The Dawn of a New Looting Age

Randomly dropped, limited quantity loot is so annoying. How much better would the game be if all loot was badge oriented, so team members don't have to feel in competition with one another for loot, but rather cooperatively gathering badges and saving up for stuff? Even if they made it Karazhan Badges redeemable for kara stuff only, Gruul's Badges redeemable for gruul stuff only, etc to make sure you couldn't just farm the lowest dungeon and get the best stuff in the game. Or go crazy and make the badges boss-specific.

But I digress...

Hot of the silliness of drama over some recent loot, we've decided to go with a loot distribution system and discard our current /roll if you want it system.

Not really interested in administering some complex DKP, with which none of our officers or raiders have any experience, we've decided to go with a basic loot rotation.

When we kick it off, we're gonna do a random ordering of the entire guild.

When a piece of gear drops, it is first offered to the player present in the raid at loot-drop-time that has the higest ranking. As long as its equipable (no clothies choosing plate) if that person wants it, for any reason, they get it. Primary raid role, off set, just because it looks cool, whatever. If they pass, it is available to the next higest ranked person present. And so on. If nobody wants it, DE and at the end, everybody roll for shards.

If you take the loot, you drop to the bottom of the list.

And that's it.

Pros

1. Easy for officers to administer


2. Easy for raiders to understand


3. People will actually think before accepting loot, as there's a future consequence to your choice, which is just not there with our current system


4. Fair distribution over time. If you feel you got shorted on a drop, that person goes down to the bottom and you'll have priority on future drops

Cons

1. Infrequent raiders will perculate to the top, and thus will be nearly guaranteed loot when they do show up/get invited


2. No thought given to raid benefit when distributing loot, only individual benefit


3. Might lead to good loot being DE'd in hopes of a future drop. ex: a hunter at the top of the list passing on Garona's Signet Ring from Curator in hopes that Prince will drop Sunfury Bow of the Phoenix later that night. Then GSR gets DE'd, and SBotP doesn't drop, so overall the player and the raid get zero gear improvement from that raid night.


4. Same as in the previous one, excellent off-set gear, which might benefit the guild in different scenarios might be passed on and DE'd

I think that con #1 is semi-moot because (A) infrequent raiders are rarely present/invited to raids where the progression team is trying to get loot, jsut because the content is too hard. (B) it currently seems that new guys get lots of epics on their first or second night in kara, simply because none of the other folks need it, so I think #1 is kinda moot. Except for the one time a rare invite goes out to someone on a progression night and a veteran raider gets pissed that the other guy has priority. Oh well, go sulk in the corner.

The last three cons have the same issue at heart. I really want an epic that is any possible upgrade in any way shape or form to be taken by somebody rather than DE'd. I shudder at the prospect of people NOT taking loot that's an upgrade because they want a bigger upgrade that MIGHT drop at some point in the future. The raid and team needs that improvement NOW, thus allowing us to more easily access that drop that might drop LATER.

I also don't want to have people trying to skirt the system and feign indifference, bluff at passing on an item, in hopes that the officers award the loot, "forcing" the guy to take the piece, without bouncing them to the bottom.

There are a few areas that I'm not fully certain (ambivalent?) about how to handle...

Unknowns

1. Where do new guild members go? Me thinks they start at the bottom. Not sure if that would impact recruiting. But at the same time, a player who would avoid a guild because of feeling like there's a small delay before they're GUARANTEED priority for loot, perhaps its better that we do scare that person away.


2. If we run two teams in kara on the same night, how do we stack the people who take loot and drop to the bottom. ex: Somebody from team 1 gets a drop, so he should go to bottom. Same night, somebody from team 2 gets a drop, so he should go to the bottom. So who goes to the bottom and who goes to second from the bottom? If we have to keep track of the exact timestamp of the drop, I just might snap.


3. What to do about off-set gear that gets passed, or gear that's an upgrade but gets passed on in hopes of a future drop? I hate to see epics get DE'd, since all we get is some crystals (and therefore gold) from that. Crystals and Gold can be obtained from a variety of sources. Epic drops can only be obtained via welfare from boss kills, and come randomly at that.

So does anybody have experience with entry level DKP, or even a system similar to this one? I'd love to hear about different ways that people have introduced basic loot rules, what the process was like, how did the guild react to it, what drama evolved out of it, etc.