People who ninja for their companions

[Setanian]

Is there a tooltip when you put your mouse over need or greed?

 

what about the tutorial thingy about looting?

 

I don't have tooltips turned on.

[GellonSW]

Sooo ... if everyone got a mission reward window after each FP boss is downed with 2-3 random items that boss drops and you can select one, then it wouldn't really matter, because the people that feel it's ok to roll for companions would get an item, and the people who don't agree with it wouldn't care, because they would be getting to pick an item as well.

 

Or does that make me a socialist, and 'challenge' and 'achievement' are then nullified because your winning a roll does not also mean that someone else lost?

 

 

That's exactly how DDO implements their loot system. Boss chests (there is no loot off dead mob) spawn randomly generated rewards based on the list the mob has for EACH player. What you choose to do with it pass it on/keep for yourself etc is left to the player. I'd much prefer it that way and dispense with the nonsense.

[JediMasterShake]

Can I play?

 

I grab the bread. The fact that it no effect on whether the other person survives, means they don't need it any more than I.

 

Merit of the analogy? None. This was a real life scenario. What we're debating in the thread is for a game.

 

You claim that this scenario doesn't apply because it's "real life"...

 

What about gear in this game isn't real life?

 

Does it exist? Yes, on the bioware servers. There are particles on an atomic level in the world that correspond to your gear. You can't OWN the gear or the particles, BW does, but they exist.

 

Plus, they have inherent value to us as gamers. Just like the bread.

 

Tell me, how isn't this real life? Am I dreaming? Do we not pay to play this game? Do I need to link to gold farming websites?

 

Oh, and the fact that you would take the bread tells me more than enough about you as a person, and I'm guessing it's quite illuminating when categorizing the type of people that roll Need for companions.

Edited January 17, 2012 by JediMasterShake

[Kubernetic]

I often roll Greed instead of Need for armor or items that my main could use, simply because I spend credits to make sure their armor and items are usually better quality than anything that drops.

 

So for me to roll Need for something a companion needs is hardly stealing from anyone. I give MUCH more back than I get.

 

There have been quite a few times where I run with groups through missions, roll Greed on every single item, and watch other players Needing and Greeding and winning every roll (even when we're all rolling Greed). We get to the end of the mission, I've seen blues and purples go out to other players, I check my inventory and I've received NOTHING through the entire mission.

 

Sometimes it goes one way, sometimes it goes another. The mature thing to do is not complain about it and hold grudges and get ticked off, and just move on with your life.

 

It's a game. Please treat it like one.

[notebene]

That's exactly how DDO implements their loot system. Boss chests (there is no loot off dead mob) spawn randomly generated rewards based on the list the mob has for EACH player. What you choose to do with it pass it on/keep for yourself etc is left to the player. I'd much prefer it that way and dispense with the nonsense.

 

Sounds sensible to me, and it would seem the mechanic is already there for something similar in this game (mission reward window, which then pops up into 'pending' if you either accidentally click away or choose not to address it at that time, i.e., you're still in combat).

 

Then the argument wouldn't exist, at least as intense. There'd still be rolling on some greens and blues that drop from random mobs, but most of the time I'm running a dungeon, it's often because there are specific 'OJ' (moddable) boss drops I want, and 'often' times they aren't 'specifically' tuned for my class, but I can certainly use the 'shell' of the item. Like the Hammer Initiate's Top/Bottom for an IA (medium armor), though it comes modded for someone else (I don't know my classes well, but whoever uses med/str/end).

[Nuzt]

Its going to happen, I personally think its pretty lame but thats just my opinion. Unfortunately it was a world boss, this has happened to me in flkashpoints at which point I just leave the group. Leaving the group is usually followed by tells explaining how long said players were LF tank ect ect, I just ecxplain to them that they can blame the person that thinks their "pet" is more important then the other players. Don't lose sleep over it imo theres always going to be greedy people that justify it in their own heads.

[Eldren]

Hey Eldren, here's a post I wrote for you that first night, when you were claiming that the idea of passing loot that wasn't designed specifically for your class was socialist.

