History Main / NinjaLooting

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* In ''VideoGame/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtlesTheManhattanProject'', 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.]]

* Some games, especially early ones, have no built-in system for distributing loot and the first person to get to a corpse can take from it whatever they like. This can lead to players rushing to a monster killed by someone else and taking the loot before the person who did all the work has a chance to. Other games only allow the party that killed a monster to take items off of it, but that can still lead to situations where one member of the group tries to loot every kill first and leaves little to nothing for the others. This is the type of system that the term "ninja looting" directly comes from, with the logical basis being that they are "stealthfully" (or just very, very quickly) taking loot from a kill. Especially horrible if one is playing an archer, since ''every single melee fighter'' will be closer to the target and have a better chance to loot the corpse.
* Most modern online games will allow loot to be picked up by other players after a set amount of time has passed. In games with unrestrained player killing enabled, this means that a player could kill a hundred creatures before obtaining a coveted item, only to be [[BackStab backstabbed]] by his [[{{Griefer}} party member]] just as he reaches over for his loot, and having to watch as said "friend" runs off with his loot. Another variation exists in games where players drop loot after death: Said Griefer will wait until you defeat a foe and pick up its loot, before [[KickThemWhileTheyAreDown killing you while you're still weak]] and helping himself to your inventory.
* Other games have a treasure pool system, where every item from a particular kill is placed in a "pool" that the party can lot or roll on the contents of using a random number generator. The act of "loot sniping" is when somebody waits until everybody else has cast a lot or passed, then lots on an item against the group's rules, usually with the group agreeing on who should get the item or some form of "need or greed" system. A person trying to do this will often try to gauge their chance of success, such as if the other party members rolls were very high or low. A frequent attempt to play off such an attempt is "Oops, I didn't mean to roll! Glad I didn't win that! Heh. Heh." if the attempt fails. Upon success, often the ninja looter will simply log out of the game if they succeed (so they don't need to deal with their outraged fellows). This method isn't sure to be effective due to the random number generator, but the intent is still viewed negatively even if it fails.

* A third variation on treasure pool-based NinjaLooting is to lot on items when everyone else is too distracted to lot, such as by fighting for their lives. This is something jerks do in ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXI'', particularly WRT seals. This is harder to do in more modern games as they will tend to make item drops more obvious, such as a popup on the screen asking if the player wishes to roll on the item.

* Depending on the group setup, it's also possible that an item will be claimed under the assurance that the player really needs it, while he is really just grabbing it to sell for money.

* In ''VideoGame/TeenageMutantNinjaTurtlesIIITheManhattanProject'', 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.]]

*** Honorable mention goes to ''Frozen Orbs''. Being totally useless for some time (Auction price fell below [[VendorTrash vendor price]].), Blizzard announced that they would make it possible to buy other stuff with them. Cue lots of people rolling Need on them (After everyone else rolled Greed, of course.). They changed it now so that people can only Greed or pass.

* In the tabletop ''Webcomic/TheOrderOfThestick Adventure Game'', players can draw a "Screw This!" card and play it out of turn to grab the loot at their current location. Ordinarily, they're limited in when they can "loot the room" and in how much they can take at a time.

** He decides to capture a big name pirate then hand them over to the Marines to boost his own reputation, rather than going and committing many crimes in hopes of being noticed by the Marines and getting a high bounty. He targets Luffy at first but later settles on Ace.

** He decides to capture a big name pirate then hand them over to the Marines to boost his own reputation, rather than going committing many crimes in hopes of being noticed by the Marines and getting a high bounty. He targets Luffy at first but later settles on Ace.

* ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXIV'' has the need VS greed system for loot drops from coffers. If a piece of gear can be used by a player's current class, they can roll as "need", which overrides any player that rolled "greed" (it is possible to have multiple players roll "need" if they can all use the same piece of gear). Some non gear items like cards, materials, and minions can be rolled as "need" regardless of class and there always at least one case where someone gets what they want and immediately leave the party afterwards. For preformed parties, there's an option to either have the loot rules set to the default or have the party leader as the lootmaster where they can choose which player gets what item. It's depressingly common for lootmaster parties to have a lootmaster swipe all the items for themselves once it comes up and quickly disband the party, causing many people to dub loomsater groupes as "trap parties".

* Most modern online games will allow loot to be picked up by other players after a set amount of time has passed. In games with unrestrained player killing enabled, this means that a player could kill a hundred creatures before obtaining a coveted item ... only to be [[BackStab backstabbed]] by your [[{{Griefer}} party member]] just as you reach over for your loot, and having to watch as said "friend" runs off with your loot. Another variation exists in games where players drop loot after death - said Griefer will wait until you defeat a foe and pick up its loot, before [[KickThemWhileTheyAreDown killing you while you're still weak]] and helping himself to your inventory.
* Other games have a treasure pool system, where every item from a particular kill is placed in a "pool" that the party can lot or roll on the contents of using a random number generator to simulate a roll of the dice or simply just numbers. The act of "loot sniping" is when somebody either waits until when everybody else has cast a lot/passed before then lotting on an item against the group's rules, usually with the group agreeing on who should get the item or some form of "need or greed" system. Often a person trying to do this will try to gauge their chance of success, such as if the other party members rolls were very high or low. A frequent attempt to play off such an attempt is "Oops, I didn't mean to roll! Glad I didn't win that! Heh. Heh." if the attempt fails. Upon success, often the ninja looter will simply log out of the game if they succeed (so they don't need to deal with their outraged fellows). This isn't a 100% method due to the random number generator, but the intent is still viewed negatively even if it fails.

