Hey all,
Would someone be so kind as to explain how Mater Loot works? And why everyone hates Personal Loot?
Master loot was one person being the âLooterâ, they could give out loot from bosses etc as they wanted.
Personal loot is the current loot system, each boss kill has a chance of dropping loot per character. There are other stipulations but thatâs the major one.
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Thanks for the reply!
Do you know why people might dislike Personal Loot so much? Is there a higher chance of loot dropping each boss with Master Loot? OrâŚ
It removes the control of the group doing the content to distribute the loot as they see fit.
11 Likes
Statistics say using Personal Loot gives more loot than Master Looter because with Master Looter, the system would always drop a set amount of loot for the raid group, but with Personal Loot, it has a chance to drop loot for everyone in the raid so it could mean that in Master Looter, it would give 4 pieces of loot, while Personal Loot could give almost everyone loot, but the down side is that everyone in the raid might not get lucky and only a small amount of people get loot.
The reason why most people donât like it based on what I heard and read is that people like the ability to control the loot being given out. Especially Guilds who like to set up their own loot system like DKP and to make it so guild members who show up and do stuff for the guild have more chances of getting gear from the raids for showing up to raids and etc.
The reason some people hate Master Looter are mostly those who are not in a guild or donât have the time to raid with their guild run raids with PUGS, but some guilds who canât fill a raid might need to invite a PUG to join them in the group, but while having Master Loot set because it is a guild run, most guild would continue to use Master Looter and distribute loot to their guild member while the PUG members are stuck with not even a chance to get loot.
The other problem was that players would abuse the Master Looter by saying that X item is on reserved for a certain person which made it hard for people to make groups because some people are looking for a chance to get that item as well and feel that they should have a chance to get that piece of loot because they are putting as much effort in getting the kill as everyone else is.
There was also people that also abused it by not making that call out that an item is on reserved and once the kill was made, the leader that sets it to Master Looter would run in and loot the boss and bail on the raid and get all that loot for themselves.
There are a lot of mix feelings about how they did this and most people are ok with Personal Loot, which others mostly guilds hate Personal Loot.
11 Likes
Mainly the trade restrictions of personal loot are the biggest issue.
I feel forced PL would be perfect with no trade restrictions.
Guilds can shift gear around as they see fit.
PuGs canât ninja anything because the gear goes to the person not the master looter.
There runs the risk of a PuG leader kicking someone if they wonât trade, but I think thatâs going to be relatively minor.
PL does bother me in that you can game the loot by stacking same armor types. But at the same time itâs nice to not have a bow drop with no hunter in the raid.
3 Likes
People also dislike Personal Loot because
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if you get loot thatâs a very small upgrade for you, but a huge upgrade for a teammate, you arenât allowed to trade it. If you get a trinket thatâs terrible for your spec but itâs a higher ilvl than your current oneâŚyou canât trade it. If you get loot with terrible stats but itâs a higher ilvl (even just by 5 ilvlsâŚ) you canât trade it to your buddies!
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itâs just inconveinent and a waste of time to have multiple people opening trade to move around unwanted loot, vs. having a single person stay at the boss and hand out loot via the menu while everyone else clears trash.
Itâs worth noting that this was really an issue with Master Loot pugs, and in Legion they made it so a group could not enable Master Loot unless at least 80% of the group was from one guild. Guilds pugging to fill a last spot or two is also relatively rare since flex raiding.
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Tl;DR Master Loot let guilds decide the best way to distribute loot for their group. That might not always be a simple /roll. The caveat is that it put the power in the hands of one person, which made trust a requirement.
This was a non-issue until they added the premade group finder in WoD. Now it wasnât just guilds with maybe a pug or 2 to fill spots using master loot, it was full on 100% pugs. There was no trust, and you were basically guaranteed to never see anyone again, so âninja lootingâ became more prevalent for the average player.
So master loot got restricted to guild-groups only, and then eventually deleted, most likely to improve the experience of the average player just pugging their way through the raid, and perhaps partly to try and combat the split runs that the top 0.5% tend to do to gain any advantage they can ('cept they still do that).