 

...

 

Here's a hypothetical to test the tenets that Eldren claims to live by:

 

You are walking down the sidewalk and a bread truck is running a promotion, free bread! They are tossing it onto the sidewalk, one loaf per 5 blocks. They toss one directly between you and a what looks to be a very, very poor person. (You have no proof, but theres no reason to think they are not borderline homeless. This is your own estimation). You can reach out and try to grab this bread, and you have a 50% chance to snatch it.

 

Now, for the sake of the hypothetical, take these as givens, don't poke holes in the situation. There is a thing, you have a perfectly equal right to it as person 2, an equal chance to acquire it if you choose to pursue, except they NEED it more than you. You like bread, you can surely use it. But it provides them more marginal utility. (one last given: it will have no effect on whether or not this person survives.)

 

 

What do you do? And please, answer the hypo as given, then feel free to comment as you wish on the merit of the analogy to the current discussion.

 

Welcome back, JMS. Try not to misrepresent me here, however. Inherently, the notion of passing on gear not specifically designed for your class isn't socialist; on the surface, at least, is isn't anything, since we have no paradigm within which to work. What I did say was that giving up a shot at an upgrade solely because someone else "needed" it "more" was socialist in its implications. It's one reason why attempts to refer back to previous points in an online thread can be so unwieldy: you need to provide context, which makes for massively ballooning post sizes.

 

In a real-life scenario such as you've posted, where it becomes a potential issue of life or death for a human being, I'm going to not only let them have the bread, I'm likely to offer to take them to the nearest fast food restaurant and purchase them a value meal. I live in a large city here in the U.S., with a fair-sized homeless population that clusters in our downtown core. You can't avoid them as they're panhandling. I've bought such folks meals before because it pleased me to do so.

 

In this game, you don't have the same considerations. Just as my one sparring partner here, the "bean counter" as he calls himself, might say I don't "need" the upgrade from a FP when quest rewards will suffice, and that this differential should be enough to motivate me to forebearance in favor of another player, I'd say someone in this game doesn't need the upgrade to the point of an "I can't play" scenario, and is mostly just upset that they lost a loot roll to someone else.

 

But it's pointless to get into minutia like that, because it just gets past the point of being reasonable. It's also largely pointless to draw real-world corollaries, which have applications in a paradigm that includes significant penalties for misbehavior (my aforementioned fiscal/incarceration/death penalties). We have no formalized, ratified set of social mores to draw on here, in a four week-old game whose individual servers are still developing personalities that will hopefully progress over years.

 

At the end of it all, it comes down to "is it an upgrade?" If so, roll Need, as this is how the system is designed to work. It doesn't hold up under much more scrutiny than that, and hasn't even held up in WoW, where it was largely codified (if not originated as a game-side mechanic) over the long haul, as Blizzard has made recent adjustments to alleviate player concern over improper disbursement of loot in an environment that has even less personal accountability than before in the wake of group content now incorporating server groups instead of individual servers.

 

If TOR reaches that point, some adjustment may be required. Some adjustment may still be required prior to that point. Upgradeable companions are a completely new paradigm in MMOs, which means BioWare will tick a lot of people off while they work the kinks out of the system. My personal prediction (admittedly sourced in nothing more than gut feeling) is NBG won't last the long haul of this game unless they add class requirements to all FP loot drops and then add a smart-looting companion loot box to each boss' loot table for the players to roll on. But we'll have to wait and see.

[Setanian]

Does it exist? Yes, on the bioware servers. There are particles on an atomic level in the world that correspond to your gear. You can't OWN the gear or the particles, BW does, but they exist.

 

This is untrue. If you pull the switch on the bioware servers, where is your gear now?

[andrewsuh]

Lol... its clear that both setanian and eldran are trolls

 

they are just messing with you guys on the forums cuz they bored.

 

I guarantee setanian will not need roll on everything in game.

