This might end up being one of the longest and most in depth posts you’ll ever read here about the loot council system. I tweeted a couple of weeks ago asking if people would be interested in an example of what happens to go on behind the scenes when loot is being decided. A resounding number said yes!
Took me about 7+ hours to conceptualize, write, and edit this one. Thanks to my guys for their help and suggestions.
What is loot council?
It is basically a group of players who decide which items go to which player when they drop in a raid. And before you say anything, yes it is entirely prone to favoritism. And yes, it is possible for it to be corrupt. Keep in mind though, the effectiveness of loot council is entirely dependant on your loot council. If they are nothing more than sniveling, selfish players who award loot only to themselves, then yes that is a problem. But if your loot council has progression first and foremost in mind, then it’ll work out in the end.
It’s not about being fair
A lot of players make the case that it isn’t fair.
You’re absolutely right.
Loot council is not designed to be fair.
In fact, it is far and away the worst system when it comes to fairness. Fairness is going to very by player and by situation. If a really awesome trinket drops, does it go to the new player who’s still using that 219 trinket who just joined the guild? Or does it go to the veteran who wants to replace his 264 trinket with a slightly upgraded version? Strong cases could easily be made for both. You could argue that that the new player would benefit the most from it as its the biggest upgrade for him (and consequently, overall raid DPS would increase). On the other hand, it could be used as a reward for the veteran for his consistent attendance and performance and that he deserves it (and has a higher chance of it sticking around in the guild as opposed to someone taking it and leaving).
When I pick out my council, I give them free reign on names and selections. They can only pick from the players who have listed themselves. They don’t have to give reasons for their judgments. Ultimately though, the one criteria I instill upon them is to do what’s best for the guild. If it means awarding a freshly minted player who just joined the guild with a trinket, that’s okay. If it means handing it off to a veteran, that’s okay too.
Every case is unique. We don’t operate on precedent because we can’t afford to “handcuff” ourselves in that manner.
Who is on it?
I try to maintain a fairly balanced class composition on the LC. It looks something like:
- Healer
- Tank
- Melee DPS
- Ranged DPS
- Other (Usually another ranged DPS, but it varies)
For me, the two criteria it takes to sit on it are both:
a) Basic knowledge of other classes and what’s desirable stats for them
b) Actually wanting to be on it
A surprising number of players I’ve approached over the 2 years have said they were hesitant to sit on it because they weren’t sure if they wanted that pressure or that power. I don’t want a player that screams “PICK ME PICK ME PICK ME”, I try to go after players who are willing to do it but are fine if they don’t.
If there’s some sort of bias detected, that council member is restricted from voting. For example, if someone’s fiancé or girlfriend or brother is up for an item, that council member would not be allowed to say anything. They can provide advice or notes, but that’s it. When that happens, an officer steps in temporarily and takes their spot. The same thing happens if it’s an item that a loot council member wants: They’re not allowed to vote (unless they pass). We try to minimize the obvious biases as best as possible.
Confused? Not every loot council member is an officer, that’s why an officer can periodically make a decision to fill in.
Loot council usually rotates after a month to several months depending on a number of things (Where we’re at in progression, boredom, “freshness” factor, etc).
Members have a say too!
In 80% of the loot decisions, we don’t actually have to come to a ruling. Back when we formed, Syd and I added a slight twist allowing our members to decide if something truly is an upgrade for them or not. Check out my macro:
LOOT OPTIONS
Int = You want and is a main spec upgrade
Pass = You want it, but can afford to wait or will not be using right away
Off = Off spec item
Say nothing = No interest in item
Yes, it’s tiered. Saying Interested signifies immediate desire and that it’s usable. Saying pass means you want it, but you won’t be able to use it until you get another piece of gear (like hit rating adjustments) or its a relatively minor upgrade (going from a 251 level item to a 264).
Anyway, I’ll give you a few of the loot scenarios and some of the decisions that I made. Keep in mind, there’s 5 of us. When someone says they want something though, we’ll ask them to link the current item that they wish to replace.