This is the main reason. Raiding guilds used Master Looter to set up an incentives system. It also enabled them to redirect the bulk of the loot to reliable players, thereby increasing the chance that this weekâs loot would help progression on next weekâs raid. Personal loot removes the ability to skew loot that way, enabling guest players to grab their loot and run. Typically, guest raiders could roll on loot, but only if it wasnât an upgrade for a regular raider.
Personal loot is better for PUG-heavy raid groups, but itâs kind of bad for guilds.
Thank you all for the detailed information! From the sounds of it, both systems have pros and cons.
For me personally, I donât think I would be ok with someone determining whether or not I deserve a piece of gear. PL seems like a more fair system, while ML looks at the bigger picture of the guild and gearing up people who are lacking or putting more time in than someone else.
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If master loot was done correctly, done fairly, done systematically, it worked for good guilds. When loot was distributed to only those who were in favor with the guild officials or to friends and lovers/wanna-be is when the disgruntled ârest of the guildâ rebelled. Those kinds of complaints went on for years and years.
Blizzardâs hands were tied because master loot was that carte blanche gear distribution system they had no control over. Purely in the hands of the loot master.
Pretty sure Blizzard got tired of the loot disputes that was reported constantly.
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Sounds just like Time Played Metrics (takes longer to gear)
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This is definitely true. Thatâs why it was great to have both loot systems in the game - groups could weigh the respective pros and cons and choose the loot system that worked best for them.
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Ya hit the nail on the head. PL is nice when it is in a random group and all, but ML was nice for guilds because they could give pieces to people who needed them the most, or to the people who showed up the most.
It is a really interesting change that they made, I wonder if they will ever bring loot options back?
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This is why with Legionâs system it worked very well for guilds since if they had enough members in the guild in the raid, it opened it up to allow the leader to change it to Master Looter. Guildâs liked this, but the con was that if not enough members of the guild showed up and needed to pick up PUGS, then it could resulted in not using Master Looter and being stuck using Personal Loot.
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I think a lot of the concerns of personal loot would be dropped if loot was trade able within the group during the two hour window regardless of whether it is an upgrade or not and a certain amount of loot would be guaranteed to drop at certain thresholds (bosses used to drop x amount of gear based on whether they were 10, 20, 25, or 40 man regardless of number of persons present).
The downside could be armor type, class, or spec (such as STR vs INT vs AGI) stacking to obtain higher chances of getting loot drops you want. Old systems, loot could drop for an armor type not present (such as mail, leather, or cloth). Using personal loot, many people would be more frustrated receiving loot they couldnât even use into their bag by default.
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The major issue is this. Personal loot is all rng. Its possible gear will simply never drop.
With master looter gear will drop garunteed but people have to toll for it. And the designated master looter has to pass it out.
Personal loot works fine for pugs. But if you are in say a regular raid group master looter provides structure and garuntees progress.
For example all the times i had a regular raid group we had simple rules for the loot.
We would beat a raid boss. The boss would drop 3 random pieces garunteed. The master looter would link the items to the raid group.
Then put up each piece individually and ask that those interested in the piece do a /roll. Whoever wins the roll wins the gear. You just rinse and repeat. And move to the next boss.
The raid group can put in extra conditions as they please.
So for example to prevent human greed and get everyone gear. My groups often asked that players not be greedy and only roll for 1 gear drop in that week. And only roll for thier main spec.
Lets say for example my raid had two hunters needing the same gear. Well they would take turns with gear drops or work out trades between themselves.
The idea is a fair master looter can benefit the whole group more. And get everyone gear. You prioritize getting key members of your raid geared so bosses can be beaten easier.
Of course its posible for people to be greedy and stll corrupt stuff. But if the team is fair to each other everyone can benefit.
Personally they shouldnt have removed the other loot systems and forced personal loot. The rng can really screw someone over simply because of bad luck.
While I agree you have many good points, is /roll not just reintroducing the same element of RNG?
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It introduces it on a piece-by-piece basis. You donât roll on things you donât want.
Yes but you are garunteed x loot drops per boss. As oppossed to the rng of you may not get anything at all.