What we have right now is many times better than quite literally every other in-game system we have had for looting and rolling for stuff in raids (and if we wanna go really far back we can include dungeons as well).
Every system will have upsides and downsides. The reason I say that this is the best system we have had so far is essentially because the only issues people bring up are ever really weird and imaginary arguments that fall apart on their own as to why they would be problems. This system, just like any other, has issues. Just none of the things that OP and many like OP tries to bring up in threads essentially identical to this one.
This is at least a system that doesn’t promote harassment.
Since we don’t know directly (because Blizzard isn’t telling us intent), we can only imply, and that’s certainly one way to interpret. But it seems strange for them to use the word “upgrade” in that customer support post. Since we can only infer what they meant, we shouldn’t overlook that. It also makes sense (in a common sense manner) as why would you want to equip something that is a downgrade?
Yes, I mostly just state that for brevity, but what it could work out to be is that it cannot be lower ilevel and, if it is the same ilevel, it can have different secondaries and be ok to roll. Trinkets could be arguably exempt if need be, but the situation is much less likely than those that are simply rolling need for vendor spec or transmog.
Unfortunately, from a technical standpoint, it’s expensive (in terms of computing) to calculate whether something is actually an upgrade in any situation unless the worn item and the rolled-on item all have the same types of stats. So, we’ve seen what happens with the “more permissive” stance, and it degrades the camaraderie and social aspect of grouping.
I don’t think eating bugs is a terrible idea, anything can be seasoned, people already eat shellfish that isn’t far off. Cheap + easily-accessible protein.
So we need to enforce camaraderie and social aspect of grouping.
Where do we draw the line?
Can I report someone if they dont talk to me?
On one hand we have a million variations on judging if gear is an upgrade or not and needing to force the social aspect (but only in this very specific way) of LFR…on the other hand we just accept that in LFR there are limited aspects to what one should feel entitled to when it comes to loot.
It’s not enforcing social aspects, it’s encouraging everyone enjoying being in group by knowing what to expect in the consideration of fair play.
If something like that’s not acceptable, just let everyone roll, and say that, so that everyone knows beforehand exactly what to expect instead of thinking people will act fairly and responsibly.
I don’t know if you’ve ever had chapulines (Mexican grasshoppers), but they’re good. Kind of like shrimp with a herbaceous rather than briny aftertaste. Anyway: I think the aversion to eating bugs is at least partly born out of politicized spin; and, anyway: crickets are actually annoyingly expensive.
Not really because we don’t know the intent (Blizzard’s intent). We know what’s allowed but people obviously abuse the Need roll (if it’s intended for that purpose of an upgrade) because of technical limitations. So we’re stuck with a very permissive “honor system” that, based on the number of posts like these, really doesn’t work very well.
So the intent needs to be clarified and enforced, in some manner. I don’t mean bans or mutes or deserter debuffs, just either something everyone agrees to beforehand by specifying whether it should have further restrictions or even any restrictions at all. This shouldn’t be a “we either have GL or PL or ML”, we need more options and confirmation of those options. So when you join a raid, it’ll tell everyone what the chosen loot rules are and ask if they agree to them. Once everyone agrees, those loot rules can’t be changed for the lockout.
Unfortunately these days some have a different interpretation of what “Need” actually means, they believe because they need it for transmog or the materials it disenchants to or the gold value. It’s important to them because they “Need it” I know it’s not right but that’s seems what people have become today, “Needy”and we just have to put up with it.
So, for starters, the restrictions I’m talking about are the optional ones I mentioned to be customized, not just the ones in place today.
As for intent, Blizzard’s intent is not irrelevant, it’s the cornerstone of the guidelines. It’s only irrelevant if we really want to disregard the long-term health of group content and the community in general.
We know what we are allowed to do, but each person interprets what they should fairly do differently. With Blizzard’s intent we could point to a baseline, or foundation, for expected behavior in the group. Without it, we have posts complaining about other people getting loot they didn’t need and others complaining that people called them a jerk for rolling need on a downgrade.
