Best 25 man loot system?

[Brett Skullcrack]

If you have shitty council sure. If you have a good council all that stuff becomes completely negated or irrelevant. Transparency? Just ask, and you'll be told. Unpredictably? That's complete bullshit, the whole point of loot council is that you don't just guarantee that item X goes to person Y because they have more of magical point system Z and you actually take into consideration other things. Encourages power tripping? Once again, back to the point of who handles it and how good are hey at handling it. Decisions made on incomplete information? Well of course, but it's still far more complete than any point system could ever hope to be.

Just because you think your current council is "good" doesn't remove the fundamental problems of it. Maybe you think your council is good because you happen to be friends with the council officers, who then either consciously or unconsciously favor you in their decisions. Other members can't know for sure, and even the possibility of it makes loot council an inferior choice.

You honestly think "transparency" can be achieved by "just asking"? You have no way to verify what the real motivations of the decisions were, people lie, and people are unaware of all their biases (this is a well established fact) so they couldn't tell you even if they wanted to. You call "unpredictability" bullshit then go on to describe a completely unpredictable system and somehow think that's a desirable quality in a loot system? And no, those officers do not have more complete information, that is bullshit.

Fundamentally, even if all the officers were great people and tried to make decisions as fairly and objectively as possible, they simply couldn't because they are humans and will always be subject to conscious and unconscious biases. Even then, sometimes human decision making is the only/best choice, but in the particular case of loot distribution we know we can craft fully objective point systems that are superior on any measure you care to pick. Furthermore, the loot distribution system is a fundamental part of the guild, when choosing it you need to think long term, possibly over years. Today's great loot council might very well be replaced by some very bad people a year from now who might do irreparable damage to your guild -- a fully objective points system protects you guild from that threat.

[Deleted]

First give it half a month or more to actually see if the merge will work, than decide how to award loot. Go with a council or RR for now. The thing is, most guild merges do not work, or end up creating a tense relation within a guild, so loot might be your least problem.

[Ssateneth]

Lootcouncil with competent people on it.

This. 10char

[Stevoman]

LC is the only system that truly works.

You, unfortunately, have already set yourself up to fail, since you stated the purpose of the loot system is fairness instead of progress.

[Brett Skullcrack]

LC is the only system that truly works.

You, unfortunately, have already set yourself up to fail, since you stated the purpose of the loot system is fairness instead of progress.

Except many world top guilds, like Paragon, use DKP.

[Vestig3]

Epgp generaly if realy progressive Loot council.

[iddqd]

We use EPGP and i hate it for a single reason: You always have to pay the full prize of the item, even if noone else would need it, not even for an off-spec. For example, i am using 403 Gurth as an arms warrior, because it's better than those 410 weapons. But now we are progressing Spine HC and it's better to use 410 weapons there, because of more steady dmg. As i respec on Fury for this given fight, i would have to pay for two 410 weapons, full prize, just for this simple fight, even if those weapon would go to maelstrom crystals otherwise -.-

How do you handle this flaw? -.-

[lakhesis]

I'm an officer in a "medium core" 25 man raiding guild, that's been around since august '06 & has been through all sorts of iterations attempting to find a good loot system.

In theory, loot council should be the system that can most appropriately give loot where it benefits the group the most. In practice, there will be occasional slip ups or biases that come into play, or something unforeseen will happen which casts a decision(s) into doubt. The fallout of this is a source of drama which can gut a guild totally out of the blue or slowly over time. In my experience loot drama is one of the key factors in breakups of otherwise successful guilds, and Loot Council is a system that tends to maximise the potential for loot drama & interpersonal conflict (i.e. even if the loot council really is being fair, that won't necessarily be the perception of others... and even if people are wrong, they'll still lash out).

In practice, EPGP is a long way off-perfect but is the "least bad" system I've encountered. I recommend very steep decay (we use 33% decay per week - it means old effort+gear are discounted within about a month), gp is costed on ilvl of gear, new members are charged the cost of an item when they start raiding so they aren't entering with an advantage, and 100 ep is given out per hour of raid attendance (or while on standby & in vent). Base GP is set at 100 & we wipe your PR and treat you like a new raider after a 1 month absence (although the decay virtually does that for us tbh).

