Loot Tables

[nalandial]

I apologize in advance for the length of this, but loot tables turned out to be more complicated than we originally thought. John, Scat and I talked at length last night about loot tables, various issues to keep in mind, and possible implementations. Here's what we came up with.

Besides the basic situation where you have a static list for mob A dropping items X, Y, and Z, there are cases where some logic will need to be performed to determine the item dropped. The three examples we came up with are skill books, quest items, and class-specific armor from tier 7 and 8, aka "smart loot".

Quest items are fairly obvious; a mob can drop a quest item, but only if that person is on a quest. Now normally this is handled via the LUA scripts to just auto-update the item and populate the player's inventory, however in RoK they introduced quests where you actually need to loot the item from the mob to get the quest update. As Scat mentioned, this means someone could theoretically buy the item off the broker and get the update, if it was't no-trade. However the item shouldn't drop if a player in the group doesn't have that quest.

Class armor is a little trickier but should still be straight forward. Class armor are specific pieces that can only be used by a certain class and is specially designed for that class. For expansions before TSO, it works via "smart loot". This means that a piece for class C would not drop if every one of class C in the group/raid already had that piece. For example, if every Paladin in the group/raid already had their class-specific chest piece, it has a 0% chance of dropping again. This also applies to RoK. If an item which is used to make the fabled item (like the VP-set items, where an item can be used by one of four classes and there are multiple versions of that item to, in the end, support all classes), then if that piece can be used by class A, B, C, and D, and everyone of class A, B, C, and D all have that piece, it has 0% of dropping.

By the way, "having" a class armor piece doesn't necessarily mean having it equipped. It could be in the player's inventory, bank, or broker. TSO is not "smart loot" enabled. Generally they turn on smart loot near when its coming time to release the next expansion, so it's easier for everyone to gear up, so this is something we'll have to monitor in the patch notes.

The last thing we thought of was skill books. All three of us have noticed when we kill things on the island on the live servers, every time we get an Adept I, it's for our class. This has happened too much for it to be a coincidence. However, I was unable to find this anywhere in the patch notes for the last year and a half. Since we are all usually soloing on the island, we can extrapolate that it would in fact be for any class in the current group/raid. However we're not sure if this applies to ALL mobs in the game of all levels, including named mobs that would drop a Master I, not just adepts. Or if it's only for lowbies, say, less than level 10 or 20. But if it does apply, there would need to be some kind of class check to determine the loot that actually drops.

By the way, a skill book (Adept I or Master I) can be dropped from ANY mob, named or not, UNLESS it is a mob that needs to be specifically killed for a quest, aka a quest mob. These are different from normal named and should not actually drop any loot at all (unless it is a quest-specific item). A Master I CAN drop from a normal un-named mob (I have seen it happen multiple times), but it is an extraordinarily low probability. That probability is increased with named, and is 100% for epic named encounters (unless you're in T5 or below, in which case I believe you have the same probability of getting a master as a normal named mob (in T5 raiding, adept I's drop from epic encounters)).

So those are the three instances we thought of, but there may be more.

In any case, John suggested that the server be running some kind of AI so that these special situations are decoupled from actual loot tables. In other words, the loot tables shouldn't know that this AI is running. That would be ideal, because we can do the loot tables for mobs and not have to worry about it. I am not quite sure of the best way to implement this, but everyone agrees that these cases need to be kept in mind when designing this thing, so any thoughts on the matter would be greatly appreciated.

[John Adams]

Excellent presentation, Nalandial. Thank you for doing that.

Here's all I have to add. Last night as we were talking about this, I logged onto my newbie Arasai, which is still in Darklight Wood, under level 10. That toon absolutely has skill books that it cannot use (toon is coercer, books i have are for necro, zerker, and templar). So we pondered whether or not SOE, when putting out new expansions, does not globally change their previous loot systems but just adds the new functionality to the new expansion (lamers). Just a thought.

