History Main / LootDrama

* Unusual in that this isn't an online game, certain {{Pokémon}} may sometimes be this rare due to the difficulty in getting them. Especially Pokémon that are given out at Nintendo events. This goes doubly for Pokémon that are only available through these events like Mew and Celebi. This also applies to Pokémon that have special moves they wouldn't normally learn (such as Ralts with Wish) or shiny Pokémon (which are only encountered once in a blue moon.)

* ''Minecraft'': Diamonds, Lapiz Lazuli, and Lightstone Dust/Blocks. Notch is adding more stuff to the game which means the drama may only escalate over time.

* Unusual in that this isn't an online game, certain [=~Pokémon~=] may sometimes be this rare due to the difficulty in getting them. Especially Pokémon that are given out at Nintendo events. This goes doubly for Pokémon that are only available through these events like Mew and Celebi. This also applies to Pokémon that have special moves they wouldn't normally learn (such as Ralts with Wish) or shiny Pokémon (which are only encountered once in a blue moon.)

** The best example of this yet in the game is the Golden Wrench. There are only 100 of them in the whole game. That's right, 100 total for a million+ players. To get one you had to be either super-lucky or knew the mechanics of how to obtain it during a three-day period. As for the drama causing part... Well, [[http://www.toptiertactics.com/2010/07/goldengate-the-engineer-update-scandal/ here is a blog post from an important person in the various Golden Wrench charities explaining what the rage was all about.]]

* ''DiabloII'' has a rare item, the ''Stone of Jordan'', which gives + 1 to every skill. This was actually used as currency in the online aspect of the game for rare goods. Before any crack down on selling in-game items for real money, an eBay auction was selling about 50 of these for $300. Then there's the ''Butterfly Ring'', which makes the Amazon ungodly powerful (it gave the Amazon + 15 to certain skills that were useful), which was even more rare than a ''Stone of Jordan''. Last I heard, perfect gems were the surrogate currency.
** ''DiabloII'' in general is notorious for this. The latest patch offers runes and runewords, runes are special socketable items with a range of abilities, depending on the rune. Rune drops aren't determined by [[LuckStat magic find]] so the probability of finding any (much less the one you want) is very low. Runewords are specific combinations of runes in a specific item which when created, imbue the item with increased stats, ranging from useful to [[GameBreaker GameBreaking]]. Runes have supplanted the ''Stone of Jordan'' as the ingame with its own exchange and pricing system to boot. Rampant [[GoodBadBugs duping]] of runes has actually caused ''inflation''.

** The best example of this yet in tf2 is the Golden Wrench. There are only 100 of them in the whole game. That's right, 100 total for a million+ players. To get one you had to be super lucky during a 3 day period. As for the drama causing part... Well, [[http://www.toptiertactics.com/2010/07/goldengate-the-engineer-update-scandal/ here is a blog post from an important person in the various Golden Wrench charities explaining what the rage was all about.]]

But sometimes, an item is ''so'' rare, ''so'' irreplaceable, and ''so'' iconic that it causes otherwise rational people to do horrible things. Indeed, with the uncertainty of getting it and the high competition both within and without a guild, many people resort to downright Machiavellian tactics. People will backstab, undermine, and do nasty things to try to secure it for themselves. People will abuse game mechanics, leading to excessive use of cheat programs. People will try to PlayerKill those that pose a threat to them getting it. Indeed, very few guilds can have this item in their treasure pool without all hell breaking loose. Expect NinjaLooting, lot sniping, and a TON of arguments about who deserved it.

* ''FinalFantasyXI'': Ridill is a sword usable by six jobs that has a frequently occurring chance of additional attacks in a given attack round. It is dropped by Fafnir, a "notorious monster" on a 21-to-24-hour spawn timer (except every 4-10 days, when something else spawns in his place). The drop rate on Ridill is hard to quantify with a percentage, but exceptionally low; The "average" estimate is about 5%. And it is the source of a vast majority of the drama in the game. There are also several other items that actually have lower proliferation rates, but due to their specialized and not-so-glorious benefits, don't really cause as much drama.

* GaiaOnline has the Angelic Halo. It was one of the first Monthly Collectables released and it's virtually impossibly to get one. The admins and artists know this and love to screw with the users about it. Several cheap aternatives have been released because of the item's rarity.

