Lewtz!

[Dren]

With the purples raining from the sky in WoW these days and the upgraded lewting system implemented, there seems to be a lot of focus on lewt drop drama.  Downing a boss now in 5-man instances is now a race to pull the lever and grab what drops out as quickly as possible.  In the rush, many times people don't get what they want because of loop-holes in the system, etc.  We still have the cries of NINJAS!  People still feel cheated.

It seems to me that they should just drop the whole lewt system.  Go completely over to an emblem system.  All bosses just drop an appropriate number and level of emblems.  Then, you take your stash of emblems and purchase what you need from vendors in major cities.  Obviously, the range of items would be much bigger including standard enchanting materials, etc.

To me, this would clear up all the issues people (including me) complain about in general with lewting including messed up lewt tables for instances, etc.

The drawback?  The biggest I can see is losing that whole Diablo type instant satisfaction with having a chance of getting an item NOW!

Are there others?

[Nebu]

The only other solution I could see would require an algorithm that decided who should get the drop based on class and primary/secondary spec.  Allowing players to decide need vs greed seems to be the root of the drama.  I like the idea of a pure emblem system, but see how it would remove the lottery aspects of the fun.  Right now, WoW reminds me of those quarter vending machines I loved as a kid.  You put in your coin and hope that the cool toy you want drops out. 

[Selby]

Eh, I think the existing system is just fine.  Sure, if you run randoms exclusively you may have more problems than not, but even in 10-m and 25-m raids, I tend to get upgrades periodically just through the random /roll system.  The only system where I feel I get hosed is a loot council system where the raid leader gives it all to his wife or friends.  As far as 5-m dungeons go, it's not like the loot tables are so large that you never see another item again drop, just run it again another day for the rep, money, and EoT\EoF and chance or an upgrade.

[Hawkbit]

The need for random is what keeps people coming back for more so that part won't go away.  I've always wanted Blizzard to add the gear dropped in instances to the emblem vendors so that you can buy a piece you couldn't ever get to drop if you want, but only after running it for quite a bit.

[Jeff Kelly]

What loot drama? People clicking on need that don't need the item or what?

If you run into random groups that have free for all or master loot on feel free to leave.

[Lantyssa]

Even in guild runs, which is all I will participate in and this is standard practice, I ask if I can need for off-spec items if no one else's primary is going to use it.  Yet another reason I don't want to deal with PUGs.

If they went to an emblem system they should do something else... gambling tokens!  The random "what's going to drop today" is part of the fun.  Give us tokens, let us select an item type, and then see what mods come out of it!

[Dren]

What loot drama? People clicking on need that don't need the item or what?

If you run into random groups that have free for all or master loot on feel free to leave.

Are you playing WoW currently?  Your second statment isn't possible anymore.  Random is locked in one looting system only.

Options are Need, Greed, Disenchant.

Need:
You can only Need an item if it is in your maximum armor class.  Priest, mage can need cloth.  Druids can need leather, but not cloth.  Shaman can need chain, but not leather or cloth. Etc.  You obviously cannot Need a piece of armor that you can't wear either.  Anyone can Need a weapon they can equip.  Anyone can Need a necklace, ring, or cloak that is level appropriate.
Drama:  People Need to either lock in getting the item to sell or disenchant themselves.  Need has the highest priority for rolls from all the choices.

Greed:
If you cannot Need, then you can choose Greed.  Anyone can do this.
Drama: People that can use the item even though it isn't in their max armor category have to roll on it like everyone else.  Others roll greed just to get the item to sell or get the Achievement, "Greedy!"

Disenchant:
If you have an enchanter in the group with the appropriate level, anyone can select disenchant for an item.  As long as a Need hasn't been selected, this option will automatically disenchant the item and give the person that won the roll the materials from the disenchantment.
Drama: If somebody really did want an item and was forced to Greed it, one disenchant in the group with destroy the item unless a Need was rolled.  Also, greedy disenchanters like to use Need to keep the materials for themselves rather than providing their service for everyone else in the group.

[Dren]

Even in guild runs, which is all I will participate in and this is standard practice, I ask if I can need for off-spec items if no one else's primary is going to use it.  Yet another reason I don't want to deal with PUGs.

If they went to an emblem system they should do something else... gambling tokens!  The random "what's going to drop today" is part of the fun.  Give us tokens, let us select an item type, and then see what mods come out of it!

That's a great idea.  Keep the luck and surprise in there, but eliminate all the issues with lewting items directly from the corpse.  Lantyssa's my favorite!