Loot Council will always give out loot more thoughtfully than this system, but this system is unquestionably even-handed while rewarding attendance, encouraging taking loot (via the high decay) & not providing a potential source of guild-breaking drama.

If no one wants an item for main spec, the officers loot council it as an offspec piece - and we're rigid that pure DPS have no offspecs & anyone seen to be using loot that's been given to them (i.e. shadowpriest using gear giving to them for their disc set) is charged & reprimanded (and never given off-spec loot again). This enables some discretion in gearing up those asked to hybrid, while giving anyone who really cares about items a chance to step in & take it because *any* mainspec bid will always stop an item being loot council'd.


TL;DR: I recommend not trying to find the ideal loot system, I recommend trying to find the least un-ideal loot system. Therefore I recommend EPGP & I recommend having a *very* clear understanding of what your settings mean, and why you have them.

[gakpad]

my guild uses lootcouncil and it is by far the fairest experience I've had with loot in my wow life.

[Fade To Blue]

Back in ICC when we ran 25s, we used a loot council for awhile. Most have already stated it's pros and cons, so I'll add something i feel made ours work quite well.

1. Your council should have an odd number sitting on it in case there isn't a unanimous decision, you wont be stuck with a tie vote that could take away from raid time killing internet dragons. I'm sure there's other ways to deal with this, this is just what we went with and it seemed to work just fine.

2. Have alternate members for your council. If someone on the council had any interest whatsoever in a piece of gear, they excused them self from the decision entirely and an alternate took their spot for that particular decision. This of course implies personal accountability and open honesty. We decided alternates were necessary not just for the aforementioned reason, but for perception as well. A council decision to award one of its members a piece of gear could very well be the best decision for that piece of gear in terms of it being an upgrade or further helping the group as a whole, but it may also be perceived by the group as "looking out for their own". It would be nice if every single player could look at the big picture as a whole, but more times than not, it doesn't seem to happen.

3. To try and combat the inherent "human nature" side of decision making, we made our council up of our most knowledgeable players who were wearing better gear than the majority of the raid. Would that stop bias and or greed? Or was it even really necessary if your raid group should all be friends in some way? Probably not, but we figured having as many (reasonable) safety nets in place as we could was a decent idea and it worked quite well.

4. Have a clear set of rules, and enforce them the same every single time, with NO exceptions. What I'm mostly referring to here is the problem of collusion between players wishing to obtain a piece of loot by trying to game the system. Most common, is player A asking player B to "roll" for them as well for something and should they win, trade it to them for whatever compensation they may have worked out between themselves. I strongly urge you, no matter what loot system you decide to go with, to stamp this out the very instant you're made aware of it. It's not so much that you're punishing those players for skirting around the rules, it's that you're protecting the best interests of everyone else that plays by the rules and doesn't cheat the group.
The second you start to waver on enforcing your group's rules, you've effectively opened the floodgates for future abuse of the system. So don't do it. Ever.

I can't stress enough that your council (if you so choose to go that route) needs to be carefully chosen for individual accountability and a fairly comprehensive understanding of how stats work for each class in determining upgrades. Not saying everyone on the council needs a masters degree in each class and spec's stat weights, but as a whole, the council should have a collective knowledge of class/spec stat weights. Say you have a trinket drop that has quite good stats for say, a resto druid, but no one on the council knows thing one about resto druids (or worse yet, no one knows thing one about healing), the resto druid in your group is most likely not going to get a fair shake.
No matter what system you decide to go with, have everyone who has a say in how loot is handled get in vent one night and hammer out as many details as humanly possible before having your system go live in a raid. Try and consider everything that can possibly go wrong, and as a group figure out how best to combat such problems. Having some foresight and a clear structure to follow will save you far more trouble than anything else, no matter which system you decide works best for your particular raid.

[Lorenell]

My guild uses a combination of /roll ms and offspec with tier going to lootcouncil. The only problem we have is everyone argues who gets the gear, and it isn't the typical arguing of I want I want. It is you take it. no you take. naa am good you take it. That is the reason for the loot council to actually make someone take the gear. We all want to see everyone else get the best gear they can.

