Loot Lockout

The issue that has been bugging my FC, as well as many of late--Raid Lockout in Binding Coil of Bahamut. I understand this is to alleviate the possibility of rapid gear acquisition and to keep those players who are working the hardest to be at the final tier raid spots, but it's doing more harm to groups than good it would seem. It seems to defeat the purpose of a Free Company with everyone forming statics of eight instead of being able to switch out or replace members easily as needed.

The thought that's gone around is "Loot Lockout" instead--enabling players to access the Turns that they've reached in the existing manner, but if the Turn has been cleared for the individual character already then they receive no drops from clearing that boss again. This helps out many FCs, like mine, form the family environment we so long for rather than have the clique type feel that causes so much needless drama.

Would this be at all possible, even in the future?

Thank you! :)

This is really too exploitable for selling runs, unfortunately. I wouldn't expect it to change.

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Originally Posted by Valanthe_Liadon

This is really too exploitable for selling runs, unfortunately. I wouldn't expect it to change.

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Given the rampant selling of Titan HM runs that still goes on, somehow I think SE doesn't care about this aspect. I think they're just too busy (or just don't really care) to bother with implementing a loot lockout as opposed to a character lockout. It's a shame.

There are already a number of groups selling Turns 1 through 4 on Gilgamesh. It's only a matter of time before it gets to Titan levels.

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Originally Posted by HiliteOrin

Given the rampant selling of Titan HM runs that still goes on, somehow I think SE doesn't care about this aspect. I think they're just too busy (or just don't really care) to bother with implementing a loot lockout as opposed to a character lockout. It's a shame.

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It may very well be the difference of opinion the developers have regarding raid content, but in regard to selling runs I'm certain that players exist with the philosophy of "Everything has its price". Loot carries exist, as noted on Twitter, so there are certainly negatives. Restoring value to FCs outside of PUG+1s to gather static members from seems worth the while. ^^

I am an advocate of such a system. Even if it can be exploited to sell runs, that's up to the discretion of the players who want to sell runs and players who choose to purchase runs. Even then with such a huge loot table in place per boss, it's impractical to purchase exact items. I want to see something that would allow me to include others instead of exclude.

At this point, with 2.1 being only a few weeks out, I think the lockout system needs to be dropped honestly or at the very least, reworked to allow a couple or few runs per week (perhaps 2 or 3 Job lockouts, not a single character lockouts)

There are a few reasons for why I think this.
1) People need to clear turn 5 before 2.3 comes out else too many people will get stuck in "old content" that is basically a ghost town finding less and less people to be able to make attempts with (try to get a story 8 man together or even chimera at even this point)
2) In that time with the Myth cap being at 450, everyone is going to have full i90 without much of any trouble anyways.
3) as included above, if people want to funnel gear to one Job, so be it, they have to do it for 9 other jobs still and will most likely want to play more to get to that point (thus being more active and the servers continue to be lively)
4) We have access to 9 different jobs, but can only really play one of them per week.. <-- bad design IMO
5) If people want to pay to be carried? Then honestly, so what? If that makes them happy and finds the game fun still, isn't that the point of a game?
6) I believe far more people then most expect would use this as a tool to help fill spots of missing groups, not just carry people through the content.

I'm ok with the lockout being the way it is for the current patch and going forward for each "progression" patch, but this single character lockout during the off "vanity" patches is going to get boring very quickly and I think that far more people will get bored well before 2.2 comes out.

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Originally Posted by Kayko

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I agree with the concept behind lockouts as boredom will come much more readily to the more vocal players--usually those clearing T4/T5 on a weekly basis even now. Once the idea of challenge has been reduced to a paltry amount for the fights as they're used to the mechanics and their team, the only reward left is in the gear to attain. Once that's acquired, the reason for doing Coil diminishes drastically. A Loot Lockout prevents rapid gear acquisition from spamming runs, but enables Free Companies to forge the environment every guild should have--help and be helped, not to tally favor, but to share the enjoyment with your friends and comrades. I feel that this will benefit the idea of helping out on lowbie dungeons, story quest fights, and A Relic Reborn fights such as Chimera and Hydra as well. ^^

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Originally Posted by Valanthe_Liadon

This is really too exploitable for selling runs, unfortunately. I wouldn't expect it to change.

