Monday Morning Musings - General MMO - Loot Systems and Distribution In A Raiding Environment

(Warning: I am going to be blunt and honest in this post. If women with larger balls than you hurts your feelings. You may want to leave now.)

Loot Systems in World of Warcraft, especially in progression raiding guilds are extremely important and fickle things to deal with. There are many different types to choose from and most of them don't work for many reasons. I am forced to bring this issue to my blog because a certain Protection Paladin in my guild has decided to personally attack anyone who attempts to disagree with him. In my guild we had a Loot Council System that in my opinion worked extremely efficiently. Loot was circulated seemingly evenly and for a long time everything seemed to be going well. And then an incident occurred where our Prot Pally didn't win the Heroic Leg Tokens off of Shannox and held the raid up for forty-five minutes to discuss it. Since then the Loot Council System has been transformed into something entirely different because a loud minority wanted it changed.

Different Loot Systems

• Random Rolls
• In a random roll system all loot is distributed randomly and does not take into account anything personal as far as the raid team as a whole is concerned.
• This kind of system does not take into account the following:
• Performance: Someone who is significantly less proficient than you can receive your best in slot items because RNG gave them a better roll.
• Attendance: Someone who only showed up one time that month can win your heroic weapon.
• It does not take into account how many other pieces that person had received recently.One person can have all of their best in slot gear when someone is still in 359s if they have extremely lucky rolls.
• Obviously, this system works extremely well for PuG raids but wouldn't work well in a progression raiding environment. Random rolls have a tendency to cause more hostility towards other raiders than other structured systems do.
• Suicide Kings
• A list is made and if you want a piece of loot you can choose to suicide to the bottom of the list and must wait until others suicide their spots and you return to the top of the list.
• This system is extremely volatile for many reasons. One it is extremely tricky for a player because if a minor upgrade drops and they choose to suicide themselves and then a best in slot drops off of a boss directly after than they have no way to receive that item. This can stop raiders from wanting a certain best in slot item in hopes that a different more valuable best in slot item may or may not drop for them this week. This can halt multiple players from receiving any loot and thus halting progression for the entire guild.
• This system also doesn't take into account any of the previous mentioned important things many progression raiding guilds look for in their players. Performance, Attendance and Rate of Receiving Loot is not taken into account.
• GDKP
• When a piece of loot drops an open bid war begins. Whoever wants to pay the largest sums of money for an item then receives it. At the end of the night the amount of gold received via the bids is either divided among the players in the raid or into the guild bank.
• The players with the largest amount of income, in game or out, will become the fastest geared.
• Yet another system that doesn't take into account Performance, Attendance and Rate of Receiving Loot.
• EPGP
• This is a very common loot system that does work if used correctly. EPGP is a two fold loot system that takes into account not only the amount of points that you have but also the amount of points that you have spent. You receive EP based on things like Attendance, Progression Bosses Kill, Progression Bosses Wipes and Farm Boss Kills. You receive EP whether you are actually invited to the raid or not as long as you are online during the duration of the raid. GP is the amount of points that you spend and are also kept track of. If someone who has the same amount of EP as you but you have a large amount of GP that the other person doesn't the system knows you have received a larger amount of gear which will be taken into account.
• In most systems there is also a decaying factor that will decrease your EP over time so that new recruits do not have a significantly lower EP than veteran raiders to the point where recruits have no chance of receiving any gear.
• There are different ways to handle EPGP. You can either have public bidding wars in Raid channel to distribute loot or you can use an addon where you choose Main/Off/Pass if you wish to receive an item and the add-on will choose who receives it based on the points of each player.
• This is an extremely good way to distribute loot however it can seem a little random at times.
• Loot Council
• When someone wants to receive an item they post in a channel or whisper a specified person and a council of selected members (either random or appointed) choose via a voting system who the item should go to.
• This is an extremely effective way to distribute loot based on what is needed at any given time in a progression environment. If you are about to work on a boss that has a tight enrage timer the LC can choose to start distributing loot to the lower DPS. If you're about to progress on a boss that requires a lot of healing you can choose to give it to a healer. If you finally kill a boss for the first time you can give the first heroic weapon to your top DPS as a way to thank them for doing so well.

Loot Concerns

This is a plead to the current members of my guild whether they read it or not.

The biggest thing that comes to mind when I write this. Stop bitching. Seriously, it's annoying and it makes you look bad. All I have been hearing recently is how our Loot Council system is biased. Not only is it not true but it is also far from it. People cried and cried about the Loot Council being biased but in the pages of complaints on the forums that I have seen not once has any evidence been shown of such a thing. Loot was given out to absolutely everyone at a constant rate. Having someone get a piece of loot over you doesn't make the Loot Council system biased. It makes you a loot whore.

Most importantly, if you feel that there is something wrong with the Loot System, then bring evidence to back your claims. Our tank used myself as an example that "I was receiving loot above our other resto druid that even I believed should have gone to her because I have a secret relationship with our guild master." Not only is this accusation far from true (and if I was receiving loot because I was friends with people and not because I worked hard to deserve I would leave now because that is not the way loot should be given) but it was in fact the exact opposite.