So this continues to come up week after week, and people continue to fight about it. It could fairly easily be addressed by Blizzard, but it’s not, and maybe that truly is their intent, but it’s a problematic one.
I don’t quite agree with this in general when referring to personal loot, but fully agree that most people cite issues with other loot systems that are either completely unrelated and/or borne from ignorance with the system. I do agree that if we are only going to have one system, group loot is the best system we’ve seen Blizzard come up with.
What I do think personal loot does better is two fold:
There is a psychological difference between someone declaring intent to roll against you for an item they win and them being given the item without intent. I could join an LFR looking for tier gloves but have no way to stop the game from giving me a random pair of boots; if I roll need on the boots then I am no longer merely a passive observer in the act of getting those boots.
In an LFR context, there can be highly skewed raid compositions with no ability for players to do anything different. I’ve had LFR raids that had zero plate wearers, for example. In that raid under group loot, all plate is nothing but vendor fodder. There can be the potential for a lot of outright wasted loot as a result. While players can choose not to trade items they get from personal loot, the player at least had the choice to do so to make sure the item doesn’t go to waste.
“Considered an upgrade” and “is an upgrade” do not have the same definition. The unfortunate reality is that it’s not possible to define a hardfast rule of which items are an upgrade for which players at all times. Even for the same character and same spec, different situations might call for different items being better.
This is where any attempt for players to define rules of engagement is going to fall apart, though. You cannot tell another person their interpretation is wrong, but that is the pillar of attempting to adjudicate beyond Blizzard’s systems relies on.
I don’t disagree with anyone who argues that players shouldn’t roll need for the purpose of selling the item. Transmog is a bit of gray area because the button is functionally useless in free roll contexts, but in principle I would also agree transmog should have its own avenue separate from need. But Blizzard is the only real authority on the matter in LFR where players do not control membership, and attempting to apply supplemental rule requires one group of players trying to assume authority they do not hold over another. And I vehemently disagree with players doing that.
Personally, i only roll need if it is an upgrade, but i’m also not inspecting and judging anyone else. They did the content and have the right to get loot. Don’t try to control everyone else and you just might enjoy the game more.
You can’t accept losing a roll to someone going for transmog because you’re entitled to any piece that has a higher level than you’re wearing. Why are you even inspecting the winner?
It’s a team effort, everyone that participated in the kill has a right to hit those dice, learn how to lose with dignity.
The thing with personal loot is that … it is the only time in the history of playing the game that I have ever been harassed for not giving an item away. And that happened on the regular to the degree where whilst the comic strip I use from Dark Legacy is usually overblown slightly for comedy but, this was the norm:
I have encountered smaller issues with other systems, and I don’t even agree on the two you mentioned being better with PL. The psychological impact on PL was instead that folks got upset at folks seemingly at random simply because “why did they get the item but not meeeeeeee”, ergo why this culture of harassment actually started. And in terms of the group composition thing … not really.
It is possible but exceedingly unlikely that it would be at best a statistical anomaly in terms of a group having no one that could use, whether to use or as transmog, any one particular item that drops. Yes a bow/gun can drop when there’s no hunters, but that still leaves it as transmog for those who can use it. With PL that’s not how it would work out statistically speaking, what happened with PL is that you would regularly just get useless rings due to the abundance of those compared to non-rings meaning that you would have to mechanically change PL to specifically devalue rings on an individual-to-individual basis due to the nature of how many different rings there are with different stat weights and that we need two of them.
Yes, folks are ignorant to how mathematics work … but that’s not a positive for PL that it promotes individual ignorance of how statistics and mathematics work. If anything that’s an additional negative point against PL than it being a thing it did better. Furthermore… rings doesn’t provide transmog.
(This is meant as a funny thing but considering the (joke) saying is "Gear is transient, transmog is eternal … it does have relevance to it as well.)
…
