History Main / NinjaLooting

** ''VideoGame/DiabloIII'' does it too, with random drops for each player in multiplayer modes. In fact, it's impossible to steal another's loot because you can only see the gold coins and items that are meant for you.

Further, note that one of the big design goals for modern MMOs is avoiding this in some way, and making the "code" rules sufficiently well designed to match up to most player's expectations.

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* ''EveOnline'' has its own, thematically-appropriate approach to ninja looting. If someone else loots your kills, you gain the right to shoot them for 15 minutes.

* In ''TeenageMutantNinjaTurtles III'', there are pizzas that restore you to full hit points. In a one-player game, only one pizza will appear at a given location, but in a two-player game, there will be two of them. If one of the players is spiteful or stupid, he can eat both of the pizzas, so that the other player will lose the opportunity to replenish his hit points. The character who hogged both pieces of pizza gets no benefit from doing this; it's just a [[JerkAss "funny" possibility.]]

* In ''EverQuest'', stealing items from enemies was a core part of the thief class. Cue thieves sneaking up on a monster while an unrelated party fights it, looting its items, then sneaking off with the party none the wiser.
* In the MMORPG ''PuzzlePirates'', most players in a "party" are simply answering a job advertisement and thus are actually working for someone. At the end of a voyage, the captain of the ship gets to decide which of the participants get part of the loot and which don't - this is mainly meant to deny loot to players who did not contribute, or left in mid-battle (screwing everyone else over). But once in a blue moon you'll meet a captain who deliberately keeps the entire revenue from the voyage for himself. If the players are all newbies or don't know how to complain, he might even get away with it.
* ''UltimaOnline'' had several different systems for awarding loot to players, most of which ran on the "whoever loots the monster first gets it" system. In the early days and in PvP areas, a killed monster would be flagged as rightfully killed by whoever landed the killing hit (it was possible to kill steal, though they may have fixed the rights logic since then) but anyone else could still loot it - at the cost of being flagged a criminal, meaning that any player could attack and kill you without repercussions until the flag wore off. The non-PvP areas have it so that only the rightful slayer of the monster can loot it until the flag wears off after several minutes and the corpse becomes a freebie. Later additions had items that would appear directly in players' inventory, but some of the more valuable ones only appeared in PvP-enabled areas while performing activities that drew a lot of attention, and were specifically flagged as "cursed" (the opposite of blessed, which basically meant that there was no way to safeguard the item through being killed) so the prizes would often end up going to player groups who swooped in near the end of a run and killed everyone who had been fighting the monsters.

* Happens a lot in ''RealmOfTheMadGod'', and irrespective of the item's value or rarity. Which is odd, as this game has limited inventory space, very strong equipment-to-class linkage, and no currency you can sell items for. (Even though you can now feed them to pets, doing so ''costs'' you a flat fee, meaning you don't want cheap goods for that either.) And yet there are players making grabs for unusable beginner gear...

* ''GuildWars2'' has the Skritt Burglar, which steals all the loot in a chest and then runs away with a bag of goodies. You have to kill it before it can teleport away if you want the contents.

* ''RagnarokOnline'' has a bunch of this, ranging from other players coming in and using 'Greed' (a skill which picks up everything in a 5x5 area) while you're killing a ton of mobs... to many, ''many'' enemies which will do exactly the same. Said enemies are usually annoyingly fast, with the exception of the ubiquitous Poring - and they can't hold more than ten to fifteen items, but ''still loot''. Also, whoever kills the looting monster gets first pick of what it drops.
* In the Aeria hosted game ''EdenEternal'', it uses a combination of two anti-ninja methods. The first is "minute wait" for anybody not in the party of the person who killed the monster. The second is a need vs. greed decision. In a party, you can't just go up and take an item, you have an option of saying "need" or "greed" on an item, having them be first and second priority respectively. If there are more than one choice on need, or everybody is honest and says "greed", it rolls then.

* In ''EarthEternal'', by default, loot goes to whoever dealt the monster the most damage. In parties other settings can be activated, including first-come-first-served and "Need Before Greed". The latter gave everyone three lot buttons on valuable items: Need, Greed and Pass. The player community is usually pretty good about choosing Greed or Pass as appropriate.

