Loot Systems and You

[Elincia]

There's one thing though that stand out and can easily turn out to be in fact an administration nightmare. This system rewards raiders for being available for raiding. Good. Now how do you keep track of who is actually available? No addon in the world can ask people who signed up as Tentative/Maybe on TS to log on and come raiding.

This is what I mean with my second point. A administration nightmare. I can think up a few things that should give EP that are hard to keep track off...
One example: As a tank/healer helping people to gear up for raids.

As for my first point:
There is a difference who should get/deserve it and what is fair.

You will never get a fair loot system imo and we can get a loooong discussion about it. There are simply always somebody or a group of people that will not like it. I actually think the way we do it now is fine. I also like the name of our current loot system.... Common sense

 

[Angelic]

@ Elincia - the officers can always edit the EP values manually, which means they can reward said tanks/healers with bonus EP without any hassle.

@ Sasser - well, this system would require people to actually be online and on their main at the time of EP distribution, which should be invite time-ish. It will make forming the raid easier for the RL, because he´ll actually see which of the Tenatives/maybes turned out to be available. Forcing people to be on time if they want the EP and filtering out the in the end unavailable Tenatives is a good thing. People not being able to wait on their alts is a small price to pay, imo (there's always dailies/farming/consumables to take care of on the mains).

 

[Elincia]

@ Elincia - the officers can always edit the EP values manually, which means they can reward said tank/healer with bonus EP without any hassle.

Wow that is great Ok scrap point 2 then
And as point one is pretty much something we can discuss for an eternity or two. I am kinda leaning to trying this out, we might actually like it

 

[Angelic]

Wow that is great Ok scrap point 2 then
And as point one is pretty much something we can discuss for an eternity or two. I am kinda leaning to trying this out, we might actually like it

Well, the EP/GP values are set in the officer notes in the guild interface, so of course they can change it!
And yeah, deserve/fair is really something SO subjective we could probably never stop discussing all the myriads of facets of the two I think what Huung replied to Drae summed up nicely how it rewards those that put in the effort, which I guess is what fairness is all about.

 

[Zooggy]

Hey,

It would also be interesting if the addon were to track the justice points (or whatever they're called nowadays) into the GP.

Cheers,
J.

 

[Razaak]

When I did a bit of raiding with my work colleagues alliance side, they used EPGP. It's not a bad system, although I preferred the luck points system that Z***th used.

In terms of "available" players who aren't in the raid getting the EP, the system that we used on Defias was that at the start of the raid, anyone eligible to raid who didn't get selected just had to send a whisper to the raid leader with the EPGP addon, and it would add them to the list, and any EP handed out during the raid went to the standby too.

You could do this from an alt too... eg, if I wasn't tanking, but was staying online and available, then I could whisper the raid leader with "/w xxx epgp standby Gaeriel" and Gaeriel would get EP for the raid.

Also, to address Drae's concern - you're right that you would have less EP than the regular raiding mage; however, the chances are that the regular raider will have already got some gear, so their ratio may still be lower than yours. So it doesn't take long for a new raider or an irregular raider to get their item; it will be longer between items, but that is only fair.

 

[Razaak]

HOWEVER... I still think luck points are better

 

[SgtFury]

Just to put in 2 cents, Luckpoints work well from a point of view if you are there everyweek and attend the kill night (say wednesday). If you missed the kills and worked on the hard bossess in the later nights (which would mean more wipes) .... you got jack shit .

You could if you were a loot whore, just turn up early get aload of luck points and then be "absent" for the later ones, which require the hard work.

Not saying this system would counter that just putting in a view on Luckpoints.

 

[Belegon]

Z***th

Ahhh I miss you Raz, made me chuckle!

 

[Huung]

Just to put in 2 cents, Luckpoints work well from a point of view if you are there everyweek and attend the kill night (say wednesday). If you missed the kills and worked on the hard bossess in the later nights (which would mean more wipes) .... you got jack shit .

You could if you were a loot whore, just turn up early get aload of luck points and then be "absent" for the later ones, which require the hard work.

Not saying this system would counter that just putting in a view on Luckpoints.

I looked at luck points, having used that system myself, but this was exactly why it wouldn't work for us. Luck points are mostly for raiding guilds, in that they reward the kills more than the effort of just being available. If we could get all those who want to raid into the raids then luck points may be superior, and give everyone a chance to build them up. As it stands, even when people want raid spots they're often not available due to our disproportionate amount of DPS atm. As such the healers and tanks would start tearing away from the DPS in terms of points, and would just win out any rolls.
Luck points also suffer from inflation, in that there's no decay system to keep the veteran raiders from cockblocking new raiders from ever getting gear.

All that, and the luck points addon we used to use is no longer maintained for Cata

It would also be interesting if the addon were to track the justice points (or whatever they're called nowadays) into the GP.

Why so? GP isn't a "gearscore". GP is given to raid loot items, so that a wrist item doesn't "cost" as much as a 2h weapon, given that wrist items aren't as valuable in terms of stats or overall usefulness. GP is a balance ratio for the loot, as opposed to helping to gear up those who have a lower overall item level.
If you wish to raid as a tank or healer, you're going to end up buying all the stuff you can with JP before you raid anyway, as there's not an awful lot of it, and JP is thrown at you like never before, hence people are capping it very quickly.