[smelltheglove]

We use EPGP and i hate it for a single reason: You always have to pay the full prize of the item, even if noone else would need it, not even for an off-spec. For example, i am using 403 Gurth as an arms warrior, because it's better than those 410 weapons. But now we are progressing Spine HC and it's better to use 410 weapons there, because of more steady dmg. As i respec on Fury for this given fight, i would have to pay for two 410 weapons, full prize, just for this simple fight, even if those weapon would go to maelstrom crystals otherwise -.-

How do you handle this flaw? -.-

we did offspec as half price

other issue i see with loot council - people deciding dont always know what your stat priorities are. a lot of people are extremely ignorant of other classes' needs. and that is assuming they dont have other agendas going on

[Deleted]

Except many world top guilds, like Paragon, use DKP.

DKP is the most drama free loot system. Does not mean it's the best in general.

[Deleted]

Just because you think your current council is "good" doesn't remove the fundamental problems of it. Maybe you think your council is good because you happen to be friends with the council officers, who then either consciously or unconsciously favor you in their decisions. Other members can't know for sure, and even the possibility of it makes loot council an inferior choice.

You honestly think "transparency" can be achieved by "just asking"? You have no way to verify what the real motivations of the decisions were, people lie, and people are unaware of all their biases (this is a well established fact) so they couldn't tell you even if they wanted to. You call "unpredictability" bullshit then go on to describe a completely unpredictable system and somehow think that's a desirable quality in a loot system? And no, those officers do not have more complete information, that is bullshit.

Fundamentally, even if all the officers were great people and tried to make decisions as fairly and objectively as possible, they simply couldn't because they are humans and will always be subject to conscious and unconscious biases. Even then, sometimes human decision making is the only/best choice, but in the particular case of loot distribution we know we can craft fully objective point systems that are superior on any measure you care to pick. Furthermore, the loot distribution system is a fundamental part of the guild, when choosing it you need to think long term, possibly over years. Today's great loot council might very well be replaced by some very bad people a year from now who might do irreparable damage to your guild -- a fully objective points system protects you guild from that threat.

Tell me what point based system you've magically come up with that takes into account how important tank 4pc are for progression? Tell me a point based loot system that accounts of player skill or dedication, for human nuances or for things like "Billy is gonna be quitting WoW next week, maybe he shouldn't get that new heroic weapon". Objective? Don't make me laugh. Point systems achieve their "objectivity" by simply ignoring the majority of the deciding factors for distributing loot. They are 100% objective on 1-2 things and completely blind to all others. And yes transparency in LC can be achieves by asking. The way you verify that they told you the truth is called trust, if you don't have that then run your point systems all day long.

Fundamentally if all the officers were great people, understood the game and the players and strove to make fair and objective decisions then they would still make mistakes but would overall make better decisions than any automated system ever could. I never said they'd be perfect, but its light years ahead of what ANY point system could achieve.

I challenge you to show me ANY point based system that accounts for every variable and is completely fair when distributing loot. You absolutely cannot. A point based system is basically assigning a computer to run loot council solo but only ever focus on 1-2 things and ignore all other considerations. Every point-system is unfair, you're just ok with it because you'd rather be jibbed by points than by people. I'd rather have 7-8 tiny human biases working together, adapting and thinking rather than one giant tunnel visioned bias. But I actually like, trust and get along with all the people in my guild. It's very very hard to have that in a 25m, so I like I said from the start: a well run LC is the best but incredibly hard to have, a more realistic approach for a 25m would be DKP.

[ihatepeople]

My guild uses DKP with a few tweaks involved. Our GM and officers also do loot council for legendary items. Our DKP system with a twist is as follows:

1) 20% decay every month
2) Progression and new boss kills earn significantly more dkp/points than farming periods. Hardly any points (besides the standard attendance and raid start/end points) come in during farm periods so totals can even out amongst players if people are spending points.
3) Trials can earn points from the day their trial starts, but they are not eligible for loot until their trial period is over unless every main raider passes to/for them.
4) Legendary items cost a shit ton of dkp/points.
5) Anyone who quits raiding at any point in time is still affected by the 20% decay per month.