Roari (the other druid) has received any piece that we have ever both wanted before me except for two items.

• She received her shoulder tokens off of Majordomo Staghelm on one of our very first kills. To be fair, I was still a trial at this point but it was at least a month before I finally received my 4-piece and only after every other person on my token (IE every other Druid, Priest and Mage) in the raid had gotten theirs. When I got my 4-piece I was the only person who rolled Main spec on it.
• She received the Heroic Phoenix Down Treads off of Alysrazor and last night I lost them again to the Boomkin who is still relatively new to the guild.
• She received Jaws of Defeat, one of the first ones that dropped for us, and I only just received mine this week because none of the others rolled for it.
• She received her Heroic token a week before I did and I was once again one of the last people on my token to receive one. Tuesday night I received a Heroic Leg token off of Shannox. Two dropped and it was myself, the aforementioned Boomkin and a Death Knight who already had a heroic token. No one else rolled because they either already had their Heroic Legs or had received a Heroic Chestpiece.
• She received the Healing Mace over Ragnaros, at the time she had a 365 crafted weapon and I had a 359 and she still received our first one.

I have never once complained about loot even though the evidence clearly shows that the Loot Council has an overwhelming tendency to give me loot last over everyone else who rolls on any items that I need. The reason why I haven't complained? Because I am in a PROGRESSION raiding guild and that is something I think a lot of people fail to remember. Every person who receives loot will get better by a small margin even if it isn't you. Do I believe that the loot system was biased because they would give her loot before me? No. Roari always beats me in overall healing on almost every single fight we are apart of aside from Ryolith and Beth'tilac (sometimes). And she should receive a lot of the important gear (Heroic tokens, first time kill loot and weapons) before me because she has on a consistent basis been our best healer, always shows up to every raid (that isn't on a holiday) and always brings her A game.

I feel that the officers should be the ones who decide where loot goes. Not any of this "making random raid members control loot" system that we are trying to make now will fix anything. Some of the people sitting in Loot Council right now barely know how to gear themselves. And yet we are giving them the decisions to gear other people. The officers are officers for a reason. They became officers because they have substantial amounts of knowledge to the game and what is best for other classes. If the officers are telling you how to gear because you're doing it wrong, what makes you think they shouldn't be the ones handing out loot. Not only that but they also have knowledge into the inner workings of the guild that you don't. Maybe someone isn't receiving loot because they are actively recruiting to replace them or they want them to change their main specs. That is something that random raiders have no knowledge of. Speaking of which here's something I really want you to think about. Maybe you aren't receiving loot over other people because every week you are threatening to leave. Just sayin'. Why would a loot council who sees you consistently threatening to leave if things don't go your way give you gear?

The loot council was also accused of being predictable. Here's something to think about. The raid group that we are currently in is very settled. Not very often are people benched and not many people have left. Which means that in the last several months the same 20 people have been in every single raid. Which means everyone has found their niche. Some do exceptionally well while some are still consistently dying to normal mode fight mechanics. Some healers heal better than others and some tanks tank better than others. Maybe the loot distribution has become predictable because we always have the same people going after loot for the last several months and if those same people haven't changed their niche since they joined then the voting patterns won't change until the raiders have change.

I believe that a lot of the complaints stem from the fact that everyone can see who goes for every single item. We post our item and what spec we want it for in a public channel. And if the loot doesn't go the way you believe it should, you have a tendency to believe it is because of biased players not voting the exact way that you would. I believe that who wants an item should be completely confidential and only knowledgeable to the people who choose they want an item and the officers who see who want a item. If you want to have a public loot table of who has received gear recently that's fine but as far as common raiders go it is none of our business who wants what and who doesn't want what.

Which comes to my next point. You are a COMMON RAIDER. Yes, you are allowed to voice your opinions but you are not entitled to anything. You are not an officer. You are not a guild master. Most of the people who are sitting and complaining are the people that only log on for the 9 hours that we raid. You do absolutely nothing to further the guild except for showing up to the raids. Some of you barely can even manage that. If you don't like the way the guild master is running things then you are more than welcome to leave. People need to realize that they are completely expendable. Just because you are the top dps or a tank doesn't mean that you can halt a raid because you don't think something is fair or threaten to "leave and take a good handful of people with you if things don't go your way". You know how easy it is to switch to 10 man raiding for the next few weeks until we fill your spots? Just because we don't have a bench doesn't by any means mean we need you. There are 10 million players, there is nothing about you that makes you a must have.

Lastly, you are all wasting the time of the management of the guild by doing this. People have left because they felt we weren't progressing enough. You honestly think that loot distribution is not making us progress? No, it's not. Halting the raid for 45 minutes over a token and spending hours on the forums bickering instead of using that time to research your class and upcoming fights is what is halting our progression. Making the officers sit down and create a new loot system instead of sitting down and making recruitment plans or boss strategy plans hinders progression. You are the problem here.

I hope some of you learned a thing or two about the points I'm trying to make here. 

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