Suggestions concerning the raid loot distribution system

[Jaeifer]

Should this belong into another topic of the forum I would appreciate if a moderator can move it over. Looking at the forums structure I found this place to be most befitting but if I am mistaken I deeply apologize.

Prologue

Before reading this I want to make sure to bring to your awareness that while I might quote examples from my own experience the conclusions I'll try to draw have an improvement for the entire playerbase in mind and are in no way intended to be interpreted as what's coloquially referred to as "whining". The players that raid in the recient raid contents of every patch are probably in unison that the loot system needs a workover and this is just one of a few suggestions I whipped up that could at least make the situation a bit more bearable.

An Example of what can go wrong

Our raid group works hard on clearing the current raid content (The Final Coil of Bahamut) - let it be farming crafted gear and melding it, capping on poetics every week or supplying the party with various potions and meals. Many other groups are doing the same obviously.

We've cleared T10-12 so far and are looking to work on Turn 13, outside of guaranteed drops like Carboncoat, Carbontwine and the Encrypted Tomestone we recieved 18 Dreadwyrm gear items, however...

- 5 Maiming and 2 Striking Gearpieces have dropped while we neither have a Dragoon or Monk in our group.
- 3 Gearpieces have already dropped repeatedly, including another Maiming gearpiece. While one of the two serves limited usefulness, two of the three are yet again useless to the group in any way or shape.

This already makes only 10 of 18 looted items, more than gets distributed in a week, over the course of 4 weeks, in any way useful to our partys progression.

I'm sure this has happened to other groups as well in a smaller or greater scope and the most irritating part about the situation is that the only remedy people have is to wait a whole week in which you can't enjoy these battles anymore until the next lockout only to have a slight shot at a better drop.

While I don't ask for a loot wonderland, I'd like to present a few possibilities that at least give the group a second chance or more variety to progress.

Before we dive into the suggestions

These suggestions are only really worth considering while a weekly lockout is issues on the mentioned content. My motive for bringing these suggestions to the table is that Final Fantasy XIV advertises itself with the Armory System that allows every class to be played on a single character. While you can master all crafters and gatherers it is impossible to vary much on classes you progress with in the current raid/gear tier. Raid groups very commonly require you to invest your Allagan Tomestones of Poetics into the class you're raiding with and since it can sometimes take weeks over weeks for any item to drop for some classes it often results in having to buy more Poetics items for one class than you really need, making it very hard to get poetics to spare for your other classes and also makes raid compositions very stiff as players are limited to the one class they could afford the token gear for so far even if they could bring the skill in other classes to the table as well if they only had the gear to support it.

Suggestion #1 - A Reloot System

Once per cleared turn, once the loot list has been generated, the party leader can elect one of the two gear drops for a reloot, should all party members agree with the leader's proposal, another treasure chest will appear which shares the loot table from the relooted chest and can contain anything but the item that was initially relooted. Once relooted theres no option to reloot again nor reloot the other treasure coffer as well.

The following rules would apply:
- The party leader may only select one of the two items for a reloot.
- The party needs to vote in absolute unison to accept a reloot. Should a single party member decline the proposal, the regular loot will be distributed.
- After a failed reloot, the party leader may not propose a reloot on the other item. The classic 'Need or Greed' system will then be carried out as usual.

This would give the party a second chance to obtain something that is useful for anybody while still making progression not too much faster and keeping a decent amount of RNG involved.

Suggestion #2 - A Loot Selection System

Discarded as being too similar to the above suggestion.

Once a turn has been cleared, instead of generating 2 gearitems in the loot list, 4 items get generated instead. However prior to the distribution per need and greed, the party issues 2 votes per party member on which 2 of the 4 pieces should be kept for the need and greed and which items should be discarded prior. The discarded items can not be claimed by anyone while the other two items then get distributed over the already existing system.

This way the party can select which of the items are more useful to the raid and while this might cause agony for a player or two if 4 perfectly wonderful items should appear they can rest in knowing that it shouldnt be too soon until they can issue their vote to claim the item the next time. Since most of the enhancement items usually go to DPS to meet the DPS check requirements of new turns this could serve as a system to help Healers and Tanks also get a little something every once in a while to sense progression as well.

Epilogue

First off, thanks for reading. If you have any suggestions yourself or would like to improve on what I brought to the table you are very welcome to reply to this thread and share your thoughts on the issue.

[Amelia_Pond_Behemoth]

I think the reloot idea shouldn't be majority, but unanimous. Can you imagine the poor sap in PF who finally sees his desired item drop, only to have 6 members from the same FC vote for reloot, which passes?

[Jaeifer]

I think the reloot idea shouldn't be majority, but unanimous. Can you imagine the poor sap in PF who finally sees his desired item drop, only to have 6 members from the same FC vote for reloot, which passes?

We're holding the same discussion on reddit to increase the amount of people that can refine a potentially good idea to a really good one and already established that reloot should only occur in unison - I should've updated that there as well. Thanks for the heads up!

[Nikraaa]

I'd rather have a token system than relooting or picking drops tbh.
Something like an allagan token collected after each boss kill which would allow you to buy a gear piece dropping from a boss you already killed.

Let's say something like 8 tokens for a small part (accessories/belt/shield) 12 for a medium (gloves/head/boots) and 16 for a bigger one (chest/legs)

Ofc weapons wouldnt be buyable since you can already get poetics ones.

This system would allow you to overcome the RNG and be quite fair imo (2-4 times a full FCoB clear for a part). The main point would be that you can only buy parts dropping from boss you already have killed

[Grotesque]

I like the way it is now. Opening the chests are the best moments of every raid night

[Sanzei]

I believe the current loot system is fine. Please do not change anything.

People who want it to be easier should just man up and not expect everything get served on a silver platter.

[Jaeifer]

I believe the current loot system is fine. Please do not change anything.

People who want it to be easier should just man up and not expect everything get served on a silver platter.

Sorry, but I think as someone who doesn't even have the Second Coil of Bahamut cleared at this stage you don't really have much to contribute as you don't seem to be aware how much work there is behind trying to clear the Final Coil of Bahamut with our current gearstate only to be "rewarded" with loot that isnt equippable by any of the attending players classes. Also if you would've given proper thought to what I proposed you would realize this doesnt serve anything on a "silver platter", especially with how properly challenging it is to clear the Final Coil of Bahamut at the current state.

[Sanzei]

We are on t9 atm so no I'm not at FCoB yet but so what? I have plenty of endgame experience from other MMO's. If you want a real pain in the ass you should have experienced vanilla wow endgame where you have 40 ppl in one raid fighting over the drops, and even then it wasn't too much. People who complain about this are the people who want to be prepared to hit the new content immediately but do not want to spend the effort to actually get the loot. Stop being a bunch of loothungry scrubs.

[Grayve]

Well, at fan fest they did say that a token type system would be coming for heavens ward raids. Details to be determined... Please look forward to it!

[Ellatrix]

We are on content that isn't behind a lockout but so what?

I think I found the problem. It took me over 30 weeks to get my last drop in SCoB.

As the above poster said, they did mention some kind of token system for 3.0.