EG point system or other?Follow

There are all kinds of loot systems that guilds and LSes and whatever have set up throughout the years. Which one is best is entirely dependent on what works for your group.

Without going into too much detail.. you've essentially got three kinds of looting:
- Points based
- Ladder based
- Decision based

Point systems can be anywhere from straight DKP, which boils down to: kill boss, get ponts, spend points for items. To as complex as something like EPGP where your priority on loot is determined by a ratio of the points you've earned versus the items you've taken.

Ladder based systems tend to be pretty simple.. you climb the ladder by killing bosses and not taking loot, you go down the ladder by taking loot, and people at the top of the ladder have priority. Suicide Kings is a good example of this one.

The most common decision-based system is loot council, which is exactly what it sounds like it is.. some council of people is deciding who gets what whenever stuff drops.

There are going to be infinite opinions over which is best, but the answer is that there is no answer. The best one depends on your group and it's to your benefit to discuss what kind of loot system you want to have with them.

It's easier to explain if I use a raid with multiple bosses.

Kill boss 1: 4 items drop, 2 people want something from the loot pool
- Raider A hasn't taken anything for a long time, he's at the top of the ladder as a result, he chooses the item he wants, and moves to the bottom of the ladder
- Raider B is 4 or 5 places down the ladder, but nobody above him wants any of the other items, he takes his thing, moves to the bottom (below A)
- The other items are disposed of by the guild since nobody wants them

Kill boss 2: 4 items drop, 7 people want something
- Start at the top of the ladder and work downward until all the loot's been distributed.
- As people take loot, move them to the bottom of the ladder, each subsequent raider will create a new bottom and push the ones above him up.

Continue that for all bosses. Every time someone takes something, they move to the bottom of the ladder, and everyone else is pushed up. This creates a priority system based on both attendance and reward. Players who attend frequently are rewarded with higher priority on loot and can ensure they get the item they want when it drops.

The primary danger here is people not taking items in order to preserve their spot for when the one thing they desperately want does finally drop. This can hinder progression because people will tend to avoid minor upgrades for fear of losing major ones.

I recommend a system like this for a more casual group that wants to reward attendance but isn't terribly concerned with min/maxing their characters. A healthy ladder system will have people taking things all the time and keeping the ladder moving in a nice fluid progression.

It's less useful for more serious groups for the reason I mentioned above. The ladder will stagnate and progression will falter as people wait for their biggest upgrades.

NB: There's another danger of someone who attends infrequently enough that they end up artificially high on the ladder. Minimum attendance rules will tend to fix this problem. But it needs to be spelled out ahead of time, or people will feel cheated.

Edited, May 3rd 2013 1:45pm by Callinon

I never liked the point systems in raids. They made raiding feel like work for me.

My issue with that is that in-game loot systems are equivalent to rolling dice for everything that drops regardless of attendance or investment in a particular guild.

While I definitely agree that player-managed loot systems can be kind of arcane and they definitely require a lot more effort on behalf of the guild leadership. That being said, they have the capability of accounting for things the game can't possibly know, like attendance.

I mean, how crappy does it feel when your guild has been working together for years, and you replace someone, and then that guy gets the drop you've been waiting 6 months to see and immediately leaves.

THAT'S what player-managed loot systems prevent.

Yep. I recently joined an HNM again in XI now that school is, for all intents and purposes, over. One of their rules is "two weeks before you can lot any drops." I have 0 problem with that, especially since I'm planning on building up my points for a long time anyway. (I need 5 umbral marrows - whole reason I rejoined an HNM, really.)

Very good point ostia and I think this might be how I run my group... Only roll on the job/class your currently playing unless told to bring another for lack of participation... Then may loot on your main and currently being used

This is why points system, when run by a guild leadership that isn't corrupt, promotes a non-drama environment. The points are cold, harsh, and factual and emotions or biaism doesn't come into play. I agree completely.