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Ugh, this idea needs to die.

It's complete garbage and has no legitimacy. Please, stop White Knighting for SEs absolutely miserable design choices.

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Originally Posted by Garnatian

Ugh, this idea needs to die.

It's complete garbage and has no legitimacy. Please, stop White Knighting for SEs absolutely miserable design choices.

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There are plenty of bad choices when it comes to SE and raiding (8 man groups, no premades for CT) but having a lockout on the hardest content isn't one of them.

Loot lockout only encourages carries and sells though. Players are going to create a sense of gain from running a dungeon or raid and if they are not able to get loot, getting gil from others by selling runs is a way to supplement this gain.

On the flip side, a group could just run the dungeon 8 times per week with one person taking every item each run ensuring the maximum amount of loot will be gained in the shortest amount of time among multiple jobs per player giving them much more flexibility when it comes to each turn over a group distributing loot in the intended fashion.


I really do think that at least in off progression patches that the character limit gets removed for something like I described above. I have to believe that more will use it properly then abuse it. Or, how about 40K seals to reset your raid lockout once per week? Only can buy one each week and vanishes on Monday so you can't save them up. At least some option to be able to run with other people. Something like that could be easily removed from the vendor during progression patches and wouldn't harm the gating during these times.

Are people somehow deluded? Raid lockout is a common thing in ANY MMORPG...this doesn't need to be changed or fixed. What needs to be fixed is the absurdity of RNG when it comes to loot in Coil. A total of 8 items per week max for an 8 man group while each of those items has a shared loot table with 7/8 other items...THAT is something that needs to be fixed.

They should have just made Turn 3 a Turn with an actual Boss, put 2 more chests there and redistribute the loot among those 2 chests to give each chest a max of 6 items possible to drop in all Turns...

A fu**ing 11-13% chance to get your desired item ONCE a week is just mindnumbingly stupid.

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Originally Posted by Kayko

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Loot Lockout is not without disadvantages, surely, but even as things stand right now carries/sells are being done. This has many more advantages in giving purpose to Free Companies and being able to run with friends. There are many, many people who feel that sharing the experience and seeing their friends get items is just as important, if not more, than it is for their own character. :) If you can help your FC friends out, all the better! The idea with the loot lock is that if the boss is downed, you don't get any more loot from it that week even if you received nothing. So that'd keep gear/content gating at a relative level as it is now. :)

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Originally Posted by TirionCrey

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Other MMORPGs don't revolve around the Armory System, and as thus encourage leveling alts. Other MMORPGs don't tie raids to story completion requirement, which involves much more time and effort than simply level/gear grinding. Other MMORPGs either don't allow or don't encourage leveling all classes on one character. Loot acquisition can be augmented through mythology gain each week, as they don't want everyone to max out so suddenly. :3

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Originally Posted by Ryuhkin

Loot Lockout is not without disadvantages, surely, but even as things stand right now carries/sells are being done. This has many more advantages in giving purpose to Free Companies and being able to run with friends. There are many, many people who feel that sharing the experience and seeing their friends get items is just as important, if not more, than it is for their own character. :) If you can help your FC friends out, all the better! The idea with the loot lock is that if the boss is downed, you don't get any more loot from it that week even if you received nothing. So that'd keep gear/content gating at a relative level as it is now. :)

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While I agree on the helping friends aspect I can tell you what a loot lockout would do to my Coil group. 7 of us would lvl alts with the exact same Job as it's main they have right now for Coil. Enter Turn 1 with 1 Main and the 7 alts. Beat T1, give both items to whoever is on his main not alt character. Exit. Reenter with 2 Mains and give the 2nd Main both items. Exit. Reenter with 3 Mains and give 3rd main both items etc etc...

Thanks but I wouldn't want this to happen...