** [[CosmeticAward The Isolator Badge.]] To obtain this badge, you had to defeat 100 Contaminated Thugs that were only found in the tutorial zone. If you bypassed the tutorial, or you got bored fighting that type of thug (and it is really boring), this badge was LostForever. The developers eventually responded to complaints by adding...the Infected Thug enemies, who act and look exactly the same as Contaminated but don't count towards the badge.
*** After MORE complaints, they finally added a spawn point. For ONE Thug. Every two hours. In a high-level [=PvP=] zone. And since villains can't get this badge and thus had nothing to lose, it was easy for {{Griefer}}s to just kill the Thug (it's still level 1!). And then stomp the non-PvP ready hero who was just here for the badge.
*** After MORE complaints, this was finally rectified with the Flashback system, where you get to replay the tutorial mission and regain the badge.

** The best example of this yet in tf2 is the Golden Wrench. There are only 100 of them in the whole game. That's right, 100 total for a million+ players. To get one you had to be super lucky during a 3 day period. As for the drama causing part... Well, [[http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1346549 here's 3,500 posts raging about a single drop recipient.]]

* The former trope name comes from a weapon in ''FinalFantasyXI''. Ridill is a sword usable by six jobs that has a frequently occurring chance of additional attacks in a given attack round. It is dropped by Fafnir, a "notorious monster" on a 21-to-24-hour spawn timer (except every 4-10 days, when something else spawns in his place). The drop rate on Ridill is hard to quantify with a percentage, but exceptionally low; The "average" estimate is about 5%. And it is the source of a vast majority of the drama in the game. There are also several other items that actually have lower proliferation rates, but due to their specialized and not-so-glorious benefits, don't really cause as much drama.

* Parodied in ''SluggyFreelance'' when a ''WorldOfWarcraft'' style [[MassivelyMultiplayerOnlineRolePlayingGame MMORPG]] has a special ability-boosting hat that a raid's boss only RandomlyDrops once every ten raids. When [[http://www.sluggy.com/daily.php?date=080915 Torg gets the hat]] his first time playing the raid, other players who have done it 50 times without getting the hat are ''pissed''.
** The ExpansionPack almost immediately [[http://www.sluggy.com/daily.php?date=080916 makes this achievement a joke, however]].

* ''WorldOfWarcraft'' has ''several'' items of that kind, which have their own rarity category, called Legendary. Without exception, these weapons require weeks of raiding efforts to be created, and just deciding who in the guild should get the item can be cause for much drama. Some epic drops in normal dungeons also fall into this category, such as an extremely rare mount ([[CosmeticAward which only looks unique and doesn't offer any improvements over normal epic mounts]], mind you).

* ''WorldOfWarcraft'' has ''several'' items of that kind, which have their own rarity category, called Legendary. Without exception, these weapons require weeks of raiding efforts to be created, and just deciding who in the guild should get the item can be cause for much drama. Some epic drops in normal dungeons also fall into this category, such as an extremely rare mount (which only looks unique and doesn't offer any improvements over normal epic mounts, mind you).

* These don't exist in ''CityOfHeroes'', due to the fact that all enemies have the same chance of dropping any particular rare item, and the fact that one player can't see when another player got something good.
** Except for one build that never made it out of beta. Wonder why...
** Purple drops are perhaps the closest thing, being very powerful, insanely rare (they only drop at the highest levels, and at the mercy of the RandomNumberGod) and fetching very steep prices on the market. However, given the fair drop system, there's very little drama over them. Before the [[ItemCrafting Inventions system]] was introduced, Hamidon Origin enhancements were similiar.

But sometimes, an item is ''so'' rare, ''so'' irreplaceable, and ''so'' iconic that it causes otherwise rational people to do horrible things. Indeed, with the uncertainty of getting it and the high competition both within and without a guild, many people resort to downright Machiavellian tactics. People will backstab, undermine, and do nasty things to try to secure it for themselves. People will abuse game mechanics, leading to excessive use of cheat programs. People will try to PlayerKill those that pose a threat to them getting it. Indeed, very few guilds can have this weapon in their treasure pool without all hell breaking loose. Expect NinjaLooting, lot sniping, and a TON of arguments about who deserved it.

