Don't stop to loot, or How to stop a zerg

[lamoixs]

In most games, zerging is a fairly effective tactic; overwhelm your opponent with speed and numbers, declare victory and call it a day. The zerg stops for nothing - but in most games there is nothing worth stopping for.

My questions:

If there is not a "loot all" button, would the draw of full looting be compelling enough to slow down / separate members of a zerg by having them rifle thru all the lootable items?
If there is a "loot all" button, would some silly tactic like loading your pockets full of small, heavy items be effective? For example:
>You killed Lamoix.
>You selected loot all and looted basic armor and 50 bricks.
>You are over encumbered. Please delete items (Are you sure you want to delete brick?) until unencumbered.
>Repeat.

In the second scenario, the defenders (or guards) wouldn't be over encumbered, but their inventory would just be mostly full of bricks.

If either of these scenarios would slow down or stop a zerg, the defenders would be given time to organize or respawn. This means that when invading, you couldn't stop to loot - you would have to just press onward.



PS. Yes, that is a brick in my pants. 8'(

[Typheous]

In most games, zerging is a fairly effective tactic; overwhelm your opponent with speed and numbers, declare victory and call it a day. The zerg stops for nothing - but in most games there is nothing worth stopping for.

My questions:

If there is not a "loot all" button, would the draw of full looting be compelling enough to slow down / separate members of a zerg by having them rifle thru all the lootable items?
If there is a "loot all" button, would some silly tactic like loading your pockets full of small, heavy items be effective? For example:
>You killed Lamoix.
>You selected loot all and looted basic armor and 50 bricks.
>You are over encumbered. Please delete items (Are you sure you want to delete brick?) until unencumbered.
>Repeat.

In the second scenario, the defenders (or guards) wouldn't be over encumbered, but their inventory would just be mostly full of bricks.

If either of these scenarios would slow down or stop a zerg, the defenders would be given time to organize or respawn. This means that when invading, you couldn't stop to loot - you would have to just press onward.



PS. Yes, that is a brick in my pants. 8'(

Quite Frankly, lets just wait and see what happens...cause i think if people are going to be relying on shitty tactics like filling their bags with shit just to slow people down its going to be lame!

L2PVP

[Xzi]

There is no "loot all" button, you have to drag things from someone else's inventory to your own one at a time. But any group that isn't stupid will just make sure that all their opponents are dead before beginning to loot.

[Bunkah]

There's not going to be a LOOT ALL button..

once you open up a corpse, a window with it's content will show up and you drag N drop items in your bags...

should be like UO...

so basically, you have to select things and grab them, same for everyone around you.. 1st pick wins!

Edit: I hate you ZXI.. posting at the same time

[Xzi]

There's not going to be a LOOT ALL button..

once you open up a corpse, a window with it's content will show up and you drag N drop items in your bags...

should be like UO...

so basically, you have to select things and grab them, same for everyone around you.. 1st pick wins!

Edit: I hate you ZXI.. posting at the same time
Lulz.

[Beeblebrox]

I hope there is not a "loot all" button.

[Silpher]

The looting procedure in DF is identical to looting in Eve. The only difference being the flagging that comes with it in Eve when in 'high security' space.

I would imagine the tactic of stuffing your bag full of garbage won't be a common tactic. I'm sure there will be enough useful junk crammed into your bag for a large encounter to fill up the majority of it's space.

And even so, looting during a fight is just bad tactics for either side. Just as in Eve, looting generally does not occur until after the fight is over and it's usually the ones who held the field who get the pleasure of looting. Anyone looting during the fight is probably making some bad mistakes and poor decisions while having to concentrate on which items to grab and which to not.

Of course, this all is based on what I've experienced in Eve and despite the similarities on paper, there's no way to tell exactly how it is going to be until we get to that point in Darkfall. And even if it isn't widely considered a formidable tactic, I'm sure to some it may end up being a common practice.

[salbrismind]

You know what is the best strategy against zergs? Using some god damn tactics for once. You know... use your head instead of whining about adding some stupid button to "balance" the game.

Darkfall, unlike ever crap cookie cutter game, gives you the capability to win based on your smarts and skills not based on the amount of soldiers or strength of those soldiers.

[Deja vu]

a loot all button is fine in a single player game but in a MMO it would be a bad idea.

[yamisniper]

You know what is the best strategy against zergs? Using some god damn tactics for once. You know... use your head instead of whining about adding some stupid button to "balance" the game.

Darkfall, unlike ever crap cookie cutter game, gives you the capability to win based on your smarts and skills not based on the amount of soldiers or strength of those soldiers.

let them kill them selfs LOL

[salbrismind]

let them kill them selfs LOL

Exactly. Zergs are usually dumb and unorganized, friendly fire is a HUGE feature built to kill zergs and promote teamwork and organization.

