to find groups without increasing the size of the player pool. It’s a double edged sword, damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

One more thing. The “Anti-LFD” people… we should call ourselves Pro Group hehe, anyways they view a LFD system as a threat to their ability to form groups. We only have a finite amount of people willing to do dungeons on a shard as it is. If you remove any portion of those people, because they choose to use the LFD tool, it makes manually forming groups harder. No not impossible, but yes harder.