I can't remember any of itFollow

Caution: Pipe dream ahead, mixed with nastalgia. Pipe nastalgia.

In my first days of Everquest, I believed my later years would yield countless trophies from my many battles. My equipment would be 90% composed of these trophies, with an epic tale accompanying each. I thought someone would say, "Nice bracer... where'd you get it?" and I would recount the harrowing tail of defeating countless undead beasts for a chance at the head of their captain. I would tell of how we slew the beast and how the bracelet was ripped from his body as a token of the kill.

Nope.

Not by a long shot.

"Nice bracer... where'd you get it?".

"Bazaar. I farmed metallic liquids for most of it... must have killed about a thousand of those golem things... over... and over... and over... and over... I don't actually know what monster dropped the bracelet, though. Ask that guy over there... he gets one about every other day."

Dang, I just depressed myself... gotta go drink a Mountain Dew.

...

Okay, I'm back.

At no time in my 4 year career has my equipment been composed of over 20% items that I actually looted. For most of the time, it was closer to 0%. Until I was level 40, the only thing I had to show for my work was a cup. The stein of Moggok. I don't remember anything spectacular about the one I looted, though, because I quested about 50 of them in total.

I want there to be a moderate to large bonus to items that you looted yourself. Make items tradable, but make them better for the first person to loot them. They could even call it something snazzy, like soul forging. Say that the magic is alive, and it can only truly bond to one owner at a time. The previous owner must die at the hands of the new for a new soul to forge to the item. This is all made up on the spot, but I'm trying to come up with convincing understory for my idea =P.

I would like for items to be about 30% (fuzzy number) more powerful for the first person to loot them and always tradable at a diminished effectiveness. If you do a quest, then the result is only soul forged if all of the individual quest items are soul forged. If you want to trade anything, then go ahead, but they will be less powerful than they would be for you.

I don't think this would solve every loot problem the current system has, but it would sure make it a lot more fun, imho. I would much rather quest for my stuff than farm it.

If you have a prior claim to this idea, then let me say, "I like your idea". It's new for me. I don't think it's overly creative or anything, but it sounds good floating around my head.

I also like level limits, as well. Lets say that a group of six level 30's could take out mob x at extreme high risk. The loot they get should be better than anything that a level 30 could purchase in the bazaar.

And they all lived happily ever after...

The end.

P.S. Flame away if it's a stupid or old idea. I have thick skin.

Interesting.

At lower levels it could work although it would make things endlessly complicated. But like the value of a car going down with the number of previous owners the coding would not be that hard. Where you can actually hunt for items alone or in a single group.

However. Some things are only obtainable by combined effort. None of the Epic Quests can be completed solo or even by a single group at the appropriate level. There are many other quests of which the same is true. How then do you handle that? It is not just your achievement, why should the item be worth more to you?

On raids - where all the nice things drop - it is not generally workable (due to time constraints) to have each piece looted by the final recipient. A master looter will collect everything and then the loot is awarded at the end. You have no less "earned" that item but because of the sheer mechanics did not actually loot it from the body.

Even in LDoN an ML system is the most efficient.

As for the previous owner "must die at the hands of the new". What if I am the healer? What if I don't actually hit that particular mob?

Nice idea but for a different game. Your aspirations are misplaced.

Hammer. I think alot of that is how you choose to play the game. You can certainly choose to hunt for and loot most of the gear you possess. The problem is that that method often takes longer and many players are more interested in just getting the better loot.

How much time did you spend farming metalic liquid? If you'd spent that time raiding instead, odds are you'd have lots of nice gear (and probably no-drop gear) filling your slots that you got as drops instead of purchased in the bazaar.

It's all a matter of how you want to play. I'm actually having a hard time thinking of a single item my paladin wears that he bought in the bazaar. I think I bought one of my rings and that's about it. Probably 70% of my regularly worn gear is no-drop.

The big downside to that style of play though is a lack of upgradeability. With purchased gear, you can sell your old gear back as you upgrade. With dropped stuff, you often just have to let it rot in your bank when you get an upgrade. That's a little depressing because you're not so much building up gear as just acquiring new stuff. Folks like me tend not to have a ton of money either. This is made even worse as new expansions come out and some new sellable stuff comes on the market that's just as good as the stuff I was raiding in the last expansion. This removes even the feel of making progress since anyone with cash can instantly upgrade to an equivalent of what I'm wearing, but I still have to spend more time raiding to get better stuff.


It's really up to you. I still prefer raiding for my own stuff. The game used to be a little too reliant on raiding to get gear, so they really added more droppable and tradeskill stuff to the game. Today, I think the pendulum has swung a bit too far in that direction. It's too easy to get to "next to top" level gear with money alone, making all raiding prior to Elemental level pointless (which ultimately removes content from the game, which is a bad thing IMO). Hopefully, they'll swing things back around in the next couple expansions and raiding will once again be the primary method for folks to gain better gear at high levels.

Click on my guild link (NOT WORK SAFE THIS WEEK) to see how we go about raiding. Kaganfindel really does nail our raid experience down - I have tons of screen shots where the only interesting thing to see is guild or raid chat.

The important thing is to play the game in a way that is fun for you. I love raiding, I'd raid all the time if we had enough content to go around. So yeah, every item has a story, usually with a few gratuitous expletives tossed in for spice.

But for people who prefer to farm or buy their gear, I say more power to you as long as you're having fun doing it.

Cool idea, but like many have said, it's a matter of style more then anything. My main toon (57 ranger) has looted/quested most of what he wears, but that's b/c I have this bad habit of using the money he makes to help alts "get a hand up" (AKA twink). I still do quests and such once in a while when the reward is TRUELY worth it, but more often then not, that's not the case now a days. My necro had several PoK quested items at one point, but had to upgrade when she hit 49 to continue getting my focus effects. I was able to quest 1 piece. All other items I found with the the appropriate focus effects were practically impossible for me to get. I actually just thought of a good analogy for it... most people will go to a car dealership and buy a car that is premade, yet still enjoy driving that car around. Others will build their dream car from the ground up, loving every second it took to build it, and every second they get to drive it afterwards. Sooo, it all boils down to "Are you a builder, or a buyer?"