[Rhynn]

Cntrl-A in EvE is "loot all".

[Beorg]

The Zerg would just loot after they've pillaged. Problem solved.

A good idea, though, but easily avoided. However, it is true that Zergs are large and hard to defeat, but every strength has a weakness. There are many other, more simpler ways to defeat a Zerg. If you can disperse them--you can win. Draw them into a place where their numbers have no effect (Ex. Battle of Thermoplyae). Zergs may be hard to stop, but hit them in the right spot, and they easily crumble.

[Kailas]

The Zerg would just loot after they've pillaged. Problem solved.

A good idea, though, but easily avoided. However, it is true that Zergs are large and hard to defeat, but every strength has a weakness. There are many other, more simpler ways to defeat a Zerg. If you can disperse them--you can win. Draw them into a place where their numbers have no effect (Ex. Battle of Thermoplyae). Zergs may be hard to stop, but hit them in the right spot, and they easily crumble.

Unfortunately in a world of health bars, even in a bottleneck numbers count for something, corrosion-style. Friendly fire will probably be a zerg's greatest counter, but a well organized large force can avoid FF better than a small mob. Honestly most big alliances will probably be better equipped than their smaller foes, for economic as well as manpower reasons, so I doubt they'll be itching to stop anyway in a game without "purples" to steal. Since everything is player crafted anyway, I don't think there's going to be any question that you can get a nice piece of armor, it's going to be "can you get a full set of nice armor and keep it repaired/replaced as often as it needs to be?"

The exception is money, I bet a lot of people will loot each other's money, but that's cool. People will target the people who stop to loot because they'll know they have more cash, and killing more powerful people will probably result in a greater amount of cash because the more powerful people die less often and kill, and therefore loot, more gold. So I don't see that as a bad thing at all. Of course no one will bring the bank to the battlefield but I imagine most fights aren't going to have a huge preparation time to store whatever you have on hand in.

So yeah, I don't think there's going to be any major impact of drag-and-drop versus "loot all" looting. We're getting drag and drop, which is fine.

[Kietharr]

Loot all will not exist, I am glad. I'll be a naked battlefield scavenger whenever possible, it wouldn't be possible with a loot all option, but when there's dozens corpses laying around they won't be able to stop someone from taking a few items off of one and running for it.

Anyways, zergs will be hindered by several factors:

Friendly fire: If a smaller guild is defending a pass, or gateway, the zerg will not be able to bring their full numbers to do damage. With good healer support, a small group could defend a small area against a large force for a decent amount of time simply because if only 10 people at a time can fit in a gate, only 10 people from each side will be able to safely deal damage. Archers or mages will risk friendly fire if they join in, people can't swing from the second line or they'll hit their allies.

Internal conflict: The main challenge of leading a clan is keeping everyone reasonably happy. Not everyone has to agree with every decision, but on the whole most people need to be agreeing with most choices. The larger the clan, the less time the leader has to devote to individual concerns. Small clans tend to be tight knit and content with leadership decisions, bar occasional conflicting personalities. Large clans tend to be loose knit and will tend to lose members more often, be rife with personality conflict, and occasionally will suffer from outright splits. Alliances partially alleviate this issue by delegating authority, but in the end if an alliance is too loose, people will act for their own ends within an alliance, if it's too tight it will run into the same issues that a large clan would. A balance must be struck and it's more difficult than one would think. This singular factor has been the main limiting factor on zergs throughout MMO history, it alone doesn't always work.

There are a lot of other things that will make zergs feel the hurt in DF, but these are the big two. In general, large scale anything is more complex, and the more complex a machine is the easier it is to disable with one well placed wrench.

[volcyn]

but you must remember that 4 people that have just started playing can take down a king of uberness so if the zerg invasion are somewhat smart zerg tactics could work i hope they dont but they might

[Deja vu]

if you are up solo against a zerg the best thing you can do is run in the middle of them and hope they get some friendly fire deaths. Sure you die too but hopfully you can take a few with you.

[Arcador]

Last time I remember zergs were stopped by psionic storm.

For sure - friendly fire + collision WILL make a REALLY drastic change in tactics in this game. Large numbers won't just be multiplied statistics, they will have drawbacks and sometimes backfire.

Imagine random mmorpg. Player from side A passes in the range of players of side B. All players of side B start to shoot spells and arrows threw eachother (since there is no friendly fire) and basicly they don't even care about positioning.
Add colision and friendly fire and get really good tactical feeling.

It will be just like your favourite FPS on large CTF (or similar team style map) but a LOT DEEPER, with endless variety - the battle will have reason for it happening (history) and there will be consequences after it ending.

Zerg will fall to well organized groups.