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Originally Posted by TirionCrey

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That'd definitely be a way to abuse it as well--like I said, it isn't without disadvantages. It all depends on your FC though. :) Hardcore FCs will do everything they can to squeeze a mile out of each inch. Casualcore FCs, the overall vast majority, will actually be able to grow and support each other rather than keep things to a static group with that clique feel. I sincerely believe the advantages will outweigh the disadvantages, and people will feel more picky about their FCs with the people and ideologies.

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Originally Posted by TirionCrey

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I agree with Ryuhkin on this one. The vast majority of FCs would not do what you are describing here. Your situation also would be a benefit to SE, because it would keep some players playing by spending time leveling/gearing up alts that they otherwise wouldn't have.

Additionally, the fact remains that each character is still limited to one chance at two pieces of loot per turn per week. It's just that in the current system, people are also locked completely out of the turn. In a loot lockout system, though, people still only get one chance at loot per week per character while still being able to go back and help other FC members who had to sit out for whatever reason. The benefits far outweigh any disadvantages in my opinion.

I am quite sure the lockout is just a temporary measure to make sure the delta between high end characters and low end ones is not too big, too soon. I think they'll remove it once new content and higher gear becomes available.

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Originally Posted by Guevara

I am quite sure the lockout is just a temporary measure to make sure the delta between high end characters and low end ones is not too big, too soon. I think they'll remove it once new content and higher gear becomes available.

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Raid Lockout is forcing people to form statics of eight, thus alienating a great deal of Free Company members and friends over reasons far beyond their control. Loot Lockout would support what you're saying in a sense, but still have more people earn their equipment than people who could be carried. As Denmo noted on Twitter, "Coil is not hard because it challenges your skill. Coil is hard because it challenges your friendships." It's extremely difficult to lend your friend a hand with Raid Lockout, but Loot Lockout opens that possibility and fosters a friendlier community overall, I'd like to believe.

The only only only way to remove the current lock out is not only a loot lock out, but also decrease the loot drop rate, so the amount of loot dropped in coil will be proportion to the number of players cleared it.

i.e. If your party contains 4 players who have cleared a turn, and 4 have not, only 1 chest will be presented.
And if 7 cleared and 1 un-cleared, only 25% chance that 1 chest will be presented at all.

This way no matter how many times player go into coil, there will always be 2 gears generated from 8 players that have cleared a turn.

However this would be quite complex to implement (for SE), and generate more frustration and complaints due to the RNG.

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Originally Posted by Ryuhkin

Raid Lockout is forcing people to form statics of eight, thus alienating a great deal of Free Company members and friends over reasons far beyond their control. Loot Lockout would support what you're saying in a sense, but still have more people earn their equipment than people who could be carried. As Denmo noted on Twitter, "Coil is not hard because it challenges your skill. Coil is hard because it challenges your friendships." It's extremely difficult to lend your friend a hand with Raid Lockout, but Loot Lockout opens that possibility and fosters a friendlier community overall, I'd like to believe.

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Don't get me wrong. I totally agree with you on this. I was just saying that the lockout in place at the moment, could be lifted on 2.2 (tbn: just my understanding of things, nothing ever officially said).

Of course if they place a loot lockout earlier instead, is even better, as long as they remove that as well once new content/higher iLV gear comes out.

There isn't really a point to be in a huge FC imho. No content out there now or even in 2.1 (CT) beside "housing" (if you want to call that content lol) need more than 8 players. And if you think about it, SE is probably only making the lockout temporarily until maybe they add more content to coil.

i hope they'll change their lock out system soon ; and dunno why ppl are crying about selling runs , do u know that u only have a CHANCE to loot something ? if ppl are selling titan , it's because 1)it's easy and 2)u have 100% chance to get a relic weapon after unlike BC ( plus the fact that only turn 1 and maybe turn 2 will be sellable) . Also ppl won't sell them until they have a full allagan set , and it'll take a while ( for now only super lucky guys are in full allagan , not my case , in a month , i drop 0 allagan gear ^^' ).... .
Also it's better to everyone to get gear to be able to clear T4 and T5 ,because , frankly both of them aren't that hard if u're geared .

