Inherent Problems Vanilla Loot Systems Have To Deal With

[NovatHunter]

The problems you describe don't exist in a guild of professional adult players.

The Armor Class (aka "Who Can Roll") Problem:
How does the loot system account for cloth caster items and leather melee items as upgrades for mail and plate classes?

The issue doesn't really exist. Armor class has no intrinsic value in vanilla wow. Except for tanks. Please come up with examples.

The Armor Slot (aka Hoarding) Problem:
How does the loot system deal with the fact that bracers and belts are worth far less than other slots?
(One of the biggest problems with the Suicide Kings system)

If loot is handed out in advance, it's easy to set up a rough order in which items are awarded. The best warrior gets the first Onslaught Girdle for example, but then doesn't get the 2nd best item first. Maybe 4th or 5th, depending on how much of a difference there is in raid performance, guild dedication, activity and ability to show on time with all mandatory consumables.

The Scarcity Problem:
How does the loot system encourage attendance with fewer items dropping?
(Much more of a problem for casual guilds where people may not attend if they know it's gonna be a month before they're eligible to win anything.
The scarcity of loot relative to retail also causes differences in loot distribution for people that know they're going to be out, for example people with newborns on the way or armed forces deployments.)

Membership status hinges on guild attendance. If a player fails to show, he or she can be demoted to social status until attendance can once again reach an acceptable level. It's the officers and guild masters task to have this talk, which may or may not be difficult if the person has been in the guild a long time. Preferably, you should initiate the talk yourself if you know you cannot show. Then show as a social to fill a spot if there is one every now and then.

The Progression / Farm Problem:
How does the loot system reward progression nights over farm nights?
(More a problem in vanilla where players can't just go get the Heroic / Normal / LFR version of that must-have trinket.)

All the raids remain mandatory progression paths for an exceedingly long time. Guilds progressing through Naxxramas may still want to run Molten core so their hunters can finally grab a Band of Accuria. At that point in progression, some people may have alts to gear up as well. With 2 raid nights, not showing for farm night means not showing for half the mandatory raids. 50% is not an acceptable attendance rate.

The Incentivization Problem:
Does the loot system reward bringing consumables to raid?

Loot distribution hinges on it. Obviously showing with fewer than ideal consumables due to unforeseen circumstances is better than not showing. But experienced players will gradually accumulate more consumables than they spend every week. I.e farm 125% of what you use, so that you are ahead if getting consumables is difficult a week. Continuously showing without the mandatory consumables will result in lower loot priority, and if a better player can be found, demotion to social.

The PUG Problem:
If it's not a full guild run, what incentives do PUGs have to come? If an item drops and Guildy A has it, Guildy B needs it, and PUG C needs it, does Guildy A get to roll and give it to guildy B if he wins?

Such discussions must be had in advance with the pugs. Presumably, a full guild run + some pugs, you know who these people are and can sort out some deal where the most sought after items goes to the guild. Such as Band of Accuria, Drake Fang Talisman etc. If you form a raid with pugs you don't know, the reputation of the guild is more important than some purple pixels. Loot rules must be made clear to everyone, and don't even attempt to deviate from the agreed upon rules.

The Main Tank Problem:
How does the loot system deal with the fact that in vanilla, there was both a strong incentive to give the main tank the best gear available but also an incentive to give warrior DPS the gear as well. At what point does a big upgrade to an off-tank offset a small upgrade to a main tank?

This is a non-issue. Each boss has a roughly equal chance to drop any of the items on the loot table, with few exceptions. With 1 main tank + 2 off-tanks, gearing up the tanks is completed far sooner than any other class. Unlike the 5-7 mages, 3-5 warlocks, 6-8 rogues, 6-8 fury warriors and 3-5 hunters.

The Tryhard / Slacker Problem:
How does the loot system deal with the fact that, especially in early tiers, there are powerful BoE items available? For example, Mace of +3 smiting drops. Player A farmed gold for months to buy the BoE Mace of +2 smiting. Player B didn't farm at all and has Questing Mace of +1 smiting. Who gets the item?


case by case. It's not an easy question to answer, but preferably both of the players in question would do their utmost to improve their character but also the guilds. If player 1 farms, and player 2 runs dungeon with guild to help them gear up. There is no real difference in time spent improving the overall performance of the guild. I know people helping guild members do over 100 BRD runs to get the Ironfoe mace, obviously sacrificing their ability to do other stuff instead.

