Monday, February 20, 2012

Loot Scalping - the Scourge of LFR

I thought I'd take a moment to talk about one of the biggest problems in LFR: Loot scalping.

Back in the day (actually only a couple years ago,) bind on pickup really meant bind on pickup. If you rolled need on an item, or if your master looter handed it to you, it was yours and yours forever. This caused some problems, though. Let's say you meant to hit greed, but accidentally hit need - for example, let's say your Elemental shaman rolled on a piece of mail because it looked really great until you realized that that wasn't spell power and intellect there, it was attack power and agility (back then you'd find all four of those on gear.) The hunter who's been pew-pewing next to you really needed that piece, and you feel like a dolt. Basically, back then you didn't have any options other than to either vendor it, get a GM to transfer the item to your hunter buddy, or go enhancement to assuage your guilt (enhancement redeems all.)

Raid Leaders and twitchy clickers, and certainly GMs were very happy to see Blizzard implement a 2-hour grace period. If you looted a piece of BoP gear, you had two hours to decide if you really wanted it, or if you should just hand it over to someone you felt was more deserving.

Fast forward to LFR. With four items dropping from every boss and twenty five people needing, greeding, disenchanting, or passing, it's not particularly hard for someone to abuse the loopholes in Need+ and get something they don't really want, but that they think they can trade for something they do.

For example, Alice has got a 2-piece tier 13 set, let's say the shoulders and the pants. Let's say she's a rogue, so there's no reason for her to get a second token of the same type. Bob, the friendly death knight (I don't remember who shares tokens, but for this example let's assume Rogues and Death Knights do,) desperately wants new shoulders - he's been stuck with those crappy old 346 blues he got back when Cataclysm just came out. His tier shoulders drop, but Alice picks them up.

Later on, Bob gets the tier chest piece. It's a marginal upgrade off of his tier 12 piece. So Alice whispers him and says: "hey, I'll give you the shoulders if you give me the chest piece." They make the trade, and theoretically everyone's happy, right?

Here's the problem: As the population gets better geared, they should be making room for newer toons (whether they're newer players or up-and-coming alts) to gear up. As time goes on, and content gets older, more people should be able to gear up. And what if Bob hadn't gotten the chest piece, or perhaps he really needed that chest as well? Alice is holding those shoulders from him despite the fact that they're doing her no good. Bob could have a 2-piece bonus, but Alice is holding that away from him out of selfishness.

If we multiply Alice by every player in the raid, the problem becomes more apparent. Eventually most of the loot that's getting dropped is being taken by people who don't need it. We achieve a kind of stasis, or at the very least a slow drip of new gear for people who've just broken in, while highly geared players sit on top of piles of useless stuff they can't even shard if they're not an enchanter.

But there's a very simple solution to all of this: Get rid of the grace period in LFR. If and when the Need+ roll is refined (which is something I believe they've said they'll do with Mists,) there will be little worry that a piece of gear is going to someone who shouldn't have it because of their spec. If we get rid of the grace period, there will be no incentive to roll on stuff you already have (well, except to shard or vendor it, but hopefully people will realize that's especially dickish - or maybe they could implement a "no sharding or vendoring things you've rolled need on" policy.)

Need rolls should be made by people who intend to equip that individual piece of gear. If, for any reason, you aren't going to, don't.

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