[Setanian]

Its going to happen, I personally think its pretty lame but thats just my opinion. Unfortunately it was a world boss, this has happened to me in flkashpoints at which point I just leave the group. Leaving the group is usually followed by tells explaining how long said players were LF tank ect ect, I just ecxplain to them that they can blame the person that thinks their "pet" is more important then the other players. Don't lose sleep over it imo theres always going to be greedy people that justify it in their own heads.

 

You highlight "pet" as if it is an afterthought by the designers. I'm pretty sure the companion system, and the ability to gear it is unique to MMO genre. As such it becomes more than just a pet. It is an extension of your character.

 

Attempting to level from 1-50 without would be do-able, but only the masochists would try

Edited January 17, 2012 by Setanian

[Setanian]

Lol... its clear that both setanian and eldran are trolls

 

they are just messing with you guys on the forums cuz they bored.

 

I guarantee setanian will not need roll on everything in game.

 

You have no idea who I am, where I am, anything else about me, yet you can guarantee stuff like this.

 

Do you have whole religions worshipping your powers too?

[JediMasterShake]

This is untrue. If you pull the switch on the bioware servers, where is your gear now?

 

That is your response?

 

 

k.

[HexHammer]

Or.. Remove 'need' altogether. The problem with the 'need' option is some players feel it gives a divine right, which they do not have.

 

Removing 'need' fixes all eventualities.

That would be even worse!

 

It has to be like WoW did it, with only being able to need on gear that fits your class.

[profaneascension]

It's become pretty clear to me from this maelstrom of opinions (there are at least three different threads going on about this) that the best thing for BioWare to do is to implement loot tokens. It robs the game of the traditional RPG flavor, but it's their fault for not thinking through this system of modded gear and companions.

 

Each boss should drop a token for every player character involved in the encounter, as well as a "supertoken" that could be rolled for by everyone. The supertoken could then be exchanged for an item on a 1 for 1 basis, and a range of other items of varying quality could be purchased with the regular tokens.

 

There, now you've taken greed, ninjas, whatever, all out of the equation. Why the heck not?

Edited January 17, 2012 by profaneascension

[Setanian]

That would be even worse!

 

It has to be like WoW did it, with only being able to need on gear that fits your class.

 

Why is it worse?

 

it has been proven that the more you offer, the more greedy players become. The only thing 'need' does is inform others that you need the item.

 

This has fostered the whole "you don't need it more than me" type arguments and this one, you cannot (like anyone can dictate) need for your companion.

 

Players somehow believe that they as a player have more right to the loot than my companion if they press 'need'.

 

By removing the 'need' option. It is a completely fair and level playing field. If you roll and you win great, if you roll and lose, there is next time.

 

It does not have to be like how wow did it at all. Because how wow did it suits your argument, does not make it fact.

[Slteath]

1. Need vs. greed is a courtesy.

the whole system is base on the idea that someone will have more benefit from an item than others. So let's say that every single drop in the game can either enhance your stat or turn into credits. But since some item are BoP, credit will not buy you back the item to enhance your stat. And credit has more than one way to obtained. So in MY OPINION, item(stat) > credit.

 

2.Stat on main vs. companion

while many of you argue that companion is important because you cannot solo a lot of content without companion. I agree, you do need your companion to go thru the content. However, I do not agree on two things. Companion will never be as strong as a same level PC due to the fact that they are just bots. Unless you firmly believe that your same level companion is more effective than an actual player(provided they are at least average skilled), then I am speechless and no pt to make this debate any longer. And so, IMO, increasing stat on a PC is more important than on a companion

 

3. Benefit in the sense of all PC and companions in a group.

so if you considering MY OPINION of PC stat is more important than companion STAT, then as someone suggest, there should be an option for rolling need for companion, however, the game doesn't have it. So while some people scale up to the "Need", some people scale down to "Greed".

 

4. JUST PURE MY OPINION

your companion doesn't need that legendary epic heavy armor to help you to go thru your class quest.....blue item is more than enough. or if you have orange, enhancement is like 4-5K on GTN. so don't play barbie with them, you really, will be fine. Besides, think of it as this, "instead of making my solo experience more smooth, you are helping another player solo experience even smoother.