This is what I mean with my second point. A administration nightmare. I can think up a few things that should give EP that are hard to keep track off...
One example: As a tank/healer helping people to gear up for raids.

Whilst you can use EP for other random things like making flasks, helping people to gear up etc, I would vote we didn't implement these things. We're a community, doing things like that comes naturally to most of us, and we'll happily do it without a reward. Rewarding those who do these things by giving them EP just makes it easier for them to win loot in raids - the act of helping the gbank or others do their heroics isn't necessarily directly linked to getting loot drops.

I personally feel we would just keep it as a raiding loot system, and not let it interfere and infiltrate into the rest of the guild. All this is meant to do for us, as The Haven, is help make the loot distribution take into account attendance in a strictly mathematical sense. We already use common sense in trying to rotate raid members and give priority to those who didn't get into previous raids because of space shortage. This just solidifies that general policy into a mathematically based one, with a real-time value the raiders can see for themselves. It's all well and good telling people they're being prioritised in some fashion for just signing up, but actually seeing your efforts being rewarded with concrete values is far more satisfying. After all, it's why we have things like Justice, Valor, Honor and Conquest points - real numerical values rewarding effort.

 

[Zhar]

Blame me for not reading every post,
but this system seems better for a 25 man raiding group. I therefor suggest to inject this new system when we start doing 25 man raiding.
(Flame shield on)

 

[Ki!ler-Mk1]

Bear in mind that the regular attendees will build up gear points faster, and indeed, those who attend less wont get gear the first time it drops, but the correlation of gear taken (when more than one person wanted it) vs attendance should be pretty even, and hence fair.

Seems to me this is going a little around, and perhaps you should run the system in parallel with your current loot system, as when you find someone is higher prior, the system(or addon) doesnt force you to issue the loot to the highest prio player who wants it.


[Important bit]
To trial would be dead easy, it would only need 1 person in the guild to have the addon, and they could (with officer notes) apply the EP, and the GP, as you guys raid, but ignoring the result with respect to who gets loot, after about 2-4 resets look at the results (the gear prio numbers extrapolated from the numbers in the officer notes).

You will see who is most deserving of loot based on attendance and prior loot taken since the system was implemented, if the numbers are all very close together then your current system would be proved effective anyway.
[/Important bit]


(the officer note numbers do use the decimal point, though this might be avoidable by having a high number in the EP side eg 200 per hour), and the max you could have would be (with 10% decay) when the 10% loss equaled the amount gained on an average raid night.

 

[Huung]

Blame me for not reading every post,
but this system seems better for a 25 man raiding group. I therefor suggest to inject this new system when we start doing 25 man raiding.
(Flame shield on)

Ironically our current system is designed for 25man, and doesn't really work for 10man. (3 main-spec item limit per raid - when only 6 bits of gear are dropping in total if we're lucky enough to get down 3 bosses in a night!).

The other point being we're planning on implementing 2 10man groups before trying to get 25s going. This loot system scales, and as 10man raiding will be our main form of progression this expansion, there's no reason to wait until we do an occasional 25man raid.

 

[Silk]

This hurts my head!

I propose a new system whereby we adopt GSP's.

That's Guild Sexiness Points

The sexier you are, the more loot you get. It's simples.

Now I know what you're thinking.. how would you ever compete with certain members in our guild, like me. Well, BP's..

That's Bribe Points

..can be accrued by our more unfortunate and un-sexy members, such as Huung. I'll give you an example.

We're running an uber instance like Molten Bore, and my GSP's are just rolling on in. It's like, every time I block an attack and flash a sexy grin, I gain a GSP. So Huung, that's him in the back there with the paper bag on his head,

..can randomly donate gold/food/his soul to me when I'm not too busy being sexy. If I'm so inclined I will then trade one of my GSP's for one of his BP's.

BP's are accrued by simply turning up for a raid. GSP's are accrued by being sexy. So are you with me so far? Good.

So now for the important part: BFP's.

That's Bruce Forsyth Points

Earning these is a tad more complex and will benefit from some macro knowledge. I'll show by way of example:

Upon encountering a boss, our raid leader shouts out "Nice to see you!".. at which point you have five seconds to respond with "To see you, NICE!". Upon lewtz dropping, I'd also watch out for "What do points mean?".. "PRIZES!"

Each successful response is awarded with 1 BFP. I should also point out that inappropriate use of Brucie quotes results in -BP! So careful on how you use those.. this is there as an anti-spam measure.

BFP can be traded in for BP, which as previously explained can become GSP. BP can also be accrued by gathering things for the guild, such as fish, food, herbs, and ripped ogre loincloths.

Raid drops vary in price, but typically a weapon would cost between 1,000-5,000 GSP's and armour about 3,000.

I propose we adopt this system immediately. *Cracks Whip*

 

[Xylak]

This hurts my head!
I propose a new system whereby we adopt GSP's....

Stupendous! I totally concur with this as everything else has too many numbers!

/this is the most cookie-worthy post I have seen in a long time - mucho rofling
//also want a Brucie Bonus!