My g/f with her 983 alts seems to also remember this inconsistency. She tells me that some low level alts of hers get drops specifically for her class 100% of the time (never sees another classes drops) until she gets into places like Antonica/Commonlands or further out into the world. It is very likely that low/noob toons get a helping hand at gearing up early - but only in certain areas.

-Or-

My Arasai happened to be played at that time before TSO came out and SOE did what you suggested by loosening and focusing their drops to prep everyone for the next expansion (though I'd be surprised if they truly cared about < level 10's)

LE,
What I had considered was building a single loottable for all skill books in a given tier of character development; ie., table1 would be all books for all classes level 1-10. Stick that on a spawn with a low probability. Then, when the player kills that spawn, the server will check their level/class and pop the matching book, if the probability is matched.

Is there a simpler way you can think of to emulate this behavior?

We can probably start building the simple loot tables now and get them assigned to our newbie area spawns. But this came up, and we agreed to run it passed the code meister to see what he can come up with.

[Bion]

I think there should be a global spell list like john was saying that checks the not only the player's class and if it should drop the item or not but also the level of the mob I have never seen a mob drop a spell or item that was greater then the level of the mob. and i have not seen the mob drop a spell or item too much lower then its level or below it's tier. doing this I think would be a good way to go as you would not have to find out if this mob or that mob ever dropped a particular spell or not which would help things alot i think and make the mob drops more complete then they otherwise would beable to be.

also having a global item list that can check the mobs race type so it can smartly pick out what would be needed for its race like skelly or crabs and being dynamic like that when new mobs are added you would not have to set up each spawn specifically unless it drops loot that no other of it's type does like a name. I also think having a zone loot list would be good too so you can easily set up that any mob in this zone can drop that loot.

[ZexisStryfe]

As of Live Update 49, when under level 10, adept books that drop are for your class 100% of the time.

[LethalEncounter]

Hmm, this is going to require some thought. Lots of great ideas, I just think we should determine exactly what we want before I implement something that doesn't fulfill all the requirements. Let me know what the final requirements are going to be for this and I can code it Don't worry about the implementation details, just what you want it to do and I'll propose a solution and see what you guys think.

[nalandial]

One other thing to keep in mind is actually _when_ a mob knows what it will drop. Rather than doing it as the mob spawns (so you could target it and do /loot list and see what its "inventory" is), it may be better to do it when the player actually kills the mob, you can populate loot lazily, so if there's one person in the zone it doesn't have to do all that work on zone-in. Just a thought.

LE, I know you said not to worry about the implementation, but I couldn't help myself. As I was writing a proposed set of requirements I started thinking about a decent way to do it. Basically you could have a lootrules table, which would map an item to a rule, a rule being some piece of logic that determines which item will drop given a set of one or more items. Then you could make an entry in the items table, that isn't tied to an actual unique item id, but is instead a logical item that could point to, for example, a set of 20 actual unique items. Then in the lootrules table, you tie that logical item to one or more rules, and them for each mob you can put that logical item in the loot table. When I mentioned this to John he said it may actually be better to tie items to scripts, something easily changeable, rather than in the server-side code. Which would be nice because, as he mentioned, anyone could define whatever rules they wanted for their own servers. Anyway, just an idea. Here's the actual requirements I was going to propose.

Proposed Requirements - Please Leave Feedback

Must be able to apply logic (a "rule") to determine what loot drops from a set of possible loot items. This logic must be decoupled from the loot tables themselves, so an entry in the mob's loot table does not know if it will have logic applied to it. However it must be easy enough for someone to decide if an item will have a rule associated with it. Here are some examples of rules we know we'll need eventually, but for our own sanity's sake, it should be easy for someone to add more, arbitrary rules, since we don't know what else SOE will come up with, or what someone may want to do with their own server.

