Well if you’re going to build a raid program at some point you have to deal with the biggest drama llama of them all.  Loot.  Why?  Well in theory you’re going to go beat down the bad man and take all his stuff right???  Besides if you’re going to raid, you’re going to get loot.  Which means you need a consistent method of dealing with Loot.

Perils and Pitfalls in Loot

Having a great deal of experience in this front, I know that typically Loot leads to at least a few people exiting a guild in any environment.  For the people I’m used to dealing with, we have a few items we need to watch for.

  • Loot rules should not overly favor people who show up every time… and every day.
  • Loot rules SHOULD include some incentive for people who are showing up consistently.
  • Loot should be able to be dealt out quickly.

Now this all sounds pretty basic.  And it is, but so often it isn’t.

Recreating the Wheel?

No… honestly I think recreating the wheel in this case is a bad idea.  In this case, its probably a good idea to just clean the tires, shine em up and make sure their healthy.  So where were we?  Ah yes.  In my previously life we utilized SK or Suicide Kings.  For a mod we tried out SKG (Suicide Kings Geo.)  So how’d it go?

Well… lets talk about what worked:

  • Loot was pretty balanced in terms of rewarding consistent effort.  People couldn’t dominate the loot just be being there every week, but yet they were assured to flow quickly through the system.
  • Once adjusted to it, loot was moderately fast to distribute.
  • SK is a very simple system to explain to someone and once they get it, its not something you have to repeat over… and over…

Ok lets talk about the ugly:

  • SKG does NOT work well in a multi guild alliance.  You can’t effectively sync lists across guilds.
  • SKG and its matching mod SK don’t have a great deal of support.  They are very spotty on the updates to the product.
  • Lists can occassionally get corrupt.  When this happens you either have to have a solid backup strategy or recreate them from scratch.  Either way you’re going to lose data.

So what’s the solution…. Well for now, we’re going to stay with SK as a system.  Its fairly quick.  Loot can be dealt with in under 5 minutes if people aren’t messing around.  For now we’ll be demoing SK instead of SKG to see if its more robust.  From my understanding SK is more likely to cause sync issues.  SKG is better about syncing and not overwriting someone else’s list, but its much worse for cross guild things.

Loot Rules

As I said we’re going to have the concept of mains.  However we will support depth.  So on average we’ll be looking at following loot rules.

  • SK slots may be spent on main spec loot.  So if you are a DPS warrior, you can spend SK slots on DPS plate or mail or leather as appropriate for your spec.
  • If you were invited on your main, you may always bid on primary spec items.
  • If you were asked to swap to an alt of yours you may bid on primary spec items for the primary spec of that raiding character.
  • Any person filling out a guild run but not in the guild will be added to the SK list as a random insert.  This is a one time event only for instances where we have to fill in the raid team with outside people.  We will use SK for ALL guild assembled runs.
  • The initial SK lists will be random insert for a period of 2 weeks.  Raid approved characters will be randomly inserted into the list for that period of time.  After the initial two weeks, all participating members will be inserted on the bottom of the SK list.

Loot Distribution in an Instance

Now ordinarily I’m a huge proponent of continuing to clear trash while loot is dealt with.  However in this case after seeing how much of a challenge it has become, we’re going to do it slightly differently in the new guild.  Immediately after the boss dies we’ll be following the procedure as follows:

  1. All dead are rezzed.  Note:  If the master looter is dead he/she needs to be rezzed first.
  2. All people will get their badges and move on to the next area to set up for trash pulls.
  3. Loot master starts loot distribution.
  4. Party rebuffs all food or pots or missing buffs while the loot master works.

Loot will follow the following procedure:

  1. Items are opened for bidding.  Main spec people may bid for loot.
  2. Loot will be open for 30 seconds to 1 minute.  Once closed, a secondary off spec roll will be opened up for all BOP items.
  3. BOE Epics not picked up on the primary spec will be sent to the guild bank for distribution from there.
  4. Off spec rolls will NOT cost an SK slot.  Use your common sense.  If you won one already for off spec, allow others to get pieces first before you get a second one.
  5. Any items not picked up in primary or off spec will be sent for DE.  All DE mats will be sent to the guild bank.

Lists, Lists and More Lists?

One big question in a typical SK scenario is how many lists will you have.  Some people like one.  Other people like two.  Other people like one for every concievable type of loot.  I’m a huge fan of the KISS principle.  (Keep it Simple Stupid).  But I’m also a huge fan of avoiding loot rot.

Having witnessed it in the past, if you keep a single SK list, you’ll see a TON of loot rot.  People will avoid spending their SK slots because they want to have their Tier token.  So to avoid that, we’ll have two lists.  The first is for all general loot in a raid instance.  The second one will track all Tier token distribution.  As I said.  Simple… yet avoids loot rot.  Now you can save up for both without having to worry about saving it for that one special item.

How do you speed up loot distribution?

The big concern I’ve seen with loot distribution in the past is that it takes too long.  My goal is to get it done in 30 seconds to a minute per piece of loot.  How might you ask?  I’m going to ask all of my raiders to maintain a loot map.  What’s a loot map?  Well, you’ll have to come back tomorrow to find out.

