A New Need-Before-Greed Loot Setting Proposal

[JanusTich]

I was originally going to post this as a reply to the older General thread that advocates round robin looting but realized I don't want to preserve the round robin status quo that exists in high level instances. What I want is for group loot to be fixed so that it becomes the new standard.

Here's what needs to be done:

1. Bind on Pickup (BoP) items should always bring up a confirmation box of "Are you sure you want to loot this Bind on Pickup item?", even to the winner of a dice roll. This allows someone who accidentally rolled to back out of their mistake and discourages ninja looters from using the "accidentally clicked" excuse since it relies on the same confirmation step that round robin uses (it’s plausible to accidentally click on the dice, but much harder to accidentally click on both the dice and a warning prompt).

If the winner of a dice roll says 'no' to that prompt, the item should remain on the corpse for anyone in the group to loot (similar to what happens when the person who wins has a full inventory) so that the group can stop and discuss who gets the item. There is no need to reroll since everyone can see who rolled and can assign the next highest roller to be the winner.

Any and all attempts to loot a BoP item should always prompt a confirmation.

2. The glittering stars should be changed so that it works the same way as round robin - only show stars for the corpse in your round. In round robin, only the one corpse that you can loot for money and items glows. Group loot as it is currently implemented shows glittering stars for any corpse with money on it, which in practice means that almost every corpse is glowing. This makes it difficult to figure out which corpse for items is yours in the round, and results in everyone running around attempting to loot every corpse.

Also, possibly related to the above, please fix the problem where an attempt to loot a corpse with glittering stars results in the "that would be stealing" error message. Round robin does not seem to have this problem, so again, please change this aspect of group loot to the way round robin behaves.

Let me answer some inevitable questions and comments to follow:

"Your proposed changes sound like you just want to make Group Loot work like Round Robin. Why not just use Round Robin to begin with?"

The problem with Round Robin is that it is slow. Every green item and up causes the group to stop, link it in chat, discuss it, and /random 100. Often, a group member will already have auto-looted some green items by shift right-clicking (a convenient feature when soloing that can understandably become a habit), who then has to link them in chat, asks who wants to roll on them, and then takes up further time by having to open a trade transaction to the winner. These are some of the common conversations and pauses you’ll see with Round Robin in an average pickup group:

“Did everyone roll for the pants?” “Oh, I didn’t roll yet.” “k, roll” “Grats Krypto, nice pants.” <pauses for Krypto to go loot the corpse or for one of the party members to walk up and open a trade transaction window>

“Hey Misty, roll.” “I did roll, scroll up.”

“Wait, what are we rolling for?” “The boots.” “Oh, I thought we were rolling for the ring of ultimate power. That’s what I rolled for. I pass on the boots. Do I have to roll again?”

“Grats on the cloak of invisibilty” “Thanks, where is it?” “On the lizard, over here.” “Where?” “Come here, come to me.”

The obvious way to solve this problem is to agree to roll on green items after finishing the instance/group. This of course has its own set of problems, namely having to some degree manually track who looted what (since round robin will result in everyone getting allocated some green+ items) and otherwise causing general suspicion of someone conveniently forgetting to list an item afterwards.

The concept of Group Loot, which is Round Robin for all regular items and a dice prompt for green and up (or whatever the threshold is set at) is great but the implementation in practice makes it less than useful.

My two proposed changes actually reflect intended design already in place by the developers - Bind on Pickup items already have a confirmation step when attempting to loot, so this simply needs to be grafted onto the dice winner step. Regular items (those below the threshold) in Group Loot are using the Round Robin system to begin with and since money is always split, in both Group Loot and Round Robin, there is no need to indicate which corpses have money to be looted other than the one in my round.


"It’s your fault for grouping up with strangers! This is why you should always group up with friends you trust.”

I play with a regular group of friends and we could viably use any of the current looting systems without much frustration. We usually use group loot because of its convenience, despite its broken state. But most people aren’t so lucky to have a regular group to play with. And sometimes our group needs pickup members, or I end up in a pickup group for an instance. Regardless, there’s no need to force manual control over loot on players when a sensible system can be created that takes care of the majority of normal loot transactions. That’s one reason why people are using Round Robin over Free For All in the first place, because Round Robin ‘automates’ the distribution of normal items (linen, murloc fins, that amazing rusty cutlass) by round robin. I want a loot system in place so that all of the items, particularly the large pool of green ones that drop, can be dealt in a similar fashion of convenience and control.

And never did I say to abandon the social practices that people are already using with Round Robin to keep people in line, which leads to the next question:


"How is relying on the above system going to stop ninja looters? What stops someone from rolling on a bunch of green items and then refusing to give them to the appropriate class in the group that needs it?"

