Loot explained?

Community General Discussion
1

Can someone explain the loot system to me for retail WOW because as it stands I believe that it’s all centred around an algorithm that decides when and what you get so that Blizzard essentially have greater control over what is distributed and with the ultimate aim of having full control?

In Vanilla I believed the loot system was based around a fixed drop rate % so if something had a 5% drop-rate it didn’t change. Which I preferred. Yes you could have bad luck but you could also have good luck and get multiple items consecutively.

So what do you think?

Am I wrong about the current loot system? If so what’s your view?

I mean I’m seeing time and the same consistent patterns of loot drop in retail to the point where I feel it’s all controlled, which makes sense from a business perspective so fair enough - you don’t want everyone to be able to rush ahead, you want to control the loot/content and be able to line it up with the next expac/content, but in the end everything averages out.

1 Like
2

Something is weird about raid bosses dropping 2x the same item.

3

It is a very common fallacy to see systems or patterns in random events. Your feelings are most likely just that.

The two main differences between vanilla loot and current loot that make people feel less rewarded now are as follows:

  1. No master loot and dkp systems for distributing loot makes looting more random now, with less sense of control over ones destiny; and
  2. The last few expansions we’ve been showered in loot to a greater extent than now, which leaves us feeling like loot is scarse now.
1 Like
4

Yea I take that on board but I’m going also by experience and what I’ve witnessed first hand over the last few expansions.

For example I’ve 5 alts and during Legion and BFA I didn’t receive any loot on my newly dinged characters from world raid bosses until the third week and that has also followed suit on SL too but this isn’t just with me but my friends too most have had the same experience and most are facing the same patterns that I am and also just watching what loot is distributed on M+ and Raids runs also allows provides plenty of insight upon which to base my judgements. So just to highlight my point here, that’s 6 characters over 3 expansions doing 6 raid bosses per week for 3 weeks which works out at 12 attempts at loot per expansion, effectively 36 attempts in total and I got nothing but suddenly in week 3 they all get something and the same happening to my friends. Not to mention the multiple M+ and raids runs they’re doing now for nothing, coincidence?

On another note, being spammed loot that you don’t need isn’t really getting loot though is it? It’s more of a mask or way for the loot system to provide you with something in order to fulfil a created obligation (for example to implement the safety net or insurance policy for players so that they receive something once a certain threshold has been reached i.e. 6 bosses no loot).

It’s much different if you were getting spammed with useful loot and had to shard or vendor it all but that’s not the case, so in this case when you say we get showered with loot you mean we get showered with trash - it’s not the same thing.

I think what I’m trying to say is that the loot system feel very controlled right now, so much so that no one can get ahead of anyone else regardless of the work they put in because the loot system decides when and what you get.

Personally, I’m getting all the ‘missing’ epic conduits week after week to perfectly upgrade the remaining blue ones (strangely though the ones I need have been last to come - but I will just put that down to luck).

It’s as though the loot system understands what you have and what you need and will reward accordingly ONCE a threshold has been reached (usually time served).

In Vanilla it was a fixed % and that’s fair and that’s what it should be.

No convolution, no smoke/mirrors, no control just fair odds - Blizzard are losing players because of their increasing control over loot. Players know the system isn’t fair but they can’t prove anything because it’s all supposed to be luck but time will show as patterns reveal themselves and people will simply quit and Blizz can come up with a new excuse as to why the REAL loot is scarce (though it’s always been scarce so the idea that they have reduced loot is just a lie - it was always reduced they just filled in the blanks with trash loot).

Fair systems are just that and people like it more when they play under a fair system.

5

I just can’t work out what is going on with loot. My main char keeps getting Balance or Resto gear drops from opening chests or world quest hand ins, but my druid is Guardian specced (yes my loot selection is set on Guardian). I don’t raid or do dungeons, I just play for fun but it’s totally baffling when my Alt Hunter now has a higher ilvl than my main Druid even though the Hunter has only done half of the things the Druid has done in game.
It must be bad luck with the drops for my Druid but like I said, when he does get a drop, it’s not even the right specc!!

