So I wrote this post about a week ago, and low and behold yesterday I had a very nice twitter conversation with Vitae, LadyAnjelle, and MarthaPie, so I’m changing my intro to give them props for giving my more inspiration.
What Is Your Poison?
I’ve heard countless people say that they’ve found the loot system for them, and then a few weeks later be accosted by their complaints that someone stole their gear. So I decided to take a good long look at some of the big guys and see what is what. Also I refuse to talk about DKP, because I hate it so very much. I’ve only ever used two loot systems, these are the first two I will discuss.
EP/GP
Effort point, and gear points. The basic idea is the more effort you put into the raid the more points you get. For my guild we also give additional points for being on time, attending Guild Farm Nights, and once a week you can deposit 3 stacks of fish or herbs in the gbank for EP. You can then “use” those points to get gear. Every piece of gear has a points value.
Pro:
It has a tendency to be very fair, and you can’t argue with it. It’s user friendly and easily adjustable if you need to do so. My guild personally does a 20% degrade each week, so if new people come in it’s possible to catch up.
Con:
If you’re a newbie, you can manage to get a bunch of gear easily, but then you’re stuck in the hole. Which is quite hard to climb out of.
“Gear the Raid not the Player”
This is a system that goes by many names, and it very rarely works. I only used it once, and it was with a 10man of RL friends. You have your raid leader that decides who the gear will upgrade the most for the good of the raid. When there is a question between two people that can’t easily be resolved, then it’s /roll to see who gets it.
Pro:
If you can manage to get a group of people together that are laid back enough for this to work, it makes loot smooth and seamless.
Con:
Everything else. Drama, Drama, Drama. I do not suggest ANY guild use this unless it’s very small, very tight knit raiding group.
/Roll
The simple basic WoW UI loot system. If it’s set on loot master then your raid leader will simply link the loot, and those who need it for main, roll. If no one needs it for main, then those that need it for off-spec will then roll. It’s probably the most basic and easy one.
Pro:
Easy. Simple, and supposed to be no arguing.
Con:
It relies heavily on luck, and some people have none. It can lead to arguing if some or one person seems to be getting more loot than others. Generally not a great system if you’re competitively raiding.
Loot Council
This is probably my least favorite, after the system that must not be named. You have your raid leader, and generally 2 or 4 other people depending on the size of the raid. You generally always want it to be an odd number so that you have a tie breaker. When loot is dropped the council will then decide who gets the piece.
Pro:
No numbers tracking, there is an addon that you can use to assign loot, and it’ll tell you who’s been given a piece most recently.
Con:
Everyone, no matter how partial they are, are prone to favoritism. So it can also instill much drama, which isn’t good for any raiding group.
Ni Karma
Vitae, introduced me to this today, and I am very unfamiliar with it, so I will Ctrl-C, and Ctrl-V it here:
Quick summary
- Gain “karma” for attending raids.
- When an item drops, your karma is added to a standard /roll, if you choose.
- Highest roll+karma wins item, winner loses half his karma.
- Tiers prevent everyone from rolling. You may only roll if you’re within 50 points of person rolling with the highest karma.
Pro:
Seems like a very smooth points based system, without the draw back of new players being able to “out bid” players that have been around for a while.
Con:
It’s another points based system and I imagine given time, and a smart mind you can manipulate it.
So there you go, those are the big boys. Each raiding group is going to have a loot system that works for them. I’ll never tell anyone which system they should use, to each their own. For me personally I think I’ll either stick to EPGP or I’ll feebly try to convince my GL to switch to Karma.
/Cheers
SK is also a popular one, and it’s what we use (switched from loot council, bleh).
We have two lists, one for tier and one for non-tier. For the most part, the distribution is fair and equal.
We ran into some drama with some loot babies though, when an item would have benefited the raid more had it gone to someone lower on the list. After that we all decided to take a more mature approach and think about the raid first and we haven’t had problems since.
The loot system you decide on really does depend on your group too… whether you use alts, backups, pugs, if some raiders tend to back out/not show up, etc.
Great post!
You know me. I’ll stick to my “raid before the player” roots until my group shows it doesn’t work for them. I like the mentality that everyone is watching each others backs instead of only trying to up their own item level.
I like my “con” for Raid not Player and Loot Council better: I do not suggest ANY guild use this unless it’s a very small, very tight knit raiding group…AND you want to make it far smaller and less tight-knit.
While I understand the merits of a loot council-type system, as a GM, the idea of trying to run one just sickens me. Imagining the mass of “hey, you know I really could use that”, “why do you like him so much more?”, “you gave him an item last week”, “you fucking officers always hoard all the loot”, “why the heck don’t you think I deserve that?”…..um….no.
Karma
?
My old loot system was similar to the Karma one – basically, for every raid you attended you gained 5 points, up to a total of 35, and for every raid you missed you lost 10, down to 0. This number was simply added to your role. That’s it, no cashing in points, you stayed at 35 for as long as you kept showing up on consecutive nights.
In saying that, if I was a raid leader I’d have no problem with using loot council, mainly because it would give me total control of the raid. Also because I have no problem dealing with people whining about loot – “you’ll get the next one, unless you keep whinging about it”.
With a tight knit group of friends like a group I used to be in, we just used to /roll, and then the raid leader would step in if there was an issue, like sidegrades vs upgrades, but most times players would even have drops worked out between themselves anyway.