[Sylvana]

To answer the OPs question directly, I doubt very much that they'd put in a loot all button, since for one they are seeming to lean toward realism whenever possible, and ripping someone's entire suit of armour off with a click isn't all that realistic. For another, they've already said that the inventory system will be like UO, in which you had to grab things in one bag and drag them over to another. Haven't heard anything about that changing, so I assume that's still how it is.

As an aside to this, I don't think everyone will wait until after the battle to loot. People will probably grab a few choice items if/when they have a chance, and you can bet there will be "vultures" on every battlefield who don't belong to either clan and who are just there to cash in on whatever they can pull off the corpses.

Continuing on the topic of zergs and the mechanics that counter them in this game, personally, I think anyone with vastly superior numbers will have the advantage regardless of any mechanics that are put into the game. Being outnumbered 2 or 3 to 1 would probably be doable for a well organized group, but 10 or 20 to 1 and you're probably screwed regardless. That being said, I think there are a lot of good things DF is implementing that will give smaller groups a chance in large scale combat.

Collision detection (for use in holding passes and breeched walls) and friendly fire (in which the zerg incinerates itself) have already been mentioned, so I won't bother repeating what others have said about these.

There's also the fact that killing a "clan leader" (whether that means the actual leader of the clan or just the instigator of the seige) will end a siege. This could allow for assassination type tactics if the zerg doesn't dedicate enough energy to protecting their leader, and/or if the smaller clan can manage to locate him/her and concentrate all their effort on killing that person, they may be able to repel an attack that way.

The big thing I'm looking forward to is a combination of the above things, along with terrain, allowing for more 'real world' battle tactics to work. Cornering the enemy in a pass, attacking over what they thought was "impassable" terrain, driving them backward into a lake, off a cliff or some other geographical feature, etcetera. Collision detection could be a bitch if you're fenced in by your own team and getting arrows rained down on your head. Getting the high ground will matter. So will how you build your city (depending on how much control players will be given over layouts). Using terrain movement skills to move faster than your enemy for quick strikes could be a viable tactic. I'd say the less "point and shoot" the game is, the more chance there is for organization to prevail over numbers.

Yeah I'm really excited about this :P if there's one thing the proto-clan I'm in has going for it, it's knowing how to work effectively together. I think that will be really important.

[Darkfalz]

The looting procedure in DF is identical to looting in Eve. The only difference being the flagging that comes with it in Eve when in 'high security' space.

I would imagine the tactic of stuffing your bag full of garbage won't be a common tactic. I'm sure there will be enough useful junk crammed into your bag for a large encounter to fill up the majority of it's space.

And even so, looting during a fight is just bad tactics for either side. Just as in Eve, looting generally does not occur until after the fight is over and it's usually the ones who held the field who get the pleasure of looting. Anyone looting during the fight is probably making some bad mistakes and poor decisions while having to concentrate on which items to grab and which to not.

Of course, this all is based on what I've experienced in Eve and despite the similarities on paper, there's no way to tell exactly how it is going to be until we get to that point in Darkfall. And even if it isn't widely considered a formidable tactic, I'm sure to some it may end up being a common practice.

The fact that it's highsec or lowsec has no bearing on flagging for stealing loot. Noob.

[Entreri]

I think zergs will be like they were in Planetside. You have 10 guys running down a hall invading a base and 1 enemy runs out into the hall and all 10 guys open fire with all except for the first few hitting allies. Then pking allies was fun too. With each wave the attackers push a little further into the base until they get to the respawn chamber and then its pretty much over. I don't actually remember ever seeing a defender win, the attacker pretty much could always eventually win, since most people instead of defending the base would be out attacking a different one.

So if the zerg has even a little bit of intelligence though, we might be in trouble.

The zerg can just split into smaller groups that come in series of waves so the other side won't have time to recover. Zerg wins against even small well organized groups. This way they still get a huge advantage from their numbers even if not many can fight at a time. The other side will run out of potions/mana/reagents sooner or later.

[Feyrband]

just have a couple towel boys dedicated to looting. if its a zerg u should have a few like this to spare. they can pick out the good stuff and throw it into the pot for distribution afterwards if people even want the stuff.

[Kietharr]

I think zergs will be like they were in Planetside. You have 10 guys running down a hall invading a base and 1 enemy runs out into the hall and all 10 guys open fire with all except for the first few hitting allies. Then pking allies was fun too. With each wave the attackers push a little further into the base until they get to the respawn chamber and then its pretty much over. I don't actually remember ever seeing a defender win, the attacker pretty much could always eventually win, since most people instead of defending the base would be out attacking a different one.

So if the zerg has even a little bit of intelligence though, we might be in trouble.

