Personal Loot Feedback - Three Raids Later

[Raelbo]

It is a major piss off when someone gets a bound useless item, however.

I would argue that useless loot going to waste has always been a cause of potential frustration. The difference now is that you might recognise that some specific pieces of loot would be useful for someone else, but not tradeable. But really, the level of frustration you experience is still entirely down to you and how you choose to respond.

Instead of getting pissed off that a certain piece of loot would have been tradeable with ML, forget about ML. Treat it the same as a piece you won off a coin, or a piece that no one in the group would've wanted anyway and move on. It's not worth getting mad about. Once you accept that this just part of luck, and that, on average, your guild is going to have average luck, with lucky stuff to balance out the bad luck, then you'll be able to actually enjoy the game. Which is kinda the entire point.

[InFamous Gerbil]

I don’t usually comment, but after reading some replies, I feel that I have to give my thoughts. Those that speak about abuse and favoritism under master looter, you do realize you can just leave the guild and find a new one? Heck, find a guild that prefers personal loot. There is no reason to remove master looter especially when there was another choice. All they did was punish organized raiding. Oh, something dropped that would be an upgrade for your fellow raider? Sorry, you can’t trade it because of your IL. I feel like those that defend this decision don’t actually raid nor been in a real raiding guild.

I’m not asking for them to remove personal. I want them to bring back master looter. Give us the option to choose.

[srathgar]

Personal loot is the single best loot system so far in the game. And for that, I don't even see it changed anytime soon.

Anyone who says Master Loot is better is just one of the people who benefited from it. It's that simple.
I can't tell you the amount of times some item was denied from someone because of arbitrary reasons. And these were small, family friendly guilds. And not because of any gearing tactic, but only cuz something is already "reserved" for someone or the GM's gf really wanted a new weapon or whatever.
Then there is the horseshit system that is DKP or any variation of that. I raided with a bigger guild back in the days that used DKP (cuz the guild was pretty big) and it just punished both me and anyone who joined after me.
There were like 10 people with so many DKP points that if you happened to be their armor type/role whatever, you could wish goodbye to every single loot drop until they were fully geared. There was simply nothing to do against that. I literally had to wait like 2 months to even be like "okay I can actually afford to roll on something now".

Beyond horrible.

Now, with personal loot you can actually gear yourself. Crazy right? And there are people who want to deny other people from getting loot still. Shit's crazy, man.
Yes, you get the occasional titanforge that you could pass on, but most of the time (that's like 95%+) it doesn't fuckin matter cuz the person you could pass it on to gets their own titanforge on something else he can use. Who cares, you both still gear at the same pace.
Which should be the norm, afterall, you BOTH participated in whatever content you did.

Oh fuck off lol, you claim everyone who liked master loot more were the ones who benefitted from it? Yea your opinion matters less than a fucking pile of dung.

Master loot was a fine system after they made it so that it was guild master loot, if you really feel that master loot was a problem you could even make it so that you needed a 100% guild group to use it. At that point a player has to make a concious choice whether or not to be in a guild where they use master loot or not.

I know for a fact that one of the big reasons to use masterloot back in Legion was because of tier sets, as personal loot could grant one guy the same tier item multiple times in a row, and if that guy is the only one of his class that is completely wasted loot.

But yea, hate it or like it, personal loot is what we got for now. That said PLEASE fuck off with your stupid bullshit argument that the only people that liked master loot were the ones that benefitted from it. Sincerely, a tank who was at the bottom of the loot totem pole.

[Raelbo]

The problem is it is not of your own volition as far as the system knows. It's "trade X to Y or gkick" implicitly.

A lot of people seem to think that because guilds can still ostensibly "force" raiders to trade PL, that the PL loot system fails. I disagree. PL was never intended to solve this issue. Nor is this issue an actual problem.

The simple fact is that when you join a guild, you know what their loot policy is. If a guild has a policy of dictating that their raiders donate tradeable loot, then it's up to you to decide whether you agree with this policy or not. Even in the worst case scenario you're no worse off than what happened with ML. In practice, any guild that needs to using the threat of gkick in order to get someone to donate a piece of loot should never happen, and if it does, it's actually a good thing because it's telling the guild and the player in question that they're not a good match for each other.

The big difference with PL, of course, is that you can only be forced into trading loot if your loot is already pretty good. Which means that what you're going to see a lot less of is people who never get any upgrades because the loot is always going to other players. With PL, pretty much everyone is going to get some loot with a lot less gear disparity across the raid than before.

[Sliske]

It makes absolutely zero sense given the current state of WoW and thats without adding in the belittling factor to it.