[Nebu]

Purchase random gear bags with emblems?  Seems a good idea if the item is at least usable for the class.  Also making emblems BoA would be lovely too.

[Jayce]

Also making emblems BoA would be lovely too.

This!



Personally I see a lot of loot drama mitigated by the purple rain effect. If someone has been spamming trade chat for days to get groups to a particular dungeon and finally gets their drop, they are a lot less sanguine about it than someone who can get a group in 0-15 minutes max.

Also due to so many people running heroics now, it seems like many people have all the gear they want from the instance itself, and now just want badges. In most of my groups, no one notices or cares whether people roll need or greed in most cases.  It's pretty much just a 5 gold loss if someone ninjas the item.  Very rarely is there contention on a given item, and there's the knowledge that you can get another group quickly and get another shot at it, so even that is mitigated.

I do like the idea of making disenchant and greed rolls equal and the item only shards if a disenchant wins the roll. (false assumption corrected in other thread)

[Dren]

Yeah, more BoA please.


I have to admit that their current system is 10x better than anything had in the past.  So, I have to give them credit.

I was just wondering what could be done to improve yet even further.  I just like the idea of getting something from instances regardless of luck.  Emblems dropping is a great start to this and love that idea especially in big raids.  Nothing was worse back in the day than spending 5 hours in a raid to get jack all nothing.  At least we get a step in the direction of nice item eventually.

I also like systems that allow us to customize and feel "ownership" of the process.  Emblems help with that a lot.  We can manage and plan our toons to finite details these days and that helps with "teh funz."  A good balance of this and just plain dumb luck sound like a good goal.  There are some good suggestions in this thread already to do that.

[Drubear]

I think the design problem with Emblems Only is that once you do the dungeon once for quest items, there's no reason to do it ever again except for emblems. Achievements maybe. At least with stuff dropping in Heroics, there's a reason to do certain Heroics over and over while you're gearing up.

Obviously, after you get all the purps from that you move out of that band of players, but as I'm a slow leveller, I haven't gotten all the purps I might out of a particular Heroic. On reflection, it may not even be worth it nowadays and just do the Emblem Dash for upgrades (or sneak into ICC Rep runs and hope for a nice purp or two while being carried.)
 

[Jeff Kelly]

Are you playing WoW currently?  Your second statment isn't possible anymore.  Random is locked in one looting system only.

(lots of explaining

Yeah I  run 3 - 5 random heroics per day and all this time I never realized that the loot system has changed in the way you described, well apart from the disenchant option. That's why I was wondering whether it is a big issue after all.

[Dren]

Are you playing WoW currently?  Your second statment isn't possible anymore.  Random is locked in one looting system only.

(lots of explaining

Yeah I  run 3 - 5 random heroics per day and all this time I never realized that the loot system has changed in the way you described, well apart from the disenchant option. That's why I was wondering whether it is a big issue after all.

Naw, not a BIG issue.  More like an annoyance really.  My thoughts on it started with Lum's blog entry with the "All the Ninja Raiders" video and subsequent comments by readers.  It showed there to be some sentiment amongst the players that the system may be better, but they are still wanting some improvement.

[Dren]

I think the design problem with Emblems Only is that once you do the dungeon once for quest items, there's no reason to do it ever again except for emblems. Achievements maybe. At least with stuff dropping in Heroics, there's a reason to do certain Heroics over and over while you're gearing up.

Obviously, after you get all the purps from that you move out of that band of players, but as I'm a slow leveller, I haven't gotten all the purps I might out of a particular Heroic. On reflection, it may not even be worth it nowadays and just do the Emblem Dash for upgrades (or sneak into ICC Rep runs and hope for a nice purp or two while being carried.)
 

I wasn't trying to suggest each emblem drop = item.  You would need to visit instances multiple times to build up enough emblems to purchase something.  This would be balanced against current "chances" at items.  The only real difference in number of times repeating an instance would be that the emblem system would guarrantee you an item after a certain time.  Random drop systems don't guarantee you anything!  There IS a chance you will never get that items you were trying to get.

[kildorn]

I really want BoA emblems. But mostly because I like to pug heroics on my warlock, and if I raid it'll be on my priest.

[Jeff Kelly]

BoA Tokens would be awesome.

I just educated myself on the new loot system and there is one thing that I think is wrong in your description of the new loot system Dren.

