nailbat.us

Greetings all! After a few weeks of raids and listening to people's gripes and various suggestions, I've collected some ideas. Though I wish I had more pretty flowcharts to share, I don't, yet. But in typing out all the stuff to try to generate the flowcharts, some ways of making the loot system less complicated (to follow and bookkeep) and speedier have come to mind. There's a common theme through these though, and it's that to speed things up, we may have to trade off some of the designed fairness to expedite things. BUT! But, that shouldn't be a huge impact, because very often

In presenting these, I want to stress that these are suggestions, not official changes, open to discussion. Each can be taken separately, and if everyone likes one, we can put it to a formal poll to approve it, and use it in some later raid cycle.

Rolling priority to be similar to Dom's binary 0/1 system. We would still track how many items people have gotten, and those who have received least loot would get first rolls, and if they pass, all the others would get to roll- rather than going to those people who have gotten 2 pieces, then 3 pieces, then 5 pieces, then onto the off-spec people. Pros: less time spent figuring who's next priority to roll. Cons: sacrifices a bit of the perfect fairness of priority ordering for speed.

Removing the priority between mains and alts. The idea is to shorten the number of groups that have to be polled for "pass" vs "roll". By taking out the main/alt distinction, we'd be shortening things to on-spec and off-spec. In conjunction with the more binary priority suggestion above, is less time spent figuring what group rolls next. Pros: Rewards the players rather than characters, and should give items to on-spec characters more often than off-spec. Cons: May impact guild progression in the short-term, unless people pass to mains.

One additional level of priority when someone is upgrading a blue. If someone is upgrading a blue item (or let's say anything under item level 200), they get priority on the roll. This would still count towards their number of items received (to make it fair when they are competing on equal ground). Pros: gets people the biggest upgrades, helps guild progression. Cons: That we need a rule for this, because we have not had enough "I pass to so-and-so who is still wearing blues/greens." I should also say that I don't think this should extend past blue items, like level 200 epics to level 223+ epics, unless people start blatantly rolling for sidegrades against people who need the upgrade, violating the "don't be a dick" rule.

Using published lists of all the loot with class/spec priorities. For an example of this, though maybe we wouldn't use this without our own modifications, check out http://wow-loot.com/, WotLK content > Naxxramas > 25-man. They're listing a kind of priority of spec between their primary, secondary, tertiary columns, which goes beyond our on-spec/off-spec listing. But maybe we can use something arranged similar to make it faster to determine what class/specs are on-spec for an item. I want to emphasize just the notion of using a list which we'd publish in advance, rather than just blindly using wow-loot's lists.
Pros: All debates and arguments about what class/spec can best use pieces of gear would be concluded. Everyone would know in advance if they'd be eligible to roll for an item, and remove errors on the part of the loot master missing a class when calling out for rolls.
Cons: All debates and arguments about what class/spec can best use pieces of gear would be concluded.

Daewen wrote: Rolling priority to be similar to Dom's binary 0/1 system.
Pros: less time spent figuring who's next priority to roll.
Cons: sacrifices a bit of the perfect fairness of priority ordering for speed.

I like what Lars mentioned in /g this morning. Instead of figuring out who's eligible, have the people interested roll, then determine their eligibility. So if there's only two people interested and person A has gotten 1 and person B has gotten 2, person A would win regardless of their roll.

Daewen wrote: Removing the priority between mains and alts.
Pros: Rewards the players rather than characters, and should give items to on-spec characters more often than off-spec.
Cons: May impact guild progression in the short-term, unless people pass to mains.

Really dislike this. The reason there's a difference here is because alts are just that, an alternate character you play now and then. People without alts or with less alts than other people would be punished by this logic since they only have one character who can get items.

Daewen wrote: One additional level of priority when someone is upgrading a blue.
Pros: gets people the biggest upgrades, helps guild progression.
Cons: That we need a rule for this, because we have not had enough "I pass to so-and-so who is still wearing blues/greens."

Don't really have a strong feeling for this one way or another. I like the guild getting upgrades, I don't like upgrades going to people that hit 80 then raid because running instances is now just extra work to get appropriately geared to raid.

Although with this priority rule combined with the 'no alts' rule there's a huge risk of abuse.