People make the argument that it helps gear everyone up evenly. First, that isn't the case at all. You can get bracers 3 weeks in a row as your only item and fall behind. Personal loot is notoriously bad at gearing people up evenly. Thats one of the main reasons people hate it.

Secondly, it belittles raiders and assumes they're children who can't handle loot distribution. Sure, maybe if you watch Asmongold all day you'd think thats how the average WoW guild is run, but in reality that isn't the case at all. I haven't had an argument about loot literally fucking ever in any of my guilds, going all the way back to casual ass Karazhan guilds , all the way through the DBW horniness, and on through cutting edge raiding in MoP and WoD.

The only time i've ever seen people get pissed about loot is, ironically, Legion and BFA. Why? because they're pissed that they were just given a dogshit item, with dogshit stats, that they cannot trade to someone who it is BIS for, simply because the magical item level is higher than their current piece.

and finally, this is a false ultimatum. I'm not stupid - i know that ninja looting exists in the pug world. If you pugged during the DBW days im sure you saw it non stop. But that means NOTHING to people mythic raiding. We already have a thing called 'guild runs' which is how guild achievements are creditted. I believe its something like 80% of a run needs to be guild members in order to qualify.

The solution is so obvious you almost double think it just due to how simple it actually fucking seems - give pugs personal loot, give guild groups masterloot. Simple.

"But, but but, what about guilds forming guild runs to the funnel gear to buyers?" bruh do you think they aren't doing that anyway? You can google that shit and see prices for it right now.

I was going to say that there are zero good arguments to be made in favour of guild personal loot enforcement, but in reality there isn't even ANY arguments for it at all.

[spalernTJ]

I miss MasterLoot, I despise Personal Loot, almost made me quit the game on that account alone.

[unbound]

The problem is it is not of your own volition as far as the system knows. It's "trade X to Y or gkick" implicitly.

One of the bigger problem with loot councils is if you look at who the item is the biggest upgrade for, you're usually rewarding the worst and laziest people in the raid.

The best adjustment to the loot system would be to make sockets count as ilvl. So a 430 socketed = 460 because the socket counts as 30 ilvls. Then if you get a 445 you can trade it.

Sigh, I have been in at least 8 different raiding guilds over the life of WoW with 6 of them using loot council style approaches, and I have never seen loot council work that way.

You sound like the usual player that complains about loot council who really isn't as great as they think they are (e.g. still riding on that 85% peak performance rating from one boss 4 raids ago because you refused to get out of bad and wanted higher dps numbers) getting made because the new raider who has gotten progressively better (and doesn't stand in fire just to get higher dps numbers) is getting gear substantially better for them that is a 5 ilvl improvement for you.

[Garymorilix]

Why even pretend this was an issue before the removal of ML? PUG groups were restricted to forced personal loot even while ML was around...

- - - Updated - - -



You chose to join guilds run by shitty people, so the guilds that weren’t run by shitty people should be punished. Gotcha.

You are very much wrong.. Your anecdoctal evidence is in fact not evidence of anything else but your view of your experience... Tbh I would bet you don't even know if those cases you have experienced have been abuse, but just you not seeing the bigger picture/having been let in on the details and reasoning behind the choices that were made.

Throughout my years of playing, I've mostly played as a healer, and many times have I've been in a council. The philosphy that were most often used in the raid settings where that in generel gearing dps matters more than gearing healers. This varies in guilds, but its been my raidleading experience that it holds some water in old heroic and mythic settings. As such I've always voted against myself in the case of it being between dps and healers or dps and tanks. That will always be cases where this philosophy dont apply directly. In those cases we have used sims, attendance, potential and more parameters.

As an example we choose to give a big tf trinket from second boss in Nighthold to a new mage in the guild. He had the biggest upgrade and showed both potential and great attitude. Sometimes those choices will bite you, sometimes it will pay off.

Half of the time I've been GM I've assigned other masterlooters and not been a direct part of it. These experiences have been from top 50-1100 guilds. So no its not fact you are presenting, but anecdotes just like me.

And to be fair I have not experienced many ninja lootings to begin with throughout my many years of playing.. But a few months of personalloot got me so down; all the things we couldnt distribute to the players that needed it, the things people didn't need but couldn't trade. Those cases have been so many and each time it felt like complete shit and backpaddling.. What a completly depressing lootseting in socialized play..

OT. PL does not belong in socialized well working and coordinated groups of players in my opinion. I may return to the game if they decide its not a singleplayer game anymore.

Maybe the issue is you since you are the common denominator in all these guilds with loot distribution issues.

And no, not everyone who disagrees with you is a "fckin hypocrite" thats just childish, grow up.

