Loot and Guild Wars: The item claim

I’ve been poking around in Guild Wars again lately and have been reminded of a feature that I thought was interesting back in the day. It’s kind of a slow day, as I’m working on a really nifty feature for the site that will hopefully make your visits here more useful. In light of that, I figured I should at least post something short and sweet that I’ve been intrigued at for a while.

In Guild Wars, when you run a mission (or even adventure in the world, which is still instanced for your party), all loot that drops is assigned to a player immediately. This in and of itself is just a new spin on a popular loot distribution method. Most games will simply allow people to roll for the loot if they want it, but Guild Wars assumes that you’ll want all drops, or at least not pick them up if you don’t. It’s a neat-o system, and I’ve always been a fan.

The thing I forgot about, though, is that when you finish a mission, rare or unique items assigned to you that you didn’t pick up (maybe you forgot, or you knew it would keep them for you) are available for collection in a pop up window before you leave the zone. What a good idea!

Here’s why I like this loot system better than most:

1) It encourages focus on the progression of the party and the battle rather than clicking furiously for loot.

I know I’m not the only one who thinks that people picking up loot during battles instead of waiting until the end is the first sign of the apocalypse. The evil part about picking up loot in battle is that if one person’s doing it, it’s in everyone’s interest to do it as well. Take away this incentive by assigning loot on the drop as well as giving the player no need to worry about finding their own loot, and you’ve come a long way toward solving this one.

2) It gives a nice way to pick up those items you couldn’t quite reach.

Inevitably in games, there will be items which drop way out of your physical reach. Chests, mob corpses, and other drops always have a way to put themselves out of arm’s reach at the most inconvenient of times. This system alleviates this, because any really quality drops you missed will be given to you when you leave the mission anyway.

And, because I just thought of it, here’s why I don’t like this system (I think):

I’m not sure, so someone correct me if I’m wrong, but:

1) I don’t think that this solution is given to those who leave the mission early or fail the mission.

If you don’t have enough skill or manpower to finish a mission, then it would be a downward cycle: people know they won’t get the option of collecting the good loot at the end, so they may lose focus in battle in a loot-clicking frenzy. Seems like a legitimate concern. Again, I can’t remember if this is the case.