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Originally Posted by Guevara

Don't get me wrong. I totally agree with you on this. I was just saying that the lockout in place at the moment, could be lifted on 2.2 (tbn: just my understanding of things, nothing ever officially said).

Of course if they place a loot lockout earlier instead, is even better, as long as they remove that as well once new content/higher iLV gear comes out.

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I'm all for overall lockout removal once higher iLvl gear is released too, given it'll help encourage use of the vanity system. :3

I still think the lockout system in this game is a dated system for how the Job system works. It's time for a change from every other MMO out there.

We have 9 available combat jobs that share a single character lock out? Whats the point of the job system? So you can run around in circles while different gear and have the same name? Tons of fun!

Think of it this way, if they didn't screw up Tower in the first place, it was to be released at launch along with the first 5 turns of Coil. The difficulty of Coil was artificially increased due to the lack of a tier of gear and with it, more people to this point would have cleared Coil. This would have without question changed the rate at which BG along with many others first took down Turn 5.

Selling/buying runs part... Why do you people care? Perhaps those people that are buying the runs enjoy doing that. I'm sure buying a run is much more fun for some people then standing around for hours in /shout chat. It's a game, let players play how they want, that keeps them subbed or oh noes, they "Ebay" those characters which any way it's done, it doesn't affect the vast majority of the rest of the player base. I still strongly believe that most groups would opt for selling runs with a loot lockout vs a multiple job lockout. If you have a chance at nothing other then a repair bill, people will less likely assist others. Take a look at your own FC's, when someone asks to do WP or AK, does everyone else chime in to say they will help? or do the people that still need Tomes or something the ones that chime in? and even those you get some gil back to cover repairs. You think a loot lockout is going to result in anything different?

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Originally Posted by Kayko

...Take a look at your own FC's, when someone asks to do WP or AK, does everyone else chime in to say they will help? or do the people that still need Tomes or something the ones that chime in? and even those you get some gil back to cover repairs. You think a loot lockout is going to result in anything different?

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My FC (and LS!) is brilliant with this, actually. Sure like every group we have a few that are like this, but most as long as they have time will always contribute towards the happiness and success of their comrades and to the group as a whole. :) I am extremely proud of them.

Too easy to exploit.

All you need is 7 people who don't need gear anymore or 7 people to make alts and you can do a 1 hour loot run for 1 person where they get every drop from turn 1 to 5 no matter what drops and this can be repeated infinitely.

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Originally Posted by Aureliami

Too easy to exploit.

All you need is 7 people who don't need gear anymore or 7 people to make alts and you can do a 1 hour loot run for 1 person where they get every drop from turn 1 to 5 no matter what drops and this can be repeated infinitely.

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HiliteOrin already adequately covered this on Page 2. :) Basically, the few who are capable of actually doing this (and who might otherwise quit due to lack of things to do) will play for a bit longer gearing up jobs and alts they otherwise would not have. It's still a benefit to SE.

I think this is a great idea, it would help to build community and help to keep down the forming of cliques within FCs.

Of course there is the potential for selling runs, but this is going to happen anyway (apparently is already even) once groups have all the drops from Turn 1 they will sell the drops when they have to go each week. This will continue for all turns until they stop running coil, which of course won't happen since they can still sell the drops even after they have them all. So selling runs is no reason not to implement loot lockouts.

Actually it's the opposite, by implementing loot lockouts instead of character lockouts you will see FC members willing to redo runs to help other FC groups along the way, it will mean that FC members who can't fit into a static can still get FC runs, no more buying them, and the loot will go to them anyway. This potentially reduces the number of people buying runs, and in turn cuts into sellers market.

In the end, I'm all for this, as I would be happy to help people clear turns I've got done, if only to hone my own skills a little more.

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Originally Posted by Aureliami

Too easy to exploit.

All you need is 7 people who don't need gear anymore or 7 people to make alts and you can do a 1 hour loot run for 1 person where they get every drop from turn 1 to 5 no matter what drops and this can be repeated infinitely.

