If you were a GM, how would you handle loot?

[Deleted]

I would do a loot "council" with a healer a tank and a dps who I trust and who knows the other classes as well in case I was in doubt of who I'd want to give each item to.
I'd also enforce a DPS > Tank > Heal priority on loot as that's what's best for progress.

Oh and people should link the item(s) they're replacing as well as any set bonuses lost/gained and if then off-set items that they might be able to use after breaking a bonus etc.

[Vaelorian]

Just curious, how do you "cheat" DKP / EPGP? The prices are structured such that higher impact slots are worth me. If someone wants to save all his DKP for that shiny weapon, fine. But in most DKP / EPGP systems weapons cost almost 4x what an off-piece costs.

Well you don't "cheat" it perse. What you do is look up how much points another "competitor" has for a certain item you want. Then calculate how many raids you and him will attent for the coming future until that item most likely will drop - you make sure that guy/girl spends his/her points on other less useful stuff by talking him/her into it. Or you just make sure that you attent every raid and hope that the other guy/girl doesn't get a slot one night.

You on the other hand pass on any upgrade that's coming in the near future until you pass the other guy/girl in terms of DKP. You graceously pass every upgrade to another player. Be it your competitor or other classes. So you get thanked for being that generous guy, while secretly you want that one item.

Meanwhile the other guy is usually clueless that this is happening. Once the item drops the guy/girl you were in competition with usually wakes up or if he/she doesn't congratulates you on your item.

I am not saying I did this - but I know a bit how it works. Is it cheating? Not really. But it is bad guildmanship imo. Ultimately it doesn't really matter if the items that could have been an upgrade for you didn't get sharded. If it gets sharded/offspecced, then it is very very bad.

edit:

You can also "cheat" if you make a deal with another competitor on how much you will bid on a certain item. If you know there are few people in the raid that can use item X apart from perhaps you and 2 other parties... one of those has not that many points and the other is the one you will make a deal with... you can "cheat". You will spend just enough points to be higher then the lowest bidder while saving your hard earned DKP for another day - outbidding that one person. The other competitor says: Oh well I'll let you have it.

Next raid: Same situation happens again, the 3rd lowest bidder (now 2nd bidder for that item) is still much lower then the other guy and so guy nr 2 (now nr 1) wins the item very cheap. Guy nr 3 (now 2) can win the item even cheaper ofcourse next time it drops.

[Deletedaccount1]

Back when I was a "hardcore raider" in late Wotlk and early Cata, I was an officer in my guild. We used a very simple loot council system that was masked to seem extremely complex. The other officers tricked everyone into thinking they were fairly distributing loot while they were getting geared faster than everyone. It worked for about a year until one of the raiders noticed something was strange and told everyone and the guild fell apart. Never have been able to look at loot council as a fair system since then. I would just go with roles as problematic as that can be.

[Deleted]

10man - just give the item to the one benefiting most from it, if it is same upgrade for more ppl, just roll it. This worked for us really well, and ppl were willing pass their BiS items if it benefited the raid. When whole raid considers loot as means to achieve common goal (progress on next bossess) rather than loot being the main goal, loot distribution becomes nonissue and dramafree.

25man . loot council is best for progressing, as long as you have players who know what are they doing and not using it as advantage for themselves and friends.

[Ealyssa]

Rolls. [...] but it leads to the least drama.

How the unfairness of total random attribution can lead to the least drama ? O_o I can't understand how a bunch of people would prefere a non rewarding arbitrary system to a logical one (that it is the easiest to use is something I understand and a valid reason to use /rand, but using it for being "drama-less" is strange imo).

[Deleted]

We use a modified Suicide Kings, broken into different catagories (like tier, rings, non-set etc) so that people aren't hoarding. The initial list was basically assigning everyone a number and /rolling.

[NightZero88]

How the unfairness of total random attribution can lead to the least drama ? O_o I can't understand how a bunch of people would prefere a non rewarding arbitrary system to a logical one (that it is the easiest to use is something I understand and a valid reason to use /rand, but using it for being "drama-less" is strange imo).

Because by being totally random everyone has a fair shot and nobody is deciding by some made up rules.

Loot council: Some random people are deciding who gets loot because of how they feel. Better hope you never piss off a loot council member or no loot for you.

DKP: You get points by attending raids and various other things. Get more points if you get invited so make friends with the raid leader and by doing other stuff. Ignore mechanics to pad your DPS meter for more points (not sure if this is actually how it works just an example).