Stop joining guilds that suck then. Most guilds that used master loot never abused it because that would just kill your raid team.

Oh fuck off lol, you claim everyone who liked master loot more were the ones who benefitted from it? Yea your opinion matters less than a fucking pile of dung.

Master loot was a fine system after they made it so that it was guild master loot, if you really feel that master loot was a problem you could even make it so that you needed a 100% guild group to use it. At that point a player has to make a concious choice whether or not to be in a guild where they use master loot or not.

I know for a fact that one of the big reasons to use masterloot back in Legion was because of tier sets, as personal loot could grant one guy the same tier item multiple times in a row, and if that guy is the only one of his class that is completely wasted loot.

But yea, hate it or like it, personal loot is what we got for now. That said PLEASE fuck off with your stupid bullshit argument that the only people that liked master loot were the ones that benefitted from it. Sincerely, a tank who was at the bottom of the loot totem pole.

It's funny how every single one of you defends master loot, and says only a "minority of people" abused the system.

Yet, when it comes to reality, the abuse of the system is exactly why Blizzard removed it.

So which one is it then:
It's not abused that much and they removed it for the lolz.
OR
It was abused to no end and they removed it for a reason?

When it comes to reality, it hurts doesn't it?
Maybe your guild weren't abusing it (which i doubt) but even then, for every one guild who used it right there were a dozen guilds that didn't.
Argue me all day you want, ya'll been proven wrong the moment they removed Master loot.

[Raelbo]

The real issue on this topic is not Personal loot vs Master loot. It's Personal loot + Master loot vs Personnal loot alone. Removing a feature that worked perfectly fine to force everyone into another feature that was already available is objectively not a solution to any problem.

The feature didn't work perfectly fine though. That's why they removed it. Sure, it worked perfectly fine for some people. But not for everyone.

First of all, there was NO PROBLEM to solve, it was in Blizzard's head.

Any evidence of this?

Aside from the fact that I have it from a reliable source that loot disputes have historically been, by far, the biggest single source of GM tickets - and thus according to Blizzard's metrics, the single biggest source of player unhappiness in the game, your assertion just doesn't make any sense.

I mean, why on earth would Blizzard remove ML if they didn't have data telling them it's an actual problem? What do Blizzard stand to gain by forcing everyone to use PL if all it is accomplishing is pissing off a bunch of high end raiders?

Secondly, if people prefer personnal loot then they could still use it before, or today even if Master loot was still available.

PL and ML co-existed for many years. Yet in spite of people, theoretically, having a choice between the two, groups using ML were still a major source of loot disputes. Which was bad for player satisfaction, and consequently bad for business.

I would say that at the core of the issue is the fact that in spite of there being an apparent "choice", the reality is that there was none. The "choice" is never made democratically. It was made by a small minority, with the majority being coerced into using it because the alternative was to not get into groups. Also, because ML was more effective at being able to optimally distribute loot (regardless of fairness) competitive guilds were pretty much forced to use it. Which was fine for some guilds, but easily abused by others.

[Marrilaife]

If someone refuses to loot a boss so they don't have to trade or equip something for their off-spec, you can easily boot them out of the raid and never take them again.

Playing Alliance in EU we had little choice who to take, recruits were always sparse and we were always stuck with a few people that shouldn't be there (due to attitude, attendance, skill, etc.) but we had no better replacement for them.

To be fair, the idea of personal loot is to prevent the rules your guild is using. People being "asked" to trade loot and not wanting but being peer presured.

What happened is people started treating loot as their personal trophy instead of tool for killing bosses, and then being annoyed if the guild gets stuck on a boss. Usually goes hand in hand with the attitude that lack of progress is everyone else's fault but obviously not theirs.

Basically what this guy said was my experience too:

After 3 raids of it, Officers and myself find that it's just becoming a swinging door for people to come and go when they please because we can't exactly pick and choose who to give loot to now. There's zero protection in place against people that will use a guild for gear and then get bored and drop raid for the tier. It sucks too because TF 455 trinkets have dropped and they've been personal loot which meant it couldn't be traded and used for one of the more consistent performers.

There's no way of rewarding loyal players so guild hoppers and tourist don't benefit at the expense of reliable, stable raiders.

It became especially bad with Jaina mount where freshly brought recruits could just be slotted once, be dead half the fight, get cutting edge and mount despite putting zero effort, and then bail, while people who were there for months, farmed ap, spent 300+ wipes on progress were left without a mount. The belief that everyone present on the kill is equally "worthy" is definitely not true for rekills where a person can be simply carried.

