What loot system should you use?

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The best thing you can do about loot is get raiders that aren’t obsessed with it. That being said, you’re going to need a system that works for your specific team of raiders. I’ve heard so many people pitch why their system is the best for X or Y reason but a loot system should be about 1 thing: Fairness. Everything else is secondary.

  

Any loot system should consider the following…
Fairness: This is the #1. Does Mr. NewGuy get to come in and scoop the heroic token his first night on the team? If so, your system has failed to reward the work, patience, and dedication your other raiders have put in. Also, you have just geared up someone that you’re not even sure is going to fit and or stay with your team.

Ease of use: If you need a webinar or a 30m vent conversation explaining how to use the mods, websites, and user/passwords involving your loot system then it’s a bit too complicated. Not all great raid leaders are amazing geeks or have the time for some of the overhead involved in these loot systems. Make sure the system is usable by someone when you’re not around. No person can guarantee 100% attendance. Make sure loot can still be handed out fairly even if you get hit by bus.

Efficiency: Can you link the loot and figure out who it goes to in 2m or less per piece of loot? I would say it needs to be much faster but 2m has to be a ceiling considering the amount of pieces that drop. You don’t want a 15m break after each boss to figure out loot. Losing momentum in a raid can happen quickly. If folks know loot takes forever they feel the need to fit in dinner and a dog walk while you’re trying to distro the loot. Keep it fair, keep it quick.

Transparency: If you are doing a secret ballot or officer loot council make sure your raiders trust that you or the folks involved are going to do what’s best for the team regardless of favorites or anatomical parts. (See: guys go goo goo for breasts)

History: I love this one but it has almost a direct correlation to efficiency. If you have a system that tracks a full history of who looted what, when then it’s most likely a database with a learning curve and upload times. While this is great to have it can be laborious to keep up to date. The moment the data isn’t accurate all of your time and historical data is crap.

Loot Systems Explored

Officer Loot Council: The guild officers who are also in the raid decide who gets the loot. I’ve done this system in a US 300-ish guild back in BC. As an officer I always got to see how thoughtful and labored each decision was but the raiders never got to see this. Inevitably the officers would get tells from the raiders they were close with asking why X raider got Y loot over A or B player. I would spend so much time explaining all the thought that went into the decision and making the person feel better about being “cheated” than playing the damn game. Another artifact is that we officers were always passing to others to ensure that we were always seen as fair. This really hurts the team as your gearing up your least dedicated players before the most dedicated. In short, I’ve seen it work but I’m no fan.

DKP: Dragon Kill Points was invented back in 1999 by <Afterlife> in EverQuest to handle loot from the very first end-game dragon bosses. [DKP: a history of] Each time you kill a boss you earn points that you can eventually spend on loot. Those with enough points then get to roll or bid or some other variation of point spending on the loot. I really liked this system back in vanilla and BC but I feel that raid sizes (40 down to 25/10) really don’t need  a system with as much tracking overhead or the learning curve required to manage DKP properly online. Some variations include attendance which I do like for the following case: JudyDragonSlapper comes back to the raid team after leaving for 3 months. StaffoftheIncredible drops and Judy scoops it from everyone because she had points built up from the last xpac. The attendance provision ensures that each raider needs x% attendance to even spend points. If you’re looking at DKP I highly recommend using the attendance variable to filter out the JudyDragonSlappers in the world from scooping face.

Random Roll: This is by far the most efficient system. You ask everyone to roll and whoever rolls the highest for their main-spec wins. This one really fails on the fairness front. It allows too many new guys to scoop highly sought after pieces from dedicated and long-time raid members. This is great for pick up groups but simply a crap system for an established raid team.

[After using all of these for various content patches I believe the one I’m about to describe is the least amount of management while allowing for the loot to be distributed most fairly. This system requires non-assbags in the raid though. In the end use a system that works for your team.]

TLC: Team Loot Council. This is something we started doing now that our raid team is 10m. Everyone on the team is on the loot council. If you want the item that drops you simply link what you’re replacing in raid chat. Everyone then sends a tell to you, the raid leader, with a persons name or a vote to “roll.” For a team just starting out or to ensure everything remains fair, if you are rolling on an item, designate another raid member to tally the votes. It lets your team decide who needs it most and is most deserving. The reason I like this is because it allows you to consider variables that are impossible to quantify in a points based system. Effort? Skill? Attendance? Attitude? Loot scooping history? Best for which class? So if you have great people with rational brains, this system is clutch. I’ve seen this used without players being properly informed though. They just kept giving the loot to the person with the worst piece regardless of all the fun variables above. In that use, it’s a complete fail.

 [Keep in mind all of these systems work at varying levels for different groups. Find one that works for your team. These are just my experiences with the systems. Your mileage will vary. ]

Handling BOEs
Taking BOEs for the guild bank: Since guilds are now expected to pay for feasts, flasks, repairs, and even sometimes enchants & craftables it only makes sense to make sure the coffers have enough gold to keep up. Here’s something we did to ensure the guild bank always had enough gold. If a BOE drops and a raider needs for MS they get it via our TLC system. If not, we pocket it and sell on the AH for the gbank. When we get to about a sustained 250k in a raiding tier we start offering the BOEs to non-raiding guildies for 1/2 the current AH prices as long as they equip the item.