Master loot, a topic where a decent portion of cutting-edge and more casual mythic players agree and disagree, on top of the developers giving their philosophy prior. That said, I thought this would be a topic to bring up, in part due to a recent statement based on external player buffs by Sigma,
“One of the most difficult aspects of this topic is social tension. Sometimes people argue with their teammates about buffs. It’s very understandable, to me, why one possible response someone might have for that is–this can put you at odds with your own groupmates, so stamp it out. The flip side of that is: this is part and parcel of playing with real people in a large cooperative group. And preserving the human element of group play in WoW, not boiling it down to predictable mechanical interactions, is an important value. See for example, the common lament that group-finder content has lost a lot of the human interaction from the experience. Mechanics that involve interacting with groupmates bring out both the good and the bad of that, and that might be better than having neither." As well as revisiting a topic where there may be a philosophical change.
What is master loot? A system where when you defeat a boss, a designated player can distribute all pieces of loot to their raid/party that a boss drops. As opposed to personal loot, when you defeat a boss, loot is randomly distributed among X amount of players in your raid/party.
What is my argument? Master loot was a system where it gave organized guilds more control over the loot that dropped and allowed you to distribute the loot based on a multitude of reasons to help your team become stronger, you were most likely rewarded for how long you were in a guild, a strong performance or simply just it is a massive increase for one class and worthless for another. Currently during progression, if you loot a piece of gear you have no agency on what happens to it, no matter if it’s an upgrade or downgrade, you either equip it for a second so that slot can be traded or you keep it because it’s an upgrade. There is no helping the other players on your team with loot, because that choice was taken away.
What was Blizzard’s argument? Master loot was removed to help deter split running. It felt bad for someone to kill a boss and have to give loot away/get no loot. This argument back then was contested, but now we have actual experiences to show that’s not entirely true. For the individual, you will still not get loot just like before, guilds that wanted to control loot to a degree and still utilize the outside source of RC Loot council, but some guilds choose NOT to use RC Loot council, and if they do there’s an option that is extremely popular that lets YOU decide if you wish to trade your piece of loot. So why is the last part important? Because guilds as a whole can decide to utilize a master loot system if the players agree with a more structure-based loot system or a pure RNG system they can. The group can decide as a whole which type of system they wish to use, just like they do now to an extent.
Breaking down Blizzard’s argument, if we look at split runs, it did not hurt them whatsoever and has only made them much worse in comparison. As very competitive guilds will do split-runs no matter what and will do everything they can to achieve the best possible results. Outside of them, Master loot is not only a top 0.1% option. There are a multitude of reasons a group would want master loot as well as why another group wouldn’t. But that’s where the social dynamic comes in and what suits each player and group best, groups CAN AND SHOULD decide on their own.
Master Loot in legion didn’t affect non-guild groups as they couldn’t enable it, players were able to decide within their guild how they wanted their loot handled. So why take the option away? In competitive raiding or even cutting edge raiding there exist groups where you want your TEAM to do the best it can, you are working as a single unit to defeat the bosses. Controlling loot allows a much healthier dynamic in organized runs. It does not feel good to get a piece of gear that I know is worthless, especially early on in progression, and I have 0 agency in being able to give it to someone whom I know it’s an upgrade for. I disagree with the notion of taking options away from players.
On the contrary, master Loot is not without issues, as you can get loot drops for a weapon/armor type, not even in your run but that’s not unique to any system.
So what am I proposing? I believe Legions Master Loot system was the healthiest version of a master looting system as it provided players with the options of Personal Loot as we currently have or Master Loot, and the only way to turn on Master Loot was to be in a near-full guild group. This allows organized guilds to have more loot control so their players can feel more rewarded and it supports the idea of a TEAM of players working together to defeat bosses. It allows guilds who wish to keep the current system to use that same system, and we have seen this currently happening with RC Loot. Taking away options and player choice is what got us to many problems with the current game, and even if you disagree with Master Loot as a system, do you disagree with systems that create more player engagement and choice?
I do wonder if anyone has experiences or opinions on the matter? As I have seen players from all different levels of raiding both support and disagree with the idea of a Master Loot system coming back for organized guild runs.