Roll: Totally random chance of winning based on nothing at all. If you're in the raid you have a shot therefore you can't be mad at anyone except Blizz maybe if you don't win. Least drama option.

Off topic: Yay 1000 posts.

[Deleted]

I think loot council, probably.

[Deleted]

We use rolls. with tier priority going to people finishing important sets (2 or 4 piece), and just leave it up to the players themselves to say if they want to pass to another because they need it more or such.

[drtrann]

having raided hardcore. at theory loot council is by far the best, give it to the people who have shined/ it would be the highest net benefit to the raid to give it to. now that said its a VERRYYYY slippery slope to fall down council loot whoring. i flat out left my server first progression guild in cata when our guild leader had 4 epic healing trinkets while some of our other healers had greens (he crossed a line when he took 2 of the SAME trinket to "reforge differently")

if you can trust yourself and your council to rule fairly, its a great system, but its extremely easy for you guys to clique and leave out the guy who you don't like on a personal level, but has earned the loot.

simple answer, dkp/suicide rolls/epgp. people only get loot when they have really worked at it, or no one else wants it.

[Deleted]

We use EPGP in our guild. It is the ONLY system we've tried where nobody has found grounds to bitch about XYZ being unfair.

[smokii]

EPGP or DKP

used EPGP for a long time throughout most of TBC and all of wrath, switched to DKP in cata, but pretty much haven't raided in an organised fashion since.

EPGP did get abused a bit, but that was mostly because we didn't use the decay function properly and as such, switched to dkp. dkp worked well but we semi combined it with loot council, so that if 2 people were close on DKP and the lower dkp needed the item more, then we'd swing it that way.

loot drama is a drag on any guild, so use whatever you can to lessen it's impact imo, combine loot systems or make your own if need be.

suicide kings is another one to mention though, lore from tankspot swears by it and for a tight-knit 10 man group, it seems like a sensible idea.

[Vaelorian]

Because by being totally random everyone has a fair shot and nobody is deciding by some made up rules.

Loot council: Some random people are deciding who gets loot because of how they feel. Better hope you never piss off a loot council member or no loot for you.

If you find yourself in a guild that have people act this way, leave. Bad management = bad

DKP: You get points by attending raids and various other things. Get more points if you get invited so make friends with the raid leader and by doing other stuff. Ignore mechanics to pad your DPS meter for more points (not sure if this is actually how it works just an example).

if you find yourself in a guild where this happens (people befriending the person deciding who gets in and get in on that merit), leave. Bad management is bad.

Roll: Totally random chance of winning based on nothing at all. If you're in the raid you have a shot therefore you can't be mad at anyone except Blizz maybe if you don't win. Least drama option.

Off topic: Yay 1000 posts.

This is def. not the least drama option. So what happens if one person always wins? Yes I have seen this happen and more then once. 1 or a few players from different classes are always lucky. How is that fair? And you know what, usually these "winners" are also the players you DON'T want to reward the most because their attendance sucks, because their dps/healing/tanking sucks (but you have to keep them in the guild otherwise you'll have other issues - they have friends who are part of the core of the guild - without those slackers you cannot raid at all etc).

So how would this be fair? Rolling would ONLY be fair if the rolls are managed in a form of lootcouncil. Again you need proper management. If you do not have that, the guild will surely collapse anyway.

[K i s u]

Since we're talking just heroic encounters and progression, I'd personally lean towards Loot council.

[NightZero88]

If you find yourself in a guild that have people act this way, leave. Bad management = bad

if you find yourself in a guild where this happens (people befriending the person deciding who gets in and get in on that merit), leave. Bad management is bad.


This is def. not the least drama option. So what happens if one person always wins? Yes I have seen this happen and more then once. 1 or a few players from different classes are always lucky. How is that fair? And you know what, usually these "winners" are also the players you DON'T want to reward the most because their attendance sucks, because their dps/healing/tanking sucks (but you have to keep them in the guild otherwise you'll have other issues - they have friends who are part of the core of the guild - without those slackers you cannot raid at all etc).

So how would this be fair? Rolling would ONLY be fair if the rolls are managed in a form of lootcouncil. Again you need proper management. If you do not have that, the guild will surely collapse anyway.