The Tier Bonus Problem:
How does the loot system deal with the fact that some classes' tier bonuses are overpowered?
(Priest Tier 2 comes to mind.)
(In hardcore guilds people care quite a bit about their performance and will want to be the first to receive those bonuses. In more casual guilds, players of a class may stop showing up if they know someone else is getting all the tier items.)

Hunter loot is a bit more extreme in this regard. Where the upgrade path goes along the line of: Dungeon gear -> Full tier 1 -> Full tier 2 -> Full tier 3. If your hunters and priests are competent players, they will understand the situation. Obviously the player that received full tier 1 first, will not receive full tier 2 first. Nor will that person receive other exotic items first, such as weapons, trinkets, rings etc. With the understanding that going into BWL for example, 6 tier pieces are already reserved for them. Priests getting their hands on the Azuregos hat for example, would obviously fall behind as well. It is an extremely scarce item.

The Racial Bonus and Weapon Type Problem:
Sword of +1 Slicing drops. Rogue A is human and has a bonus to swords, Rogue B is not. How does the loot system handle that?
(Although this will probably be much less of a problem in classic now that DPS can be simmed so easily.)

An Alliance rogue rolling anything but Human does so with the understanding that they will be going dagger specialization. There are only so many weapon drops, and some of the weapon dropping are daggers. Sword human with Vis'kag + brutality blade may be the best DPS in tier 1, but dagger rogue with perdition blade + core hound tooth is better than a sword rogue with blue swords. The guild can't throw away epics, because the ideal geared sword rogue is better than the ideal geared dagger rogue, when ideally geared sword rogues takes months to get.

The Bad RNG Problem:
In vanilla with the large raid sizes, relative scarcity of items, and lack of tokens, it's very common for a few raid members to have one item slot they just can't get the drop for.

As an example, imagine a mage that just can't get a caster necklace to drop after farming Molten Core for months. Then, in BWL, a caster necklace with spirit drops that is a huge upgrade for the mage but a small upgrade for all the healers. How does the loot system handle this?

Give it to the healers.

The Wonky Itemization Problem:
The equivalence of items, especially jewelry with spirit or MP5, can be very hard to judge. Is a neck with 15 spirit a bigger upgrade for a shaman with a 9 spirit necklace or a priest with a 7 MP5 necklace? Or what about that mage from the Bad RNG problem that is still wearing a blue necklace with vastly lower intellect?

Because the value of those stats depends on the length of the fight, the other gear the person is wearing, and the other tier bonuses acquired, there's no single correct answer.

You're kicking the bucket down the road if you keep giving items to players, based on what item they are currently using. If you give the spirit neck to the shaman, the overall performance of the raid increases the most. But then a neck with more MP5 drops, which is now a bigger upgrade for the priest. Then you end up in a situation where the Shaman and Priest would like to swap necks.

The BoE / Legendary / PvP item Problem:
How does the loot system deal with BoEs and other novelty items?
(The biggest difference from retail is that many powerful PvP items dropped in PvE raids, as opposed to cosmetic mounts.)

BOE :Same as BOP
Legendary:
2H mace - Who cares? To a dedicated pvper who would be using it and has the highest attendance etc.
Tanking sword - To main tank
2H staff - To whomever will continue playing after Kel'Thuzad is dead
Pvp items: To players actively participating in PVP with the intent to eventually hit R14

The Alt Problem
One of the few things that's probably more problematic in retail, where a boss like Mythic Kil'Jaeden is significantly easier with two guardian druids, a blood death knight, a holy paladin, resto shaman, disc priest, resto druid, warlock, and as many rogues and preferably mages as you have after that. It might be an issue on 4 Horsemen where 6-8 tanks are helpful, but generally alts weren't as needed in vanilla.

And then there's two "Modifiers" that can affect every single other problem above.

Main > Alt

The only reason to deviate from this is if a guild member is swapping to tanking upon request. Then that person will probably show in on farm days to pick up tank gear. You would be pretty damn stupid to deny tank loot to a guild member abandoning their current main to start tanking. It's not really an issue in T1 and T2 content however, as most of the tank loot is exclusively tank loot.

The Upcoming Boss Modifier:
A modifier that pretty much affects every other problem above. If the loot system is set up to spread the wealth evenly, but on the guild's first Chromaggus kill an item drops that would give a priest their mana-return tier bonus for the upcoming 10+ minute Nefarian fight, is the guild going to change the loot system?

If a guild's loot system is to always give their main tank the best available, but the next progression fight requires five tanks and 2 of them are sorely undergeared, is the guild gonna change the loot system for that?

