The Psychology Behind Loot Council Issues

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
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Hello, I am a psychologist and game designer, so I thought I might try to weight in about the reason loot councils often have issues from the angle of player psychology.

I think there are 3 main issues that make using a loot council a bad idea for 99% of raiding guilds in WoW. The top 1% of progression guilds could probably make an argument that everyone is dedicated enough to make it an okay system for them. Otherwise here are the 3 points:

1. Control: We generally want to feel like we are in control of our own fate. Most of the happiest people in the world are focused on what they can change and can control in their lives, while the majority of stressed out people are focused on all the things that happen to them and feel like they have very little or no control. Loot council removes the player’s ability to feel like they can control when they get gear. This generally increases tension and stress and makes people feel bad.
In game design, when a bad thing happens to you that you could not control we call it a random pain point, and while they can be useful (such as an enemy critical striking you) when it comes to progression, random pain points tend to make people feel like their effort was worthless and that makes players want to stop playing, generally speaking. SO when loot not being assigned to you feels random, that hurts.

  1. Projection: Projection is our concepts being put onto another person. So in this case, if I suspect that an officer does not like me, I am going to project onto that officer that they are arguing against me getting loot. Since transparency is often an issue in loot councils, my idea that I am being overlooked or purposefully ignored can fester because I do not see what happens in the council, but I DO see that I did not get the loot. Then I am left to draw my own conclusions, which is not helpful for morale in most cases.

  2. Hedonic Treadmill: This is the idea that you keep getting new stuff and you have fun doing it, but that you then are looking forward to that next item. MMOs are built around this grind. You are always improving and your work feels like it pays off. Intermittent reinforcement is when you are sometimes rewarded but not always and is also a major driver of behavior. In Raids, getting one upgrade every couple of raids is an excellent incentive to keep coming back.

A loot council often messes this natural cycle up in 2 ways at the same time:

A: Some players may go a very long time without getting gear. This may happen in any loot system but because the council decided it, that feels like the player is not earning anything. In a DKP system the player can feel like they are still making progress toward their next item, whenever it drops. They are likely to lose interest or feel frustrated when the player has no idea how close they are to their next item and does not sense they are progressing toward it.

B: The player who gets a lot of gear quickly via the loot council is likely to similarly feel a lack of interest in playing, because the game is a bit too easy and they do not have as many drops to look forward to. In many cases people get all their gear and then stop showing up for that raid.

For one final point, if people are running DPS and HPS meters and a loot council is not giving people toward the low end of the meters gear, those people are going to look even worse than they are and then potentially be left out of progression raids in the future, and it will FEEL like there was nothing they could have done to prevent this. I hope this post made sense, and I welcome your comments.

So do yourselves a favor, guild leaders. Ditch the loot councils!

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Why this need to tell people how to play the game? These are probably the same people who complain that Blizzard ruined the game by taking away choices; now you’re trying to tell other people what loot system they need to use.

Pay my subscription for me and then you can tell me how to do things. Elsewise, bugger off.

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Best of luck to you with whatever you decide to do.

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My take is more simple:

  1. Trust that no one ninja loots
  2. Favoritism (favoring you pals over the guild as a whole)
  3. Those with power to give loot having a bias because of drama or other reason

I think a competent guild raid leader would also be competent enough to see who could make the most improvement from an item and can use the loot council system efficiently. I don’t mind letting a TRUSTWORTHY person decide that a warlock deserves a certain staff over me as long as it helps the raid clear content faster and with fewer wipes. EVENTUALLY I’ll need to have enough upgraded gear to pull my end in the raid group and the raid leader who’s the master looter will give me what I need. But WILL THEY?

I’ll probably join a loot council guild although I’ve never done that before. I want to progress very well AND and I can see the DKP thing slowing progress tremendously when I read about and remember times where people just disenchanted epic gear because no one wanted to spend points on it. Absolutely stupid.

I’m not familiar with all of these loot systems. I’ve only been apart of three kinds since vanilla:

  1. DKP (vanilla)
  2. /roll on epics unless you already had one for the night
  3. in-system Need before Greed
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Did anyone ever read a blog called 8 Years in Azeroth? (You can google it, I cannot post links I guess.)

In this long blog a Rogue joined the group in their early days. He was in Blue gear. The guilds Rogues had purples. The blue geared Rogue DESTROYED the epic geared Rogues’ DPS. Moral of the story, work on your rotation and worry less about gear.

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My favorite part is when the officers get all the drops from certain bosses and then want to bring in their alts. Can you explain the psychology for me?

I’m the best player/class I do the most healing/damage I should get all the loot drops priority because I help the raid the most. Gets all the gears they need Well, I could bring my alt because I don’t need anything from this boss on my main anymore.

WHOOOOOSHHHHHH

So what happened to being the best player/class that does the most damage/healing?

I’ve seen this happen in almost every guild i’ve been in that wasn’t DKP based.

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  1. Another Factor I would like to add(And you did touch on it) is a lot of the things used to justify what gear goes where cannot always be quantified to stats or dedication, it always comes down to someone’s subjective opinion…

A lot of things in wow raids have nothing to do with DPS… like cleansing, gather materials, buffs, well-timed raid saving utilities, utility abilities in general, attendance, amount of errors you are making, etc.