6

No, it’s the loot system. It’s basically set in a way to try and provide balance in terms of time served and time remaining (until next content). What I mean by that is that someone could have played since day one and farmed 24/7 all the M+ and raids they could, then 6 weeks later they start an alt and end up with the same gear in a fraction of the time because the loot system is ensuring that both characters are allowed to be a point X at time X - so you will most certainly find that the alt character has much more luck but in actual fact it’s just Blizzard fast-tracking the alt up to the current point.

It’s disgusting.

7

Your experience means very little. Your 36 attempts is far too small a sample size.

What you seem to imply is that the “controlled” loot system does not reward players in the first few weeks. However, it does. I know people who got loot in the first weeks, from world bosses. I have seen it with my own eyes. If I were a betting man, I’d wager that just as many percent of players killing a world boss gets loot week 1 as in week 5.

Your conclusion that the system is set up so as to not allow anyone to get ahead is, to be blunt, ridiculous. Compare your own progress to that of truly hardcore raiders, and you’ll see that they did get far ahead quite early. And then look at players far more casual than you, and see how far behind they were/are.

There is no denying that the gap between the lucky and the not-so-lucky in terms of getting ahead on ilvl has been reduced with the new gearing system, mostly due to removal of titanforging, but that is something that a huge part of the player base asked for for a long time and not some evil plot by the devs.

1 Like
8

Always happened; it could even drop two things that no one could even use!

9

I’ve seen some bosses drop 3 of the same item in the past expansions.

10

Nonsense. What ilvl a character reaches is a result of the content that character os played through and the ilvl of the characters it plays with. If you start a new character later in an expansion, it is boosted by friends (or others) that barely need any gear and such as for said alt character to reach great vault rewards early, well then of course it will catch up or be close to catching up very quickly. Most people will quite soon be able to do content on pretty close to same difficulty on alts as they do on mains, and therefore get quite similar rewards, and therefore catch up.

11

I guarantee you would get more/better loot in less time on your alt than it took to get on your main. Remember Blizz love their catch-up systems.

Scenario:

Your main starts week one plays for six weeks and does 100 M+ and 6 CN Raids and ends up with the ilvl 200…

Your alt starts in week three and in three weeks does 50 M+ and 3 CN Raids ends up with ilvl 200

All things equal I guarantee it - your alt will be so much ‘luckier’ than your main. I would happily wager all my gold (2mill) on it. Why? Because ilvl 200 is around where the loot algorithm is happy to allow people to be at week 6 and if you are behind this threshold by this stage then the loot system will help you ‘catch-up’ by increasing drop rate and quality so here is where you will find your luck mysteriously improve for a given period of time (basically until you have caught up to the threshold which in this hypothetical case is ilvl 200).

That’s how the PVE loot system works, imo anyway.

12

It’s basically master looting from classic, but the master looter isn’t a GM (guild master) handing loot to his in-game “GF”, instead it’s an AI master looter that swoops up 99% of the loot drops for each player and gives them the player the remaining 1%.

13

Why do you complain?

You get 35 anima per boss killed in raid.

You do it for 3 weeks,kill 9 bosses each week,without getting a single item,but you get super rewarded with 945 anima.

14

up to 200 ? sure

above 200 ? hell no.

you cannot catch up to 10 resets of GV. just like i cannot catch up to people who have been doing m+ 10-15 from week 1 since i just started to do +10 last reset , your alts will never catch up there.

but yes you can catch up to 197 in 1 reset if you push hard. thing is 197 is trash tier gear.

15

Yes only because GV is following/part of the set timed threshold for loot. In other words you’re only getting what you’re supposed to get for that time spent.

If Blizzard want to ensure that by week 4 no one can physically achieve 225 (even though it should be possible given M+ farming) then they can simply program to algorithm to ensure that this threshold will not be achieved/passed so no one will be hitting 225 regardless of how many hours they farm M+. Of course new thresholds are created to coincide with the progress of the game but for me that’s essentially how the loot system works now, Blizz have complete control over all loot distribution.

16

This topic was automatically closed 30 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.