*** We're looking at you Feebas. (For those who don't know the games: Feebas can be only found in a few tiles of lakes that are 600-800 tiles in size, and each of those tiles must be searched by fishing, a long and boring process.)
**** Speak for yourself. It took me three minutes to find the right tile, and then I promptly caught up a storm of them.

** Oddly enough, the Hockey Stick, Lucky Bastard Sword, et all of the Ultra Rare drops have subsequently been replaced by gear obtainable in-game, from special one-time-only quests, or Items of the Month (the Brimstone Bludgeon far, far outweighs the LBS for Musc boost, and the Haiku Katana gives near-equivalent bonuses all-around and has way better abilities - both are one-handed weapons, too, while the LBS is 2, making them even ''better'' in comparison). IOTM's & FOTM's in particular are known for this, one being the V-Mask, which is generally considered a ridiculously high-powered item; others are the aforementioned Haiku Katana, Pilgrim Shield, any Tome, Libram, or Spellbook, and especially the familiars - Bandersnatch, He-Boulder, Llama Lama, Comma Chameleon, and Sandworm being some of the best.

* ''TeamFortress2'' has this with the unlockable weapons and to a greater extent hats. In order to acquire the best weapon for the medic the player must earn "achievements", some of which are so hard to get during normal gameplay that they have caused players to "farm" achievements by organizing games with like-minded players. This has led to many very large online feuds, due to every player only there for their own benefit and not wishing to help anyone else. The result of these games tends to be a whole lot of wasted time.
** This problem isn't so bad anymore since the update has long passed, but that still doesn't forgive Valve for having achievements that were counterproductive to the medic class. IE: kill 50 scouts with a certain weapon, instead of...y'know, using your healing gun and ''assisting'' in killing 50 scouts. Stuff like that made normally rational medics do borderline retarded actions all in the name of a shiny new weapon or two.
** The counterproductivity of people trying to earn achievements causes many fights among people trying to actually beat the other team, instead of, say, equipping the melee weapons as medic and going after other medics.
** The Sniper/Spy update added random "drops" (in reality, a line in chat stating that "Player has found the Item" and a message when you die) that can be any unlockable, for any class that has one (including the new, ultra-rare hats for all nine classes). For a week or two after the update, the only way to get the new Sniper or Spy items was random chance (after that, either due to player outcry or they just planned it that way, Valve added Milestone achievements for those two classes, allowing you to earn the Sniper/Spy weapons the old-fashioned way). They also mentioned, shortly after the update went live, hints about a trading feature in a future update (which is good for those of us who have 5 copies of a weapon and want to get rid of 4)...
*** Trading seems to have been dropped in favor of the smelting system, which isn't so bad except for hats. Yes, hats. You can get enough weapons and hit create ha, and out pops a hat... That you already own. *cue rage* It costs 54 weapons for a random hat and 72 for a class specific one. And weapons can only be smelted into metal if you've got multiple copies of the same ones, such as three backburners. Also, weapons don't drop that often. This and the system that Valve has in place makes hat making a very stressful affair. The system is a roll of the dice. Every few hours or so the server will roll a die, and depending on your number you get a weapon or a hat. The more you play, the more rolls. The downside that Valve put in here is that the more you play, the lower the odds are to get the drop you want. After a certain point you'll hit a wall where you won't get a drop no matter how much you play. Thankfully this resets every week or so. Due to this system, idle servers were created where players log in and... idle.

** The recent Polycount update finally released trading, and some of the new hats can be crafted from a given recipe, not the usual "craft random hat".

* In DotHackSign, the minor character A-20 is trying to get an item known as "The Golden Grunty". Her character is very low level, and completely incapable of obtaining it on her own; she manages to rope [[{{Tsundere}} Mimiru]] into going with her, in spite of the fact that there are very serious and real things going on. Mimiru eventually gets fed up dealing with A-20 and leaves her in the dungeon alone, but goes back at the end and finally helps her reach the dungeon's treasure room. They acquire the Golden Grunty, and... it doesn't do anything. Mimiru is initially upset, but seeing how happy it makes A-20 anyway, she decides that that's enough.