I never said that any automated loot system is supposed to replace standard, social intervention. Round robin doesn’t solve any of the above problems in and of itself, either. All of the manual practices that groups are already using for Round Robin can be adapted to Group Loot:

• a need before greed philosophy by passing on items that you can’t/won’t use and someone else needs.<>
  
• if an item isn’t needed by anyone, those who would normally be eligible (melees for +str/sta/agi items or casters for +int/spir/sta items, for example) can quickly say ‘don’t need, roll everyone’ or the like so that everyone can roll for the vendor sale or left to enchanters. This can be agreed upon beforehand so people know to wait briefly before rolling or passing.<>
  
• any items mistakenly looted (that aren’t Bind on Pickup, of course) can be given to the appropriate person afterward.<>
  
• anyone refusing to do the above when they have no justification for doing so can be reprimanded, kicked out of the group, and/or guild blacklisted.<>
  
• similarly, with my proposed change in place, anyone that loots a Bind on Pickup item despite the warning prompt can be reprimanded, kicked out of the group, and/or guild blacklisted.<>
  [st]The ideal loot system is one that would balance the convenience of automating most loot while retaining enough control for the exceptional cases. The Group Loot system with the fixes I propose would round robin normal items, automate dice prompts and inventory placement for green+ items, and provide a safety clause for Bind on Pickup items. The current systems all have a failing or two - Round Robin, in the manner that most high level instance groups use it, sucks in the convenience department because it requires manual intervention for almost every step; Group Loot doesn’t provide a safety clause for Bind on Pickup items as well as possessing the aforementioned quirks.
  
  
  ”I hate group loot cause everyone in front gets all the good stuff and I’m stuck in the back getting the shaft.”
  
  It seems a lot of people are confused with the way the current loot systems are implemented. I'm going to reply to this post with a brief summary of the various looting systems, but in the meantime, I'll address this one directly:
  
  Group Loot, in regards to normal items like linen and potions, is exactly the same as Round Robin. A lot of people don’t think so, but my guess is that’s because of the ‘seeing stars on every corpse because of money’ characteristic that I talked about earlier. So that means in a group of five with Group Loot, you’re gonna get a chance to loot items like silk and claws one in every five kills, just like you would if the loot was set to Round Robin. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the front or the back, because the monster that has items you can loot is ‘assigned’ to you when your round in the group comes up.
  
  In Round Robin with a group of five, you get the technical right to loot every fifth monster killed, including any green or blue items that are there. Group Loot works the exact same way as Round Robin, except it gives a dice prompt on green or higher items to the entire group if they’re close by.
  
  
  "What about someone who is too far away to receive a dice prompt or dead? Doesn’t it screw them?"
  
  Again, just because you’re using Group Loot to automate most of your normal loot transactions, doesn’t mean that you throw normal intervention out the window. What would happen in the situation described using old school Round Robin?
  
  “Hey, don’t loot yet. Talbain died. Wait for him to rez first.”
  
  “Oh schnap, the Crimson Breastplate of Craziness dropped.” “Wait up, Kasi isn’t here – hey Kasi, you rolling for that?” “Yeah, I’ll roll, I’m on my way.”
  
  You can do the same in Group Loot for this kind of special circumstance by having everyone pass on their roll so that it can be rolled manually afterward:
  
  “Everyone pass on the roll since Maia is dead. We’ll do a manual /random when she gets here.” <everyone passes, and the item stays on the corpse> (if someone accidentally already rolled on an item, that can be fixed afterward by giving to the winner if the item is tradable, or on a Bind-on-Pickup item, that person can click ‘no’ during the confirmation step).
  
  (with my proposed change for BoP items given a prompt to the dice winner): “Oh schnap, Dorothy’s Ruby Slippers dropped.” <everyone rolls except Janus> “Janus? You rolling?” “He must be out of distance, say no to the prompt and we’ll get his roll manually when he arrives.” “It’s alright, I pass, Ruby Slippers probably don’t fit me anyway.”
  
  Is it harder to make a mistake using Round Robin? Yes, perhaps, but it’s also a bigger inconvenience with the lack of automation. I will say that until Group Loot gets fixed (if ever), I recommend along with most others to use Round Robin and manual rolling in pick up groups.
  
  
  The inadequate state of the current loot systems affects both high level instance groups and to a greater degree, casual pickup groups where often the inexperience of the players regarding the looting system causes arguments and frustration. Group loot provides a good interface for quick rolling and loot distribution but needs to be refined in the ways I described to be useful.