If the intent of the system is to distribute the loot evenly, then you have already failed at distributing loot. The number 1 rule in running a guild, is to never ever arbitrarily deviate from the set loot rule set in place. People tend to get grumpy if loot is mismanaged. If Chromaggus dropped an item which is really good for a player going on Nefarian, the system should have been set up in such a way as to award that piece to the player, before the piece dropped.

The Pain In The Butt Modifier:
How complicated is the system? How much time does it take to administer? How much arguing does it cause? How long does the raid have to stop to assign loot?
Probably 30-90 minute meeting a week between the ''loot council''.
Why would the raid ever stop to discuss loot during the raid. Just a bit above, you wrote about consumables. Which are ticking down 40 times per second, one second for each player per second the raid stops. Clear the raid and raise your grievances between the raids.

----------------------------------

The key is to find a group of people, that understand classic wow. I play a hunter on private server, and i understand that certain items which are extremely powerful on Rogues and Fury warriors will not be assigned to me in the top 10 on the list. Nearly regardless of how well i perform, how much i farm, how much i scout for world bosses and however many level 60 alt characters i bring to the raid. If i top damage meters, show up with all consumables plus flask, scout for world bosses 20 hours a week and manage to get a warrior and a priest to level 60 to tank and heal. I may get Drake Fang Talisman as the 6th to 8th person.

If your hunter is whining for melee loot (and not joking). Find a new hunter.

[lagiacrux]

it rewards progression because when you kill new bosses you get new loots that you couldn't get prior, this seems like a no brainer.

thats not what he means imho.
farm raid = lot of boss kills = lots of dkp
progress raid = lots of tries, maybe no kill = less dkp

my old guild would usually hand out bonus dkp after a night of progress for everyone attending the progress raid.

[Maudib]

Man OP... that's a whole lotta problems you see with Classic.

It will be the same as it was in Vanilla. Not perfect by far... but everything just "worked" overall. The game provided players with a rewarding, entertaining, and satisfying experience.

[D3athsting]

Are you talking about offset pieces? Because the tier for shaman/Paladin dropping for the opposite faction only happened in the TBC pre-patch.

He's talking about dungeon sets (aka tier 0) lightforge and elements that dropped for both factions regardless of ally having no shamans and horde no palas

[MrPaladinGuy]

I wouldn't worry about DKP, there should be an incredible amount of pugs going on that faceroll practically all the content without getting in a VoIP- even most of Naxx 40.

[korijenkins]

Guilds that pop up on Classic that are run by players who never played it will fail completely.

"We gave all our gear to the wrong people, and can't kill the first trash pack in MC. Whoops!"

[Vaelorian]

Having a decent community is always going to help, but it was my experience that people in vanilla were much less generous because the drops were so much more rare, they helped farming so much more, and it was much less clear what was for whom.

I'd also say a Loot Council in vanilla / classic was about 3-4x more likely to generate loot drama than a similar guild doing it in retail. There's just so many more problems and the scarcity just amps tensions in a way that four difficult modes never will.

My response to Whiskra is that the system in vanilla/classic has many more choices and caveats to getting 40+ people to agree on how to do things. I'm basically trying to set up a template for what guilds should discuss when they're setting up their loot system.

Lootcouncil is not going to be a good system when you play with 60 people (yes because no one has exactly 40 people in their roster to fill up daily raids).
Management will likely never get the trust required to deal with loot properly. But they can handle DKP and they should enforce fairness on that DKP system. Such as DKP decays at a set date. The DKP system should be transparent for everyone. Councils will never work in a Vanilla environment unless everyone is an adult and knows eachother very long and a base of trust has already been established. Why Adults? Because ultimately and generally speaking "children" will be selfish more. Or don't understand (or want to understand) that it is better for someone else to gain a piece of loot for whatever reason. But even with adults... but you just have less chance of drama that is it.

[Phantombeard]

Words of Wisdom my little wow fanbois, 'LOOT is like Pussy, the first time you get a good piece you just want more and more" Quote from the WOW Oldgod.. pusilithus-the living breading pit.

[Armourboy]

He's talking about dungeon sets (aka tier 0) lightforge and elements that dropped for both factions regardless of ally having no shamans and horde no palas

I dont remember that, but it also took over 100 runs to even see my Lightforged pants to even drop so I probably blocked it out lol

[solinari6]

He's talking about dungeon sets (aka tier 0) lightforge and elements that dropped for both factions regardless of ally having no shamans and horde no palas

I vaguely remember that, but thought it happened in patch 2.0, the shaman sets started dropping for alliance (and pali for horde) even though you couldn't actually create those classes yet.