Loot councils tend to snowball justification for certain players… give one guy loot, of course he is going to be pulling the most dps, and that further justifies him getting more loot. The raid becomes more reliant on that one person instead of the power being evenly distributed… and if that person leaves, then the whole raid is impacted significantly.

  1. Loot councils also often do not respect peoples time as the most significant contribution to the raid… every person in the raid has dedicated their time and effort in order achieve the objective, therefore everyone should have an equal chance or share, within reason, to the rewards.

It is really rude to me for certain people to go weeks sometimes months without any significant rewards even when they have been dedicating their time just as much as anyone else.

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My all time favorite loot system was simply a need main spec, greed offspec or pass.

In my time as a raid leader/main tank I think the worst thing was when someone was invited to fill a spot on a night when people tended to bail and they were rewarded with zero chance at loot. That sucks, it isn’t fair and not surprising these folks didn’t stick around.

As far as systems go, DKP tailored to the guild is the most fair system I have seen. Like anything it can be bad, but I have not seen anything else (other than rolls) where a player helping you out in a jam by filling a spot could get something.

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No one solution exists that doesn’t have downsides. As a guild, you have to figure what works for YOUR guild.

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Imagine being this much of a tool, lol. Can you try to make yourself look older than you actually are please?

Very interesting post OP.

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I agree, the system is generally subjective and if anyone does not understand why one player is racking up loot while others get nothing that is particularly bad. I hope most guild will not do this too much, but even minor gear disparities are going to upset people.

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Interesting read and perspective, though I do question the need to state that you’re a psychologist irl. Surely you as a psychologist KNOW that the moment you’ve stated that, it will change how your post is received and perceived.

But anyways, on the topic of discussion you’ve raised :

  • ALL loot systems have flaws. DKP can be just as flawed as Loot Councils, Need/Greed etc. There is no perfect system, the same way that there is no “worst” system.
  • Debates like these contributed ( at least in part ) to the current state of WoW, where everyone gets a prize just for logging in.
  • The biggest flaw with any loot system is the potential bias brought about by people. Put simply, the occasions where someone get shafted on loot are always brought about by the people running the raid, which is part of what makes them bad leaders.

Overall, it’s not the loot systems at fault, it’s the raid leaders. There will always be bad raid leads / guilds that mismanage things. Place the blame where it lies, with the bad leaders that do exist.

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I prefer DKP because it is what it is, even though it has it’s drawbacks too. If you do X amount of raids then you earned X amount of points to spend. And even if gear is “fairly” handed out by a council all it takes is one person to say there was favoritism and then that can rock the entire guild with drama. Loot council is subjective as far as fairness goes, while DKP is exactly what it is.

In the guild that i was in during classic that used DKP however, the MT and main offtank were the exceptions to the rule and they got first dibs on tank gear. The reason why was less damage = less healing / less risk to wiping, everyone gets more gear. That was pretty much the norm at the time. Loot council was used but only by a few guilds.

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has any one tried a hybrid approach?

a system where you get points such as DKP or EPGP, but the loot council looks at who has the most points that would benefit from the item and assigns it to them, rather than people spending points on their own, which sometimes leads to point hoarding and disenchanting upgrades etc. that said, you could allow some people to pass on an item as long as it doesn’t get disenchanted if you want.

essentially a deterministic and transparent approach to loot council

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also assigning loot based on things like topping the dps meters is a huge fail. quickly turns into a rich get richer situation. then you will have people standing in fire if it means being able to do more dps

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Loot councils with fair officers can be awesome.

Loot councils with corrupt officers can destroy a guild.

I’ve seen both in action.

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But it basically boils down to, if you are unsure if the officers ARE unfair, how can you tell/prove it?

The best way to measure fairness is to track attendance in raids, and how much loot each player has received previously. If you are tracking that much, you already have dkp. And fairness can be judged by who has the most points saved up, and they get priority for loot drops.

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All dkp systems functioned like this for most progression guilds and most everyone understood it was a good idea…

MT tank/100%healers then DPS/3rdtanks/3rdlvlhealers worked the dkp game.

Main Tank gets it all first. Main OT gets it all second. Main Healer generally 100% gets first on set items. Basically, you invest in these people being 100% attendance. Then the DKP game. It works similar to loot council but different.

4-5 people are invested in with DKP and 35 play the dkp game. If you are in a good guild these people are all class lead 100% and play an unhealthy amount.

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yeah picking priorities like that is fine. but what do you do about point hoarding and stuff after that?

back in the day when we were doing BWL a warrior wanted ashkandi. so he passed on everything to hoard points for it. he did bad dps because he never took any upgrades so we were basically carrying the guy, all so he could snatch the best weapon. not a team player at all.

im suggesting taking it a step further by basically having the loot council spend your points for you. it would at least not feel arbitrary like a typical loot council whispering in officer chat.

to be clear, I would consider this to primarily be a loot council system, but it would be backed up by points.

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The best loot system I’ve seen is Suicide Kings. Removes the politics of Loot Council, doesn’t turn raiding into a job like point systems do, and gives pretty much everyone a fair chance at getting something.

Having said that, given the ridiculous number of people in most Vanilla raids, there should probably be a group that decides what classes/specs are eligible to roll for a given drop… even if just to prevent Hunters rolling on everything.

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