* A possible UrExample goes back to the early editions of ''DungeonsAndDragons'' where the party thief was often the one called upon to scout ahead for traps and monsters. Being thieves, many of these characters could be counted upon to pocket any treasure they found while beyond the supervision of the rest of the party (or skim some off the top, if the party grew suspicious about the lack of loot). This one is referenced in the famous Emerald Rose song "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PUMCIn2swTU Never Split The Party]]".

* Referenced in [[http://darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0042.html this strip]] (referring back to the events of [[http://darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0039.html this strip]]) of ''DarthsAndDroids''.

* In ''Franchise/{{Noob}}'', Gaea is the resident expert in the domain. The webseries has her invent "Ninja healing" that consists of placing herself between the healer and another player at the right time. Another webseries-only story has Relic Tracker's guild also do this to the Noob guild at the end of an important dungeon.

** The Troves of the Thunder King is filled with loot-bearing chests. In one room, opening a chest will spawn a saurok that stuns you, steals the chest's contents, and then runs away. Killing him yields better loot than average for the chests.

* A possible UrExample goes back to the early editions of ''DungeonsAndDragons'' where the party thief was often the one called upon to scout ahead for traps and monsters. Being thieves, many of these characters could be counted upon to pocket any treasure they found while beyond the supervision of the rest of the party (or skim some off the top, if the party grew suspicious about the lack of loot).

* Combined with [[KillSteal Kill Stealing]], this can be a valid tactic in WarcraftIII against your enemies, particularly if you are using the Blademaster hero. Wind Walk to go invisible. Follow the enemy force to a high-level creep camp. Wait until the boss creep is about to die, [[KillSteal deal the finishing blow yourself]], and snatch the high-level item drop. It would be griefing if you were allies, but you're enemies.
* In the early days of ''WorldOfWarcraft'', there was only a need/greed system, and so a ninja could lay in hidden wait until a boss was killed, and then ''loot every time after everyone had passed on it.'' Nowadays this is impossible due to a "loot master" system in which the raid leader is the only one able to distribute items, and it has worked exceptionally well from then on.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'', the player can take the opportunity to loot the corpses of friendly or neutral NPC's killed by others, and you will also gain XP if an NPC finishes off an enemy you attacked first. And then there's pickpocketing, or worse, planting a grenade on an NPC.

* ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros3'' provides a very early example in 2-player mode. Because the bonus invventory items are held in Toad houses, the players taking turns to play meant that they were invariably open to whoever played ''next'' after the level blocking access to the house was beaten. Some wily players quickly realized they could just let their friend beat all those hard levels and just swoop in to clean out Toad houses on their own turn. And because picking one of those items ''didn't'' count as a turn, you would often see a single player hoarding all the fire flowers, cool suits and P-wings by carefully allowing the levels blocking passage to those items being cleared by the other player.

!!Examples:

* Referenced in [[http://darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0042.html this strip]] (referring back to the events of [[http://darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0039.html this strip]]) of ''DarthsAndDroids''.
** And in [[http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0029.html this strip]] from ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfTheStick''.

* An interesting form of NinjaLooting that isn't mentioned here, probably because it's much rarer, appears in games such as the MMORPG ''PuzzlePirates''. In this form of NinjaLooting, the person who organizes an excursion abuses power to cheat everyone else out of their hard-earned pay. In the specific example of ''Puzzle Pirates'', most players in a "party" are simply answering a job advertisement and thus are actually working for someone. At the end of a voyage, the captain of the ship gets to decide which of the participants get part of the loot and which don't - this is mainly meant to deny loot to players who did not contribute, or left in mid-battle (screwing everyone else over). But once in a blue moon you'll meet a captain who deliberately keeps the entire revenue from the voyage for himself. If the players are all newbies or don't know how to complain, he might even get away with it.

* Successfully averted in ''VideoGame/AdventureQuestWorlds''. Every player involved in a fight recieves exactly the same dropped items, since there's no way of trading in the game, but it's possible to involve yourself in a fight by healing someone already fighting the monster, and you still recieve anything it drops (including experience and gold).

