Best Type Of Loot System?

Resurrecting our old LS, got the site up and running, shell made, etc.

I've been pondering this for awhile now, but I'd like some opinions on what you guys consider the best and fairest loot system.

So far I'm considering members set up a Main and Secondary priority. But what snags me here is how to limit this to prevent abuse/lootwhoring. What should I do when someone wishes to change their priorities?

Open to other ideas/systems/suggestions, I just want to make this a very fair system and keep everyone happy.

PS: I'd rather not use a DKP oriented system if I dont have to :/

It's pretty hard to quantify anything that has to do with Abyssea into a loot system because anything a linkshell can do, you can pretty much solo/duo.

Helpful post is helpful. And thats not the point of this ls or this thread, thanks.

EDIT: nevermind, not gonna bother with this ***again.

well , when i had my ls I used a point system (not dpk).

people earned points for attendance and they bid on the items (so everyone could decide how many points they want to spent on which item and when), people who join events very often of course get items before people who join rarely (it's quiet a join,grab item, leave ls prevention), after 6 months i had a constant ls-member-base, who were friendship related, people passed so other people can get items too, but it takes a while to build up such a playerbase.
I think the friendship is the most important thing in a ls, and it's more comfortable as this greedy-elitists-ls's, where u have to be on every event and if u mess up (well ***happens ^^) , then u'll be punished.
i really miss those days and my mates :/

however, good luck with your ls ^^

Personally the only loot system I liked was a benevolent dictatorship. Literally, someone distributes loot based on their opinion loosely based off player's playskill, jobs/most used jobs, and of course attendance. This makes it so new members aren't completely screwed by old members having more DKP and you want have to deal with them being unhappy and rage-quitting.

For something like Limbus, I liked a priority system based off what you want and attendance. Skip a farming run, bumped down a slot. Example: Homam Legs - Ninian#1, Nightfyre #2, Gradd#3, Captaincrunch#4, Uzugami #5. Nashira legs: Gradd#1, Nightfyre#2, Ninian#3. if two homam legs drop nini and night gets, if one just Nini, etc. Say Nini misses a farm run, Night is #1 and she's #2 for homam, and #4 for Nash (even though no one is there currently)

Always used the #1 #2 #3 jobs, where #1 would get an item over someone who's #2 or #3 and always seemed to work great for us at least

Like a 1man Loot Council? xD


By the way thanks for the input guys :D

Everyone knows 99% of Abyssea is duoable, but the thing that makes a linkshell helpful is the bodies to hold the key item sets for faster and more efficient results. This being said what I came up with for our abyssea linkshell was this:

Gather somewhere as a linkshell
Random
Highest person picks something: ("+2 Mnk Feet, need 4 more stones of vorage" or "Zelus Tiara" etc.)
Work on that and any stones of voyage that you get to drop, or first of the item would go to the random winner.
Once complete re-random, repeat.

Some common sense rules we implemented:
Let someone know if you need to miss. 2 misses w/o notification will no longer be able to run with the linkshell.
You have to wait until everyone has won the random 1 time before you can random again (order)
People who are not on time and keep everyone held up don't get to random. (We set a time of 5 minutes after gather time and were strict on this. If you were not here then you did not get to random this time.

Upside:
This allows multiple ppl to hold key items.
Lots of freelot stuff.
Quick turnover as 4-6 ppl can do multiple nm's at once, and be called where needed.

Downside:
Have to wait on the list to go through before getting a dedicated "run" (with 4-6 ppl you can go through a list in a night if not twice)
Requires trustworthy people who actually will show up for each other.

As I'm sure other downsides to this are relevant I can't remember any more at the moment. This worked very well for our group. As most people were able to finish a full +2 set within a couple weeks. (only meeting 2-3 days a week)

Whatever you decide, good luck.
And as I always thought, if you are in a linkshell you are in it for the fun of working with others obviously, so what's the fun in duoing everything? xD

^ THIS THIS THIS! This is the point of the LS I'm creating!


Thanks for the input Rebo :)

Mhm, with the right person it works great. Of course if your leader is corrupt/succumbs to favoritism the whole system falls apart, but if you're able to, great system. D:

Trickle down economics.