I think our system that we have is pretty fair and rewards effort and steady attendance. No system is perfect.

[Harsesis]

We use a kind of let the people who want it decide system. We are a 10m group though so it's usually on 2-3 people on a popular item. This system only works well in a group where loot is just a means to a goal and everyone is out for the betterment of the group. I couldn't see this working too well in a 25m group though.

[Brett Skullcrack]

Tell me what point based system you've magically come up with that takes into account how important tank 4pc are for progression?

"Tank priority." DKP with tank priority is what many of the world's most successful raiding guilds use.

Tell me a point based loot system that accounts of player skill or dedication, for human nuances or for things like "Billy is gonna be quitting WoW next week, maybe he shouldn't get that new heroic weapon".

Every point system that awards points for attendance takes dedication into account. As for skill, that's an issue of who you bring to your raid, not a loot distribution question. And if Billy is going to be quitting next week, he's most likely not going to be bidding on items this week.

Objective? Don't make me laugh. Point systems achieve their "objectivity" by simply ignoring the majority of the deciding factors for distributing loot. They are 100% objective on 1-2 things and completely blind to all others.

They are fully objective on the things that you measure. Just as they should be. If you believe factor X is very important, simply put it into your DKP rules.

And yes transparency in LC can be achieves by asking. The way you verify that they told you the truth is called trust, if you don't have that then run your point systems all day long.

You can keep repeating that all day long. It won't make it true. Humans are humans.

Fundamentally if all the officers were great people, understood the game and the players and strove to make fair and objective decisions then they would still make mistakes but would overall make better decisions than any automated system ever could. I never said they'd be perfect, but its light years ahead of what ANY point system could achieve.

You are yet to make any argument why you think the decisions would be "better". By what measure would they be better?

I challenge you to show me ANY point based system that accounts for every variable and is completely fair when distributing loot. You absolutely cannot.

Sure I can: Every point system ever created. They take into account exactly the variable you want to take into account and they are "fair" in the sense that they cannot have any hidden biases or dishonesty which every loot officer in existence has.

A point based system is basically assigning a computer to run loot council solo but only ever focus on 1-2 things and ignore all other considerations.

Nope. Nothing like it. Point systems are loot distribution mechanisms that you can design to take the important things, and only the important things, into account. And which will apply those rules fully transparently and fairly.

[Deleted]

"Tank priority." DKP with tank priority is what many of the world's most successful raiding guilds use.

Oh hey look you're introducing LC elements into your DKP. Who'd have though. Oh wait, T12 tank gear was the lowest priority of all the gear drops in the instance. Oops, your system just failed. It's too bad you didn't have an actual human brain making decisions which would be able to adapt from tier to tier and boss to boss.

Every point system that awards points for attendance takes dedication into account. As for skill, that's an issue of who you bring to your raid, not a loot distribution question.

Why shouldn't it be an issue of loot distribution? Because your system can't cover it? How convenient, your systems fails to account for X so you immediately dismiss it.

They are fully objective on the things that you measure. Just as they should be. If you believe factor X is very important, simply put it into your DKP rules.

I once again challenge you to tell me a system that incorporates everything into its rules. You can't.

You can keep repeating that all day long. It won't make it true. Humans are humans.

It is true. If you have trust issues that's your problem, don't force your nonsense onto others. I trust people in my guild, I've known them a long time. They all have their biases, each one has a different bias and they cancel each other out perfectly. If anyone feels anything happened unfairly its discusses and resolved. Again, trust issues are your own problem.

Nope. Nothing like it. Point systems are loot distribution mechanisms that you can design to take the important things, and only the important things, into account. And which will apply those rules fully transparently and fairly.

It's exactly like it. That's EXACTLY what a point system is, it's a perfect loot council with regards to the parameters you set it. It does its LC perfectly with what you allow it to and ignores all else.

I already admitted LC has bias issues, if you're gonna keep rattling on about that you'll get nowhere. The whole point of LC is that if your council is good enough those bias issues are tiny, much smaller than the issues you encounter with point-systems. You can ramble on all day about "if you think it's important put it into your point system" but you can't put everything in it. You can only account for so many things before it gets way too complex and convoluted and there are some things you can never account for.

