Guildleader chores - Fixing some of my bad decisions
Last night I was late to raid because of work and it was brought to my attention that something which I had initially made to try to be fair wasn't really very fair and working out very poorly. I honestly feel like everytime I am not in a raid there is some drama I have to deal with afterwards!
I don't play alts, and I don't care about loot. I just like to raid and I am happy to go along to anybody's run just to help out and even if I was an essential part of the raid and they couldn't raid without me, I think just the opportunity to roll on loot with a coin is enough to keep me happy (even if my repair bill is 300g and I'm cross-realm so I can't access guild repairs).
But that doesn't mean everyone thinks like that. And nor should they. People should be rewarded for the efforts they make to help the raid out. I expect differently of the officers, but the other raiders are another kettle of fish.
I had made this mains > alts loot rule, but though I could see that eventually alts would get the loot if they just waited till mains got their loot, some people are not that patient. Week after week if a rare thing dropped and they didn't get the opportunity to roll on it until every other main raider (casual, not heroic) got it, meant that they were better off trying their chances in a PuG.
So the uncomfortable situation arises now that someone who was going to get the loot now because of the loot rules I set up, will feel bad that they upset the other person because of a loot and not want to turn up to raid. The person who was upset about not being able to get the loot will not want to raid anymore on their alt because there is no point turning up to help if they can't get any loot. Damage output drops and then we can't get a boss down. And then nobody gets any loot. And that's not fun for anyone.
A big officer discussion ensued after the incident and it was decided that it would change next tier. It's too late to change it now - we have already beein doing the same loot system and it would be unfair to others who had already followed the system. Hwired hated trying to figure out who was a main and an alt and how many loots people had already had and thought everyone should just be the same - mains pay EPGP for it, otherwise we roll. Aimei said that we had always had a main>alts rule for as long as we have been a guild. Madcow said that he had missed out on loot on his alt every week because of the rule but he never said anything because those were the rules but when we made this alts raid it was supposed to be fun and not getting loot ever is not fun. Kyjenn said that without the alts of main raiders we struggle to make this run work.
Every single bloody point was valid. I could see everyone was pushing for rolls, but it was really unfair for everyone who had already been on the receiving end of no loot because of being an alt, so to suddenly change it now would be crap. And they were right. We did struggle afterwards when people left the raid because of loot, and I could feel that this could be a problem for the rest of 6.1, but I wasn't going to change anything now. I agreed that I had made an error with that decision and that for 6.2 we would not do this again this way. We would make it free roll with a 1 or 2 loot max before you had to pass to others. And main raiders can EPGP the item they need.
I really should've taken Athanasy up on their offer to pug into our alts raids. None of them want to take any loot. Make my job a hell of a lot easier, that's for sure.
Loot is always one of those things that someone will always complain about. We've just ended up sticking with personal loot. Next patch personal loot will improve anyway, but everyone gets the same chance to get something and the majority of people who won stuff, won stuff they could use. Plus there are still the coins ... AND it makes a run much faster because you don't have to stop for ages doing rolls etc.
ReplyDeleteWe occasionally do a joint raid with another guild who do a type of basic need/greed roll .. but once someone has rolled need (for their current/main spec), if there is more than one person wanting it, they look at what everyone is currently wearing and give the item to the person for whom it is the better upgrade. In theory sounds great, however, you end up with that person who just came along to fill up the numbers, who doesn't normally raid, or hasn't made much effort with their gear prior to attending, getting all of the loot.
As we are a fairly casual guild, we have a lot of people that have a bunch of alts that are all valid raid alternatives .. some of course are just dps/dps, but we have quite a few who can cover two or more roles. I don't really know a lot about EPGP, but could you not just simply have something in place that would include all alts in a persons points? You could put in place a modifier for an alt, if you want to give mains a better chance of getting loot, however, if someone has had to switch from their main to an alt in order to cover a certain role, it seems unfair to punish them for that.
I'll see how this new loot system works when we do casual/alts runs again, but I may even open them up to outsiders to get some numbers going (and make new friends). In which case, rolls will have to be the thing.
DeleteOh how I hate loot drama. Destroys more guilds than anything else :-(
ReplyDeleteIf this is just a friendly casual/alt run, why not just use Personal Loot?
We did personal loot for a while and people complained saying they wouldn't have loot drama. But I knew better :P but personal loot is ok when everyone needs gear, not so great when people are looking for specific things. And the DE's are good for the guild bank. Thanks for visiting Wes! Added you to my blogroll :D
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