* With some systems there's also {{kill steal}}ing... the person who deals the deathblow gets the XP (unless they're grouped with others, in which case the XP is shared), so some people will let another player wear an enemy down to their last HP, then swoop in and take the kill.
* Depending on the group setup, it's also possible that an item will be claimed under the assurance that the player really needs it, but is really just grabbing it to sell for money.

Note that in all cases, the rule(s) being broken by Ninja Looters is 99.9% of the time a rule which was made up and enforced by the community over the "real" rules of the developers of a game (much like the way swearing during mass is not illegal, only frowned upon) or by societal "standards".

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.

Can happen in RealLife (or be perceived that way), if the "First come first served" rule is in effect.

** Card Identification automatically adds items to your inventory as you win them, but since there's both a weight limit and a stacks limit on what you can carry, it's possible for someone to get lucky and loot a Secret Card (the most common of which sells for half a million galders) because the person doing Card Identification was full and the auto-toss feature of Card ID kicked in...

* In the early days of ''VideoGame/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.

* ''VideoGame/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.

* ''VideoGame/DarkfallOnline'' 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 ''Webcomic/{{Sunstone}}'', Ally, [[Webcomic/BloodStain Elly and Dr. Stein]] have just downed a powerful boss in the MMORPG that Ally likes to play. Ally is celebrating like mad because it was a server first. While she's doing this, Dr. Stein, who is playing a paladin, rolls Need on a pet egg that gives mages (Ally's class) a sizable boost to elemental damage and other classes a bonus to magic resistance, and ends up with the item despite Ally's own roll for Need made at the last minute. This [[BerserkButton pisses off Ally]] enough to challenge Dr. Stein to a PVP duel and rage all over him.

* Other games have a treasure pool system, where every item from a particular kill is placed in a "pool" that the party can lot or roll on the contents of using a random number generator to simulate a roll of the dice or simply just numbers. The act of "lot sniping" is when somebody either waits until when everybody else has cast a lot/passed before then lotting on an item against the group's rules, usually with the group agreeing on who should get the item or some form of "need or greed" system. Often a person trying to do this will try to gauge their chance of success, such as if the other party members rolls were very high or low. A frequent attempt to play off such an attempt is "Oops, I didn't mean to roll! Glad I didn't win that! Heh. Heh." if the attempt fails. Upon success, often the ninja looter will simply log out of the game if they succeed (so they don't need to deal with their outraged fellows). This isn't a 100% method due to the random number generator, but the intent is still viewed negatively even if it fails.

* ''VideoGame/SuperMarioBros3'' provides a very early example in 2-player mode. Because the bonus inventory 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.

* ''VideoGame/MapleStory'' prevents monster drop looting by locking said drops to the player to made the kill for a certain amount of time, and everyone in a party gets any money drops picked up.

* Some games, especially early ones, have no built-in system for distributing loot and the first person to get to a corpse can take from it whatever they like. This can lead to players rushing to a monster killed by someone else and taking the loot before the person who did all the work has a chance to. Other games only allow the party that killed a monster to take items off of it, but that can still lead to situations where one member of the group tries to loot every kill first and leaves little to nothing for the others. This is the type of system that the term "ninja looting" directly comes from, with the logical basis being that they are "stealthfully" (or just very, very quickly) taking loot from a kill. Especially horrible if one is playing archer, since ''every single melee fighter'' will be closer to the target and have a better chance to loot the corpse.

* A variation happen in the ''FireEmblem'' series. In some chapters, [=NPCs=] help out your party. Though they're normally stupid or weak, they love to go up to an enemy holding a droppable item that you weakened and finish it off, making the item disappear forever.

* ''TricksterOnline'' has a mixture of these:

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* 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, and a character gains nothing from getting more than one of a powerup. [[WithFriendsLikeThese This is part of the fun]], and a key reason why [[PennyArcade some]] have referred to the game as "marriage poison".

[[quoteright:189:[[ComicStrip/{{Dilbert}} http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/12794_strip_print_113.gif]]]]

*** There is a less faith-destroying side; sometimes, in instances of ''accidental'' NinjaLooting (it happens), an honest player would tell other players to roll a random number and give the loot to the winner.

*** GenreSavvy players keep a stun, fear or otherwise disabling spell readily available so that they can still gather the resource before the mob resumes the attack, denying the opportunist player the opening needed to take the node from the distracted player.

** In its sister game ''{{Vindictus}}'', loot drops come in the form of "evil cores", which don't go away until everyone has looted from them.