Muse

I'd like to start off by clarifying this thread is not a debate about what loot system is the best but how to quickly administer one (since we have plenty regarding the former). For instance, the biggest qualm I have about my guild's loot council is that we often take longer to pass out the rewards than it does to kill the boss. Especially on the last boss of an instance, players not bidding will be long gone by the time a decision is reached. The delay is really a killjoy and surely this trend is not the norm.

My guild uses a loot council where players bid on a dropped item and the officers decide based on attendance, dedication, and size of upgrade who should receive the item. Players are first asked to bid on the item by linking what they would replace with it. A last call ensures no indecisive players miss out and the officers then discuss it in officer chat. Decisions often come down to each officer voting who they think should get it after a short discussion reviewing each of these criteria.

I'm looking for tips to speed up the bidding and (in our case of a loot council) the decision. We'd really like to refine our system as we progress into T5 content. Specific advice for DKP or Loot Council systems is great too. Thanks in advance.

 

Wodahs

Wait till you kill Anetheron, in Hyjal. If your not fast, you will have serious issues.

 

dukes

Only if you have idiots in your raid that talk to Jaina before you sort it out.

We use a loot council, and stuff tends to get decided faily quickly - theres always the odd items that 10 people want and takes a while to sort out. How big is your loot council? We have 4 people total, of which there are sometimes only 2-3 there. It makes it faily quick to sort out things - we have class leaders put forward one person from their class for tier items, and then it gets decided, while random loot is "paste current" and then decide from there.

 

• Shifft

We use a loot council too, and in general, the best way to speed it up is really just to force yourselves to decide faster. Say "PM FOR X", list bidders in officer chat, have everyone pick who they think should get it, then either majority rules or the GM makes the final decision. That whole thing should probably take less than a minute. It also helps if you have a general idea of who is going to want the loot before it drops, so look up loot tables.

 

Kytrarewn

Have wishlists for the players, in cases of two players wanting a specific item as "high-priority" in the raid, decide beforehand.

You should have some idea of how well each player uses his/her gear and skill by this point, and what attendance is like, so just roll with it.

 

Kier

Make some decisions (or at least have an idea) ahead of time. Other than a handful of guilds, we all know what the boss will drop before it dies. Browse the loot table ahead of time and make a coupe of educated guesses as to who you might give a particular drop to. Obviously rarer drops like weapons you wouldn't necessarily cover but you could probably take 5 minutes and figure out who's got the best attendance for each of melee dps, caster dps, healers, etc.

 

Triton

We're using a Suicide Kings loot system with an AddOn that automates the bidding process and automatically updates the player list when loot is distributed. Players just whisper the master looter if they're interested in a drop and the addon announces who the winner is, based on their position relative to the top of the SK list. It allows for very quick looting, especially because we're using a pretty basic SK system that doesn't account for attendance or other 'intangibles'. It sounds like your raid wants to take more of those other merit/need factors into account so you'll probably have a bit more work to do, but you may want to look for (or write) an AddOn to at least speed up the bidding / voting process.

 

Dinadass

We use the same loot council system, and generally it's not a huge deal. We got our first Kael kill last night and I think it took a total of 5 minutes to award his 5 drops + 2 vorteces. The only times it seems to take a long time are items like mag's head or the neck token from Kael, where you have up to 10 people bidding on it.

The one way I've found to speed up the time to award items is to have people talk in class channels ahead of time. Try to determine who benefits the most from it, and have only them send a bid. Obviously if there isn't a consensus, then have everyone send a tell and have the council sort it out.

 

Daeus

We run a Officer loot system in our guild as well. Average loot time is about 5 minute how it basically works is lets say for Example Tier 5 Mold drops Hunter/Mage/Warlock usually the classes themselves already have sorted out who is up in terms of tier 5. Then we basically rotated the mold in between the 3 classes.

the only variation is the Warrior/Priest/Druid mold We do 3 to the tanks first priority then rotate from there

Thing about bc is that most of the loot sends a pretty clear message on where it's suppose to go there isn't too many overlapping items. Eye of Magtheridon comes up as one On the trickier items you can do by seniority,class, size of upgrade etc

Best way to stop Conflict of interest is also as an officer sit out of the discussion on items you, yourself is interested in to avoid temptation

Just one of my Pet Peeves is Size of upgrade. Unless the person asking for the item has the best available non-raid equivalent of the particular slot. i tend to frown on people who link me their upgraded pieces. I feel that the more dedicated people who go out and try and obtain the best pre-raid for that slot should deserve first crack at the raid drop they are the ones putting out the effort to obtaining it. One big one is that if they know you look at strength of upgrade there is no motivation for them to go out and try and get the upgrade.

Weigh it differently
Attendance
Attitude
Dedication
Performance
Last Raid loot

in that order and it should speed things up a bit when "bids" come in pretty much you have an idea of who it's going to pretty fast i'm sure everyone does

 

Muse

We seem to have the same philosophy Daeus. For instance with prioritizing the criteria, we consider attendance paramount.

Also, the size of upgrade category is rather minor as we've explicitly stated all non-raiding loot is considered on equal ground (i.e. a heroic badge item is equal to a quest reward). Like you mentioned, we don't want to discourage raiders who gear themselves outside of raiding but it broadens the scope of players who can reasonably bid on cross-class items.

To what extent do your loot councils review loot tables and 'pre-determine' drops?

 

Vanderstar

My guild also runs a loot council. The council is 5-10 people, depending on which officers are on that particular raid.

One thing we've found useful in speeding up the trickier decisions is to keep a running tally of who got which drop, and spreading gear out amongst the people who have put in equal effort.

Also, another thing we've been doing is having certain members roll off for certain items.

Example: A mage item drops and our 2 best, highest attendance mages want it. They would both get about the same benefit from the item. We have them roll off.


EDIT: Clarity/grammar.

 

◊ Maniq

Faster decisions, Clearer DKP System, Faster rolls, pre-arranged lists.

There we go.