Give you an example:
[Coldwraith Links] has dropped.
Loot Master: 5
DPS warrior: Int [Vengeful Noose]
Loot Master: 4
Death Knight 1: Int [Coldwraith Links]
Death Knight 2: Int [Coldwraith Links]
Loot Master: 3
Loot Master: 2
Death Knight 3: pass
Loot Master: 1
Ret Pally: pass
Loot Master: –
Right off the bat, we’ll strike Death Knight 3 and our Ret Pally off the list. They both want it, but for whatever reason, they’re willing to wait or not able to use it (or are just being generous because maybe they’ve gotten a bit of upgrades that week). This case is one of the tougher ones we’ve had to deal with because all 3 partys’ could make a strong case for themselves.
But it’s easy in that since any of them could use it, the whole guild would benefit anyway regardless of who got it. I’m thinking big picture at this point. If memory serves, I think we gave it to Death Knight 2 because Death Knight 1 had gotten something earlier that night or that week. Honestly, it was a coin toss between the Death Knight and the Warrior.
Let’s do a tier example.
Conqueror’s Mark of Sanctification
Holy Priest – Int (42 badges) – Has no tier piece
Shadow Priest – Int (33 badges) – Has 1 tier piece (Shoulders), 251
Prot Paladin (off tank) – Int (60 badges) – Has no tier piece
Warlock – Int (60 badges) – Has 1 tier piece (Legs), 251
Ret Pally – Int (55 badges) – Has 1 tier piece, (Shoulders) 264
Let’s travel back in time a few months where tier tokens were still relatively new and not many players had tier pieces equipped yet. When it came to tier, we looked at factors like the amount of Emblems they had. We also wanted to know if they already had the 251 level tier pieces. We also had a quick chat with the players to really figure out which set bonuses were okay and which set bonuses were jaw droppingly awesome. Our mindset with tier is that we knew it would be a constant drop rate. We wanted to try to spread it out as much as possible. It was up to the raiders themselves individually to do dailies or whatever they could to get as much Frost Emblems as they could. Over a span of several weeks, our accessibility to tier would increase anyway. It was our job to determine who got what tier first.
Keep in mind, at the time Saurfang was the only boss who dropped tier at the time.
The first thing we looked at was how quick the token could be spent and used. The Shadow Priest would have been able to upgrade their tier shoulders immediately. The Holy Priest would need another week or two to purchase the 251. The Prot Paladin would also benefit and has not bought any tier yet. The Ret Pally already received one from the week before, striking her from the list. It would’ve been a tough call between the Warlock and the Prot Paladin. For me personally, I would’ve awarded it to our Warlock. It gives him immediate access to a 264 piece and a 2 piece with the shoulders.
Conqueror would drop again and it would’ve been pretty easy to “map” out the next few drops anyway.
Phylactery for the Nameless Lich (heroic)
Loot Master: 5
Shadow Priest: Int Phylactery of the Nameless Lich
Loot Master: 4
Warlock: Int Muradin’s Spyglass
Mage: Int Eye of the Broodmother
Loot Master: 3
Loot Master: 2
Loot Master: 1
Shadow Priest: pass
Loot Master: –
Here’s some background information. Both the Warlock and the Mage joined the guild the same day. The Shadow Priest has been around for 9 months as a regular raider. Our Shadow Priest notices the trinkets the other two are using and realizes it would be a better upgrade for the other two and decides to withdraw his name from consideration. Seeing as the Mage and Warlock are new and that extensive notes have been taken so far on their performance. The Warlock has been performing extremely well with top 5 finishes on most boss fights. The Mage is about average to below average (10th-15th with massive fluctuations). Unfortunately, the Warlock was mind controlled on Blood Queen because his target had already been bitten. In terms of drops, the Warlock had received no items that night and the Mage received both a Vanquisher token and a neck upgrade (both immediately used).
It’s now down to the battle of the recruits.