* TricksterOnline has a mixture of these:

* In-universe example: in KingdomOfLoathing, finishing a battle underwater always carries a chance that a dolphin will come along out of nowhere and steal a loot drop, and the only way to get it back is to buy a dolphin whistle and beat the tar out of that smiley little asshole. But as it happens, dolphins only steal items that would otherwise have ''failed'' to drop, so their ninja ways actually work out in your favor.
* Largely averted in EarthEternal. By default, loot goes to whoever dealt the monster the most damage. In parties other settings can be activated, including first-come-first-served and "Need Before Greed". The latter gave everyone three lot buttons on valuable items: Need, Greed and Pass. The player community is usually pretty good about choosing Greed or Pass as appropriate.
* Also averted in ''VideoGame/{{Mabinogi}}'' and its sister game {{Vindictus}}. In the former, loot went to the party member who finishes the monster, and this privilege is usually reserved for the biggest contributor to the monster's demise. In the latter, loot drops come in the form of "evil cores", which don't go away until everyone has looted from them.

* In the Aeria hosted game EdenEternal, it uses a combination of two anti-ninja methods. The first is "minute wait" for anybody not in the party of the person who killed the monster. The second is a need vs. greed decision. In a party, you can't just go up and take an item, you have an option of saying "need" or "greed" on an item, having them be first and second priority respectively. If there are more than one choice on need, or everybody is honest and says "greed", it rolls then.
* In ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIMAGINE'', There are also methods for preventing ninja looting. The original, and best but now removed, was to have multiple channels on a server with few enough people that one grinding spot was not likely to be overwhelmed by a mass of people trying to get some easy currency. That prevented issues average ninja looting. Another issue is dungeon. However, that is well taken care of. First is that all enemies mooks drop either the same loot, and the amount of enemy mooks who can be taken care of easily, making it hard for a ninja to be greifing. Also, as this is only in party, it is quite possible that people will notice somebody not working when not approved to just be on the sidelines, meaning they go away soon enough. Also, while bosses drop rare items they never drop anything too rare, meaning that if somebody is looking for a quick steal won't get any game changing advantage. Also, the big dungeon loot is always prevented into 5 boxes, each one can only be accessed by one person, meaning that the big loot is given to everybody without the possibility of being depraved.
* Darkfall Online is chock full of this, since everything is full loot, and there is no sense of item binding. Though since the game also is a non-instanced full-loot PvP game, where items are not usually as time consuming to craft/acquire, Ninja Looting becomes something of an acceptable issue since it promotes world PvP encounters.

* In-universe example in ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsVSkyrim'' ''Dragonborn''. Every time you slay a dragon, [[BigBad Miraak]] will show up just long enough to steal its soul.

* Yuffie Kisaragi of ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyVII'' is a literal example of this trope, and for a curious subversion, this is also exactly what people perceive her to be.

* In ShinMegamiTenseiIMAGINE, There are also methods for preventing ninja looting. The original, and best but now removed, was to have multiple channels on a server with few enough people that one grinding spot was not likely to be overwhelmed by a mass of people trying to get some easy currency. That prevented issues average ninja looting. Another issue is dungeon. However, that is well taken care of. First is that all enemies mooks drop either the same loot, and the amount of enemy mooks who can be taken care of easily, making it hard for a ninja to be greifing. Also, as this is only in party, it is quite possible that people will notice somebody not working when not approved to just be on the sidelines, meaning they go away soon enough. Also, while bosses drop rare items they never drop anything too rare, meaning that if somebody is looking for a quick steal won't get any game changing advantage. Also, the big dungeon loot is always prevented into 5 boxes, each one can only be accessed by one person, meaning that the big loot is given to everybody without the possibility of being depraved.

* This is infuriatingly easy to do by accident in ''VideoGame/NewSuperMarioBrosWii''. Due to the way that powerups move, it's nearly impossible for everyone in a 4-player game to get an equitable share.
** [[WithFriendsLikeThese I thought that was half the draw!]]