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Unless of course entry required that you are on the proper turn, like to get into chimera/hydra requires that someone with the quest take you in.
Making enough alts and getting them all to coil that you could fully gear a person in 1 week would be at best incredibly difficult (and by difficult I mean absurdly time consuming and require that the RNG played in your favor ALWAYS), considering you can't guarantee which drops you get.
To make an alt, get it all the way to coil, do all 5 turns, then do it again would be absurd. Which is not to say people won't do it, but let's consider the following:

If you need 3 turn 1 drops you need a minimum of 3 people to take you in, considering the nature of things, lets be nice and say you get 20% (it's actually closer to 18% iirc) chance on each and it "actually" works out that way. You will need 15 "alts" to take you into turn 1 to get all 3 of your drops. The odds that you actually get those 3 drops in 15 runs is terrible. Repeat this for all turns, your looking at (assuming 10 minutes a turn avg.) 750 minutes, 12.5 hours of non-stop coil turns 1~5 using 15 alts to take you in, and perfect drop rates.

Factor in the time needed to grind your alts to 50, get through the entire story line, and all the other hoopla, would this really be a worthwhile endeavor for anyone?

And this:

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Originally Posted by HiliteOrin

Additionally, the fact remains that each character is still limited to one chance at two pieces of loot per turn per week.

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If you can't lot you can't get it anyway, your locked out of any drops for turns that you have already completed, so even if everyone else passes the loot you don't get it.
Can everyone get 2 drops per turn by using alts, yes, but it's only 2 per turn per person, so you can't "fully" gear a single person in a day, or week even.

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Originally Posted by Enfarious

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Brilliantly stated. :) I wish I could 'Like' more than once per post. >_>; There are undoubtedly groups that could abuse this, who could and would take all of the time and effort into maximizing all of those alternate characters and jobs. As you noted, it surely wouldn't be done in a week, so benefit to SE still based on subscription fees. The vast majority also benefit since there'll be a reason for supportive FCs--helping one another out in times of need rather than only for greed. With larger FCs supported by how things work, more people will be willing to join one rather than go solo/PUG and, well, improvements all around. :D

Crystal Tower apparently has a loot lockout so one could feasibly be added to Coil.


There are no words to express just how vastly frustrating it has been trying to get runs set up when many of the people in our FC have very tight schedules and this is the first content that does not allow us to freely swap people in and out as needed. Doing something with my FC and people I want to spend time with should not be this awful. We would love to learn these fights and welcome the challenge.

We can't really get PUG members, because gear that they win is essentially gear dropped to the floor as it is not improving our group. To add to that, that is one less FC member that is getting important run practice. It's highly unlikely that we would be able to re-invite the PUG member for future runs if we ever need them to fill a slot again because of the stupid lockout. I wouldn't mind randoms getting gear at all if I could count on their help in the future. It would be great for the community.

To add to that, we can't even grab members from our planning-to-be-allied FC because they have their own runs to do and taking their members means locking them out of their own runs and their own practice and such.

Coil just fights us every step of the way and honestly feels like it greatly benefits PUG players over anyone that is dedicated to their FC simply because they have no strong ties to other people and don't have to concern themselves with locking others out of content.

The difficulty in content needs to be in the content itself, not scheduling to get around an obnoxious mechanic.

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Originally Posted by Estellios

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The difficulty in content needs to be in the content itself, not scheduling to get around an obnoxious mechanic.

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I agree with all of what you just said. I find that I actually feel bad asking outside my own FC for "spare" bodies to do runs, well not from /shouts but from asking other LSes that I'm a member of. Mostly because it means that, while I may know all of them and be friends with them, I'm taking someone from their own FC to benefit mine. I also am not fond of the idea that my FC members might not get the drops as a result, have one whm who's there every run and has lost out on 2 drops to non-FC members, the only 2 times we've seen whm drops so far to boot. None of us mind losing to an FC member, or even a non-FC member that is part of a static group with us, but losing to /random folks hurts a bit.

