Darian Wrote:But I think the biggest concern I have is very simple: point systems assume victory, and there have been a lot of people who have been with us on every raid, done their job properly, and have nothing to show for it. Every failure helps the overall raid teamAn excellent point. We had early forays into MC when no one got any loot, and therefore, no points either - this can be very frustrating. It is definitely a drawback of a zero-sum system that you can't award points unless loot has dropped. However, if you don't go zero-sum, you end up with inflation and bidding, where we're fighting each other for loot. There is also the fact that Olon97 mentioned a couple of pages ago, that invites are at the discretion of the raid leader. We may get to a point where there isn't enough space for all of the hunters who want to come. This is where you can reward people who have done the hard slogging to get to where you are, with a spot on the team.
GG, I don't think you're ever going to be able to sufficiently quantify everything. And if you could, you'd just use the quantitative system, rather than the council! :P Whenever a decision is subjective, it becomes hard to defend when someone else holds an opposite opinion. If someone is the top rogue as far as damage goes, you may argue that they deserve an upgrade because they're really stepping up to the plate. I may argue that they're doing fine, and what we really need is to give the good equipment to rogues who aren't doing as well as they are. How do you determine which position is right? How do you explain the final decision to uber-rogue (and not-so-uber-rogue)? Do you explain at all? How do you guard against the "ninja-ed for progression" perception?
Also, in your comparative list, when you talk about a point system, it seems like you're talking about an inflationary bidding system, rather than a zero-sum, fixed value system. A zero-sum system would have fixed values for items, so collusion isn't an issue. However, it doesn't look to me like changing that fact would alter your ordering of the "scores" for each of the systems.
My view is that the council and point systems should end up with similar distributions, other than a few items (and I think you can ask the raid to give preference on a couple of key items, as well as making council-ish decisions on crafting mats within the point system. After all, there's no prohibition against someone going negative in points). The point system has the advantage of being transparent and predictable over a council system. The list system seems like it would be very streaky, and the individual's actions often have nothing to do with their chances at loot. /random ends up with a bell-curve distribution, with some rich and some poor, so I'd like to see something that ends up a little more uniform.