This is one of those “investment” type calls. Who are we most likely to keep? Who is most likely to go? We don’t know. It’s difficult to gauge that especially on a day 1 (a little easier after week 1). Do we give it to the Warlock as a reward so far for his efforts (except for the blown bite)? Or do we give it to the Mage to escalate his gear further? We’re aware that his DPS isn’t as high as the rest and it would really bring it in line. But he already received two items that night.
Those were just some of the questions that ran through my head. Ultimately, the Phylactery would’ve been an upgrade for either of the two. And for me, I would’ve sided with the Warlock just for the sake of even distribution.
Holy Priest – Int – Heroic Althor’s Abacus, Glowing Twilight Scale
Disc Priest – Int – Talisman of Resurgence, Glowing Twilight Scale
Resto Shaman – Int – Heroic Althor’s Abacus, Purified Lunar Dust
Resto Druid – Int – Ephemeral Snowflake, Heroic Althor’s Abacus
Resto Druid 2 – Int – Ephemeral Snowflake, Talisman of Resurgence
Holy Paladin – Int – Sliver of Pure Ice, Althor’s Abacus
Let’s try some healing trinkets. They are one of the biggest headaches in the game due to the number of players that want them when they drop. For me, when a player gets two powerful trinkets, I cut them off for the rest of the expansion. Again, I want to minimize the number of wasted drops. No point for us giving a trinket to one person only for them to replace it the week after when another player also could have benefited from it.
Here’s the information:
The Holy Paladin is entering finals for law school. He’s already declared that he will not be able to show up for the next 3 weeks. The Resto Druid received his Abacus earlier that week.
Ugh, tough decisions. The Holy Priest is just being plain greedy, so he gets struck. He’s already using trinkets that will last him the length of the expansion (probably that Matt guy who wants it, greedy bastard). The Holy Paladin could also put it to good use, but it won’t be effective for the next 3 weeks. The Resto Druid already got something that week, he’s out. Resto Druid 2 missed out on 2 straight progression raids without letting anyone know. Now it’s down to the Disc Priest and the Resto Shaman.
Looking across the board and seeing how everyone (and their mother) seems to already have an Althor’s Abacus, I’d award it to the Resto Shaman. The Disc Priest could benefit from an Abacus or a Solace. The Resto Shaman could use the Solace and then be done for trinkets for the expansion. It’s a narrow decision, but it ultimately gets awarded to the Resto Shaman because the Disc Priest trinkets could be completed with any of the 2 above options.
Final thoughts
Generally, most items take seconds to resolve. The ones that take the longest end up being:
- Weapons
- Trinkets
- Rings
Those take the longest because many classes have vested interest. Look at an item like the Ring of Rapid Ascent. It’s one of the top items by practically everyone (casters and healers).
Granted, we do make mistakes. For every 4 or so good loot decisions we make, there’s a bad one that bites us in the ass. A Glowing Twilight Scale was handed off to a Paladin because no other healers wanted it at the time. He left after 2 weeks. We passed a Deathbringer’s Will to a feral Druid who had been a long standing member of the guild before he departed to try his hand at a higher progression guild. Since the inception of the guild, we’ve had over 115 players contribute to the success of our raids and for various reasons, they have dropped out and retired (Getting married, moving, getting yelled at by SO for too much WoW time, school, work, etc).
I have never had a single player leave and cite the reason for their departure as “unfair loot system”. We have a strong recruiting process and players that (we think) are self-centered when it comes to drops don’t usually make it past week 1.
It takes a dedicated and unique organization to make this loot system work. Everyone needs to be onboard with it and absolutely must buy into the system. That’s the reason it works. It’s because players understand it isn’t always about loot.
In the event the council is evenly split or unable to come to a decision (say an item benefits 4 people on the council and they all want it), then any officers present will make the call. If it’s a 5 way split (which rarely happens), another officer is asked to make a pick so that it becomes a 2-1-1-1-1 decision. Lastly, for anything that cannot easily be decided, I invoke what’s called the Matt clause. It usually happens if there’s a number of loot council players or officers who are either absent or unable to vote. If that occurs, I make the decision regardless of whether I can vote or not. If I’m not present, that falls to the raid leader, then the main tank, and on down the chain of command until its resolved.