Disenchant doesn't take precedence over greed. Disenchant is a greed roll but you state that "if I win this greed roll don't give me the item give me the mats instead"

So if you select disenchant and roll 10 and somebody else selects greed but rolls an 11 he wins the item, if you select disenchant and roll 11 and somebody else selects greed but rolls an 10 you win the mats.

So I only see the issue of an enchanter rolling need to keep others from getting the mats. Rolling need to sell the item is stupid in my opinion but people seem to be like that

[K9]

Random loot does seem to be the bugbear of many.

Personally as a player who sees loot as a means and not an end I'm perfectly happy with the current system. A badges-only system would just become impossibly grindy and dull, and wouldn't really improve the game overall for me. As it stands you can get full gear sets from badges; so having random loot drops is fine.

[Sjofn]

I'm pretty OK with the system as-is, although if they did something like have the bosses drop BoA stuff instead of BoP, that would be cool. But then there would be EVEN MORE loot drama.

[ezrast]

Or, each boss could just automatically grant each player one piece of random loot with no rolls. Bosses still have their own loot tables, so there's still a reason to run specific instances, and it keeps the "just one more run and maybe THIS time my sword will drop!" factor. Basically the same solution they're putting into Diablo 3, last I heard.

[Fordel]

Keep the loot drops, but put everything in the dungeons on Vendors as well. Maybe split the vendors/currency down 'groups' of dungeons, if you want to be an asshole about it. So you have to farm the Utgarde dungeons for blah drop currency, then farm the Halls of Light/Stone for the other blah drop currency etc.



I mostly dislike random loot though, small wonder I favour all the honor/crafted/badger gear.

[Rendakor]

I'm pretty OK with the system as-is, although if they did something like have the bosses drop BoA stuff instead of BoP, that would be cool. But then there would be EVEN MORE loot drama.

If they're going that route, I'd rather it be done like EQ2's Heirloom system. Basically they items are tradeable between characters on your account until they are equipped, at which point they become soulbound.

Edit: I really like the idea of BoA badges. That way, I could get insta-queue heroics on my tank and gear out my alts (and have a use for Triumphs besides epic gems).

[Ingmar]

My feeling is that the system has caused loot drama to dry up almost entirely compared to how it used to be in PUGs, actually. Except for the very top end heroics, the actual *items* that drop are not very often used for anything but disenchanting anyway, and the cost of losing a chance to roll on some level 200 cloth pants for a druid or something is pretty small since that upgrade would be extremely transitory given the badge system anyway.

Seriously things are much much better now loot drama wise.

[Sheepherder]

Each person having an individual loot table with a mix of appropriate items and consolation prizes would work.  But as is, things aren't bad.

[Gobbeldygook]

My objections to pure emblems (assuming you continue the WoW-like system of requiring lots of emblems for an item):

A. It would make characters even more identical than they are.  Right now, there are some differences between characters based on what drops.  If you switch to pure emblems, every single player of <class> is going to buy the exact same items in the exact same optimized order.

B. It's harder to gear someone up quickly on farm content.  In TOC, we lost(kicked out) one of our main tanks, so we had to gear up a new one.  We took a guy into toc-25 who was crittable and forced every tank drop we could down his throat to gear him up quickly.  If we were on pure emblems, we would have just cleared TOC and in a few weeks he could buy a single piece of loot.

C. It greatly reduces the incentive to clear new bosses because after all, you can just kill the easy bosses over and over for emblems.  All the new bosses have to offer is more emblems.

D. There's no longer an incentive for well-geared players to go back to old content for 'that one drop'.  You could still get people in full 245+ into TOC-25 clears up to patch 3.3 because they really wanted those trinkets and weapons that were in perpetually high demand.  Without the well-geared ringers, the less-geared players have zero chance of clearing the content.

[Ingmar]

Yeah agreed on all counts. I think the hybrid system works out the best.

[Nebu]

My objections to pure emblems (assuming you continue the WoW-like system of requiring lots of emblems for an item):

A. It would make characters even more identical than they are.  Right now, there are some differences between characters based on what drops.  If you switch to pure emblems, every single player of <class> is going to buy the exact same items in the exact same optimized order.

B. It's harder to gear someone up quickly on farm content.  In TOC, we lost(kicked out) one of our main tanks, so we had to gear up a new one.  We took a guy into toc-25 who was crittable and forced every tank drop we could down his throat to gear him up quickly.  If we were on pure emblems, we would have just cleared TOC and in a few weeks he could buy a single piece of loot.

C. It greatly reduces the incentive to clear new bosses because after all, you can just kill the easy bosses over and over for emblems.  All the new bosses have to offer is more emblems.

