One of the things that really annoyed me during my BETA tests were the loot-chests in dungeons. For those who have not played beta , or didn't get to the 4-man dungeons, here is a quick explanation:

When you are joining a dungeon-party the loot that will drop of mobs is personal. Every player will get his own drops from every mob that get's killed. However, there are also multiple chests that spawn inside the dungeon, easilly 10 or more in The Banished Cells, for example. These chests ussualy contain random on-level blue Bind on Equip loot and there is no roll-system on the loot, the person who gets to the chest first gets the loot. Ok, that's not true, protected by a lockpick of various levels. When you fail the lockpick you will be unable to loot the chests for 5 seconds or so, giving other players the chance to lockpick the chest. Lockpicking is pretty damn easy though...

I don't think i'll have to explain what kind of behaviour this ussualy leads to in most groups, and i don't understand how this archaic loot-distribution system get's implemented in a new MMO when games like WoW have actually very activly changed their loot system through the years to discourage "ninja-looting". I've seen tanks fake-pulling bosses, just to get to the chest behind the boss. Healers letting people die to get some loot. People leaving the groups becasue a plate wearing character took 5 pieces of light armor from chests just so he could sell em to buy his horse. I've played enough MMO's to know that people willl be @ssholes if you let them, and this system promotes it.

I have to agree. The very first moment I saw a locked chest in Grotto I thought to myself "uh oh".

it really is a bad idea for all of the reasons you mentioned above. Random chests in dungeons aren't in themselves a bad thing. Several MMOs do it.

The two biggest problems are this:

1. The chests are locked. Picking a lock takes time. And if you fail or break a pick it takes even longer. Meanwhile the entire group is waiting on you. Even worse if you decided to try and pick this lock during group combat.

2. The loot should be on a roll table. As you mentioned, this will cause no end of grief as selfish people will set aside respect and courtesy in order to be the first one to get their grubby paws on the chest. The easiest way to eliminate this problem is to give all group members an opportunity to roll for the item in the chest.

This is why I just decide to let someone else take them. Sure I would like a shot at the loot, but it's more important to me that the group doesn't wipe or fight about something stupid like a chest.

I suspect this is just a case of a company new to the MMO industry making a classic mistake that will be fixed sometime down the line. Because as you said. Nobody does this anymore. It simply isn't worth the headaches.

I'd like to see chest loot instanced to each player, so one guy opens it and each player can then loot whatever the chest holds for them.

Co-operative play in pve is the way to go about it, not competitive - save that for pvp.

Haha, I was most upset when I unlocked a chest, forgot my inventory was full, and hopped to my inventory to drop xyz useless crap, and when I look back someone else had the chance to get the goodies I unlocked.

So moral of hte story, always check for room in your bags before opening chests.

I didnt get to do a dungeon, but this doesnt sound like a good system at all...

I did Banished Cells as well and to me I think there are enough chests that everyone in the group gets at least 2-3. I mean I'm not going to point out chests as if I see them I take them...

I tend to agree, that's a huge oversight. Players can and will be jerks about it, better to fix it early as even if the game is great some people will be incredibly turned off to this feature.

God plz no, you get so much loot allready, someone opens they chest and over grenn/blue/epic stuff should be rolled, nothing more. Its allready bad enough that everyone has his own loot, giving out even more loot is just....

...fun.

I hate this too.

I'd much rather there are fewer chests but they be instanced to the player. Don't see why they need to be locked - it just slows down the run, but if they do need to be locked, then after somebody unlocks the chest, make it so every player can loot it.

Not really more like killing there own game, if you give out too much loot, people will get there gear pretty fast, and the moment you have it you dont need to go there anymore, and if that happens in endgame, people will not stick with the game. Gear Grinding = Lategame for most PVE Players.

Me think this is grrreat, Khajiit always find chest first. Then run.

During my adventures in Fungal Grotto, some players didn't even know of or look for the chests unless they were in plain sight along the main path, many of which were not. I simply let the other players have at them and I waited until we cleared it and then let everyone else leave. On my way out, I swept through the dungeon finding all sorts of chests, many of which had respawned after being looted while we were trying to clear the dungeon.

Always reduce your inventory to the bare essentials before tackling a group dungeon as you can pick up a lot of items to sell, use or extract/research.

Thanks for the heads up I love looting chests and I love it even more when they respawn and i can loot them 2ce.

Don't any of the mobs respawn?

Hmm this really sounds bad. I hope that player crafting will have better gear than the one that drops. Otherwise this could ruin profit to crafters. In WoW i think crafting of armors is pretty useless. So I hope it will be different in TESO...

Roll for chest drop is good idea. Although I like even this "ninja" style. You see what players are good and what are just selfish idiots who you remember not to group up again... Hope that Aldmeri Dominion won't have many idiots

Gear grind should not depend on drops from chest loot - that should be extra stuff and things to basically tide you over till you get crafted items equipped.

Problem is there are too many players and too many idiots. Can't remember them all.

I hope I can find a guild early on, so I can run dungeons with them and won't have to put up with people who just try to screw everyone else over.

Clarifying chest loot rules at the beginning of the dungeon run would be helpful too. Something like 1st chest goes to the first person in the group, 2nd to the second person and so on.

No, dungeon mobs or chests dont respawn. He most likely found some chests that were skipped (they are ussualy placed slightly out of sight) or not fully looted.

Going by stereo-type, with the aldemeri dominion having 2 races, Khajit and Bosmer, that promote stealth-gameplay more then other races (which in my experience seems to suit alot of players with ninja-tendecies) you ar e quite out of luck.

So they decided to make the other useless stuff instanced but the treasure chest non-instance. This is pretty bad. I could care less about gears from treasure chest as most of the time, its worse than the one i crafted or just doesn't fit my gear. The only thing i want from treasure chest is the random world loot like the treasure map as well as the style books.

With this system, for every guild that has some solid loot-rules when doing a guild-run there will be another that ends in drama.

Oh definitely - one just needs to pick their guild. Nothing makes me leave a guild faster than repetitive guild drama. It's why I usually search for 18+ guilds. 20+ would be even better. Haha.

Chest loot instanced to each player is the way to go. The last thing you need in a group is animosity towards one or another. Guild groups may have an understanding between one another, but in pugs maybe not so much. Prime loot does not have to drop for each player every time a dungeon is run. It can be random, possibly requiring multiple runs to attain what you are after. I personally want to enjoy the experience with the group and not worry about who gets to the chest first.

I want great loot as much as anybody, but I am not going to risk the group over looting. Unlocked would be nice also so as not to slow progress.

Aye, and on a personall level this is pretty manageble. But that still means that there will be thousands of these loot-drama's per day, all because of a loot-system that serves no purpose. It will sour peoples gaming experience, and for many players in the most noticable way possible; Other people's selfish actions causing them to miss out on character progression. I think being vulnarable to things like trolls and ninja's, because of in-game systems, is for many people one of the biggest complaints when doing online gaming.

I never got to do a group dungeon in beta, but I hope whoever did, submitted feedback about these chests.

I did, i jsut hope other people did aswell and it gets picked up. Not sure how much attention gets paid to these forums.