[Nuzt]

You highlight "pet" as if it is an afterthought by the designers. I'm pretty sure the companion system, and the ability to gear it is unique to MMO genre. As such it becomes more than just a pet. It is an extension of your character.

 

Attempting to level from 1-50 without would be do-able, but only the masochists would try

 

I don't disagree, I just view the companion as a glorified "pet" its really nothing more in the end. You can dress a dog up in clothing and give it a name but in the end it is still a dog.

[iain_b]

As far as I'm concerned no one should be needing any gear for their companion whatsoever if a real player needs it for their own character.

 

An argument can be made that if you are in a Flashpoint/Heroic group and your companion is contributing than they should have a right to gear they need that drops.

 

However, in the case of the OP (50+ pages ago), the companion did not contribute to the the boss kill thus they should not be getting any gear.

[Elysith]

This is my stance on the subject (just quoting what I posted in a related thread)

 

For me I would simply want the NEED option to be selectable for one player only if:

 

The player's character can equip it.

 

OR

 

The player's companion can equip it AND this companion is present in the current party.

 

Because In my opinion, the only characters (player or companion) who deserve priority on a loot, are the ones who helped to obtain such drop in the first place, and not the absent characters.

 

And obviously, the loot obtained through the NEED option should be automatically bound. (just the same way items are bound when you equip them).

[JediMasterShake]

Welcome back, JMS. Try not to misrepresent me here, however. Inherently, the notion of passing on gear not specifically designed for your class isn't socialist; on the surface, at least, is isn't anything, since we have no paradigm within which to work. What I did say was that giving up a shot at an upgrade solely because someone else "needed" it "more" was socialist in its implications. It's one reason why attempts to refer back to previous points in an online thread can be so unwieldy: you need to provide context, which makes for massively ballooning post sizes.

 

In a real-life scenario such as you've posted, where it becomes a potential issue of life or death for a human being, I'm going to not only let them have the bread, I'm likely to offer to take them to the nearest fast food restaurant and purchase them a value meal. I live in a large city here in the U.S., with a fair-sized homeless population that clusters in our downtown core. You can't avoid them as they're panhandling. I've bought such folks meals before because it pleased me to do so.

 

In this game, you don't have the same considerations. Just as my one sparring partner here, the "bean counter" as he calls himself, might say I don't "need" the upgrade from a FP when quest rewards will suffice, and that this differential should be enough to motivate me to forebearance in favor of another player, I'd say someone in this game doesn't need the upgrade to the point of an "I can't play" scenario, and is mostly just upset that they lost a loot roll to someone else.

 

But it's pointless to get into minutia like that, because it just gets past the point of being reasonable. It's also largely pointless to draw real-world corollaries, which have applications in a paradigm that includes significant penalties for misbehavior (my aforementioned fiscal/incarceration/death penalties). We have no formalized, ratified set of social mores to draw on here, in a four week-old game whose individual servers are still developing personalities that will hopefully progress over years.

 

At the end of it all, it comes down to "is it an upgrade?" If so, roll Need, as this is how the system is designed to work. It doesn't hold up under much more scrutiny than that, and hasn't even held up in WoW, where it was largely codified (if not originated as a game-side mechanic) over the long haul, as Blizzard has made recent adjustments to alleviate player concern over improper disbursement of loot in an environment that has even less personal accountability than before in the wake of group content now incorporating server groups instead of individual servers.

 

If TOR reaches that point, some adjustment may be required. Some adjustment may still be required prior to that point. Upgradeable companions are a completely new paradigm in MMOs, which means BioWare will tick a lot of people off while they work the kinks out of the system. My personal prediction (admittedly sourced in nothing more than gut feeling) is NBG won't last the long haul of this game unless they add class requirements to all FP loot drops and then add a smart-looting companion loot box to each boss' loot table for the players to roll on. But we'll have to wait and see.

 

Didn't mean to misrepresent. I knew there was some nuance in there that I missed...