Remember, we have a raid to run and bosses to kill. We can’t spend all that time debating. Unless it’s a Deathbringer’s Will, it’ll drop again.
We’re not completely infallible. Just like referees, we make bad calls too. But hey, this system isn’t for everyone. But it definitely works for us (we took down heroic Putricide last week on 25 man, and that guy was a nut case).
While I suspect a number of you won’t agree (and will continue to disagree) with this system, I hope this post has at least shed some light on how a guild could do the job. I know of a guild where a Shaman immediately LC’s mail gear to himself for all 3 specs. It’s unfortunate that cases like that happen, but they do exist. I wanted to write this to illustrate that not every guild or loot council is corrupt (at least, not intentionally).
We are currently running a straight DKP system and have been toying with the idea of going to Loot Council for Cata. To be frank, I’m not sure how many people would buy in come the expac – how do you convince your recruits / members night after night what’s best for the guild is being done through your system? That’s what we’re struggling with right now in our decision. There’s a lot of trust factor in a LC system.
Depends if you think your DKP system is failing
There are 2 Major Cons with with DKP and Loot Council
DKP – People Horde DKP for one thing and pass on obvious upgrades thus stagnating the raid and slowing down overall performance. I have seen different ways to handle this but none of them are really effective
Loot Council – There is no need to show up night after night if you do not require specific items from remaining bosses. This believe it or not is a killer and there are people in our current guild(albeit it doesn’t happen as much as it used to) who sign out way to often because they no longer need or require anything. This will limit progression a great deal
I appreciate you posting this, its always an option my guild considers but ultimately passes on but its good to understand the inner workings of it.
Sounds like a part time job. You should be paid for doing this cause it really doesn’t sound like much fun.
@tehshiv: Beats DKP management and accounting thats for sure ^^.
Our guild tinkers with the idea of more formal looting rules occasionally, but ends up sticking with the relatively simple 2-roll system we have now:
– raid leader announces item, starts 5 second countdown for main spec rolls
– anyone that wants the item for their main spec does a /roll
– high roll wins, with the caveat that main toons get priority over alts
– if nobody rolls for main spec, then a second 5 second countdown starts for off spec rolls
– its basically an open roll at this point (and people often pick up items that are marginal upgrades at best for possible stat juggling later on)
This doesn’t scale well beyond 10 man (too much for the raid leader to keep track of), but for 10 man only stuff it works pretty well.
It helps that we aren’t a serious progression guild though (the main raid group is 11/12 normal mode 10-man ICC, with 1 progression run each week, extending the raid lockout so every second week is dedicated to LK attempts). People that are only in it for the loot have better options for their raiding.
ewww never.
I’m what i condsider a hardcore raider. Pushing H LK on 25. and have been… -.-
I know some guilds do use this rather well. but…. the room for drama, subconscious favortism, and “I told you so” as well as the people making the decisions perhaps not as familiar as the players dependent on the loot (varying theory craft, philosophys, and playstyles as well!)
= a loot system i’d never raid under.
I’m a fan of DKP myself, less drama and well defined rules that reward attendance.
People will not spend their dkp on very minor upgrades or sidegrades so that takes care of the interest of the guild on its own.
I think the main reasons people go with a loot council are: 1. They do not want to manage a dkp system because it takes quite a bit of effort, and 2. They like being in a position of power and aren’t willing to hand things over to a system (don’t underestimate this as a main reason).
Having said that, I think Matt’s is one of the best run loot councils. Only thing I would change is ability to over-rule someone’s pass to an int. For instance the spriest with 9 months raiding that “passed” on trinket I would give to instead of the mage and warlock that “int” on their first day.
Our guild runs EP/GP and actually keeps up with the paperwork, so I’m really happy with its loot system, since it’s numerically fair.
That said, I’d love to see Loot Council in a well-knit group.