The zerg can just split into smaller groups that come in series of waves so the other side won't have time to recover. Zerg wins against even small well organized groups. This way they still get a huge advantage from their numbers even if not many can fight at a time. The other side will run out of potions/mana/reagents sooner or later.

Zergs were HIGHLY successful in Planetside, I should know as I was in the devil dogs, we never failed to do exactly what we wanted at any given time on a smaller objective based scale. Though the devil dogs were usually highly casual and just had squads deployed to every major fighting point just to fill in numbers, once a week we'd gather as a clan and roll out in unison. We actually had a pretty decent level of organization for a zerg clan. We'd all get vehicles (we almost always hit fully red/purple continents so vehicles had to come from sanc or far flung bases) and basically power dive into the first few bases, taking almost no losses due to the absence of opposition on a wholly controlled continent. The opposition would come but we went in with a decent grand strategy and had infiltraitors blowing generators and stealing towers across the continent to make an organized defense impossible, often times we would strike the weapons facility, or at least blow the gen to force it neutral, so the best they could muster against our vanguards were lightning tanks and striker missiles :lmao:.

We also usually did MAX crashes to break spawntubes in the scenario you described, but we usually had 20 or so at a time coming from multiple directions, which REALLY is not favorable for any non NC unfortunate enough to be trapped inside the base, scattermax was probably the best close quarters weapon out there.

God, that WAS a really fun game.

[Milo Hobgoblin]

I highly doubt there will be a loot all button. Hopefully they will require you to have to sift throughpacks to find anything useful as the average armor and weapons are supposed to be very easy to come by.

They need to make encumberance and looting somewhat realistic or it will just be a joke. If you want to strip some guys platemail off.. it shouldnt happen instantaneously.

[raza]

I highly doubt there will be a loot all button. Hopefully they will require you to have to sift throughpacks to find anything useful as the average armor and weapons are supposed to be very easy to come by.

They need to make encumberance and looting somewhat realistic or it will just be a joke. If you want to strip some guys platemail off.. it shouldnt happen instantaneously.

hes right guyz who wat to wait like a minute just to get a armor when you have like 10 friend fighting for thier lives beside them.

[salbrismind]

hes right guyz who wat to wait like a minute just to get a armor when you have like 10 friend fighting for thier lives beside them.

How about waiting until you have enough time to loot? Instead of whining about how long it takes!

[volren]

In most games, zerging is a fairly effective tactic; overwhelm your opponent with speed and numbers, declare victory and call it a day. The zerg stops for nothing - but in most games there is nothing worth stopping for.

My questions:

If there is not a "loot all" button, would the draw of full looting be compelling enough to slow down / separate members of a zerg by having them rifle thru all the lootable items?
If there is a "loot all" button, would some silly tactic like loading your pockets full of small, heavy items be effective? For example:
>You killed Lamoix.
>You selected loot all and looted basic armor and 50 bricks.
>You are over encumbered. Please delete items (Are you sure you want to delete brick?) until unencumbered.
>Repeat.

In the second scenario, the defenders (or guards) wouldn't be over encumbered, but their inventory would just be mostly full of bricks.

If either of these scenarios would slow down or stop a zerg, the defenders would be given time to organize or respawn. This means that when invading, you couldn't stop to loot - you would have to just press onward.



PS. Yes, that is a brick in my pants. 8'(


this sounds like shit, seriously. Why would you be interested in such a limmited tactic. You see unlike WoW DF has room for tactics, you shouldnt spend your time thinking up ones based of abusing a game mechanism(that won't even be in the game) to pointlessly slow down enemies.

[Prox]

Yea, loot after the fight cuz if u loot before your safe then you could just die and loose it all anyways.

[Chubbyjesus]

Honestly I already see how its going to be. Just like Ultima Online.

I expect this to be a much LARGER scale though.. In UO alot of the time they were vultures. Naked, with low skills, noobish players.. They would circle around fights waiting for a corpse, grab a bag and run.

I love it, it brings the game to life. Alot of times I find myself watching a duel or a small battle.. Im sure many do.. Well now you can get involved, try and snatch bags, fight off those who want said bag.. And create more battles that others will watch/interact with.

Its a depth that games dont have nowadays.. Ive had times ive been getting jump in X game, where friendly players just jog on by without batting an eyelash.

I know DF will drag people into fights.. heck you could be next if you dont fight off PKs.. Or you could end up getting some nice loot for free, just for being in the right place.

[Secret]

why is everyone insulting this guy? alot of u are telling him to use tactics to defeat the zergs. Well as far as I can tell his plan would work fairly well if there was a loot all button.
but there isnt so really fail

[holyhitman]

Guys in 300 didn't loot because there was no need for it. When you got all the shit you need whats the point of looting?

Be the badass and have all the coolest shit and don't die. Kill a guy - don't spend time looting - kill more.