Many years ago when EverQuest II first went live most raid loot was trade-able. We would lay waste to dragons, giants, and any other beasties that came our way and an officer would collect all of the loot. At the end of the evening we would rally outside our last lair and issue out the evening’s booty in one fell swoop. That gave us a lot of advantages and I believe it was better for us as a guild and better for the game in general. Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could do something like that again?
It is obvious that raid loot will not be trade-able any time soon in most MMORPGs. I don’t intend to make an argument for that in this article. It would be interesting if guilds had the option of “bank loot” in a temporary container until the evenings festivities were done. Imagine downing a boss, opening the chest, and clicking “save to loot bank” and moving on without interruption. I’m not suggesting that the items go to the guild bank. A special holding area would need to exist for a temporary amount of time. My thought would be 24 hours or “while you’re in the zone.” At any time guild’s could issue loot out of that area as if it were an EQ2 treasure chest or a WoW corpse. You could also skip that area all together and just issue loot! The loot bank would exist to give guild’s the option to make better decisions for items and players at a time of their choosing. Think of the advantages!
Making loot decisions in the middle of a long clear really slows you down. This is doubly true if the decision is a hard one. You may also end up with hurt feelings if said decision doesn’t go a certain way. You now have a raider or two more focused on how they lost than the task at hand. Keeping everyone focused and the momentum going is the name of the game!
A loot bank would also avoid the problem of a single player upgrading the same slot twice in an evening. We’ve all seen it happen. An above average weapon drops and a player takes it. Later in the raid the best weapon in the slot drops and the same player wins again. You’ve now wasted the opportunity to upgrade two characters unless you tell player A no. In some guilds the rules may not allow you to do so and in either event, if you do or don’t, you’re going to upset someone and throw their focus off.
It is also important to note that pointing items in a DKP system can also be difficult if you don’t have access to all of those items prior to starting. In Iniquity we had to make a lot of judgment calls on the fly. This added time and complexity to loot calls. We made far better decisions in the early days when we could look at everything we had first. An item that you thought was top tier at the start of the night might actually be in third or forth place by the end of the evening. This system would help you avoid making adjustment and adjustment as the night goes on.
A final and more sinister benefit of this system is one that I saw a lot in the old days. Players can’t really skip out on raids they don’t like to do. If you hold all the night’s loot until after you’ve spent two hours wiping to the latest encounter you’re trying to learn you’ll probably have better attendance. Holding the loot drops from earlier mobs hostage while you’re trying the new mob has a certain appeal to it. Some guild leaders might not like that but from an competitive aspect it is great.
I can see some other minor advantages to the loot bank system and of course some negatives too. What happens if your zone crashes or the game goes down? That would have to be addressed. For games that don’t allow you to bring in people who weren’t in the raid to loot an item you’d have to figure out a way to lock each item to those in attendance (even if I dislike that mechanic). What happens to the people that leave and have a legitimate reason? You could stop and do loot when they need to go but it would be even cooler if you could take their name and, should they win, zip the loot to them via the mail system.
I see a lot of value in this kind of system. I’d be curious what everyone else thinks though. What is your perspective as a guild leader? How would you feel about this as a raider?
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You can do this in WoW since they changed dungeons so items are bound to the group for a set time.
Really? That is an awesome feature!
Yes, dungeon drops can be traded to other players who were eligible to loot the item in the first place for two hours. The timer does not tick down if you’re off-line, and is automatically removed if the item is gemmed, enchanted, etc.
I don’t know that anyone uses the system for what you’re talking about, though, partially because many raids are going to run for longer than two hours. It was implemented primarily to reduce customer service petitions from when a master looter mis-clicks or whatnot by letting players fix the problem themselves. The place where I could see it working would be if your guild takes a scheduled bio/afk break every hour or so, and has a natural time to hand out the gear.
Actually I’ve seen this feature used in PUG TOCs to stop people from ninja logging during the run. Granted, TOC is an abnormally short raid, but it was very effective when used.
It could also be used in ICC, not for the whole run but you could distribute at the end of each wing. Just have to make sure the master looter keeps track of the time.
As a side note, the 2 hour feature also works for purchased items. It’s not so useful for regular gear (enchantable/socketable) but is amazing for trinkets/wands. I ghetto rented my ICC trinket for 2 weeks (2 hours at a time) while deciding if I was going to gear up dps or holy.
I think it’s a good idea, but would be very difficult to implement perfectly. What about raids that aren’t completely one guild? Lots of guilds create alliances, after all. What about game and/or zone crashes — and the ‘temporary’ bank. I’d be very nervous to go about that, because I’ve seen all too many zones crash, and have of course crashed my fair share of time, too (albiet on older, crappier computers).
None of my criticisms are to suggest it’s a bad idea. I just think there’s more to it than one would think. A simpler solution may be to create a system where people who were at the raid could be tagged as eligible to wear the items that dropped, etc.