It would take coding skeelz to implement but i was thinking about an alternative loot drop system to the standard one and the diablo type one.
I've been very impressed by the task based systems I've seen on the servers here and while i do think that that could be ideal (I loved the SOF factions/items when i played live), I was also thinking about the experience when you play things straight. There didn't seem much point in going to any places but the latest expansions for loot. The best items will drop in the latest zones, because of the mudflation: to tempt people to buy the latest, it has to have uber gear, or at least more uber than the last, and year after year the old mobs become more dated.
I guess there is a balance in that the older mobs have less mitigiation etc, so what i was thinking is having a weighted formula to work out the relative value of loot, and the relative ranking of a mob, and having it so that the mob had a chance, in addition to it's normal drop, of a drop from the ranked table as well.
This will result in some silliness (spider silks dropping from sharks) but it's less silly than the diablo type, and just as silly as most randomised loot (why do creatures like skeletons carry coins? Where would some gelatinous blob even store them, wouldn't they be excreted?)
So what i was thinking was skipping any summoned, maybe tradeskill items (i would love hand made backpacks or enchanted silver bars to drop!), no rent, or artifact items.
Then summing stat bonuses, adding hp and mana and (price/100), (adding heroic stats getting triple value?) then multiplying it by a value eg (1 + haste/100 ) and similar fine tuning such as squaring hp regen and mana regen.
I'm not sure how to adjust for the classes but you could make a case statement out of the bitmask for "classes" so that usable by all has a higher value than usable by one class only, maybe things usable by anyone would have 3 times as much value as one class only since you don't have the bazaar economy usually? Similar for deity and race.
I'm not sure what sellrate does; maybe it makes the item ridiculously under priced to sell to merchant, overpriced to buy? To me, that would have a slight negative effect, as would weight.
Proc effects could be a problem as without assigning a value to each one, you could have two items of theoretically the same value, but one procs a light source and the other smotes an earthquake zone wide. Still, it's the luck of the draw! 8-]
If you have access to a spreadsheet, i exported the relevant columns in CSV for to paste in here, as far as i know i can't upload the spreadsheet directly.
Code:
"aagi" "ac" "accuracy" "acha" "adex" "aint" "asta" "astr" "attack" "augrestrict" "augtype" "avoidance" "awis" "bagslots" "bagtype" "bagwr" "banedmgamt" "banedmgraceamt" "banedmgbody" "banedmgrace" "classes" "extradmgskill" "extradmgamt" "price" "cr" "damage" "damageshield" "deity" "delay" "augdistiller" "dotshielding" "dr" "clicktype" "clicklevel2" "elemdmgtype" "elemdmgamt" "endur" "focuseffect" "fr" "haste" "clicklevel" "hp" "regen" "mana" "manaregen" "enduranceregen" "mr" "pr" "races" "range" "reclevel" "recskill" "reqlevel" "sellrate" "shielding" "skillmodtype" "skillmodvalue" "clickeffect" "spellshield" "strikethrough" "stunresist" "favor" "weight" "proceffect" "proctype" "proclevel2" "proclevel" "worneffect" "worntype" "wornlevel2" "wornlevel" "focustype" "focuslevel2" "focuslevel" "scrolleffect" "scrolltype" "scrolllevel2" "scrolllevel" "svcorruption" "purity" "dsmitigation" "heroic_str" "heroic_int" "heroic_wis" "heroic_agi" "heroic_dex" "heroic_sta" "heroic_cha" "heroic_pr" "heroic_dr" "heroic_fr" "heroic_cr" "heroic_mr" "heroic_svcorrup" "healamt" "spelldmg" "clairvoyance" "backstabdmg"
Some general thoughts about loot
Linear Mode
