Personal Roll Loot Classic

Motivation

One of the biggest problems of WoW classic I can remember was Loot-Drama. Who should be entitled to what? Everyone has their own views of fairness and if you add all aspects of the game, such as: roles, off-specs, twinks, raid loyalty, character reroll etc. it can quickly become very complex.

Those who spend some time studying different loot systems will find out that each one comes with its own advantages and disadvantages. Searching for the right loot system, the “modern” WoW has evolved the proven “personal loot” system. There is a good article about “Personal vs. Master Loot for BfA”, which concludes that “Personal Loot” has only a very small effect on “Team Progression”.

Since there will probably be no “Personal Loot” in WoW – Classic, I decided to simulate the loot system based on “Master Loot”.

For those thinking of using a DKP system, I can highly recommend reading the following articles:
https://wow.gamepedia.com/Loot_system
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Saraid/DKP

Quickstart

• As raid or party leader, open the MasterUI via /prlm.
• Go to the ‘Instance’ tab, enter a name for the new instance, select the raid and click ‘Add Instance’.
• Select the newly created instance in the list above and click ‘Role Check’.
• If needed, confirm that missing players will be added from the group.
• When every player is ready, click ‘Invite’.
• If you now loot a boss, simply click the item in the ‘Roll’ tab.

How does it work:

• First, all Raid members have to be tracked with their equipment level. This is nothing unusual, since a player should not get an item twice.
• Then, for raid preparation, all players choose one or more roles for which they want to acquire loot in the upcoming raid instance.
• With this data alone, an instance invitation can now be made, in which all participating players receive a “personal loot list”, consisting of the items that indicate their upgrade status and correspond to their chosen roles. The order of the items in the lists is mixed once during the invitation (equally distributed).
• If an item is now dropping, only the players who are first in the “personal loot list” are allowed to roll the dice. If the item is nowhere in the first position or the players pass, then the players who have the item in the second position roll, and so on.
• The “personal loot lists” are now split into lists of different priority, shuffled separately and then concatenated, so that items with better priority are always before other items.
• Instances can be created with a custom priority (prio-1,…,prio-3) where each player can move a certain number of specific items to the top of their personal loot list.

In contrast to the conventional dice (/ rnd), the chance of receiving an item does not diminish as the level of equipment increases.

Advantages:

• It is quite simple and understandable.
• Rolling makes the process objective and free of arbitrariness.
• Both new and old Raid members have equal chances to loot.
• This makes it particularly suitable for groups with a highly fluctuating squad.
• Without consideration of previously collected points or successes, it can always be set up for a new raid.
• No competition and no race for most points. You take part in a raid and have the chance to get an item.
• No wasted or disenchanted items due to point reservation.
• It can be combined with other loot systems.
• Off-specs and twinks are integrated fairly.
• Players have no conditional advantages or disadvantages if they renounce an item.
• Basically, only the loot master would need a corresponding addon or tool to support the loot assignment.

Disadvantage:

• Raid commitment is not considered.

The reason for the reward of commitment is understandable and tends to be desirable, but the quantity and quality of the reward by means of points or items is doubtful. This loot system is not about finding the “right” player, because the premise is that there is no “right” player. You have to see the system more or less like a /rnd with a higher chance for good equipped players to get a specific item to compensate the higher chance for bad equipped players to get any item.

I am currently working on the development of this add-on to support the loot award and am grateful for any feedback.

FAQ:

Why not just take the obvious dice (/ rnd)?

The simple roll has one major drawback: the chance to get an item that you need is getting smaller and smaller as your equipment progresses. You pass for everything that you already have and then you also have to roll for the few items you still need with all the others in the raid.

Usage:

There are two UIs, for the master looter and the raid members. The member UI is optional to check the configuration of the master looter and not required for the loot assignment. To open the UI simply type in /prl /personal – /prlm or /personalmaster

• First, players need to be tracked with their equipment. Open the master UI and add the players in the first ‘Players’ tab. If you have already a group or raid, having no target while selecting the ‘Add Player(s)’ button will add all players in your group. (Note that you either need a target or a group to add players.)
• Then select the player you want to modify and check or uncheck their equipment progression. If you select an item, the item becomes grayed out, which signals to the addon that the player already has this item. Inspecting a player that was added to the list will scan the equipped items and automatically uncheck them to help with this process when the addon is first setup.
• Don’t forget to select one or more roles for the player.
• Added players are also automatically marked as ‘trial’, which means that they don’t receive certain items marked as ‘restricted’, indicated by a little star in the UI. It’s up to the raid leader to manually remove the ‘trial’ status from members.
• If everything is setup, switch to the ‘Instances’ tab and type in a name (e.g. MC1) under the ‘New Instance’ label and select a raid in the dropdown menu, then select the button ‘Add Instance’. The new instance should be available in the list above now.
• If you are the raid or group leader, you can select the ‘Role Check’ button in the ‘Instances’ tab to request the specialisation from each raid member. They can check the setup and communicate possible missconfigurations.
• Select the instance and click the ‘Invite’ button. You need to be in a group to do so. It is important to know that as soon as you do that, players do receive their personal loot list for that instance that will be fixed and cannot be changed. For the system to work, it is important that this list cannot be modified. You can only create a new instance and invite all players again to assign new loot lists.
• Selecting an instance in the ‘Instances’ tab will mark it as the active instance, thus the personal loot lists from that instance will be considered.
• Finally, if an item drops you can select it in the ‘Roll’ tab to print a list of players that can roll, split into different rounds of priority. There are two lists showing loot for the raid instance (on the left side) or the current boss drops (the top list). Selecting one item will also announce the roll order to members that they can see the roll order in their member UI.
• In addition to the roll order, players will notice an item roll dialog in the order they appear in the roll order, so they can directly inform the raid if they need or pass on an item.
• Some items can be removed by raid members themselves in their UI by clicking on the item they don’t need. This is allowed if they already have an item on the same slot for the current tier or higher (weapons are always removable).
• Players can also request the current settings done in the ‘Players’ tab from the group or raid leader so that they can step in as a replacement for the master looter. To do so, the raid member opens the master UI and presses the ‘Synchronize’ button, which will send a request to the current group or raid leader. This might take some seconds to complete.