Yes, I agree that you can run into an issue of a select few always winning but in my guild at least people will pass to others if that's the case. However, that being said you say that the other systems are better but then say to just leave guilds where those systems cause issues and to me that just seems silly. You say DKP and loot council are the best systems but also say if they cause drama because of favorites leave the guild. How can they be good systems if you have to leave a guild because of the issues they cause?

And the guild collapse without proper management? My raiding team has been together for 7 years, we've always rolled. We let pugs roll same as everyone else and we've NEVER had any loot drama except from temp raiders we've brought in who only caused issues because they wanted loot all the time. That was their issue not an issue with the loot system. And I am the raid leader. If you're mature and don't think you are greater than everyone else rolling works fine but maybe its because raiding with friends and having a good time is more important than pixels that will be replaced in 3 months to us.

[Alltat]

How the unfairness of total random attribution can lead to the least drama ? O_o I can't understand how a bunch of people would prefere a non rewarding arbitrary system to a logical one (that it is the easiest to use is something I understand and a valid reason to use /rand, but using it for being "drama-less" is strange imo).

Two big reasons:

1. There's nothing except pure luck involved in a roll. There's no strategy to it. It doesn't allow for any cunning schemes like DKP does. There's no room to even suspect greed or favoritism like with a loot council (it doesn't matter if the loot council actually is biased or not; what matters is whether people think it is, as that system is based on complete trust). You can get upset at the random number generator for not working in your favor, but then you might as well curse the random number generator that generates boss loot for not having that item drop more frequently to begin with.

2. It's the default system built into the game, meaning that you don't actively choose to use /rolls. It's what you default to if you don't use anything else. Items will be rolled on unless you manually choose to have a master looter (we do anyway with rolls, but mostly to forceloot stuff to indecisive people in order to speed things up) and enforce another system. This means that if you never win because you always roll poorly, it's Blizzard's fault and not anyone in the guild's. You could blame people for not fixing Blizzard's mistake by making up their own loot system, but there's a big metal step between "our loot system is unfair" and "Blizzard's loot system is unfair, so we should make up our own".

Both contribute to reducing drama. If you're looking further than the current tier, the best way to ensure progression is to ensure you keep your raiders happy. You do that by avoiding drama. Six months from now it won't matter who did or did not get that trinket. People can hold a personal grudge over what they perceive as an unfairly "stolen" trinket for much longer than that, though. What loot system you want depends on whether you want the best possible progression now or if you still want to have progression under the same guild banner a year from now. You can still discuss and distribute loot however you see fit under a roll system; the key part is that if you still disagree in the end, the dice have final say.

[Tinykong]

Suicide Kings is pretty great. Drama free, and loot gets spread around evenly.

[Vargas]

Since I raid exclusively with friends, we don't need special loot rules. If a piece for your spec drops, roll on it. Thankfully the people I play with are considerate enough that, if a piece is a bigger upgrade for someone else, they will pass on it.

[Spl4sh3r]

As a 10man guild I would use Rolls, with the added rules that trials (first week atleast) can't roll on gear that others want.

As a 25man guild I think I would use DKP because its the least hassle and it is more fair than rolling can be. Probably some system where you have to use all your DKP for an item. Seperate DKP per gear tier.

[Deleted]

It would depend on the guild and its aims. For a casual 10 man, roll; a hardcore 10 man, loot council. For almost every 25 man, EPGP with fixed prices; seriously hardcore 25 man, loot council.

DKP/EPGP in 10 mans smacks to me of either raiders that are all out for themselves and don't care about the team, or leadership that want to micromanage everything; either way, I don't like it and think it's really unnecessary.

I like loot council but it does require that everyone has faith in the council and I've witnessed it being used to create drama even though the decisions were generally fair - because it's (perceived to be) a subjective system people can and will see unfairness even when there is none and it's being used well.

I hate bidding systems, but love fixed price EPGP. I prefer EPGP over DKP because of the decay and the inability to hoard points; I've been one of those carrying a weak player through countless raids because they wouldn't spend their DKP only to see them win the awesome weapon everyone needed from the final boss because of all their DKP, and it's an unfair system (and a badly run guild, or a raid leader that gets his head turned by chatting to a pretty girl on a webcam ) that allows that to happen. Priorities for certain things, for example the raid wall set bonuses for tanks in DS, should override that though, but should be announced before the tier starts.

The best loot system I've been involved with was EPGP with everyone discussing amongst themselves who needed it, so when an item a particular class or player really coveted and deserved not one person rolled against them; that's a lovely environment to be raiding in