Monday, 23 March 2009

To Roll or Not-to-Roll

There's a little uncomfortableness in the raiding guildies at the moment, about the number of drops people are getting.
People seem a little unhappy with the way the loot is being distributed. The intention was, originally, to keep it as fair as possible. Anyone who is in the raid, with their main, may roll on any drop that is an upgrade for their main-spec.

If there are no takers, then it is offered to roll for off-specs, if nobody wants it after that it gets DE'd for shards in the guild bank.

If a BoE item drops, then the same rules apply, but instead of DE'ing it at the end, it gets put on the AH, and the raiders that night split the cash from the sale.

This seems a pretty straightforward system. And it doesn't favour the more hard-core raiders over the newbies, as everyone gets an equal chance to roll.
Sure, this might mean that someone who is new to the raid, or has sketchy attendance, gets a major upgrade, meaning that someone who has been loyally raiding every week, misses out. But I don't see any fairer, and as uncomplicated, way of distributing it.

Buty people are unhappy... So would it be fairer to bring in a DKP system (Dragon Kill Points)?

My understanding of DKP is this:

Every raider who is present at a boss-kill gets points awarded. When a drop appears, that they want, they use those points to bid for the item. The points roll-over in to all future raids, so people can build up a larger number of points.
This means that regular raiders obviously have more points, and have more bargaining power, and newer raiders have fewer points and so less chance of winning an item.
But this also means that people are more likely to pass on a minor upgrade, with the intention of saving their points to bid for that special drop that they want.

In some ways this seems even fairer than the system that we use now. And new raiders aren't going to miss out on every drop simply because they don't have any bidding power, as the more experienced raiders will either already have the item, or will be saving their points, and so will pass on the item anyway.

I know there's addons to help with the DKP systems, but having never used one, or been in a guild with a DKP system, I'm not sure how much work it would be to manage one. Or whether it would be worth the hassle.

Unfortunately for me, it wouldn't help much, as my main competition for drops is the only rogue in the team, who happens to be the raid leader, and so will always have more DKP's than me. But I'm not worried about that. Besides, his DPS could do with the upgrade more than mine ;P

6 comments:

  1. Yeah, the drops in Naxx are a bit on the weird side, I can't believe Flowersz ended up with 3 pieces of tier 4 after only a couple of full attempts (minus Kel'Thuzad ofc), sure she had outrageous luck, but there is a serious underlying imbalance if you're a clothy. It's one reason I sometimes pass on minor upgrades and sidegrades.

    Torbold did a summary of drops in Naxx at http://tobolds.blogspot.com/2009/03/naxxramas-loot-table.html which shows some strange "balancing".

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  2. I think it is rather unusual to use DKP in 10-mans, one reason being that it is not very difficult to assemble a 10-man group. With more raiders than spots, it may even be considered more "loyal" to sit out than to attend... On a good day I'd gladly give away my DKP for the opportunity to raid.

    Anyways, I was under the impression that already the majority of drops are being DEd? But then again I am one of those "favoured" plate wearers.

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  3. Imo rolling on every single drop sucks... Tank Y is always lucky with rolls... Tank X always has bad luck... This way at the end of a run Tank Y has awesome lots of new shiny epics and is able to tank better... While Tank X is frustrated because of his low rolls and still has his crap lvl 78 blue gear... spending a full night in Naxx and seeing all the loot he could use so hard went to the same person all the time...

    BAD!!!!

    In the beginning of our Karazhan raids the raidleader + officers decided how that piece of loot would upgrade the raid team the most + having in mind that not 1 person gets all loot all the time. The people who rolls like shit most of the time (like me for excemple) deserve loot just as hard to the people who are lucky mofos with rolls... With this looting system we NEVER had complaints about loot and people where happy almost all the time.

    Rolling on every single loot is bad... I tell you... It's wrong!

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  4. PS... The official name for the loot system we used in Karazhan is called: Counsil Loot.

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  5. You know, I'm inclined to agree with Architect, rolling doesn't do well for loot distribution. Some of the players are passing like I do *if* I know that another player has poorer gear. The problem is that I don't always know....

    Last night for example I was thinking of rolling on a minor upgrade drop when I got Komatai to link his cloak and it was a Blue. IMHO it shouldn't have come up for a roll, fortunately we got it sorted to the right player.

    More than once I've seen players pass/refuse loot and I'm sure it's because they died early in the encounter and don't feel they "deserve" it. The way I see it is that you don't earn drops for living through one encounter, you earn them by living through as many encounters and killing as many bosses as you can. Even if you die 1/3 of a second before the end!

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  6. Think the problem is more than the roll system. Tank x and Tank Y are raiding at seperate weeks. Tank x raid week it was filled with tank drops and tank y's raid week have been filled with dps/cloth drops.

    Which is a basic down right luck issue. But I agree it can be fixed partially on handing out the tier gear as normal loot basis and remove it from the "Special" loot (everyone can roll) This will atleast ensure the class who have no luck with no tier can atleast earn some tier to keep up with the rest of the team.

    hmmm... Think I'm going to make the april raid update on officer forum. Smy, check it out soonish.

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