Thoughs on Loot Council

[Prancy]

Myself, being the raid leader, and all my officers, being real life friends, are all in agreement that we really don't like dkp. The alternative we came up with is loot council. Only problem is we haven't had the chance to try this out in any of our runs yet. I only see LC as being acceptable in an all guild raid which we haven't quite been able to put together yet.

For now this system would be used in 10 man situations so I think that most of the players involved will realize that everyone will get what they need in time and the item will go to helping the raids progression.

Anyone got thoughts on the matter? Has this system worked for you? Has it failed miserably?

[Aggathon]

If it isn't an all guild raid DKP is bad too because it doesn't allow the PuGs an equal shot at gear when that's probably the reason they agreed to help out in the first place.

For all guild runs I think Loot Council is the best idea too, as long as the council is balanced and has some objective rules laid down too.

What my guild does is a tiered Loot Council system. We link the item people are to put in for, then whoever wants that item links their current item and a 1, 2, or a 3. 1 = Offspec, 2 = Upgrade of any Magnitude, 3 = OMFG WTF I NEED THIS PIECE OF GEAR SOOOOO BAD. Basically, a 3 is the equivalent of bombing all your DKP, we weight if someone got something contested on a 3 very heavily for future pieces of loot. If someone puts in a 3 in on everything we stop weighting the 3 as a 3 and put them on the level of a 2.

When distributing loot we look at the following (roughly in order, but depending on circumstances we rate some things higher than others).

Who's gotten gear last/# of 3s bombed
Who's gotten the most of the highest level gear (right now 258)
Who's gotten more contested gear (aka they weren't the only person that wanted it and it wouldn't have gone to DE or Offspec if they had picked it up)
Who the upgrade is better for
Performance
Attendance
Guild contributions
Performance improvement
Attitude/Effort
Etc. Etc.

I don't like dkp because what usually happens is X person stocks up their DKP for Uber_Loot1. Y person methodically picks up gear upgrades with a little bit of DKP and is your best DPS, and most attendance, and deserves Uber_Loot1. X person bombs all DKP on Uber_Loot1 and because X person horded up all their DKP rather than upgrading that blue wand, X person has more DKP than Y person, and even though Y person deserved Uber_Loot1, Y person did not get Uber_Loot1.

This actually happened in my old guild, we had a rogue with Chromatically Tempered Sword in his main hand and friggin' Trash Blade in his offhand.

[Thulldar]

It's the best way to efficiently gear your raid for progression.

It's also the best way to start loot drama and cause people to ragequit the guild.

The extent to which you explain your decisions and defend them will determine the results for you.

[Risky]

Loot council only works if people respect their officers' decisions and intelligence.

DKP works great for us. We don't have gearwhores, so people tend to take upgrades and don't horde except for trinkets and rings.

[Prancy]

This actually happened in my old guild, we had a rogue with Chromatically Tempered Sword in his main hand and friggin' Trash Blade in his offhand.

Hey man don't be knocking the thrash bade, its got a crazy mad proc. But seriously, that's pretty messed up. If I could get 2 acceptable entry 60 weapons on my alt rogue he could have too.

Back on subject: I like the 1, 2, 3 idea since it gives the council members more to work with and assures the raiders reciveing loot that the system isn't completley arbitrary.

[Aggathon]

Hey man don't be knocking the thrash bade, its got a crazy mad proc. But seriously, that's pretty messed up. If I could get 2 acceptable entry 60 weapons on my alt rogue he could have too.

Back on subject: I like the 1, 2, 3 idea since it gives the council members more to work with and assures the raiders reciveing loot that the system isn't completley arbitrary.

Ya, I was in the same spot you were in about a year and a half ago. I started a guild with a bunch of my real life friends and we decided to do loot council, but we didn't have the 1,2,3 thing in place. First piece of loot first raid was the trash drop shoulders from TK. We had people link, decided to give it to a mage, a warlock immediately rage gquits and the mage was like, "I didn't want them that bad!"

So we decided to do a teired system to try and avoid some of those problems. But frankly anyone that would ragequit over loot should go ahead and do it because I don't want those kind of people in my guild. Get gear to kill bosses imo, not kill bosses to get gear.

We've only had a few problems, but most of them were compounded by dramaqueens/kings and relationships and such. We once gave our second Tempest of Chaos to a warlock who used a 3. Next raid we got our first Mother Sharazah (I forget how to spell it) kill and she put in for shoulders, but I ended up getting the shoulders (I needed them pretty badly at the time and hadn't gotten loot in a while, we also have a rule that any member of the loot council that puts in for an item is not allowed to put in any input to the discussion of who gets that piece of loot). She got real pissed and her boyfriend did too and they caused drama llamas and ya it was bad, but fortunately we'd been so far and balanced that no one else in the guild saw it their way and we got things worked out.