Skill Book Example: A level 3 crab on the Queen's Colony has a chance to drop crab meat, a crab carapace, or a skill book, with their respective probabilities of dropping applied first. The first two are normal items, as in, no logic needs to be applied to them. They simply drop if the roll of the dice says so. The skill book in this case is associated with a set of (for the sake of example) 20 actual items. This will apply the "noob skill book rule" which is (please comment on this): for all mobs in lowbie areas that are less than or equal to level 10, if they drop a skill book, then the rule will populate the chest with a skill book usable by a class that's in the current group, and less than or equal to the mob's level.

Class Armor ("smart loot") Example: Mayong (the x4 raid mob) from Inner Sanctum in EoF always drops a random deity alter, a master I skill, and a class chest piece. The deity alter is normal loot. The master I can be for any class, regardless of whether or not one of that class is in the raid. Additionally there is NOT an equal chance for any master to be dropped; some masters are rarer than others.

The class armor is tied to 24 actual items (one for each class). Smart loot works like this: if a piece of loot is usable by class C, if every one of class C in the raid owns that piece (bank, equipped, inventory, broker, whatever), or if there are no class C's in the raid, then the piece of loot for class C has 0% chance of dropping. If there are three Illusionists in the raid, two of which has the class chest piece and one does not, it has an equal chance of dropping, as if none of the 3 had that chest piece.

The same logic also applies to VP-set items. The way this works is you loot an item, which you can turn into an NPC to get the actual armor piece, usable by a single class. However the item you turn in can be used by one of four classes, meaning there are six different items that drop (I believe, correct me if I'm wrong). This means that the same logic applies from above, only you have to check four classes instead of 1. Let me know if this doesn't make sense.

Quest Item Example: A sarnak in Kylong Plains in RoK will drop a quest item that the player needs to loot, but only if the player (or a player in the group/raid) is on that quest. Simple enough.

This is just a proposal, so again, please leave feedback, or add any additional rules you can think of.

[Bion]

Loot rules sounds good but would such a system allow for the mob to not have a static table for it’s loot at least not fully. I think it would be nice if mobs could have an inherited loot table. The server could provide the logic in some fashion to determine what should drop. It can be base on the mobs race, class, level, deity, faction. Zone, tier and any other things, that would be the same for an entire group of mobs.

Example
We could set up what should drop from lets say all Yetis as race type then say ok if this mob is <10 then the race loot should be cheap meat if the mob level is <20 it should be little more costly meat and a chance for small bones, and it gets progressively better as it gets higher like lvl > 60 gets pelts or hides and they have varying degree of worth as it gets higher in lvls.

Then we could say ok we are in zone icy keep so lets have a chance to drop those icy tokens. And say ok this mob is “this” level and in “this” zone so it’s tier is “that”, so it should have a chance to drop these spells then check players level and look at some table to see if it has a modifier to what % should spells drop that is the same as the players class. Then it checks for the other things then finally it checks its own loot table and see if it has a specific drop.

Loot in eq2 in the old world anyway is setup like this each chest has a value that value is different on a few things what mob quality dropped it, and if named, what named dropped it. If it drops a small chest then it should not drop anything above normal loot = to the value of the chest each item has a cost. If treasured then <= treasured items etc, etc.

The reasons for these suggestions are every zone has some type of zone wide loot that any mob can drop some are limited to humanoid creatures some are limited to only animals depends on the loot. Every zone has one fabled item that can drop from any creature but has a very low chance of dropping on top of that it competes with masters there are some loot dependent on tiers like some masters or adepts, gear can drop in poet’s place off of those lvl 63,64 mobs but drop t6 stuff instead of t7 that is because even though they are lvled to be t7 they are in a t6 zone and are classified as t6.

We have to think as dynamically as possible so zones can easily be scaled this is a problem live has that I think we can correct here. From seeing some dev posts scaling zones are hard for them because they have to add the loot per lvl for every mob instead of that system being designed to do that from the start. Which would only help us a little bit from a emu standpoint, since we will not be scaling any zone that does not scale on live. But for custom servers this would be amazing.