Thats how I run my ls everyone is happy so far, used to be only salvage for 3+ years now its nearly all endgame events. No points system at all not even ls website, you lot what I say and the endgame for the day is whatever I decide and put in lsmes the night before. Generally I wont discriminate against those who have made mistakes or performed pooly in said event.

The reason I decided to do this was due to an old dyna shell who had a simple set of rules at first glance it would seem they would work :

- 1 point per run
- comment 1 piece of af an recieve that af then lose all points
- person with most points if 2 ppl have it commented gets it 1st
- any af not commented by anyone goes freelot to anyone with more than 1 run attendance

So with a system like this you got 2-3 blms all in a race to stay ahead on points for sorcerers belt unable to lot anything else, get some people join shell for 1-2 runs and comment melee cape which you cant take until it goes freelot or lose your spot for sorc belt, despite having 300 points/runs.

Yeah I hate points systems. I also prefer systems that encourage better play. Not saying dock people for making mistakes, but if you know the leader judges based on skill, and say you (a BLM) and another BLM joined around the same time and have similar attendance, you KNOW the better of the two is getting the first sorc belt, so it encourages better gameplay. If the two are roughly the same skill-wise/everything else-wise, they both lot the item.

Basically for Dynamis, stuff that's good is restricted lotting, garbage is freelot if yoy have the job/all freelot.

I agree that this sort of system works best for the long term health of a linkshell. Ideally this system means the gear goes to people who know how to use it, will use it, and deserve it. However it finds itself vulnerable to accusations of favoritism. Look at how many people are disgruntled about larger linkshells because they believe they are structured around gearing "the leader's e-gf and anyone else who sucks him off."

As a result point based systems such as DKP evolve to make the loot system more transparent and predictable. However this is achieved with trade-offs. While you can always make additional rules to modify a points system, like attendance requirements and such, working within this very framework imposes a lot of limitations. There is no point to a points system when you overrule it all the time, so by default that means sometimes you don't have the freedom to make the best decision and have to watch gear get wasted.

As someone who has experimented with both types of systems, I prefer DKP myself, with a minimum attendance policy and a soft job priority (it can be overridden by point/attendance differential). For some exceptionally rare items I impose other criterion (for example, Defending Ring requires at least 6 months tenure and is prioritized for A-List tanks)

DKP puts a lot of control into the hands of the members and they can choose their poison to save up and scrimp to stay in the lead for that rarer more expensive they want or grab those lower tier items that come up. That makes it a lot easier to deal with people who are upset about being passed up. I can point directly to their attendance, their points, etc. and say it's not my fault they aren't in the lead for items.

Another important aspect of DKP is that it creates a paper trail for everyone. People tend to see the worst in their competition and the best in themselves. A DKP system lets me show others WHY they got beaten besides my judgment -- they went to more events, they put in the effort to camp long window HNMs, they farmed pop items for the LS, etc. This lets people know how and how much to step up if they want to compete for items.

I also think that a leader's reputation as a fair leader and a linkshell's reputation as a fair place is very important for a linkshell's long term health. People quit, life happens. Recruiting is important for any linkshell no matter how big. And on the other side, people are always going to get disgruntled and leave, or bad people will get kicked. I think a DKP system makes it easier to show that the linkshell is corruption free.

Favoritism is real bad :/ I seen lots of rage/breaks because 2 or more people had the same attendace and helped equally at events and w/e then an item drop's and Mr 50% attence gets it :(

I gotta agree with the people saying someone handing out the gear is the best course of action for a linkshell. DKP systems favor people that have been in the linkshell forever, and they'll get so many pieces of gear before any new person would have a fair shot. This could be unfair because the old person could be just using their high points to show up to events they only need stuff from. Without some human element to the system, a DKP system can be very flawed.

I was talking to someone about this not to long ago and he said, "If you can't trust your leader to hand out gear fairly, why are you even in that linkshell?" Gotta say Hev, I couldn't agree with you anymore :p

The leader would have to be strong for the dictatorship to work. I'd suggest having peoples attendance viewable online, and possibly have notes from runs. Example: x player just afk'd the entire run. Or grade peoples performance (would be difficult to do by yourself). That way you'd have stuff to site, and you'd be able to explain why so and so got x item over them. Keeping records of desirable loot obtained would be good. For example (back at 75 cap etc) if someone got DChap, they're NOT going to get ***-armlets any time in the near future.