My small casual guild is using a hybrid of open rolling and loot council… we discuss who the item would be a good upgrade for in our mumble server before the rolls open, and generally only the people who have been confirmed as good possibilities are allowed to roll. If a roll is won by someone that the item is not suited for, the issue is resolved again in voice chat with anyone in the raid having an equal say. When we decide who needs it most, that person gets it. Even if we pug someone, they have an equal say, and if it’s best for them they get it. We’ve never even had a pug complain.
Even though it sounds like it can be fair at times, I’m glad I’ve never been in a guild that uses loot council.
EPGP ftw!
At the end of the day, what determines whether a specific loot system will work is your players.
if your players are on board and prepared to make it work, any system will suit any guild. if your players are not on board with it and set out to break the system, no system will work well.
That said, if the players are not on board with it, loot council tends to be the system that allows the least manipulation by rank-and-file members of the guild, though it is also the one most prone to officer corruption.
You’ll note that nearly every complaint about loot council is based in some way around “the players”. Either the officers were corrupt, or the GM was, or the players feel the LC made a bad decision in some cases, or whatever. In the case of DKP and other points-based systems, however, there is plenty of room to criticise the system itself and to refine it. Look at how many variants of points systems there are.
At the end of the day I believe loot council is the most polarised system. It either works for your guild and players are on board with it, in which case it generally works better than any other system you could conceivably use, or it is the worst system ever. There’s really no middle ground with loot council.
For the healing trinket, did you consider which healer had mana issues? That would actually be the first question to myself, “Have I actually heard one of these healers call out for innervates a lot?”
I’m glad my 10man can simply use the roll in game. Roll a 1 if it’s offspec or sidegrade, roll normal if it’s an upgrade. If two or more people show interest they discuss amongst themselves, and otherwise it’s simply highest roll wins. But I guess you can only do this if you have a fairly steady raid roster, and no greedy people in the raid.
The macro I use for my 25mans:
Loot is DBA – Don’t Be an Ass | Once you’ve won a piece you will see if someone else is still rolling, if not lucky you otherwise lucky other. MS before OS. Tokens are a MS roll.
Mind you, this is actually used for a raid with people from about 6 different guilds. Most of us have been running together for 10 or so months now, but every now and then we bring in new people.
They roll greedily? Best way ever to decide that they do not come again.
This keeps the atmosphere good because rolling is fair, and even though we’re not number one on the server, we have a really good time, and the fact that this ‘PuG raid’ is still working together, and now working on LK does say something about how much fun everybody is having I think 🙂
@Shyraia: Yeah, those are all things we consider. In cases where a decision does need to be made, we do look at as many factors and one of them includes regen. For the purposes of this post though, I tried to limit each scenario to a single factor so that readers would get an idea of the different things that are considered. Sometimes it becomes a combination of the above.
Oh, also…
“It isn’t always about loot”
Players who want to raid should understand that it’s never about loot. Loot is replacable. Progression, experience, and plain having fun with friends is worth a lot more.
Loot is the road, not the destination.
My guild was the #55 heroic Lich King kill in the United States. It’s no surprise that 53 of the 54 guilds that downed him before us all use Loot Council.
Matticus, I wanted to quickly “shout-out” my mod that I made for loot councils and it’s become pretty popular, LootCouncil_Lite
http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/lootcouncil-lite.aspx
The important thing to understand about loot council is that it’s not about what’s FAIR. Fair implies that you have an individual entitlement to gear. It’s a word that’s driven by point-based systems and other guilds. You only hear things like “it’s MY item” – “I EARNED it” – “I deserve it.” And we just don’t see loot that way. Loot council works on the premise that the team downs bosses so that the team gets gear so that the team can progress. You should gear to progress.
@Blacksen: Wicked. Ass. Addon.
Matt, i’m confused why you would call the Holy Priest ‘greedy’ when interested in that Solace trinket. It is, after all, consider best in slot for Holy spec. I know I have the heroic version on my priest and if I switch it out with say a SP trinket, or on the sliver, I can see a definite hit on my mrg. I understand the decision, but to say the priest is just being greedy is not entirely true.