Relying on free lots, "let's pass loot freely", and other methods aren't methodical and have no rhyme or reasoning. It *always* culminates into a massive issue that drives people apart and usually away from the linkshell/guild. They don't work effectively over a long period of time, they never have, and never will.

Both systems can be corrupted by leadership, but only a point system ran effectively curtails any complaints of favoritism.

Personally I've been a fan of EPGP because it rewards effort as well as attendance: if you don't show up for a while you fall down the "list" due to natural point decay. The decay is usually percentage based so if everyone shows up all the time the ratio/loot eligibility doesn't change, only those not attending events suffer (and rightfully so).




Edited, May 4th 2013 2:53pm by Viertel

99% of DKP systems award points for being available even if you aren't invited to the raid.

Ugh, I hate when people talk in absolutes about things they obviously don't understand. In swtor, my guild had a free lot system based on the Need/Greed/Pass implemented into the game. You only rolled on stuff for your class, and if you won a piece that run, you passed the rest unless no one else needed. In the full year that I ran with them, there was not one issue over gear, other than people feeling bad about joining a run for the first time and passing on stuff, even if they were told they could lot. The system worked great, there was never one iota of drama based on it, and everyone got what they wanted eventually. As long as you are playing with a group of mature, responsible people, the free lot system is excellent, and I highly encourage it. It encourages people to come on raids, because as long as they are there and participate, they have a chance at getting gear.

DKP works well also, but for casual players it really stinks, because for those who can't make a run all the time, they get left in the dust points-wise to those who have a more open schedule. To me, I'd much rather just have the people who come to an event be able to lot on items they can use. That way you aren't constantly getting screwed just because you can't play all the time. It also encourages those players without a ton of play-time to actually come to events, because they won't feel discouraged by being 100 points behind the hardcore dudes who come to every single event.



So basically, ***** the casual players in favor of the hardcore players. I understand the philosophy, and have been in shells in ffxi that did this, and what I found was that there was WAY more drama in those shells, because the hardcores got all the loot and everyone else got jack sh*t unless they drop their real life schedule for the game. If you're in a hardcore shell, I guess it makes sense. But for anything else, it seems pretty backwards.

Edited, May 4th 2013 6:44pm by BartelX

Please i will never forget when i was in a hardcore raiding guild in wow with a dkp. I just joined so i had like no points and first day i joined i went to the raid. Dropped a healers item that i needed and the other healer didn't. And the Raid leader refused to give it to me and instead took it and sold it for gold because i didn't have enough points. Seriously? How is that ok? No one wanted that item and just because i didn't have enough points yet, he took it and refused to let me take it. Oh the rage i put on them it was my first and last day on that guild. I also got reported as well.

The thing is, there are no things related to game attendance that the game can't know. The game can know everything. Why does loot drop at all? Because the game knows that you fulfilled the requirements for the loot to drop. You complete a task, and you are rewarded with something--this is how almost every game in the world works.

The problem is when game designers are lazy and don't want to build the structures needed to track progress and reward appropriately, but even any half-assed game designer knows that feedback loops are one of the foundations of all games. It's a video game's JOB to manage the rewards. That's what it does! Arguably, that's the main thing that it does!

What it comes down to is this one truism: simple solutions require less work, but they also don't usually solve as many problems. When you're in an industry that rakes in many millions of dollars based on your disposition towards solving problems, you put your thinking cap on and build a system that minimizes the damn problems. There's nothing a player-managed loot system can do that a computerized system can't, other than automatically account for out-of-game work and subjective assessments. And it can even account for those if you provide a means of player input!

There wont be HNM in ARR, atleast not like in XI, if is understood that X person comes as a healer, because we need it, but his main class is lancer, then he can roll for lancer gear, just as he would be able to use his DKP for lancer gear, there is no excuse to not use Need/Greed/Pass other than greedy need to control loot distribution.

Would you look at that, Ostia and I agreeing on something. Oh God, the sky is falling!!