[Shinrael]

As someone who has raided both casually with pugs or has been in/has led a raid guild throughout the years:

While I quite like the personal loot for pugs (both raids and dungeons) as well as world bosses, I much enjoyed group/master loot in a premade group. Getting to decide who gets what is fun and a concious choice. It can both bond and destroy a community (party of friends/guild) and you bear the consequences.

[RaZz0r]

There was a lot of complaints in these forums when Master Looter was removed and all raid loot was turned personal. Now, 3 raids later, what are people's opinion of the current loot system?

To Raiders:
- Has personal loot helped your raiding experience by reducing loot drama?
- Do you feel interested in staying with a guild once the guild hits a major road block or do you just move on to higher progression guild for easier loot drops?

As im only a raider i will reply to these

- Has personal loot helped your raiding experience by reducing loot drama?

No in fact in the 15 years of playing wow i have not really experienced much of loot drama at all
Sure there might have been the odd disagreement but it tends to get sorted relativity quickly
As most people i have been playing with tend to be in the mind set of give the upgrade to those who need it the most to make progress kills much smoother.
And the faster we can get a boss on farm the faster we will be able to kill it in the feature.
thus i will get the bit of loot i want soon enough anyway its really not that big of a deal.

In fact due to the current limitations of the personal loot trading system more people in my guild me included has been annoyed when they cant trade a bit of gear to Someone else ether due to ilvl or slot type restrictions if blizzard sticks with the removal of master loot then they should remove ALL trading limitations and restrictions.
Let players freely decide if they want to give something away or not even if its a ilvl or just a minor upgrade for them but a bigger one for someone else.

- Do you feel interested in staying with a guild once the guild hits a major road block or do you just move on to higher progression guild for easier loot drops?

This has just never been a problem for me so i cant really comment much on it but its pretty easy to spot someone who bails as soon as the guild hits a road block and need to work on a boss for a few weeks.
As all those things tends to be logged and viewable online its really up to guild recruiters to do there research about a player before inviting them to the guild.
Going over a few of the players / past guilds loggs and maybe talking with the old guild master / raid leader if something seems fishy.

[ThrashMetalFtw]

It has brought a shitload of frustration at the start of every new tier (items that are bad for you, but BiS for somebody else dropping, and not being able to trade).

Forced personal loot has been exactly what everybody who was against it said it would be: A big step down from ML. A lot more frustration and drama, with no benefits over the old system whatsoever.

[Marweinicus1]

Personal loot is also shit. Let's take a look at Uldir. In all the kills during progression and farm, Mythrax NEVER dropped the tanking sword for me. As the only Prot Warrior tank in our guild (Others being a druid and DH) only I could get it. The one time it did drop (DK went tank spec for me, in hopes of trading) he couldn't trade it to me due to ilvl bullshit. It's even worse for DHs, because my tank buddy was the only DH we had, he can only get glaives himself, and not count on the help of other guildmates.

And then you have a boss like Mother that always drops multiple rings, because everyone can use them. It became a meme.

Personal Loot is great for PuGs and shitty management guilds. But any competent guild hates it. Raiding is a guild effort.

[ThrashMetalFtw]

It's funny how every single one of you defends master loot, and says only a "minority of people" abused the system.

Yet, when it comes to reality, the abuse of the system is exactly why Blizzard removed it.

So which one is it then:
It's not abused that much and they removed it for the lolz.
OR
It was abused to no end and they removed it for a reason?

When it comes to reality, it hurts doesn't it?
Maybe your guild weren't abusing it (which i doubt) but even then, for every one guild who used it right there were a dozen guilds that didn't.
Argue me all day you want, ya'll been proven wrong the moment they removed Master loot.

This has got to be the most fucked up shit I've seen in a long while. Blizz removed it because of the potential for abuse, and because they are retarded (and because they listned to shitters who's opinions are irrelevant and wrong). The idea that Blizzard removed it because it was being abused is fucking weak. How can Blizzard know if it was being abused in the first place? Because some shitter whined after a much better player in his guild was given an item he wanted (while being dead for 50% of the fight)?

Giving BiS TF/socket items to your most loyal/best performing players is not abuse of the system, it's exactly what it was designed for, and why ML was good. Bad trials being denied loot and whining about it is not abuse of the system, it's exactly what ML was designed for, and why it was good. If you see any of these things as abuse, you are part of the problem, you're a shitter and your opinion means nothing.

The ONLY people who disliked ML, were the entitled shitheads who thought all loot belonged to them, despite being one of the weaker players in the guild. The dramaqueens and lootwhores. The kind of people that nobody wants to have in their guild.

Any argument coming from a PuG point of view are irrelevant, since PL has been enforced in non-guild grps since WoD.