 

It seems from this post that you've begun to embrace the issue with a more practical mindset. That first night I felt like you were bogged down in a very abstract ruleset where to accept any point as fact, you needed it to stamped in triplicate by the debate and logic police. To gain any traction in this discussion (and others of abstract nature), certain things need to be taken as given, even if you're not 100% sure about them. Then, once you reach a conclusion you can say, "well, I can agree with this, assuming this given at the beginning holds true". I know that can be tough for you - you obviously have a healthy inclination for serious Debate (with a capital D), and that doesn't seem to jive with this constructive discussion of partially unknown and fuzzy principles.

 

In any case, it's good to know you would pass on the bread, even if you won't pass on the blues (though in the hypo I did say it was specifically NOT a life or death situation, not sure if that changes your answer.)

 

Here is where I continue to disagree with you:

 

"It's also largely pointless to draw real-world corollaries, which have applications in a paradigm that includes significant penalties for misbehavior"

 

I'm not quite sure how you can so easily separate MMOs from the real world. In what practical way are they different? You say there are penalties for for misbehavior in the real world. But what we are interested in the are the set of human interactions that specifically DON'T have penalities - since that is exactly what an MMO (and the internet!) is.

 

This is exactly why we see so much venom and hate on the internet. No repercussions.

 

So the internet and MMOs are a reflection of the slice of human interactions that don't have consequences. For example:

 

Cars are merging on a highway. You could zoom past 100 cars and go the very front and jam your way in, or you could wait your proper place in line. I would say a solid 10% of people always jam to the front. There are no repercussions. No one ever gets in an accident or gets ticketed in that situation, ever. You can just take it if you want - or you can do the right thing and wait your turn in line.

 

I see these as the same choices to pass or roll Need on loot in an MMO. I just fail to see how this isn't the "real world" for two reasons:

 

A. There are many real world choices that have absolutely zero repercussions - these situations are very similar to those in MMOs

B. Things in this game have monetary and emotional value

 

I think you'll need to convince me that MMOs =/= real life.

[JediMasterShake]

This is untrue. If you pull the switch on the bioware servers, where is your gear now?

 

I lit your house on fire. It's gone. Where is your house now?

 

It's illegal to burn your house down just as it is to erase the data for a 200 million dollar MMO.

[Tahana]

This is untrue. If you pull the switch on the bioware servers, where is your gear now?

 

Stuck in the database that stores this information in a series of 1's and 0's. The data exists until it is erased. Even then it is still recoverable through the use of specialized tools that can read the magnetic structure that existed on those drives. It is also stored in their daily system backups.

Edited January 17, 2012 by Tahana

[Setanian]

I don't disagree, I just view the companion as a glorified "pet" its really nothing more in the end. You can dress a dog up in clothing and give it a name but in the end it is still a dog.

 

That's perfectly acceptable, you can give your companion as much or as little priority as you please. That is your decision.

 

How-ever that does not mean or necessitate that I must also give the same value as your have chosen to my companion.

 

You can dress an opinion up all you want, but in the end it is still an opinion. The fact is, I have the right to place whatever value I wish on my companions. You do not.

[notebene]

That would be even worse!

 

It has to be like WoW did it, with only being able to need on gear that fits your class.

 

This would be worse for my situation. I'd never be able to get the Hammer Initiate Top/Bottom as an IA. While I can wear medium, they would most likely lump the item w/ whatever class uses str/end, even though from my perspective, the armor and mod are 'expendable' on the roll.

 

I like everyone gets a mission reward window every time a boss is killed with 1-2 random items that the boss drops and you pick 1. You'll keep going back to eventually hope you get to pick from the item you are looking for and something you don't care, or going back for your companion(s), and your choices won't affect anyone else's, and vice versa.

[Thunder-God]

The only time a person can need for a companion is if the companion is a functioning member of the group. If they are actively contributing then there's no reason why a person can't roll need on a piece of gear for that companion.

 

Not in the group...then it shouldn't get a damn thing except from a greed. That limits what people can roll on....otherwise a fully leveled up person with all their companions will roll need on nearly every good drop. So they have a tank, healer, ranged dps, melee dps, etc companion they NEED items for...that's BS. If they contribute then they can need for them...otherwise greed like everyone else.