Having the server do a lot of this checking should reduce the overall amount of personal spawns loot tables. Which should help not only in entering all this data, but managing it as well. Since you would not have each of the 30 or so crabs with the same loot entered 30 times just the once. There will be less chances for mistakes.

I do not think specific masters are rarer then others as intent I believe all that to be bugs / short sided designing that loot.

Here is why mobs will drop masters or anything really it’s lvl or only 2 or 3 lvls below its lvl and never under it’s current tier some mobs have exceptions to this where gear is it’s specific drop but spells don’t drop much less then it’s current lvl. Add this with the fact it can drop 24 different classes but has only one slot sometimes 2 slots to do this in.

then add in the fact there are not a whole lot of names of all lvl ranges and even though masters can drop from solo type mobs it is very rare and competes with the whole 24 different class and can be more the 1 spell per class.

So it is easy to have some masters more rare then others and also there are some that way because of dev mistakes like the one with the monks lvl 70 fd they were not even going to put it into the loot tables for mobs until one name was bugged and dropped it by mistake. Or something like that.

[nalandial]

I really like your idea Bion, of having items be "blanketed" by certain types, e.g. race, zone, tier, etc. I agree this would be really, really helpful in all the ways that you mentioned.

Now that you say that about masters dropping, it actually makes sense. Lower level masters are rarer because people have to farm them to get the masters they want, since all raiding is towards the upper end of the tier. I hadn't thought about that.

[LethalEncounter]

Wow, I'm not used to such large and thought-out posts. I'm used to dealing with JA (j/k) Anyways, give me a few days to process all of this (I have limited free time during the week) and I'll start working on it this weekend.

[John Adams]

I'm used to dealing with JA

Uh, standing right here???

[John Adams]

~nudge~ this for LE. I'd like us to get back to this discussion and come to some conclusions how LOOT actually works in Live, and how we can implement the "smarter loot system" here.


Edit: Thanks to Zam's, we can take a top-down look at some mobs "loot tables", and finally understand how dynamic (and maybe impossible) they are. It may be best to create a server-side AI that "pops" loot into the mobs loot table upon death, depending on many variables.

Take a look at the crab mentioned above:
http://eq2.zam.com/db/mob.html?eq2mob=5 ... 5358ea7c6c 153 drops? C'mon!

[Bion]

thought this was interesting from the live forums

So what is the difference between a "chance at smartloot" and the random chance that the master that drops being usable by someone in the group? A "chance at smartloot" is in fact NOT smartloot imo.

So there are two percentages that are set on master drops. There is the drop percentage, which means monster X has an X% chance to drop a master spell.

Then there is the smartloot percentage, which means aside from the drop rate, if a master drops what percentage chance is it that someone will need it.

So a boss mob that has a 10% chance to drop a master and it has 33% smartloot, means that when it drops, there is a 33% chance that its a spell someone in your group needs.

If you think about it, with there being currently eventy-billion spells and abilities on a given tier, 33% that its something you need is light years better then the alternative.

I see how people see the smartloot as not so smartloot, I hope that helps.

Link

[Zcoretri]

Can't believe my corporate network blocks the SOE and zam sites, but I can get to this one...<boggle>

[alfa]

For some quest (like Mythical Quest) player need to loot a specific item on a corpse.
Each player that need a item should clic on corpse of mob this will display a loot window with the item. Only the player have clic see the loot window. Player can clic on corpse in each loot mod (Leader Only, FFA, NbG,...). The window that display is the same you have when you are solo a loot a classic item.
Until each player that need the loot from mob have loot it, the mob stay.

[alfa]

If every one of class C in the raid owns that piece (bank, equipped, inventory, broker, whatever), or if there are no class C's in the raid, then the piece of loot for class C has 0% chance of dropping.

Piece should be transformed (not only the pattern) and should be equipped too