[247365spam]

Lootcouncil is not going to be a good system when you play with 60 people (yes because no one has exactly 40 people in their roster to fill up daily raids).
Management will likely never get the trust required to deal with loot properly. But they can handle DKP and they should enforce fairness on that DKP system. Such as DKP decays at a set date. The DKP system should be transparent for everyone. Councils will never work in a Vanilla environment unless everyone is an adult and knows eachother very long and a base of trust has already been established. Why Adults? Because ultimately and generally speaking "children" will be selfish more. Or don't understand (or want to understand) that it is better for someone else to gain a piece of loot for whatever reason. But even with adults... but you just have less chance of drama that is it.

This is completely counter to my experience and assumes a rotating roster. Hardcore guilds are unlikely to have a heavily rotating roster. Loot council works extremely well in vanilla content. I could agree with you that loot council will not be a good idea for casual guilds at all.

[Vaelorian]

This is completely counter to my experience and assumes a rotating roster. Hardcore guilds are unlikely to have a heavily rotating roster. Loot council works extremely well in vanilla content. I could agree with you that loot council will not be a good idea for casual guilds at all.

Well I am happy to hear that atleast one guild during Vanilla in a roster with 60-ish people were always happy to have a lootcouncil and no drama ensued ever.
In any other settings/expansions lootcouncils were prominent. Vanilla. Not so much. No successful ones atleast that I know of. So I am genuinly happy that you were in an exception. And sure.... if a guild was top 100, I imagine that everyone had the very same mindset (and because they were top 100... also less likely to go seek greener pastures) and therefore lootcouncils could and would be successful there.
My guild (I was not GM of that guild) was clearing mostly everything, except C'thun and did 50% Naxx. Not sure if you consider that hardcore. We raided 5 days a week though, but had a lot of idiots tagging along.

[garicasha]

It's funny how small impacts on roster size make huge differences in how well loot councils work. In a super hardcore guild with a roster of like 45 people, loot council would probably be fine because everyone is showing up every day and there's no gray areas of "will this person use this item more because of attendance?"

But if you increase the size of that raid roster to a more typical 50-55, a loot council now has to answer questions like "Should rogue 6 or rogue 8 get this? What weapons is rogue 6 using anyway? And didn't rogue 8 miss two raids last month without saying he'd be gone??"

Similar to the strength of the chain of a whole is only the strength of the weakest link, in many ways the measure of a guild is how dedicated their least-dedicated 10% of players are. In modern raids, those 2-3 players are the ones that are frequently new recruits, maybe veterans with new demands on their time, or just anyone that's eyeing the door for whatever reason.

In retail, where classes are balanced, gear is everywhere, and DPS requirements are always very tightly tuned, if someone eyeing the door doesn't want to assign loot optimally screw them, they can go find another guild. Chances are they weren't a good fit for the guild anyway, they would have held back progress, and there's always an endless supply of applicants sitting in the Guild Recruitment forum anyway.

In vanilla, where gear really only started to matter at Twin Emperors, was much harder to acquire, and losing a raider was devastating, it'd be the guild that'd have been nuts to not do everything in their power to keep the most disgruntled 10% as happy as possible. That generally meant no loot council. (Although losing raiders will be significantly less devastating in classic as there'll be server transfers. In vanilla replacements simply may not have existed depending on server.)

Back to the original post though, loot councils only really shine when an item drops and 95% of people all agree where it should go, and the other 5% are demonstrably "wrong". In classic / vanilla, it's so much more likely that 25 people will like option 1, 10 people will like option 2, and 5 people like option 3. And even if option 3 is "wrong", option 1 and option 2 are much more likely to be a toss up.

[Hey There Guys its Metro]

Glad to see people talking about this. People will downplay it, but this is the kind of discussion that needs to be happening.
These are examples of poorly designed systems that we are basically asking to return for the sake of nostalgia and not in the interest of making the best game possible.

I wish there was a way to address some of these that wouldn't dramatically change how Classic would play though.
In the end, I assume most of the discussion will be "We can't agree on a better option, so don't bother even trying to change it."

[Whiskra]

Glad to see people talking about this. People will downplay it, but this is the kind of discussion that needs to be happening.
These are examples of poorly designed systems that we are basically asking to return for the sake of nostalgia and not in the interest of making the best game possible.

I wish there was a way to address some of these that wouldn't dramatically change how Classic would play though.
In the end, I assume most of the discussion will be "We can't agree on a better option, so don't bother even trying to change it."

Nothing is the fault of the "loot system". Loot just drops, and the players choose what to do with it. That's the way it was designed, and that's why it's better than today's loot system in BFA where "fairness" is forced.