LC can account for anything. It's only limitation is the size and type of bias of your council, if you have issues trusting your fellow raiders that's your problem. Either way, I'm done with this argument. Maybe you got passed over for some loot so you're mad now or something. It's irrelevant to me whether you understand why it's better, enjoy your limited DKPs.

[Brett Skullcrack]

Oh hey look you're introducing LC elements into your DKP. Who'd have though. Oh wait, T12 tank gear was the lowest priority of all the gear drops in the instance. Oops, your system just failed. It's too bad you didn't have an actual human brain making decisions which would be able to adapt from tier to tier and boss to boss.

Tank priority is in no way an "LC element". It's just an explicit rule in the point system, just like any other.

Why shouldn't it be an issue of loot distribution? Because your system can't cover it? How convenient, your systems fails to account for X so you immediately dismiss it.

Because "skill" is not a useful measure for loot distribution. It's not a useful measure because it can't be measured meaningfully -- and no, your officers' gut feelings or biased opinions are not useful measures. Then again, if you truly believe stacking gear on your "best" players is useful, you can just hand out DKP based on dps from log parses if you want -- again, superior to stacking gear on whichever random person your officers mistakenly think is most "skilled".

I once again challenge you to tell me a system that incorporates everything into its rules. You can't.

Everything? You think loot councils incorporate everything? Do you think you want to incorporate everything? DKP systems can be designed to include anything you feel is important and it can do so fully objectively, unlike loot councils.

It is true. If you have trust issues that's your problem, don't force your nonsense onto others. I trust people in my guild, I've known them a long time. They all have their biases, each one has a different bias and they cancel each other out perfectly. If anyone feels anything happened unfairly its discusses and resolved. Again, trust issues are your own problem.

Trust has precisely zero to do with it. You can trust a person all you want, but if that person is unconsciously favoring someone he subjectively likes (as everyone of them is), then they couldn't tell you even if they wanted to.

It's exactly like it. That's EXACTLY what a point system is, it's a perfect loot council with regards to the parameters you set it. It does its LC perfectly with what you allow it to and ignores all else.

So you're saying that a perfect LC is an inferior approximation of a point system? Why would you want to use it again when there's a more accurate, faster to apply, predictable, fully specified system available?

[gakpad]

The main advantage a fair loot council has over a point-based currency system is simple.

A) If you're doing it right, loot council is going to benefit the raid as a whole the most with every piece of loot that drops. Takes items' status as BiS for certain classes into consideration, guarantees people won't stockpile DKP for "that one item they really really want," and ensures an even distribution.

B) Takes attendance, performance, etc. into account on a level that a typical DKP system cannot do without becoming extraordinarily convoluted.

My experiences with DKP systems has been that people are going to whore DKP. This is an inevitability. Weekly/monthly decay can help this but it really doesn't solve the problem. People can bid on items and win them that they will replace due to not being BiS over people who the item is BiS for. There's too many complications with DKP that will prevent it from ever overcoming a truely fair LC system. Sure, you can add rules to help accomodate these complications, but the fact is that no amount of rules will ever cover the nearly infinite number of details that a group of 2-3 people on a loot council can take into consideration when distributing loot.

That being said, the crux of a successful LC is having everybody on board and understanding that they may not get what they want as soon as they could have if they used a DKP system. It also depends on how much your raid values waiting an extra ~1 minute per item for the council to decide who it goes to and sometimes maybe a little more. If you have people challenging the council, getting upset because they didn't get an item, etc. it starts to become iffy whether or not its worth the time.

My 25 man semi-casual guild uses loot council. Our two GMs (one is in a 7 or 8/8H guild on his main, and leads our raids in his off days, the other values the social experience far more than loot) co-operate the loot council and it has been an enlightening experience. I raided with DKP since BC and hadn't really questioned it until joining this guild at the start of cata. The loot council has to be knowledgeable enough about every class to make informed decisions, but in the end, the result is that at the end of the raid, nobody in our guild can really argue with the decisions they made.



tl;dr LC can work extremely well but everyone has to be on board and the council has to be knowledgeable and unbiased. not saying DKP/point systems aren't viable, just that they can't take account certain factors that LC can.