There have only been a few pieces of gear that I think have gone to someone that didn't deserve it, and seeing as how I've used this loot system for over 18 months now, I'd say that's a pretty good deal.

[Prancy]

So here's my next question. Those of you who are somewhat against/warning about it, are your LC experiences in 25 or 10 man raids?

[delta38]

We use Loot Council too. Somewhat similar to what Aggathon described, but with some small but - in my eyes - important differences:

- The Members of our Council are regularly (every 3 Months or when necessary)
elected via our guild forums. This gives our Members confidence in the decisions made - at least the majority of them.

- When an item drops, everybody has the right to say "need" and has to post his current item in that slot into raidchat. If its for offspec a simple "2nd" is enough. When only one Member has a real need, its trivial.

- Otherwise every member of the council (5 normally) whispers his decision to me or my co-leader, when I'm not present. Then I announce, who got the most votes and distribute the loot.
The decision is based on nearly everything, what makes a good raider:
attendence,
current gear (who gets most out of the item),
skill,
how much loot one got recently,
timeliness,
improvement,
effort, ...

- When there is a draw, those two (or more) persons roll for the item. When there is only "2nd"-need, everybody rolls.

- The arbiter (is that word right in that context?) - normally me - has the right to question the decision of the council, when it just doesn't seem right in that place (happened once or twice in one and a half year)

- on top of that the council has a channel to discuss the decisions or specific members - wether they deserve items or not as much as others. Same in our forums.

So for me, there is no downside in lootcouncil at all. Nearly everybody here is happy with the distribution as is - at least to my knowledge. Those who don't get the big picture to push the group as much as possible either cope with it or get replaced (also happened not more than 4 or 5 times in that time and mostly to guys that never integrated / fitted into the group).

I hope that helped a little

Edit: Talking about 25 mans.
In 10 mans there are too little items that more than 2 players want to justify that much effort. Mostly rolls or open discussion suffice.

[ZubZero]

Loot council will allways cause drama, because everyone got the right to their own opinion.

Btw. how long time do you waste during raids discussing who gets the loot?

[delta38]

Btw. how long time do you waste during raids discussing who gets the loot?

I'd say about 30-40 seconds per item. Sometimes it naturally takes longer, but most of the time its very fast.

"Always" is not right at least in our case. No drama at all - and much better progress than before.

On top of that we don't take anyone's opinion away. It's like always: Not everybody will be satisfied all the time.

[Aggathon]

I'd say about 30-40 seconds per item. Sometimes it naturally takes longer, but most of the time its very fast.

"Always" is not right at least in our case. No drama at all - and much better progress than before.

On top of that we don't take anyone's opinion away. It's like always: Not everybody will be satisfied all the time.

^ This, the only drama caused is if the loot council has no objective benchmarks and clearly favors some people over others. Loot drama will happen irregardless of the system, and if you have people in your guild that would get pissy and leave over something as silly as a piece of loot that will drop again... then let them leave.

[Kalbitang]

Loot council really depends on who is running it. It's probably one of the systems most likely to have bad drama, though, whether it is deserved or not. I would personally avoid the system, but some folks like it.

[chun]

If you are a small guild of real-life friends, primarily focused on 10-man content
loot council can be quick and easy. As others have mentioned, it requires
the participants to trust the judgment of the council, and for the council
to make informed looting decisions.

When we were RL friends in kara, that's what we used, we talked about
what drop benefited whom the most and folks even planned out what
they wanted. Since in TBC kara (and much later ZA) was the only
10 man content, we ended up growing the guild and stepping into 25s.

We kept loot council (mainly since we're lazy) and for a long time folks
were happy. A few disagreements would occur particularly when someone
who had been in a raid (ie SSC) 4-5 times got an item over someone who
had been in more like 8-9 times. And we did lose people.

We even used loot council in naxx 25, but by then the guild had grown
and had so many different folks that it became less and less tenable.
Particularly when bringing in pugs (even regular pugs from smaller guilds).

Early this summer we finally switched, and now use Suicide Kings.
For our more casual nature, and the sheer random number of people we
may have in raids, it words wonderfully for us. If someone has
moved up to a top spot, even if it's a regular pug, there are no complaints,
since they have obviously put the time in, and I can't think of a single
loot problem that's occurred since we switched over.

Hope this helped in some way!

