Thursday, October 05, 2006

Draft Priority

I don't really agree with restriction-based loot systems. However, if you do think that priorities are necessary, here's a system I came up with a long time ago (but never actually posted about):

Have your class officers draft the items in the instance.

In a random order, each class picks one item. That class gets first priority on the item. Continue drafting items (use switchback so that the second pick goes in the reverse order). The second class to pick an item gets second priority on that item. Continue until all the non-class restricted items have a first and second priority.

Each class now has an equal number of priorities. The focused classes will probably get first priority on the very best stuff, but hybrids should be able to score some decent second priorities.

As well, it sets up little rivalries between classes who do not normally compete, such as mages and warlocks, which helps them understand what it feels like to be a hybrid.

Plus it's a fun game, and you could turn it into a guild event where everyone provides "advice" to their officer.

3 comments:

  1. Have you ever explored the Suicide Kings loot method? It's sort of a spend-all DKP where as whoever wants to dump all their DKP on an item can have a fair shake at it, regardless whether it's "ideal" for their class or not. It also avoids the DKP inflation problem by putting someone down to zero whenever they get an item.

    http://www.curse-gaming.com/en/wow/addons-2335-1-suicidekings.html
    for the addon, and:
    http://www.brbafk.com/web/mods/SuicideKings.swf
    for a flash demo of it.

    I wish I could talk my guild into using it...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Which is exactly why a good setup would allow people to dictate their own priorities.

    ReplyDelete
  3. david, SK is a good system for reducing administrative overhead, while still being reasonably fair.

    It's not a good system to pick if you are looking for the fairest system possible. You should not think that SK is fairer than basic DKP. It simply is not.

    However, administrative overhead is important to consider. If your officers burn out because of DKP hassles, that's going to be terrible for your guild. My second raid guild broke up in large part because of a situation like this.

    SK is a simple, easy-to-use system that is reasonably fair. 80% of the results for 20% of the effort, is how I like to put it.

    But you shouldn't choose SK thinking it is something that it's not.

    (The big problems with SK are that you can't reward people for learning runs where loot does not drop, and that all loot is valued equally, which causes weird behaviour near the top of the list.)

    ReplyDelete