You forgot one absolutely huge and massive con to "Removing the priority between mains and alts":
Causes extreme strife and hard feelings between players.

I applaud your effort to look at ideas for loot, but putting alts on the same footing as mains is sure to cause all sorts of problems. I've been around since day 1 of EQ and have never seen this work in any shape or form.

In the interest of faster raids, I am open to either "0/1" or "roll and let the spreadsheet see who comes on their first" whichever seems both fair and fast to people. I foresee some slight problems with the "roll and let the spreadsheet decide" in that some people with high rolls may get butt-hurt that their 90 got beaten by a 5.

However, in the interest of guild peace, I don't see alts getting the same priority as mains happening - even if we tie loot to players rather than characters, the problem at hand is the ability of the guild to progress into Ulduar. We'll need nothing but the best to get through those first few hurdles, and diluting the loot pool (even a loot pool as massive as Naxx's) would dilute our ability to go further. That would lead to nothing but Bad Times. We currently have enough leeway that alts can come in and expect to get some loot that everyone else has already gotten, but that's perfectly in line with what our current loot rules are - the alts can get what the mains don't want or already have, and no one loses.

Chamomile wrote:I like what Lars mentioned in /g this morning. Instead of figuring out who's eligible, have the people interested roll, then determine their eligibility. So if there's only two people interested and person A has gotten 1 and person B has gotten 2, person A would win regardless of their roll.

I really, really like this idea.

It speeds up the process a lot in many cases.
It simplifies the process a lot.
It doesn't actually change the loot rules whatever yall decide they should be (works with any given rule ideas).

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On another loot subject, we still have a significant issue none of these loot ideas are addressing: Passing on upgrades out of fear of not being eligible to roll on better gear later in the run.

This week I got all the drops I was interested in, yay! It was however, entirely because I was lucky absolutely no one else wanted them ("better then d/e"). The order of upgrade amount/desire was inverse of the order the items dropped and I felt myself strongly considering letting upgrades get disenchanted rather then taking the +1 "got something" penalty. And make no mistake, it is a penalty.

And that's the core problem with the current system(s): They all give you a penalty for accepting loot. That fact fundamentally changes the decision process from:

"Is this item an upgrade for me?"

Into a value judgment:

"Is this item enough of an upgrade to be worth the cost of a +1 got something loot penalty"

Quite a few people are already working the system this way, passing on loot that's a clear upgrade because it's not a perfect enough upgrade to take the penalty. -This is easy to see when someone passes on something and upon inspection it's clear it would have been an upgrade, albeit not a perfect one. Expect to see a lot more imperfect stat items end up as shards as more and more people realize the true cost of accepting sub-par loot.

"This isn't on my Perfect Gear From <insert dungeon> list and so I'm passing, even though it's an upgrade and going to goto d/e if I don't take it"

Easily fixed, I think.

Instead of saying "pass" or /rolling, add another option: you can say "default" and you'll get the item if no one else wants to /roll on it. When you say "default", this won't count towards your number of items, but you take a gamble by saying "default" if you want the item since everyone (alts, off-specs, etc) will have a higher priority than you. At least no upgrades (however small) will get disenchanted this way.

Cons: Someone could rig the system if they are the only member of a certain class. As Logos I could "default" all the stuff I want because there aren't any other hunters on, e.g. And then roll on the T7.5 chest at the end and still qualify. Then again, I have a feeling that would be a pretty transparent tactic

Part of me just wants to get rid of all these rules though and just /roll whenever you want. That is both the fastest and in some ways (at least over the long run) fairest way to distribute loot. Or maybe we could monitor non-tier loot and let everyone roll on all the tier-gear? Just an idea.

Cool! I'm glad I got feedback, good points too. And I can totally agree that the scenario of alt-in-blues would be horribly broken, if it were so exploited. But we'd know fully who that person is and give them terrible grief about it! Nonetheless, if people want to keep mains before alts, we'll do that. I'm not really trying to own the decision making on this, I just don't have a problem with throwing ideas out into the arena.

• I'm looking at this from the point of view of making the rules and the process
  simpler, less error-prone, and more easily understood.

