Raiding as we go forward

[Olon97]

For the sake of discussion, I'm working on a loot system at work (which will most likely turn out like every other system, but I'm working from the ground up, with limited knowledge of how it's been done before.

Some pitfalls to watch out for:

1. Inflation. This is a question of how long someone new to the raiding group needs to participate in order to have a reasonable shot at winning something. Easiest approach to this is ensuring that your system is zero-sum (no gain of points without someone else spending/losing points). You'll have a much easier time getting new people to replace burnout turnover if they come in in the middle of the rankings rather than at the bottom with 0 chance to ever win the super uber gear.

2. Collusion. Free market determines the proper price of an item... right? Yes and no. Say you have a small pool of warlocks who get along and work out an order so they all can do a minimum bid when it's their turn for a class item. Say on the mage side they don't get along (fire & ice ya know) and get into bidding wars on every single class item. An item drops that both warlocks and mages can use, and suddenly you have fully decked out warlocks with more points to spend than a mage who has one or two items tops (same participation).

3. Disenchanting. Depending on how you deal with #2 (common approach is fixed prices for each drop), people may not want to spend points on a drop they can use because they're saving up, or it's a bad value or whatever. Disenchanting epics is always painful, and if you've delt with #1 by going zero-sum, nobody gets anything when it happens. Not totally avoidable, IMO (you can't force people to take something they don't want), but some way to adjust pricing on an item based on total demand (while not bending to collusion) might be wise. Even better if the new price can be retroactively adjusted so people who bought the same thing for more don't feel slighted.

4. Time. Both at the time of drop and administrative. Probably the fairest system out there would be to talk over every drop and have a majority vote on who should get it, after evaluating current gear, past drop history, particpation, etc. You would never kill more than 2 MC bosses in a night if you stick with such a system, however. Administrative time is mostly a concern to avoid burnout - accounting can be fun, but not that fun.

5. Transparency. If there is a list somewhere of who gets what first, it should be accessible via web browser and understandable by participants. That also allows individuals to audit for admin mistakes (human error) on point issues that affect them.

6. People able and willing to come but not allowed to come due to being full, required class mix, etc. There's a balance of keeping enough people in the raid who know what they're doing and will get the job done vs. exluding new faces and giving them the impression that even with zero sum they'll never outbid a "core raider" due to being lapped while they're sitting on the waitlist. More of a question of invite policy, but it bleeds over to loot systems once you start accumulating points.

Be careful how much you reinvent the wheel, unless you care to blindly repeat others' mistakes. ;) Nomatter how good your group of people is, if there are loopholes in your system that allow people to develop an "optimal loot strategy" they probably will.