I think one of the biggest issues I take with personal loot is how you’re no longer just waiting for a low drop rate item, but competing (after clearing the content) for even a chance to get a roll for the potential drop. This issue hinders progress significantly for the average player. I imagine bonus rolls were initially implemented to conceal this issue or lessen it which is why their removal has had such drastic consequences.
The 2nd issue I take with personal loot directly ties into my previous one. People privileged enough to pay for or form a loot stack group have a multiplicative advantage over a normal player clearing the same content. One recent example is people buying funnels for mythic unguents while average clearing players (who actually did the content) took months to get theirs.
My last issue with personal loot is more controversial. I know a lot of people have heard stories about ninja looting and bad GMs being stingy or partial. However, I also know that everyone has a story about someone refusing to trade loot that isn’t an upgrade or simply DEing it. Both are unacceptable behaviour. The latter unmistakably harms the progression of everyone else involved - however, it’s also directly encouraged for competitive advantage as there is no recourse or ability make an appeal on it to Blizzard.
Tl;dr - Personal loot incentivizes boosting and poor player behavior while hindering the progress of the average player. I wanted to write something down about it even if people disagree or very few people actually read it.
I ran into more guilds as a casual with a tyrant raid leader than a fair guild that cared about its members. For those just wanting to enjoy raiding casually as a average player you were at the mercy of master loot. Which meant you could dedicate the small time you had to others and never get anything in return, and you can only join so many guilds and have the same thing happen before burn out.
Its easy for people to sit here and defend master loot when they are the raid leaders, officers, or buddies with the higher ups. But I don’t see your average casual here saying how great master loot was. I don’t trust anyone here to be fair because nobody cares about anyone but themselves in the end.
That’s understandable, but I would like for people atleast to be provided a choice as to whether their group is personal loot or not. Nearly every guild which is progressing would choose masterloot as it’s just the superior option for progression and gearing, but casual guilds would have the choice whether or not enable it. They did this in legion but Personal loot was so unpopular they just removed the option for ML entirely in bfa.
I mean I’m not generally selfish about loot I dont think, but I remember an almost BiS trinket dropping for MM (me) and it was pretty low on the list for BM, and we had a raider who was trying to claim it… Until someone pointed out that would be a waste (I wasn’t even paying much attention).
So here we are clearing trash, and the RL is trying to sort out what is what, and we are looking through trinket lists instead of just doing the raid, and I always get anxious when I get loot or I’m involved with loot (like that scenario). I just hand anything that is not an upgrade to the RL and he can deal with giving it to the highest roller.
A couple of weeks ago our druid got a neck he didnt need, but didnt immediately link it to roll and here is one of the DKs every few seconds “hey you need that neck? You have a 213 neck already”. This was an alt raid mind you and he isnt even on the actual team. It was his first time in raid with us as of this expansion. Like… Very awkward.
I’m glad it wasn’t me that got it. That is irritating. But like I said, I can just hand it over to the boss and whoever gets it gets it.
Edit to ask:
How is it objectively better, outside of the whole “cant trade this piece I dont want, but I cant because its higher ilvl than what I have”. Honest question.
I was an officer in the ML days and we spent more time in Ochat trying to pass loot that anything. I think loot may have been the only guild drama I’ve never run into lol.
The forums do not represent your average casual.
If your friends leave you feeling like that, it’s unfortunate to say the least.
Yes, instead of 3 random items being dropped, 3 random people are given items that they can use and can give away if they don’t want to use it… Seems like a better system in every way. You just removed the possibility of a bow dropping for a group without hunters.
How?
No, bonus rolls are a system to make it easier for you to target a specific item, without changing much the amount of items dropped overall.
Yes, and this is something that is usually hard and annoying to do, the groups are usually sub optimal and have a harder time clearing the content. Also the amount of loot dropped by the bosses is the same, they are just optimizing their chances of no repeats. There is nothing wrong with that at all.
Yes, carrying is a thing in MMOs and will always be a thing. There is nothing wrong with this. If you want to get rid of this you will need to make the game single player.
There are tons of ways to make the game easier if you want, you can right now go into molten core and solo it. its boring a f, just like being carried. If you want the true game experience you will not do those and you will play normally.
Sorry but I don’t know a story like this. People tend to be very proactive in offering loot actually, and I never got denied after asking. I never got ninja looted in master loot either so…
Personal loot is good.
There is not an issue if someone is ‘greedy’ it’s their item and they can do what they want with it.
I like the concept of having ‘master loot’ as an option if all participating members agree or better yet just don’t force-bind item level upgrades. That way if you get an item that’s a dead stat item to you but an ilvl upgrade you can still trade it.
For a prog team that can use it to gear most effectively, it’s flat out better. The issue with ML is people using it irresponsibly, not it’s effectiveness.
How so? Even with ML, the drops were random like PL is, right? I’m trying to brush up on this because I remember when it was a big topic, but it’s been awhile.
I think ML did give more drops, but that may be my own confusion because we are in SL and they changed drop rates.
But you can still effectively pass gear around with PL, right?