Following the RWF, I have some new ideas about loot I would like to discuss and get feedback on, specifically relating to loot.
No one loot system will ever be perfect. Over the years of WoW there have been options for looting. Free for all, Personal, Group, Master Loot, to name a few.
Each of these systems have their shortcomings. As everything does. But each also work well given the right scenario.
TL;DR
- We need to revamp the loot systems for 10.0.
- Let Master Loot be voted on.
- Personal loot works, in niche scenarios, but trading restrictions need to be changed.
- Group loot has its place as well.
- Use personal loot coding to prevent useless items from dropping.
- Look at drop rates of items such as necks/rings/trinkets in raids.
Master Loot
Most players have an opinion on Master Looting. Some love it, others despise it. Those who love it want to use it to be able to delegate loot to specific players to help them gear up faster, those who hate it, in many cases were at the bottom of the totem pole for loot. There are also plenty of examples in WoW’s history of Master (Ninja) looting occurring. This sucks for sure.
My suggestion for Master Loot is require a unanimous vote within the group to be able to use it. There have been suggestions in the CC forum about making it available for guild groups only. I was one of the people to make that suggestion, but this new idea would require everyone in the group to be on board with using that loot system. In effect, if the group/raid leader selects master loot as the loot system, there would be a popup to the effect of:
Letholas has selected Master Looter for this group. Do you accept this loot system?
Yes / No
This would make it clear to everyone in the group what is happening and unless there is a unanimous vote the system cannot be used.
Personal Loot
Personal loot works great in systems like LFR and Premade Group Finder (Including World Bosses), everyone has an equal chance to receive loot, which is tradable if certain requirements are met. These requirements are the main pain point of this system. I understand why they are there, but in so many cases pieces of loot that are upgrades for people in the group are getting disenchanted or sold because the looter can’t trade it, even if they aren’t going to use it. This very thing happened in my raid last week. It sucks. This is a system that needs to be fixed for 10.0. Please.
The one advantage to Personal Loot is that if a group killing Sylvanas had no hunters in it (lol jk I know that never happened), the bow is not in the loot table.
But could this not be applied to Master Looter and Group Loot? Let the code determine what loot is dropped based on the people in the raid (just like it is with personal loot, but instead of assigning those items to individual players, they are all attached to the boss to be distributed as the group sees fit? This seems like a “best of both worlds” option to me.
Group Loot
Great for less hardcore groups that don’t want to use personal loot, but also don’t want the hassle of master loot. Let people roll on what they want, pass on what they don’t, etc. Keep the class restrictions if you want to even.
Necks/Rings/Trinkets
This is a problem closely tied to personal loot. Every spec in the game can loot a necklace off the boss due to stamina being the only primary stat on the item. There is no str/agi/int to prevent certain classes from using it. With the way personal loot works there are just way too many of these items in circulation that people see multiple copies of the same ring before seeing the item they really want off the boss. If there are no changes to the way loot works we need to look at the drop rate of these items to make it more consistent across all items.
Conclusion
Going into 10.0, we need to revamp the loot system. The RWF has proven that guilds will push themselves to the absolute limit to get every tiny advantage they can and break the systems to gear their characters. I don’t advocate for changing the entire game for the top 0.01%, but it affects more than just those players, it affects players like me in the middle of the road who just want an upgrade, but the player in my raid can’t trade it even if they want to.