Is the new LFR loot system working for you?
I'm not, by and large, a huge fan of LFR. Most of this isn't really due to the raids themselves, but to the fact that as a DPS I generally feel like I have to wait an eternity for that queue to fill up, especially if I wait until the end of the week to run the thing. But I like seeing the fights, and I like beating things up. I like getting loot.
Unfortunately, that last statement doesn't really happen very often. I've gotten a bare handful of pieces out of LFR, but most of the time my reward is simply gold, and the valor I get at the end of the run. That seems to be the case for most players -- after each boss kill is a litany of "Oh no, not gold again, I never get anything from here." But then I started thinking about it, and what exactly that new loot system has done for LFR raiding.
Oddly enough, it's changed it in a significant manner.
Doing LFR for Dragon Soul was kind of a chaotic mess. Loot worked the same as it did in regular dungeons -- the boss would be looted, players would see what was on the boss, and roll need on items they wanted. Except that you'd invariably get the group of people who would come along solely to roll need on gear that their buddy wanted, so they could hand it off to them after the fight. Or you'd get the people that would roll need and then offer to sell the item to the highest bidder. Or you'd get the people that would roll need not because they needed the gear, but just to be a jerk about it.
In short, it sucked. More time was spent arguing about who got what loot and who really needed it than actually killing the bosses themselves. Loot drama was back and at an all time high -- and so Blizzard rolled out a new looting system for LFR that went live with Mists. Now, nobody sees the loot. It's simply doled out via roll, and nobody knows what anybody else happened to get. There is simply a roll, and the game decides who gets the loot. Players can use Elder Charms of Good Fortune to then roll again if they'd like to, and see if their chances improve.
I never really "got" how this new system works from a mathematics standpoint -- math is not my strong suit at all. Big Bear Butt just finished up a post that explains that loot mechanic in a way that is much easier to understand for those like me that are not mathematically inclined.
I told them, "The way loot in LFR works, you kill a boss, the game does two loot rolls for you. The first roll determines if loot your class and spec could have used would have dropped at all, and then the second roll is to see if you would have won a need roll for that loot when competing with others. If yes to both roll checks, you get loot. If not, you get gold."
Okay, this makes perfect sense. The way I had always looked at the new looting system was vaguely similar -- in the old LFR system, we looted the boss and saw what was on his loot table. In the new loot system, we don't loot the boss and see the loot. The game determines what was on that loot table. In the old LFR system, everyone rolled to see who got what, and one person came out on top for a piece of gear. In the new system, everyone is rolling -- but the game decides who gets what, and we don't see that decision.
In other words, the chances to get loot are exactly the same in the old and new versions of LFR. The only thing that's changed is what we see on our screens -- and the fact that we can roll twice on one piece of gear due to a coin mechanic, if we want to. And now our litany of "Why did the mage roll need on cloth gear that was for a healing priest," and "WTS tier token, PST," has been replaced with ... nothing.
We have no loot to complain about. We have no loot distribution to complain about. We have no fellow players to complain about. In fact, once all that loot drama nonsense was removed and swept out of sight, out of mind, the only thing we have to complain about is that we aren't getting the loot that we wanted -- which was the case in the old LFR system as well. But we can't complain that someone else got it, all we can do is complain that we didn't.
So we gripe about gold being the only thing we get out of the LFR, because it's all we have to gripe about. Now that I look at it that way, it honestly seems kind of funny to me that I've been griping in the first place. After all, the majority of the time in Dragon Soul, all I got was gold. But I wasn't fixated on only getting gold, I was fixated on that jerk over there who just took that piece of gear from that other perfectly nice player.
The jerk is gone. He has been replaced by an unfeeling machine. The machine does not care about your opinion. The machine does not gloat at your misfortune. ... I think I'm okay with that.
What do you think of the new loot system? Has it made LFR raiding easier? Do you miss the old Dragon Soul system of looting? And how about those Elder Charms -- fun to use, or waste of time?