I would agree that just letting all interested people /roll and then handling priorities would probably make things faster. But to avoid bad sentiments about the results, the process would have to be transparent- which we could do by the record keeper going down the list, saying who's first eligible, checking the rolls, etc. Then our only issue would be with record keeping, to make sure it is still fast and accurate. And for that matter, easy enough so that anyone can do it- to spread the work around. For this, I kinda like Joe's suggestion of different people keeping track of different groups, such as: melee dps, tanks, caster dps, healers.

One more suggestion I forgot to add to the original post (and will duplicate this up there shortly):
Using published lists of all the loot with class/spec priorities. For an example of this, though maybe we wouldn't use this without our own modifications, check out http://wow-loot.com/, WotLK content > Naxxramas > 25-man. They're listing a kind of priority of spec between their primary, secondary, tertiary columns, which goes beyond our on-spec/off-spec listing. But maybe we can use something arranged similar to make it faster to determine what class/specs are on-spec for an item. I want to emphasize just the notion of using a list which we'd publish in advance, rather than just blindly using wow-loot's lists.
Pros: All debates and arguments about what class/spec can best use pieces of gear would be concluded. Everyone would know in advance if they'd be eligible to roll for an item, and remove errors on the part of the loot master missing a class when calling out for rolls.
Cons: All debates and arguments about what class/spec can best use pieces of gear would be concluded.

Ideally, we would have time to provide a list of priorities for each item, with a clear indication as to which categories count as +1 and which do not. It does, however require a bit of honesty in some people's cases, if they are the only person rolling.

MOST DESIRED
1. Main, on spec, actively wanted (+1)
2. Main, off spec, actively wanted (+?)
3. Alt, on spec, actively wanted (+1)
4. Alt, off spec, actively wanted (+?)
5. Passively wanted / Niche gear / Sidegrade (+0)
6. Save from shard (+0)
7. Shard (+shard)
LEAST DESIRED

In order to keep gear that would have been useful for someone from falling down to #7, we need to make sure people don't feel penalized for taking something at #5. This may also be an out-of-date hierarchy (are #2 and #3 switched?), but you get the idea. Also, do off-spec pieces count as +1? Keep in mind the concept of "off-spec" blurs in 3.1, when this really becomes important again.

The important thing to keep in mind is that there is a bit of game theory if people are dishonest. If everyone who's eligible decides they don't "actively want" a piece of gear, it drops down to #5 where they all "grudgingly" pass on it with no point penalty. Then again, as soon as someone rolls at #1, the other people realize it's not going to #5 and roll against them to get it, which can potentially keep the system balancing. It would be a classic prisoner's dilemma problem if we did silent bidding, sadly we don't. (My end-game linkshell in FFXI did silent bidding with a DKP-like point system that was built up by attendance and spent on drops, it led to some interesting outcomes.)

Logos wrote:Easily fixed, I think.

Instead of saying "pass" or /rolling, add another option: you can say "default" and you'll get the item if no one else wants to /roll on it. When you say "default", this won't count towards your number of items, but you take a gamble by saying "default" if you want the item since everyone (alts, off-specs, etc) will have a higher priority than you. At least no upgrades (however small) will get disenchanted this way.

This is pretty much what I've been doing with melee dps leather. "I'll take it if no rogues want it." This gets a thumbs up from me, and is similar to what I just posted.

Edit: I have to stop calling it "rogue" leather. It's melee dps because druids have just as much right to it as rogues!

Logos wrote:Easily fixed, I think.

Instead of saying "pass" or /rolling, add another option: you can say "default" and you'll get the item if no one else wants to /roll on it. When you say "default", this won't count towards your number of items, but you take a gamble by saying "default" if you want the item since everyone (alts, off-specs, etc) will have a higher priority than you. At least no upgrades (however small) will get disenchanted this way.

Hmm, not a bad idea. I like it. Simple, fast, and keeps noise off the spread sheets (keeping things simple, fast).

Part of me just wants to get rid of all these rules though and just /roll whenever you want. That is both the fastest and in some ways (at least over the long run) fairest way to distribute loot. Or maybe we could monitor non-tier loot and let everyone roll on all the tier-gear? Just an idea.

That'd be my preference and it is mathematically the fairest, but it's been rejected.

I'm not sure tier matters or not; It only matters to the classes that happen to have good tier sets. The holy priest stats and set bonuses for example, are really, really terrible.