I'm going to define a "corrupted system" as the following: The developers design a system for a specific purpose. Someone else comes along, and says, "That system is really cool, but if we make this tweak, we can also use the system for a different purpose." So the tweak is made, but the result ends up weakening the system for the original purpose.
To see what I mean, let's take Personal Loot. Blizzard introduced Personal Loot to eliminate loot drama when grouping with strangers. The game gives individuals loot, and that's that.
But then Blizzard allowed Personal Loot to be trade-able to other members of the group. That immediately cuts against the original purpose, to eliminate drama. Now we have mods like Personal Loot Helper which call out in group chat when you get an item that you can trade and someone else needs. Refusing to trade creates drama.
Blizzard should have stuck with the original plan. Completely eliminate loot drama in transient groups. If you want to share loot, use Master Loot.
Part of my annoyance at Personal Loot is that my guild likes to use it during raids. I have no idea why, as it turns loot distribution into a huge hassle of people calling out tradeable items and having to find others to trade. It's pretty much a dumber version of Master Loot.
Personal Loot has its purpose, and it is an important purpose. It should be designed to fulfill that purpose to the best possible degree. Instead Personal Loot was watered down so that it is usable in a greater variety of situations. But those other situations already had reasonable options.
Interesting reaction. I definitely come at it from the other side - I love personal loot and our raid team has loved getting back the 20+ minutes we wasted every raid doing loot council. We do have an addon that calls out who can trade lower gear, which simply requires someone who wants to trade their drop to whisper TRADE to the addon, which then automates rolling and even calls out the winning roll. Those of us who aren't interested in the drop don't even notice it in chat.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I can see how it would create drama in pugs, although I haven't experienced that yet in any of the pugs (5-man or raid) that I have been in.
What addon is this? Maybe I can convince my guild to give it a try.
DeleteObviously it's faster than full Loot Council. But in my experience Master Loot with straight rolling, or Need/Greed would be just as fast.
Personal loot has one positive still: You can raid with 15 hunters and don't have to worry that priest loot will drop. So it's "master loot with loot type weighted by class"
ReplyDeleteThat is true. But surely the normal loot systems can be weighted in the same manner?
DeleteHow often does this really happen though? Especially with WQ's offering better loot in most cases then anything less then Mythics. I've done lots of pugs and in most cases people have been offering up their drops without even having that mod. Can only think of 1 reason that personal loot tradeability is bad, but several for its pluses.
ReplyDeleteThe counterpoint is that the old loot system was perfectly fine the vast majority of the time too. You only got drama rarely.
DeleteBut Personal Loot was introduced to eliminate drama. They should have gone all in on that aspect, and not watered it down.
Wow this is an interesting take on it. I personally love it because it allows me to finally have these items that are either going to rot or get sharded go to use. My guildies love it because they can trade me things that aren't going to get use and I DE them for them... which allows me to fund giving them enchants. We always treat it as a bonus thing, and are not like suggesting that people HAVE to trade things... we are just a super generous guild as a whole and it happens constantly.
ReplyDeleteAlso of note... as to "why not master looter" we find it takes less time to do personal loot and have folks trade if they want than it took to divy up loot at the end of a boss. Folks can trade things as they have time and the raid can keep moving on, rather than the usual case of waiting for loot to finish before things resume again. Secondly I have been keeping track of the number of drops we get off each boss, and in general we are seeing one to three more drops per boss than we would have seen off master looter. Granted this is all super RNG based, but it seems to shake out in the end with a twenty player raid. We progressed in gear faster thanks to personal.
DeleteThe thing is that Master Loot or Need/Greed would be just as fast. If Personal Loot truely gives more loot, than it or the others should be adjusted.
DeleteI don't entirely disagree with guilds choosing to use Personal Loot as it exists. I'm just saying that the designers made a mistake with it. They should have made it the best possible at reducing drama, and adjusted the other loot systems to match.
Personal loot with trading is less work for the raid leaders. Definitely has saved me a lot of time and grief. That alone has made it worth it for us.
ReplyDeleteYes, but my point is that Personal Loot was not meant for you. Altering the system to be better for you made it worse for its true intended purpose.
DeleteBasically, one of the other loot systems intended for non-transient groups should have been adjusted, rather than modifying Personal Loot.
I honeslty dont understand your point. Everyone here is saying it works great for guilds, and I have had nothing but positive experiences in PUGs. So how would you change it to make your point clear?
ReplyDeleteLet's say you want to give someone two utensils. Would you give them 2 sporks, or 1 fork and 1 spoon?
DeleteIf you have multiple tools, they should be specialized for different use cases, and you should use the right tool for the right job.
Personal Loot should be optimized for zero-drama, no-social-friction settings like LFR. One of the other loot systems should be improved/changed if existing ones don't match the needs of a modern guild?
I liked Azuriel's post on this, where he observed that it felt like things had come full circle, causing personal loot to basically be a more complicated version of need or greed.
ReplyDeletePretty much. Allowing Personal Loot to be traded added a lot of social friction, when the original purpose was to eliminate it.
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