D. There's no longer an incentive for well-geared players to go back to old content for 'that one drop'.  You could still get people in full 245+ into TOC-25 clears up to patch 3.3 because they really wanted those trinkets and weapons that were in perpetually high demand.  Without the well-geared ringers, the less-geared players have zero chance of clearing the content.

My solution to this is a) make all loot random, b) allow crafters to fill the gaps in gear (like the spellcrafting system in DAoC), and c) allow for appearance tabs with dyes.  As soon as you create sets you have homogenized the game.  Random loot ensures repeats of instances, particularly if you tie crafting and require top crafters to need drops from particular instances.  I guess it's all what you're used to.

[Cadaverine]

I'm pretty sure the current system is designed to drop anything but what you need.  For example, I run ToC a dozen times or so with my rogue.  All the leather drops are bal/resto Druid stuff, or Plate.  I finally get my Druid to 80 and the RDF sends me to ToC.  First drop?  Rogue leather piece.   

If I had more hair, I'd pull it out.

[Rasix]

Only thing I'd really want is a lot more items on the emblem vendors just in case personally you have shit luck or Blizzard decides to hide the only offhand caster upgrade in the equivalent of HHOR. Weapon upgrades would also be nice because until HTOC and the ICC 5 mans they were very hard to comeby unless you were a raider or arena participant. 

I liked the variety the emblem vendors had toward the end of TBC, not sure why they made it so much more limited in WOLK. 

This is only from the perspective of a very casual, non raiding player.  Raiders will almost always find an upgrade of type of loot somewhere, but those that don't shouldn't be so boxed in by what's available.  Crafting can also help fill the gap here, but is often neglected.  I mean hell, are the best crafted weapons still titansteel?

[Rendakor]

Raids are like that too. The only time I've seen Juggernaut's Vitality drop in ToC25 is when I was in there on my rogue.

[Ingmar]

Only thing I'd really want is a lot more items on the emblem vendors just in case personally you have shit luck or Blizzard decides to hide the only offhand caster upgrade in the equivalent of HHOR. Weapon upgrades would also be nice because until HTOC and the ICC 5 mans they were very hard to comeby unless you were a raider or arena participant. 

I liked the variety the emblem vendors had toward the end of TBC, not sure why they made it so much more limited in WOLK. 

This is only from the perspective of a very casual, non raiding player.  Raiders will almost always find an upgrade of type of loot somewhere, but those that don't shouldn't be so boxed in by what's available.  Crafting can also help fill the gap here, but is often neglected.  I mean hell, are the best crafted weapons still titansteel?

Yep, same for shields, hats, etc. There are some crafted pieces of higher level but they're very very expensive and you can only get the recipes via 25 man raiding (or spending precious primal saronite in the case of the ICC faction stuff.)

[Merusk]

The problem with tokens is that people would only cycle through the easiest dungeons to build up their stash.  Even if the "hard" dungeon was nerfed to the ground, you'd still have people avoiding it like the plague based on rep alone. (Hello, Occulus)

IIRC, this has also been suggested before along with a more Diabloesque "totally random" system and Blizz said no. They'd rather have the bosses drop known loot so people can focus on those places, and don't want to go to a token system to avoid the ezmode problem.

[Sjofn]

My main wish is for boots that match the fuckin' sets.

[Kail]

The problem with tokens is that people would only cycle through the easiest dungeons to build up their stash.  Even if the "hard" dungeon was nerfed to the ground, you'd still have people avoiding it like the plague based on rep alone. (Hello, Occulus)

You could just give most of the tokens out via the random LFG system (like the ones it gives when you complete a dungeon), so that if someone wanted to "maximize" their rate of earning, they'd have to run whatever the system gave them. 

Or, you could just do something like what Ezrast says, and ditch the idea of "competing" with other players for loot.  If the Boss drops X, everyone gets an X.  Or, just individualize the loot rolls, so rather than there being say, a 10% chance of some armor you can use dropping and you have to roll against other players for it, you'd just kill the boss and each player would have a 10% chance of getting something from their class' useable loot for that boss, without having to roll against the rest of the group.

[Selby]

I guess my lack of passion about the issue is... all of my characters are done with heroic gear outside of the ICC 5-m heroics.  So I get put in groups where mostly the people are matched for me and rarely need anything from them.  And I chain heroics on new alts so much that I've got badge gear and BoE blues replacing most of the drops for almost all the heroics relatively quickly anyways.