Drops have changed - CLOSED

[Masterjack]

Bug Report

Description: When I pick up drops I have to identify every item. There seems to be no auto identify of normal items. It will auto identify quest items like giant heads and Storan's crypt key.  Also when I get drops of cure potions or bandages they are a single item not the usual full stacks of ten or seven. I'm not sure if this intended or not. Please let me know if this is or is not an intended change in the drops. I put these together because I thought they were related


Location: All Mistone and Dregar

Verified:


Reproducable:I have reproduced item identifcation problem every drop since the latest update.
I have reproduced the potion/bandage problem about 6 times now. Four times on Mistone and twice on Dregar.
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[Dorganath]

This is kind of a side-effect of the new loot drop system.  I believe if you are in a party, then the loot-reporting system will use the character's LORE score to see whether or not something should be identified.

I've known about this, and I am honestly wanting to see the overall impact.  This new system is very flexible, and more and more features of it will be phased in over time.  Right now, it's operating in its closest approximation to the old drop system, but unfortunately, there are things that should not be identified up-front, and a by-item level of granularity is not currently available.  

Likely this will be temporary, at least to some degree.  What creatures drop will eventually be more tailored to what type of creature they are.  Skeletons and other undead, for example, will no longer spawn in with curing potions and kill themselves by using them in the middle of the fight.

[Kindo]

This is kind of a side-effect of the new loot drop system.  I believe if you are in a party, then the loot-reporting system will use the character's LORE score to see whether or not something should be identified.

I've known about this, and I am honestly wanting to see the overall impact.  This new system is very flexible, and more and more features of it will be phased in over time.  Right now, it's operating in its closest approximation to the old drop system, but unfortunately, there are things that should not be identified up-front, and a by-item level of granularity is not currently available.  

Likely this will be temporary, at least to some degree.  What creatures drop will eventually be more tailored to what type of creature they are.  Skeletons and other undead, for example, will no longer spawn in with curing potions and kill themselves by using them in the middle of the fight.

There are plenty of new things in certain updates, that you don't get to read much about. Are there any release-notes under way (I haven't seen any so far), that explain specific system-changes like this one?

[Weeblie]

They can usually be found here: [LORE]NWNChangelog[/LORE]

Although... that page is not extremly up-to-dated lately (too much to do, too little time!).

This is also the V3-release thread with changelogs: http://www.layonara.com/layonara-server/113498-new-version-online-v3.html

It takes some time to read everything in that thread, but everything "new" should be present.

Granted... Something like "new loot system added" doesn't say so extremly much.

[Dorganath]

What Weeblie said is correct.

With LORE having been in a state of transition lately, that site is not up-to-date with all the latest revisions, but there will also always be a forum post in the New Version Online thread.

We don't generally detail new systems unless they require some level of player interaction or training.  We certainly almost never list the exact technical details of some changes, as some people may find a way to maximize benefits/minimize risk due to such knowledge.

In the case of the loot drop system, this has been "in" since V3 was released.  However, it was included in parallel with the old (V2) drop system while figured out how best to take advantage of it.  In v3.00.2, I added a way to more easily support the selection of which loot system to use based on a server-level flag. In v3.00.3 I added a way for all existing creatures, which are unconfigured for the new drop system, to take advantage of it in a "default" sense.  A silly oversight on my part led to that not working at all....something I corrected in v3.00.4 (the latest release).

The most exciting thing about this system is that where the old one had 4 drop types (Low, mid, high, and unique), this one can have any number.  We currently have 67 different drop categories set up, though only the "default" 4 are in use right now.  Using this system, we can, decide that a given creature type will drop a certain kind of loot, and we can even configure this on a creature-by-creature basis. This system gives us finer-grained control over what drops and how often.

If anyone is interested, I invite you to look at SiliconScout's treasure generation system on the Vault.  That's the basis for our system, though with any system like this that we import, it has been modified to better fit our needs.