Blizzard Currently Plans on Group Loot Returning to Raid Content in Dragonflight

Dragonflight Posted 2022/07/14 at 11:21 AM by Squishei

Group Loot isn't Master LootWowhead: In a previous interview, you mentioned that master loot was something you wanted to do but was looking for the right implementation, which kind of was a change from ‘no’ previously. Any update to that?

Ion Hazzikostas: Yeah! I think I would describe it more as group loot rather than master loot. That’s the specific process of a single loot master allocating the drops, that’s actually in some ways some of the stuff we were looking to move away from back in the day. But moving away from personal to shared pool of loot, where you kill a raid boss, you work together with 15 or 20 or 30 people to do it, there’s 5 items on the corpse you can roll for those items, you can pass on them, you can trade them to your friends; that’s a world we think we want to be in again.

We’re still hammering out the details, but our current plan is to have raid bosses in Dragonflight work that way. This is a raid boss specific system. Dungeon loot is fine. We haven’t really heard people clamoring for the return of group loot in dungeons, and getting a bow from a chest at the end of a dungeon when a group has no hunter–but I think raids are uniquely a cooperative experience, they lend themselves to a cooperative loot allocation mechanism. And that’s the current plan. bringing master loot back was a long-term goal

Ion & Asmongold

So it's not that the team is necessarily ideologically opposed to this, it's just that there is a lot of tech problems and the dissonance. I think it was Antorus whenever this happened, just caused problems?

Yeah, we had our tools, our code, every assumption we made in how we build loot tables from 2018 onwards has gone in one direction, and now we'd need to just turn back around. There's a lot of questions to figure out also, we should also bear in mind that going back to group loot means you could have a bow drop with no Hunters in the raid, and sometimes that's a thing that will happen and that feels bad, but that's kind of ok - it has to be. The thing we can't have happen is a world where loot is still smart and if you stack a group with like 6 Warriors, you're only going to get Warrior loot and it's completely tradeable with no restrictions? That just kind of breaks everything, so we need to just figure out a middle ground going forward, but... that's something we want to do.

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Comment by Yeezus1kRip pugs sorry for those who still raidComment by Garebearthis is a major blow for the casual playerbase, hope you all love loot council where you have to suck the raid leads *!@# every week for lootComment by rezzykGroup Loot where everyone can roll on gear (are we talking one roll? or back to need/greed?) sounds horrific if you are running with any pugs. I'm unclear from those quotes if the option to do Personal Loot will still be around or if it's just Group Loot.Comment by dabone1337this is a major blow for the casual playerbase, hope you all love loot council where you have to suck the raid leads *!@# every week for lootComment by onefishbluefishIon says: "Group Loot isn't Master Loot"

Wowhead image: "Turn Master Loot on?"

smh my headComment by CerylaiRip pugs sorry for those who still raidComment by HtacidNo more will loot just be wasted because of personal loot. Group Loot as an option is a good choice. prompting for group loot is solid.Comment by dokeefe1986seems like a clunky implementation but better than nothing. i dont see why they couldnt just have the group loot pools be determined by the present specs just like personal loot currently does. that would eliminate the stupid example of a hunter bow dropping with no hunters present. doesnt seem like it would be that hard to me but what do i know.Comment by Hellboy999It only took a decade and vanilla - wrath classic to start getting back in the right direction.
Master loot is good for serious guilds and loot councils are still a thing in those, you trade all the loot to the loot council and they give the stuff out to the people that are most in need for it.
Personal loot is still a good thing for PuGs where you have no trust in the other members of the group.
Not a huge fan for Group loot, but I am taking the small wins.Comment by ThorWowHead"The thing we can't have happen is a world where loot is still smart and if you stack a group with like 6 Warriors, you're only going to get Warrior loot and it's completely tradeable with no restrictions? That just kind of breaks everything, "

I don't understand what is being "broken".... Some arbitrary and subjective principle about how loot should function behind a wall of RNG?

If raid groups can organize well enough to actually get loot to drop that helps ease the pains of RNG - then GOOD FOR THEM. RNG is bad enough, but it's as though Blizz wants to keep cramming it down the players' throat all because some random person thinks that's how loot should function.

Meanwhile tons of players would like a more direct approach to loot that helps avoid bad RNG issues.Comment by MrXtrmthis is a major blow for the casual playerbase, hope you all love loot council where you have to suck the raid leads *!@# every week for lootComment by Nyte1103Thank god, its about time its brought back. I cant wait to read on the forums of how people will say " ohh my item was ninjad " imagine hating group and master loot that much that you think youre entitled to items. xDComment by visconwowThey say it isn't master loot but it just is for guilds with 1 extra step. Everyone passes the loot to Raid leader and he assigns it outComment by SwayvThe people saying rip pugs/casuals, you’re hilarious. It’s almost as if you have complete control over what groups you join/raid with, complaining just to complain.Comment by afterrSo with 4 items that drop from bosses on mythic difficulty, you say it's ok to have items that can drop and no one can equip that item? Maybe just reduce the drop chance of an item to drop more than 1/2 times , but don't implement a thing where you can have random useless drops while using group loot. And can you actually provide a statistic of how many splits raids/ funnel raids there were in SL done and if. apart from the RWF teams, how many guilds actually did those? To see if the argument in the last statement is that valid. I think blizzard forgets that the majority of the guilds are in the 400+ world ranking bracket and they don't have 5 alts each and will not be able to take advantage of such a "smart technique"Comment by nosteam43Eh, still no ML, but at least that's better than "strictly personal loot and no exceptions" attitude we've had over the past expacs.Comment by WorgendeathRip pugs sorry for those who still raidthis is a major blow for the casual playerbase, hope you all love loot council where you have to suck the raid leads *!@# every week for lootComment by TiresomeRIP PUG lolComment by Nazamberthis is a major blow for the casual playerbase, hope you all love loot council where you have to suck the raid leads *!@# every week for lootComment by EdlarelAs long as it's opt in, I'm okay with it. I'm going to be quite upset if it's just how it is going forward, as I'm sure many others who raid casually in some form would be. They can't be considering dropping personal loot entirely, right? I guess we'll find out soon enough.

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