@David: I would call that Priest greedy because they already have two powerful trinkets that would serve them well until the next expansion. Something I always tell my players is that this guild isn’t here to get them the best in slot items. The guild is here to get them the necessary gear to take down bosses. So if theres another player that benefits substantially from it as an upgrade, it would go to them.
And also partially because that priest would be me ^^
We use a DKP system in our guild that works very well. First, Officer’s and Raid Assistants gain more dkp per hour than other ranks. (12 per hour as opposed to 10). We get dkp per boss kill, 15 I think, and a 100 bonus for new kills. Since DKP hoarding can be an issue, we instituted a 5% per week decay, which keeps high balances in check and encourages spending instead of saving up for 6 weeks to get that H-LK loot when we finally down him. It works very well, gives an edge to the RL/Officers that you know will be there week in and week out, and distributes the gear evenly over the raid. If it weren’t for this and the ease at which it works, Loot Council would be our top choice.
For whatever reason I always enjoy reading about how various guilds employ a loot system.
I’m glad the Loot Council thing continues to work out for you guys. I think Chris’ post really hit the nail on the head concerning loot systems needing to be endorsed by your players or else people will seek to break it in one way or another.
I’ve been a GM for 5+ years and have attempted multiple DKP systems and multiple loot council systems over the years. Through the years I’ve only ever had 1 extremely serious “blow up” regarding loot… and that was the very first trash epic in MC… the first epic I’d ever looted to anyone, as it were (*shakes fist @ Vambraces of Prophecy*).
For the most part the loot systems we’ve employed have worked… but each one progressively better partially due to my increasing ability to “sell” the loot system to the guild and the guild’s maturing mentality regarding loot. I think we went through 3 different DKP systems… the very first was zero sum, which after about 4 raids I viewed as a train wreck waiting to happen. Then we moved through 2 different types of bid related DKP systems… and in Burning Crusade I moved over to a loot council. It worked well, but due to some of the changes and recruitment the guild was having to do, I didn’t like the idea that people could perceive abuse of power by the officers, even if there was none.
I changed the loot council to 3 officers (of about 6 total) alongside 3 non-officers that were generally well liked, performed well, and had a good attitude about guild progression. They had their own chat channel for loot talk, and in the event of a tie, I was there to break the tie… otherwise I didn’t vote.
While that council worked pretty well, I still felt there were some poor decisions made, as did some of our raiders. I’ve always urged people to bring up problems to me immediately after the raid and even if we finished raiding late, I’d stay awake for a little while so people could approach me. The issue however is that I found myself having to defend other people’s decisions… and I didn’t like the whole bit “Well, the vote was 4-2” and then people sat around trying to figure out who voted for who…. again, it seemed problems could potentially be there, so in Wrath I ditched it.
At this point, I don’t even have true “officers” in the guild. I do loot distribution… ie, I have a spreadsheet in excel open on my other monitor… I track how many raids people miss (rather than how many they attend), and what item slot was upgraded when they receive loot. I have some color codes that allows me to make some weighted decisions n’ such, but I won’t get into the whole process. I won’t bother citing some statistic that I’d make up in my head…. but the vast majority of the time, the GM probably knows what person is best suited for a piece of loot FOR guild progression. I make decisions in seconds… and I encourage and re-encourage people with questions to bring it up to me after the raid. I can easily cite why I made the decision I did.
This wouldn’t work unless my guild fully trusted me… again, they have to buy into it. I de-emphasize loot at every turn in the road to keep people on track… have fun, kill bosses… do it for US, not for some post in a progression thread or standing outside the bank in Dalaran with your weapons unsheathed.
This got long and somewhat off-topic. Sorry about that.
Cheers again for the post and the great responses.
EPGP is great for me, seems the more “fair” but I’ve also come from a really bad loot council for 25 mans. Running a loot council in a tight 10 man group is fine.
I was an officer in a short lived guild that broke up before Ulduar. (loot council was not the reason for the break up).
My observations are…..
There are always biases on loot. We always looked at attendance, upgradability and last loot recieved in that order. We tried to spread the loot out however you fed the eagles and starved the buzzards. But when you leave it to individuals to choose, they will pick close friends over others most of the time when it counts.