4 Responses to “Raid Programming 101: Loot Rules”

  1. 6:09 am, 8 April, 2009 р.
    PsychoChris says:

    Well, first off: Providing you get the “Smart” raiders you are looking for Loot Drama won’t be nearly as rampant as it is in your more “diverse” guilds. If everyone understands their class and role in the raid almost all loot can be easily determined with a simple /roll.

    SK / DKP are designed to fail. I agree they are likely the best solution for a broad range of players / abilities, but the logic behind them is a bit silly. Even with two lists you have folks “Sandbagging” bids because they really want that weapon upgrade (easy example, because of large itemization lots). We have had to go to a Need over Greed /roll with loot council to stop this. Once you add the “with loot council” you can be assured loot is not speedy. I have on more than one occassion had to force a raider to roll/bid on an obvious upgrade because they don’t want to lose their right to roll on a particular piece later in the raid. (Here is where “Smart” raiders are needed) Small upgrade now = best for the raid, Chance at large upgrade later = best for the player (or so they seem to think)

    The fact is the folks that don’t need that small upgrade “Raider A” does, have already put in the effort to gain that gear (or better) and they then deserve to not have the lower geared folks diluting the pool of potential /rolls on the later, better loot.

    Also, the big downside to SK/DKP is that loot is simply not itemized equally in game at the moment. It will take a Bear tank x2-x3 longer than a plate tank to gear up using SK/DKP systems because they are literally bidding against DPS folks on almost every piece of gear. Plate tanks have the luxury of no one else wanting their gear! Plate with Def = Tanks (DPS don’t Want) Leather with Agi/Stam/AP = Rogue’s, Kitties, Warr, Bear, DK, Shammy….you get the point. This same thing happens to Healing Priests…all other healers have a “unique” armor class, so your priest gear more slowly than everyone else.

    I would also reccomend that you have a “Primary Armor Class” clause in your loot rules. If anyone can roll on cloth, your clothies get shafted (same logic as above). If you force folks to stick to their “Primary” armor type, you will no doubt annoy your Resto Shammy or Druids at first but once they realize they are walking away from every raid with a piece of gear because no one is rolling/bidding against them for Mail or Leather items, it all works out.

  2. 8:20 am, 10 April, 2009 р.
    Starman says:

    While I can see your reasoning, the leather wearers get screwed. For both shaman and boomkin, the best in slot items are about half in cloth. So now I’m expecting to say to them, you can’t have that item until the other casters have it in cloth?

    SK is not bad though for giving a fairly equal distribution of loot overall. We’ve had good luck with it generally. Is it perfect? No, but no system is. They all require human intervention.

  3. 8:40 am, 13 April, 2009 р.
    PsychoChris says:

    The theory with the folks who have say 1/2 of their BIS items being cloth, would be…well, ALL of the priests BIS items are cloth (and mages/warlocks), so with an DKP system they have to wait behind your hybrids now (because hybrids are biding against no one else for leather/mail). Also, the Shaman and Druid are not competing with other classes for the 1/2 of BIS items (and all other items along the way) that are their “Max” armor class. So they have the market cornered on items (maybe not BIS) but all items along the way. You’ll be hard pressed to find a Shammy or Pally who raids somewhat regularily who doesn’t have a full healing set, regardless what their main spec is (offspec gearing ftw). Those items simply can’t (or shouldn’t) be used by other classes.

    I definatley agree though. No system is perfect, and human intervention is always required. Again, if you are able to achieve the type of raider you seem to be seeking, you will have no problems. :) I am scepticle that you will be able to find 25 people on one server that meet that qualification that are not deeply commited to a different guild already though. (Lets face it, these players are truley the best of the best, and guilds won’t part with them easily…I know I wouldn’t!)

    I want to wish you best of luck with the new guild and just wanted to offer up some experiences that I have encountered to try and help you fight off drama before it unfolds.

  4. 11:52 am, 16 June, 2009 р.
    The Raven says:

    Problem we had with SK was someone not raiding for 1-2months due to real life reasons showing up after we had worked on a boss for a week and they get loot off the boss since their spot was locked on their first pull ever of that boss. The problem is this wasn’t dpser number 11 or 12 it was the healer we had to take or no run or the tank we had to have in the same situation. Its kinda hard to tell that person thank you for making the run and the boss kill happen you can’t have anything. It deflates then and the guild.

    We switched to a dkp system come WotLK. Its not perfect either honestly I hate it. But it seems to work better than SK for us atleast just a different set of issues.

    We tried working on a decay or bumping system for SK. but it didn’t work as well and we as stated said this is more or less dkp and switched. I think the real problem is the way loot is handled in the random get lucky drop idea. I’d almost rather see a boss dies everyone gets something idea or a token drops for everyone to turn in for some loot. Might make you feel like you accomplished something everytime you raided and not a feeling of oh…I wasted my time didn’t get anything tonight deal.