[jafager]

Loot council is bad. It is always bad, but some people have had good experiences with it, so it persists.

It turns what should be an economic decision ("I want this item enough that I'm willing to pay X amount, but no more.") into a political decision ("Who deserves this item the most?").

If you could somehow feed all the variables into a computer and get an objective analysis, loot council would be okay. Instead, you end up with a system that rewards people who are good at politics to the detriment of everyone else.

And I don't buy the "well if you're all friends it all works out" argument. If you're all friends, you should be able to work it out without some animals being more equal than others. If not, let the dice decide; being pissed at the RNG doesn't ruin friendships.

[Bashal]

I've never really liked the notion of loot council. I can understand the need to make sure loot doesn't get concentrated onto a couple people in the raid due to lucky /rolls, but lots of other methods work well enough to prevent that. Suicide Kings (which was mentioned already) is very effective, I have found.

Loot council strikes me as being one of those systems that only works well when you have a raid with a very static group makeup, with the vast majority of your raid being long-time members. If that doesn't match your situation, you're probably just in for a lot of drama, mistrust, accusations, and some gquits.

[sakkdaddy]

My guild used DKP in TBC, and going into WotLK we revamped our loot system entirely. It works amazingly well!

We use a loot council system, combined with a wishlist priority system. For each tier of content, everyone has to submit a wishlist for that tier of content: 1 item per slot. When an item drops, I link it in raid chat, and people say wl for wishlist, n for need, and o for offspec. WL > N > O as the first rule, and then if there are more than one people with the same loot priority on the item, the council decides who gets it.

Furthermore, the loot council relates heavily to our guild structure. I have one officer for melee (+ hunters), one for casters, and one for support (tanks+healers). If a physical dps item drops, then the melee officer decides who gets it. The same goes for caster items and support items. When an item could go to people in multiple groups, then each officer chooses which of their raiders it should go to, and we compare the person from each group who would need the upgrade.


The greatest benefit of this system is that nothing gets sharded unless it is truly useless to everyone. Our offspecs are geared insanely well, and there is no reason to pass on the intermediate upgrades on the way. We had a bad string of luck and lost 2 of our main tanks within 2 months, so got our first Anub HC kill with 2 alts and 2 offspecs in the raid, one of which was our MT. We had only one tanking main spec in our guild for some time, but had geared our offspecs so well that a ret pally and dps feral could just switch specs and MT the instance fine. Most of our healers have dps offspecs that are far better than 99% of dps apps that we get.

Using loot council lets us look beyond the numbers and reward people for playing well and being reliable, and similarly punish people who would try to "hoard" and pass on wishlist items in hopes for a step up on a more important item later on. We can see this and make sure that "hoarding" is penalized, and just make generally smart decisions for loot.

DKP sucks because it is hard to maintain, and subject to all sorts of abuses that are hard to handle because of the mathematical nature of the system. Also, people are much less willing to take intermediate upgrades if it means that they will have to wait longer on the BiS item from that tier that they want. It also makes it very hard to punish dkp hoarders who let upgrades get sharded so they can save their DKP for the uber weapon or trinket that they want.


Loot council is highly dependant on having fair and honest officers though, which is the main drawback. It is also a bit trickier to punish people for mistakes with loot council, where in DKP you can deduct points easily. If you have good raiders and good people in the council though, then there is really no better way to distribute loot.

[geros]

My 10man only guild doesn't even loot council. We roll and if someone really wants/needs the item the other person(s) will pass it. We run with a roster 10 people for any hardmodes though so it is very easy to distribute loot in a orderly fashion.

[Zorahh]

We have just started using EPGP loot system and it seems like it will work out very well. Rewards those who come with us on a regular basis, and still allows everyone an equal chance to get loot.

[Penlowe]

The key to any loot system is a detailed description of how it works posted somewhere on your guild site. So, when a Drama Llama says "but I deserve it more!" you can point to the forums and say "according to our system, no you don't. You agreed to this system (when you joined the guild) (when we voted on it). If you would like to see the system changed, please post to the forums, now is not the time to discuss that".

Write it down, write it down, write it down. All guild policies, every time, big or small.

[Rominoodle]

Personally, I think you guys are over complicating the matter. If this guild of yours is mostly friends and family I would imagine you don't beat each other up over loot. I've always done it with loot master and a need and a greed roll. Need roll is only for main spec, and it's a roll from 1-100 and greed roll is off-spec and it's 1-10. Very easy to distinguish who really needs the item and who doesn't. My guild doesn't use DKP, or loot council, we just trust each other not to be ninja looters and need on a slight "oh i could use this eventually" item.