To that end, I'd hope that any loot-locking happened based not just on clearing the run, but also if you actually got a drop. I was thinking about this whole thing earlier and it seems like it would help ensure the repeated runs of content throughout the week. Eventually everyone in your group(s) would get 1 drop from each turn if you continued to repeat the turn. It would mean that you do each 4 times, and you couldn't guarantee you get the drop you "need" but at least everyone in a group gets a drop, making each turn worth something for everyone, not just for 1 or 2 people a week. After you get 1 drop then your locked out of lotting in that turn for the week.

Scheduling for us is of course part of the issue as well, I can't imagine how hard it would be for a FC that is larger than ours, or with more people interested in fulltime endgame content. As it is we lose people to PUGs just because they miss a normal run and jump into a PUG to get caught up w/o losing a chance at gear, if we could just go back and redo those turns it would be even better for them as the number of people lotting against them would be reduced.

Edit: OMG 1000 char limit kills me ...

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Originally Posted by Enfarious

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Perhaps if Loot Lockout were done as you described, with loot allowance based on acquisition instead of completion, the item drops could be based on the jobs currently within the run? Say you have no BRDs, the chance of BRD gear dropping would reduce to 0. Might ease the issue of even further increased exploitations. :3

As for troubles filling up FC groups, I understand that all too well. My FC went from two Coil groups down to one because members kept dropping out to join groups they had vested loyalty into prior to joining us. It left one group gutted, so now we try to shift members around as needed for the existing group to keep them going. The FC doesn't have many that are capable nor willing to do Coil, so we always pull from the LS. It's fine for us since that's how social design has developed our group, but there's such little need for any loyalty to an LS.

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Originally Posted by Ryuhkin

Perhaps if Loot Lockout were done as you described, with loot allowance based on acquisition instead of completion, the item drops could be based on the jobs currently within the run? Say you have no BRDs, the chance of BRD gear dropping would reduce to 0. Might ease the issue of even further increased exploitations. ...

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There's a part of me that wants to endorse the "only gear for jobs in the party drops" idea, then there's part of me that thinks, well I have all 50s and so does alot of my coil group. I'd hate to have to see us all run on every job to get geared. It would get a little trying making party builds that work for our whole group.

I've been hoping since early in 1.0 for content that really encourages LSes (before FCs existed) to be more unified. I really thought we were going to get that, but so far it hasn't happened. Your spot on though there is little reason to be loyal to a group, getting PUGs to do content actually tends to work out better for people's schedules so why wait for an FC/LS run.

This is a major flaw in the game at the moment. Charging over 150kgil a run is Crazy. Im sure the gil they get is used to sell for real cash to Websites and gold spammers. I believe players that make cash off of this mmopg should be banned. Because the gil is used to profit Square. They are a business and they need subs and profits to make our updates. Lots of Fcs are charging rediculas amounts. I also wish u would ban all the Gil spammers im tired of blacklisting up to 50 names.

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Originally Posted by Enfarious

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That idea was more to benefit SE and prolong subs, it'd be more work and kind of annoying to users. :3 It'd help crafty groups prevent the usual, "Oh man, another piece of DRG gear AGAIN?!" ...Not that I'd particularly mind more DRG gear. ;D I actually had one of my LS mates, who was there on trial for the FC, tell me, "Well, no group does Coil when I can that I want to join so I guess I'll take an invite." Gee, thanks for the display of interest and loyalty. FCs right now have that feel--there's almost zero ability to lure people in outside of existing members that might have more of a draw to their friends than other friends do.

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Originally Posted by jc500

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You might want to check the topic you've posted in, sir.

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Originally Posted by Ryuhkin

FCs right now have that feel--there's almost zero ability to lure people in outside of existing members that might have more of a draw to their friends than other friends do.

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It might just be a different interpretation of what an FC is. To me, FC is a guild of friends/community. To me, LSes are where you go to find your static groups. Maybe the reason you are having a hard time with getting people to join your FC is because they feel the same way I do and would rather join your LS for coil instead of your FC?