[Uthgaard]

Originally Posted by Rogean [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

and the lack of knowing just exactly the system worked in classic because we know it didn't result in the looter having THAT much of an advantage

I wasn't just making it up:

A: This question is the source of much angst, and isn't as simple as it might seem on the surface. Autosplit is something each person turns on or off (using the /autosplit command, or /au for short). If the person looting a corpse has it turned on, any cash found is split evenly among all players in the group (even those who have it turned off). (This doesn't apply when a player loots their own body, of course.) Sounds fair, doesn't it?

The catch is, it's implemented in a logical way in a roleplaying environment, which is to say it splits the COINS you get, instead of splitting the CASH VALUE of those coins. It doesn't make change. And it does this separately for each type of coin. If, as is often the case, the coins can't be divided evenly, the game gives any left over coins to the looter. So suppose a mob drops 5pp. In a two-player group, the looter gets 3pp and the other player gets 2pp. In a three-player group, the looter still gets 3pp and the others each get 1pp. In a six-player group, none of the 5pp can be divided evenly, so the looter keeps all of it! Even when there are some coins given out to the rest of the group by this method, the looter is more often than not getting twice or three times as many coins as the rest.

The innocent (such as yourself) will loot freely, thinking they are being fair. They will also happily allow others to loot, thinking that they are getting a fair share. The unscrupulous will arrange to do most of the looting while allowing the uninitiated (such as yourself) to think they are getting a fair share. And of course, if someone in your group is looting with autosplit on, you can't know if they're innocent or unscrupulous, which can lead to some bad feelings. What's worse, if you try to work around the problem by looting with autosplit OFF, planning to split the money later (preferably after selling off any vendor trash items as well), the innocent may get upset because they think you're planning to abscond with all the money (which has, alas, been known to happen also).

The best compromise seems to be to have the group choose one person to be "main looter" (ML), and that person is responsible for selling the items and splitting all the cash when the group is ready to break up. This still gets awkward if some people leave the group early and/or other people join partway through, but it's still a lot more fair. Another approach that is sometimes used is "open looting" (also called FFA, or free-for-all), where everybody is free to loot (usually with autosplit ON), which works well if the group is killing lots of mobs so everyone gets lots of opportunities to loot some.