Guild Wars 2

Keep reading if you agree with the following:

• You don’t like missing out on loot cause you didn’t see a corpse or bag through the thick of the battle or because it’s hidden by the terrain.
• Picking up loads of trash just to see if any enemy was carrying something useful is impractical.
• Spamming F when looting can lead to interactions you didn’t expect or want (talk/pick up/activate/etc.) [this was fixed with the recent addition of an optional separate loot button].
• Having to stop after every fight to loot is annoying and makes you lose momentum.

Agreed? Good. Now, here it is…

THE SOLUTION

Remove all the sparkles from corpses (no more F-button) and add a new button to the UI that opens a list of all loot these corpses have on them. This list shows all loot that has dropped recently and you can pick items directly from this list (not from the corpses) and place them in your inventory.

The loot is sorted under the names of the enemies that dropped it and since corpses disappear after a certain time, the remaining time is shown next to the enemy name for your convenience. Once the time runs out, the loot disappears like expected (unless you have moved it to your backpack).

THE SOLUTION… Again

If you didn’t quite grasp the concept yet, here’s another (perhaps more morbid) way to look at it: The corpses of everything you kill follow you around (not graphically of course). This allows you to loot them whenever and wherever you like as long as they haven’t disappeared/despawned. Then add the possibility to view the loot of all corpses in one list.

There you have it; the solution to all of the above.

Still not satisfied? See a downside to this compared to what we currently have? Or maybe you just want to support this idea? Please feel free to comment.

Precautions

Now since i can predict the future, I’m gonna reply to some posts that i know will come if i don’t:

I usually want to loot everything, not pick specific items

Add a Take All button to the list and voilà, your loot-everything days just got a whole lot easier (no more running around searching for sparklies).

On the other hand, if you only got trash and don’t want any of it or if you’ve already taken what you want from the list; add a Discard All button to make it nice and clean for your next batch of fresh kills.

I don’t want loot disappearing while I’m looking at them just cause some stupid timer ran out. Currently, the corpse will always stick around while i keep the loot window open

This new window/list can have the same effect, when it’s open, no items will disappear until it’s closed again, even if a timer expires. “But then we can always keep it open and have an infinite inventory!” Aha! But here’s the kicker: the window automatically closes if you move, just like a corpse looting window does.

While the window is closed, the button could light up when there’s loot to be had and on top of it, it could show the timer that’s closest to expiration.

this sounds way more complicated than just pressing f a couple times.

poe lyfe.5879:

this sounds way more complicated than just pressing f a couple times.

How is this more complicated? It works like looting always has, just with a better interface that eliminates all the downsides mentioned in the beginning. It will be less clicks, no unnecessary running around (i hate this), and no missed loot.

I even explained the concept in one short paragraph, it’s not complicated at all:

The corpses of everything you kill follow you around (not graphically of course). This allows you to loot them whenever and wherever you like as long as they haven’t disappeared/despawned. Then add the possibility to view the loot of all corpses in one window.

Updated Topic for clarity.

Area loot would be another good solution. Badges of honor should not come in loot bags though to be honest, they should just end up in your inventory/collection tab to be honest. As a matter of fact, why even have it as an inventory item? Alot of mmo’s have or are starting to implement ways of storing currency thats not inventory based. Lotro did this with the wallet change a while back.

I agree area loot or true auto loot (no F needed) would both be improvements over what we currently have, but they both still have some downsides compared to this.

Area loot doesnt let you choose what to loot, it just vacuums up everything and lets you handle the sorting in your bags which can be annoying when you want 1 item out of 15 dropped and you need to destroy the other 14 items manually. The area it loots is also limited so there will still be some running around and F spam persists since you still need to make sure you vacuumed everything.

Auto loot has the same problems as area loot with picking up stuff you dont want but has no F spam or running around. It also has issues when the inventory gets full, where does the loot go then?

This system i suggested incorporates all the advantages of auto loot while eliminating the disadvantages. It’s also quite flexible and can be expanded with options such as “Take all collectibles”, “Take all items above X rarity” etc. to make selective looting even faster.

The 1st post is genius. You just walk on corpse and you can go on another without pressing, and you will just get window on right center of screen, press on items you’d like to pick and be happy for not taking useless loot I’m in.
+1

Now that Anet has shown an interest in improving looting (thanks for Area Loot!), i thought I’d give this old suggestion another shot (it’s better then Area Loot).

I feel like WVW looting is fine the way it is, I mean loot teleports to you? What more could you ask for, I find on the rare occasions I go to pve I’m always going…..Why isn’t my loot teleporting to me!

Who wants loot windows popping up when your trying to pwn people in wvw? I sure as heck don’t.

My inventory fills up in wvw fairly quick but rarely am I unable to fix that quickly, teleport to the nearest WP keep, sell and move on.

Your suggestion sounds complicated and just well….not necessary for a game that already has a good system in place for loot imo.

Happysack.7132:

Who wants loot windows popping up when your trying to pwn people in wvw? I sure as heck don’t.

Who said anything about windows popping up? On the contrary i’m trying to introduce a less annoying looting system. The window will only open when you choose to open it (by clicking on the loot icon). And you will only have to open it maybe once every 10 minutes (or whatever is the despawn time on corpses in this game).

Actually there could even be a right-click “loot all” function on the icon if you prefer that. Or you could set it to loot everything to your bags until you get an overflow, after which the loot will go to this system. Or you could set it to loot rare stuff to your bags and keep everything else in this system. The possibilities are endless really.

The big thing here is that if you leave anything behind, you never have to stop and run back.

Edit: I see now how the OP could be misinterpreted to seem like the window pops up automatically. I’ve edited to clarify the fact that it does not.

I love this idea! There are plenty of things ANet could do to make looting less painful, and this is one of them.