Yeah that ***is *** awful. :( I refuse to be in LSes like that, or "farm *** leaders relic" linkshell.

Seriously, have you seen the pic of the guy with an aegis for his 22 pld?
If that ***'s not from mog bonanza you know he had to do some serious manipulating to go about getting that if he had help from his ls

I believe I saw that awhile back >.> Ridiculus.

Thanks so much for all the input and explaining all this, guys. Really helpful :D

This works really well but then the onus is completely on the leader to be impartial and fair. My two best experiences with linkshells were in shells that ran like that.

Oh god seriously? I hope that's bonanza'd otherwise gdamn. I mean there's a large supply of idiots to manipulate, but that doesn't mean you should @___@. Hell, when I joined my first Dyna shell, I didn't realize the shell-holder was making a few mil Gil per run until later <___<;

Most DKP systems have a attendance requirement to prevent that member who goes lootwhore and starts skipping events and only coming to point-bomb on runs they stand to profit from.

However the better question is, do you still want a skipper in your LS? My view of the LS and playtime is that if you join my LS, then your playtime is LS time. That's your membership due in exchange for membership in an organization that can do far more together than you can do alone or with your 2-3 best friends.

Repeatedly skipping and trying to game the system means you aren't an asset, you just suck up gear from others that we will never see when you resume skipping. That means I don't want you here.

I personally favor this kind of system as well. The hardest part, of course, is finding a leader who isn't power-hungry. This also works best with small linkshells. In larger shells, it's much harder to keep everyone happy without the leader looking like he's picking favorites.

edit: The other system I like most is a non-leader type. No leader, just a group of friends who get things done based on suggestions and respect for each other.

We cant be 100% sure, you might be right this might be the case, but a lvl 22 paladin in my honest opinion can earn an aegis still. Especially now at 90 with the changes in dynamis. He isnt needing that many hours from the ls for help towards completing the shield, 1 jueno run will get you 2 shields you need, 1 ram nm, 1 goublefauppe and 1 animated shield the rest is soloable. But you cant be sure he has gotten it due to manipulation if you dont know all the details.

@Gredival: DKP (even with an attendance policy) still doesn't factor in new players. Example: new RDM joins shell. They're always in RDM and they're amazing at it. Everyone and their mother has rdm, and they have 9000 dkp. This poor RDM is never getting a chapeau in a DKP-oriented system.

@Kira: Yeah, the leader has to basically be perfect. It's not that hard to cite reasons why you gave someone something,and usually the person who asked will understand. Unless ofc you actually pulled favoritism.

I've never been in a linkshell where I trusted the leader enough to make completely fair choices in regards to who gets gear. There's always going to be favorites among leaders, and they will be the ones to get the gear even if they aren't the best at their jobs or show up most often or whatever.

One of my friends was on a limbus ls where people earned points for attending chip/coin farming runs, then if they bid on homam or nashira, all their points were wiped. That way no one could hoard up hundreds of points and new members could have an equal chance. That may not work so well for things like abyssea where you can go for actual gear every run instead of having a few farm runs in between gear runs, but something similar might be able to work. It allows the people who attend most to get what they want first because of the points, but it allows new members a fair chance because all points are wiped upon receiving an item so old members can't gather huge numbers of points.

not to say that dkp systems aren't useful, but it's not like you can't evaluate a "skipper" without using one.

In reply to Liela,

But then an old member could get hard done by in that system, look above at dyna example.

Well to me this is about calibrating your system appropriately. I tend to find that if you make items cost enough and keep DKP inflation down, players won't want to spend DKP on jobs they don't use. The flip-side of this is that no one will ever *** bid on WHM items no matter how much they are WHM.

But I agree DKP systems impose constraints and that prevents you from adapting to situations. As I said in my very first post, part of deciding to use a DKP system is resigning yourself to knowing you'll see a few wasted items.

I just believe that with the right foresight and adjustment you can limit the drawbacks. For instance I've seen a lot of wasted Chapeaus, but I've never had a problem where I just couldn't get a deserving RDM one at all.


Sure, but I was merely responding to someone bringing up the skipper as the Achille's Heel issue with DKP. Just pointing out that you can get rid of skippers with a DKP system in place.