Your argument is weak, and you are wrong. Just like everybody who wanted PL was wrong in every single thread about this issue. Just like they will be wrong in every single thread about it in the future.

[Rendark]

It's funny how every single one of you defends master loot, and says only a "minority of people" abused the system.

Yet, when it comes to reality, the abuse of the system is exactly why Blizzard removed it.

So which one is it then:
It's not abused that much and they removed it for the lolz.
OR
It was abused to no end and they removed it for a reason?

When it comes to reality, it hurts doesn't it?
Maybe your guild weren't abusing it (which i doubt) but even then, for every one guild who used it right there were a dozen guilds that didn't.
Argue me all day you want, ya'll been proven wrong the moment they removed Master loot.

It's not abused that much and they removed it for the lolz is the right answer. Just because you picked some shit guild doesn't mean most guild were run that way.

[glowpipe]

I feel it sucks for everyone except the ones that this was meant for. People like method gearing characters. They hhave workarounds. Its the regular mythic raiders who are fucked by this

[Reaper0329]

I would argue that useless loot going to waste has always been a cause of potential frustration. The difference now is that you might recognise that some specific pieces of loot would be useful for someone else, but not tradeable. But really, the level of frustration you experience is still entirely down to you and how you choose to respond.

Instead of getting pissed off that a certain piece of loot would have been tradeable with ML, forget about ML. Treat it the same as a piece you won off a coin, or a piece that no one in the group would've wanted anyway and move on. It's not worth getting mad about. Once you accept that this just part of luck, and that, on average, your guild is going to have average luck, with lucky stuff to balance out the bad luck, then you'll be able to actually enjoy the game. Which is kinda the entire point.

I phrased that line exceptionally poorly. What I meant by "bound useless loot" was a bound item that is useless for the recipient, but great for someone else (such as the earlier example of the bound Azshara trinket, or rings as a broader example) rather than a bound "Jim's Stabbin' Dagger of the Whale." In the context of Jim's dagger, I totally agree with you. Otherwise, I stand by the system being frustrating with respect to optimization.

The only time i've ever seen people get pissed about loot is, ironically, Legion and BFA. Why? because they're pissed that they were just given a dogshit item, with dogshit stats, that they cannot trade to someone who it is BIS for, simply because the magical item level is higher than their current piece.

A better example of "bound useless loot."

[Cosmic Janitor]

I feel it sucks for everyone except the ones that this was meant for. People like method gearing characters. They hhave workarounds. Its the regular mythic raiders who are fucked by this

This, the very top brute forces their way through it, and the very bottom in their cesspool guilds also profit from it. The disadvantage here is mostly for the mid tier raiders.

[Raelbo]

This has got to be the most fucked up shit I've seen in a long while. Blizz removed it because of the potential for abuse, and because they are retarded (and because they listned to shitters who's opinions are irrelevant and wrong). The idea that Blizzard removed it because it was being abused is fucking weak. How can Blizzard know if it was being abused in the first place? Because some shitter whined after a much better player in his guild was given an item he wanted (while being dead for 50% of the fight)?

As already stated, they look at what people make tickets for. Loot disputes was a major one.

Which means one of two things:
1) Guilds were abusing ML in order to screw over individuals
2) Individuals were abuse the ticket system

Either way, removing ML solves a significant portion of the problem.

Giving BiS TF/socket items to your most loyal/best performing players is not abuse of the system, it's exactly what it was designed for, and why ML was good. Bad trials being denied loot and whining about it is not abuse of the system, it's exactly what ML was designed for, and why it was good. If you see any of these things as abuse, you are part of the problem, you're a shitter and your opinion means nothing.

Firstly you're speculating about the nature of the complaints and trying to lump them all as some "shitter" crying wolf - while conveniently glossing over the possibility (actually it's an outright fact) that a lot of guilds abused ML. Secondly, it's actually entirely irrelevant. ML simply created an environment conducive to disputes. The objective here is to avoid disputes altogether, regardless of who is right or who is wrong.

The ONLY people who disliked ML, were the entitled shitheads who thought all loot belonged to them, despite being one of the weaker players in the guild. The dramaqueens and lootwhores. The kind of people that nobody wants to have in their guild.

That is a ridiculous assertion for which you have no evidence whatsoever.

Your argument is weak, and you are wrong. Just like everybody who wanted PL was wrong in every single thread about this issue. Just like they will be wrong in every single thread about it in the future.

Without trying to offend you, I would point out that at least he had an argument with a logical structure. All you have presented is a bunch of dubious, unsubstantiated statements as fact, with a good dose of ad hominem to boot....