Stolen drops... Can anything be done?

Wow, having something like that would really piss me off! Even though, I have to admit that a few days ago when I was helping a friend do the dragons lair mission, one of our party members decided to take a free mission ride and just leave their comp for us to do the work. About 10-15 minutes into the mission, a rare max dmg hammer drops for this person. I waited around about 3 minutes and then picked it up. But, to me this seems certainly fair because this person just left his/her comp leaving us to do the mission. We did complete the mission, and this person got his/her free 1k exp.... but not his/her rare hammer ... BTW.. it was a +17% damage to dwarfs x_x

Death is a mute point in this case, and only complicated the problem. And you're telling me that if you were in the same situation you wouldn't be pissed? You're such a liar.

Hell, if I was still ALIVE, left a drop so I could HELP MY TEAM like I'm supposed to, and then turn around when we're done to see a teammate picking up my drop, do you think I'd be pissed? Would you?

Its not stealing, you died. Think about it. A dead person cannot own anything. Why do you think the developers made it possible for the item to be "public"

Best thing you can do is join or create your own guild and play with people you know and trust. Otherwise you'll run into the crap that you did and have no recourse...

I would be pissed. But not at the person that acquired the item. You guys need to grow up.

The developers made it so items went public, so that if someone didn't want that item, he could just leave it and someone else could get it.

They didn't make it so you could abuse it.

If so, why wouldn't they make a pop up window ask if they would like it public say after 3 minutes or so?

I think the developers were thinking that if an item isn't picked up by a certain time after the drop that the player doesn't want it. I don't think they thought about when someone dies.

Diing and being unable to pick up your drop is completely different from just deciding not to pick it up.

I agree with Konquest that the countdown to becoming public should stop when the player the item is reserved for dies.

Because there is no reason to have that. It would be annoying to have that pop up, especially if you didn't pick up multiple items in a row and they popped up one after another.

you're one of those players that sees a rare drop in the middle of a mob battle and runs half way across the screen to go pick it up...leaving the rest of your team high and dry so you can get your drop....aren't you?

Somebody didn't read all of my post.

Death isn't the problem here. People can steal drops without you being dead; happened quite a few times during some of the missions I took.

Death just complicated things. And besides, if you wanted death to mean you don't own anything anymore, why not have all of your belongings just strown out the second you die for anyone to loot from. Like that idea? How everything you worked for is just gone because you died?

Oh wait, what about res?

You say you'd be pissed, but you're contradicting yourself time and time again. I can't even believe you're condoning the action. You're just as horrible as the person that stole the drop.

Yes, death in game is different since there are res skills and signets. Heck in some tough missions most everyone takes a turn at dying. So I won't touch something that wasn't mine unless we backtrack and they don't want it, or leave the game.

I have been known to announce to that person that they got a purple or gold drop, just so they don't miss it!

When I first read this I was thinking the same thing then I reread and realised what the OP was saying, the guy waited 5 minutes not for him to get back/res before taking the item but rather instead of ressing him, waited out the 5 mintues to steal the item so therefore yes that does suck. He wasn't waiting 5 minutes for the OP to come back.

Personally I wish at the end of the 5 minutes some type of message comes up and says "Do you wish to get said item?" (pick the message I am just throwing something out. Plus it would only refer to blues, purples, and gold items. White items would still fall under the old method of after 5 minutes any ones game. If not then at least as some alluded to earlier, the timer only counts towards live time).

I had a good experience with this. On my first purple drop while playing back at Ascalon, the whole party except for one warrior died. He had already used his res sig for a monk or didn't have one, I do not remember, but he waited around to pick up the bow and give it me after he ran off to die so we could try again. That experience made me feel better about the community...until I turned public chat back on..... /doh

danfrancisdo, roleplaying-wise - a dead person cannot own anything, but this is a game and since you can resurrected and your character will live on no matter what, the items assigned to your character by luck of the drop should persistently stay assigned to you no matter what extenuating circumstance arises. This may be harder for the designers to program but the easiest way may be for each person to have a "lock-drops" feature which enables them to keep the rarity of their drops hidden from the group, unless deemed otherwise by the player, and keeps the items from defaulting to public if they are above a user set level.

So, I could set my "lock-drop level" to Purple and Gold only. Blue and White items show up as normal but Purple and Gold would show up as White and Blue to all others in my party. I guess this could be an extremely customizable feature but it may just be more hassle than it could be a relief. There will always be griefers no matter where you go and what you do, but hopefully they will do something that goes against the RoC, in addition to being jerks, that will get them permanently banned from GuildWars

I think everyone agrees that stealing items is a bad thing. It is clearly a somebody exploiting the system. Danfrancisdo is just trolling. The 5 outrageous responses on this topic are the only posts he has made. He just wants to stir up trouble.

Although I've never experienced losing an item to a different player, it has worried me a number of times, especially when killing enemies on the other side of gate. I think it should work that items still have a 5 minute countdown, but if you see a rare drop, you can left/right click on it and choose "reserve" or something. That makes the item never go public, therefore saving it for you. This eliminates pop-ups or message boxes asking about your items, and it keeps them safe from thieves.

Once, I was the only surviving monk in a party in fissure, everyone else laid down around monsters and it took a good 5mn for me to find a safe path and rebirth everyone. In the middle was a purple drop for me, which of course turned white in the process... Sure enough, I rebirthed a few until this elem guys as soon as I got him back, run to the drop and pick it up. This guy just kept saying tough luck, it was white.

I surely was pissed about it and asked the others not to heal or rez him anymore. Sure enough at the next encounter, he remained dead, even proposing to give me back the drop, which of course I refused. He still got his 5,000xp but it was probably so boring to wait the next 10mns laying dead that he dropped out swearing at us before he left.

I didn't get my drop but just seeing all his constant pleas for life made us all feel so good and teasing was at his high... "Just use that drop to rez yourself, etc..."

Now I don't care that much about that drop, it's just a game and he probably just got a minor out of it... He since is on my ignore list of course

PS: I still agree purple and gold drop should remain reserved forever to their owner...

The only way you can keep this from happening in the future is to pick up the drops you know you want.....during battle. This may go against your view of "team play", but take notice that most people snatch drops up all through a fight.
I too usually wait until battle is over, then survey the ground by holding down the ALT key and doing a 360. I've been lucky to have not died and have someone grief me in this way but I can tell you that if I see purple/gold while fighting.......I do make sure to either stay alive or if that's in danger....I pick my item up.
Diqueheads like you described, should be banned, if not for violating Anet guidelines than for just being a pure piece of crap person.

youre dead....is there a rule about drops after a party member dies?,,,,what i mean is do you all have a job briefing befor going in ...or do you just assume that everyone is on the same page?...

To solve this all that needs to be done is make the public countdown timer only start after you have moved a certain distance away, say 50 meters. That way you obviously didnt want (or didnt see) the item and are off on your way down the trail leaving it behind.