[Low Hanging Fruit]

Lesson of this post is.. if you can find something that isn't perfect it's flawed... congratulations.

[Simulacrum]

I'd also say a Loot Council in vanilla / classic was about 3-4x more likely to generate loot drama than a similar guild doing it in retail.

That's what makes it fun.

[czarek]

Tbh new loot system would be better for classic :P In classic loot could be pretty useless. Pala items on horde side and wise for example.

[Armourboy]

It's funny how small impacts on roster size make huge differences in how well loot councils work. In a super hardcore guild with a roster of like 45 people, loot council would probably be fine because everyone is showing up every day and there's no gray areas of "will this person use this item more because of attendance?"

But if you increase the size of that raid roster to a more typical 50-55, a loot council now has to answer questions like "Should rogue 6 or rogue 8 get this? What weapons is rogue 6 using anyway? And didn't rogue 8 miss two raids last month without saying he'd be gone??"

Similar to the strength of the chain of a whole is only the strength of the weakest link, in many ways the measure of a guild is how dedicated their least-dedicated 10% of players are. In modern raids, those 2-3 players are the ones that are frequently new recruits, maybe veterans with new demands on their time, or just anyone that's eyeing the door for whatever reason.

In retail, where classes are balanced, gear is everywhere, and DPS requirements are always very tightly tuned, if someone eyeing the door doesn't want to assign loot optimally screw them, they can go find another guild. Chances are they weren't a good fit for the guild anyway, they would have held back progress, and there's always an endless supply of applicants sitting in the Guild Recruitment forum anyway.

In vanilla, where gear really only started to matter at Twin Emperors, was much harder to acquire, and losing a raider was devastating, it'd be the guild that'd have been nuts to not do everything in their power to keep the most disgruntled 10% as happy as possible. That generally meant no loot council. (Although losing raiders will be significantly less devastating in classic as there'll be server transfers. In vanilla replacements simply may not have existed depending on server.)

Back to the original post though, loot councils only really shine when an item drops and 95% of people all agree where it should go, and the other 5% are demonstrably "wrong". In classic / vanilla, it's so much more likely that 25 people will like option 1, 10 people will like option 2, and 5 people like option 3. And even if option 3 is "wrong", option 1 and option 2 are much more likely to be a toss up.

It's always interesting because loot was rarely something that our smaller much more tight knit guild had issues with. Our biggest issue was when we got new people and getting them to understand our view on things. I would have called it a modified loot council I guess.

Basically our rule was that if you killed a boss you had just as much right as anyone else to roll, but you weren't allowed more than one item in a run until others in your grouping had gotten something or they didn't want it. The only real council part I guess was when we he had someone that was doing a farming run and they had only been going for one particular item for a while. We would ask people to defer to them on that item, but they weren't required too. Generally speaking people were nice enough to do that because they got the same treatment on the back end.

Other great thing about our system is we didn't need to modify it for pugs, and because of that we had zero issues getting people to do return runs.

We technically still run like that, although we don't really do anything to use it anymore because most everyone has quit over the years. I can only think of one time it caused problems from vanilla to Cata, and that was an " issue " looking to be dealt with anyways ( aka our original GM's wife )

[247365spam]

And those guilds implode before they get to any boss that matters.

Proper guilds who use loot council, give out loot that benefit the raid the most. That often means giving the best in slot loot to players who perform high and has close to 100% raid attendance. Lesser skilled players and those who show up for raids now and then have no real use for the very best items, they can get by just fine with regular gear.

I prefere a EPGP system myself, favors high attendance players, and running a guild in vanilla is all about having people show up for raids.

You said this well! I love all the loot councils only gear themselves nonsense that gets spouted. LC's gearing themselves/their friends certainly happens in guilds with crappy leaders, but guilds with leaders that award gear based on nepotism rarely make it into bwl, let alone beyond it. EPGP is better than pure DKP, but it has it's own flaws as well.

I've ran DKP, EPGP and Loot council systems in my guild before and Loot council has definitely fostered the fastest progression along with having the least amount of drama. The only drama we had under loot council was from obvious loot whores (people who feel entitled to every upgrade loot on their first raid/without regard to raid) & guild hoppers. I've seen much worse distribution of loot under dkp than I've seen it under epgp or LC. EPGP is certainly an upgrade from DKP, but it's still sub-optimal to a healthy informed loot council that focuses on guild progression.

The truest truth with gearing in vanilla wow that I've seen is that if you bring your A game, come to all required raids, and just do your job you get geared.