Its very hard to keep a tightknit 25man group. That was always our goal. We had a stiff requirement on membership based on attendance and performance. So we had to pug a lot. We always gave the pugs a fair roll on loot but restricted it to standard pug rules, 1 MS loot and limited OS loots.
Eventually as your core gets geared, it becomes very lucrative for your new members on getting geared. Lots of new folks could get to BIS quickly as the majority of the raid was after those last coveted pieces to finish off their gear set.
We used 3 officers and 2 members for the loot council. We would hop vent channels and discuss, sometimes the discussions would run long and be unproductive. I would probably change this and make it more straight up and structured voting via a system of tells. I would defininately feel for whoever had to be lootmaster that night.
Lootcouncil is by far the best way for progression(if everyone shows up and you really focused on upgradeability) however your fringe members will get left in the dust until everyone gets geared. In this current game of WoW, geared folks lose interest and “get busy” when there is not much reward in playing. You still need every player to be geared, skilled and dedicated for progression.
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Currently our guild uses straight up simple dkp system with no raider status affecting loot. (raider status is only for priority on invites). If I was to ask for any change I would say there should be either a decay over time or a dkp penalty for missed raids. It doesnt have to be much, just something to encourage participation even after getting geared in order to keep your dkp totals high. This last expansion I would say caster classes kind of get screwed on gear as there is more competion. Between healers and non cloth wearing classes willing to wear cloth…. its tough. Maybe cataclysm will fix all of this.
So with all that said, give me DKP and an attendance decay for missed raids. Give it a ratio of 4 to 1. So miss 4 raids and that is like losing a full raid worth of dkp. So not only everynone who shows up gains on you but you are going backwards in dkp for missing out. It is fair, even if folks go on vacation they wont hurt too bad. Maybe make it where nobody goes negative also.
In sumation, if you have a strong foundation with Loot Council then dont fix what is working. It is not for everyone. If you have 15-18 really geared raiders and 5+ who are not and 5-10 who do not show up for every raid then you might look for something else. Most big progressive guilds probably need 2 solid 25 man groups anyways for a solid talent pool and work folks in as needed for loot and achievements.
I myself know that there is too much individual competition. This works against Loot Council. My 2 copper.
Also just to add…. I have known at least 2 but I would imagine the numbers are more of corrupt dkp guilds.
One guild used a 3 bid auction on items with the 3rd bid being the final auction. So the officers/friends would often win bids by 1 point or few points. Also the officers always seemed to have the dkp to bid prior to the raids to win the rare items they were after.
Others had guild leaders that would whisper back to folks to “bid higher” to help them win bids.
Integrity on leadership is key in any system. Keep it simple, keep it fair, keep checks and balances and have fun. If I suspect an officer of being unfair or even in a pug if folks try to railroad loot to someone for w/e reason I have no problems dropping out and moving onward. Luckily if you play over time you can find stand up folks that it is great to go to battle with. Folks that you are happy to gear and grind bosses with, even in pugs.
It’s not supposed to be fair… It’s supposed to be what’s best for the guild…
Unless your guild is made up of at least 25 regulars who care about advancing to the next level of progression as quickly as possible, what’s best for the guild is probably going to be a loot system that reduces drama and maximizes the perception of fairness.
I’m sure that Loot Council can be that system with the right people making the decisions, but I’ve never found that group of people, and given what I’ve seen as the ratio of corruptness to reasonableness, I hope never to have to try and find such a group.
There’s only one serious guild on my realm/faction that does loot council, and miraculously the obnoxious guild leader and his alts get all the best upgrades first. I’m sure my guild could optimize our progression with loot council, but I much prefer sticking with our system of zero-drama, and very very low turnover…
@Vinz: Every loot system will have its share of guilds who exemplify the best qualities and the worst qualities. Its unfortunate that the guild you mentioned happens to be one of the negative ones.
Its only drama if its perceived as drama.
I was so confused about what to buy, but this makes it undetsrandalbe.