Why is random loot disliked by some?

The only frustrating thing about WOW are the bots ruining everyone's experience. I think a lot of people like EQ early Expansions because you actually have to socialize with other classes to benefit. WOW is sooo rinse and repeat. Get quest, look at map, finish quest, turn in. Can solo all the way up and not talk to anyone about anything. It gets really boring. The problem I had with Michief was farming wasn't a thing anymore cuz items dropped anywhere. So the best thing to do is just group and grind. As a Necro it took away farming camps and getting loot that you knew dropped there. Made certain zones pointless cuz another zone of similar level would drop the item you need. Next TLP I hope is just Free trade Kunark start.

Different strokes for different folks. You literally described the thing that everyone seems to love about mischief as "the problem". Loot volume was increased and certain mobs still dropped fixed quest items, I don't think I ever heard someone complain that they couldn't get an item they needed. Worst case, it's free trade so you just sell the loot you got to buy the loot you want.

I am not strictly opposed to the mischief ruleset because it brings something different to the game. I accept it for what it is.

With that being said, there is a side of me that likes difficulty and progression. Let's be honest, mischief ruleset has removed that aspect of the game. You have some of the easiest bosses in the game dropping top tier loot. And, lots of it. In addition to the bloat of loot with the removal of no drop and the people who whip out a credit card and buy their glory with RMT.

There is pride and good feels that comes along with the struggle and challenge of a more difficult vanilla ruleset. You can't just buy your stuff on the auction house and to get the best loot in the game. You have to be part of a guild that at least somewhat has their together. And you have to progressively tackle the content. With that comes a certain amount of pride. Perhaps it is arrogance and snobbery too?

At any rate. Mischief is certainly fun as the loot pinata that it is. And, it has to be a tremendous cash cow for daybreak.

I would question anything about a TLP being difficult with how fast guilds beat all the content once an expansion unlocks. It seems the only thing that really matters is how long it takes to farm the gear they want from each expansion and guilds that split raid make that faster.

I don't mind random. What I minded was that the server was advertised as one thing. But because the Devs have a fundamental lack of understanding on their own game (even in what is possibly the single most well documented expansion there is) the server they delivered is not what was advertised.

The server was advertised as raids of similar level will drop eachothers loot table randomly. In no way shape or form, could any reasonable argument be made that a lvl65 group target mob in plane of nightmare, is the same or similar level to plane of time phase 4 bosses.

You want to make all of the elemental planes or portions of them, and time on the same table. Great makes sense. Is in line with the advertisement of this server.

You want everything to drop everything, and muddy the loot tables to an absurd degree? Not that fun killing Quarm and Elemental planes and getting things that we'd sell to a vendor. Or in some cases *literally* nothing drops except parchments. Which is kind of omegalawl.

It's harder for Krono farmers to make money on a server where people can actually get stuff themselves without huge raids.

But, that got nerfed now so the Krono farmers can be happy again.

It's not that I dislike or like the Mischief ruleset as a whole, but it definitely has presented a unique set of pros/cons. Overall it's been very enjoyable and allowed me to have gear quality that I've never had before when it was still relevant.

The biggest downside for me is that the actual raids I'm doing have been less fulfilling. No longer is the goal to strive for end-expansion bosses, but spreadsheet out what are the easiest bosses we can kill that share the best boss' loot tables. Most raid nights are spent speed-running mid-tier PoP content, having only really seen the elemental planes targets once this TLP (with the exception of fire and water minis). That's really the only thing that feels bad to a degree.

Have I been having fun? Yes. Do I like this ruleset? Yes. Would I play this ruleset again? Nah. It's a fun loot pinata "oh my god look what gear we all have" ruleset, but it's not creating any cool memories like even Phinigel TLP created.

They ARE of a similar level. They didn't say similar tier. Just level.

Hobgoblin Anguish Lord - level 75.

Phase 4 Time Gods - level 71.

You will find people on these forums that dislike everything. They complained when SOE gave 500 free Station Cash a month because they had to log in to claim it. They will complain of something is A and and not B and the exact same people will complain if it's B and not A. I have come to the conclusion that some people just like to complain.

Everyone that I have spoken to seems to love the random loot as well as the free trade aspects.

Pretty sure it is impossible for Quarm to drop nothing but parchments. Everything on his table drops something other than parchments.

Guess this is just another example of different strokes for different folks. I love it that Quarm can drop junk. Is Quarm really so hard that he needs to always drop amazing loot? He doesn't feel any harder than Mith Marr. We certainly never struggled to kill any of the mobs in any of the zones. Everything died on the first try, and ever subsequent week they all die in one pull.

Or is it just a memory of difficulty that makes you feel that the Elemental and Time tiers should be lumped together? Or would you rather things just weren't diluted? Mischief is "action that annoys or irritates". It wouldn't be worthy of the name unless you got some duds some of the time.

I didn't mind the random loot so much--that was kind of fun. What I didn't like about Mischief (left in Velious) was the super abundant nature of loot. It really trivialized things, and well left me bored when everyone and 17 alts were all decked out. I wouldn't mind random loot again. What I'd suggest as a hybrid is keep random for group content (but just one item), and for raid, one item from normal table and then random from there (for however many items the boss normally drops). I'd be interested in something like that. I was okay with the increased rare spawns too. I think that's still plenty of extra bennies without overkill.

When they first announced the loot concept on Mischief I thought - no way I'll be interested. After trying it, I love it.

Might actually make it harder to go back to 'standard' loot. I love the fact that good items can just drop anywhere.. well within a defined 'bucket' anyway. To me - this really derails those bot groups that like to lock down a spawn for certain items... because those 'certain items' don't necessarily drop off only one mob here.

I love the server rules. I am far better geared than I ever have been on any server in the past. But it does beg the question. Is it because of the server rules, or is it because I have far more time to raid these days, than in years past? It could be either, it could be a combination of both. Really, it doesn't matter. I am having a ton of fun.

Resonate with lots of comments on this thread, and I'll mainly comment on Random loot since it is the OP's question, but my general feelings overall:

- Random Loot is a cool idea. Biggest disconnect seems to be mobs being placed in to "buckets" that just don't make sense. Typically the difficulty of the mob vs the reward. To clarify, I'm ok with Shade dropping Time Loot, but it is just so inconsistent, especially between expansions. This would have been like the Servitor of Luclin or Lodizal dropping Tier 1 or 2 loot. I think they just need someone with more intimate knowledge of these expansions to assist with the "bucket" implementation. PoP is the worst so far in terms of "Why is this mob in this bucket?", at least when compared to the precedent set from the first few expansions. I'm also not a huge fan of implementing the buckets in such a way that the higher end raids are simply not worth doing in terms of time/risk vs reward. I love that lower tier content remains relevant and offers an avenue to obtain higher end gear, but I think it needs to be balanced better so that it still feels worthwhile to slog through long raids and still get aptly rewarded(Vulak, Time/Quarm are the biggest offenders here so far). Hopefully today's patch helps with that, we'll have to see.

- Quantity/Abundance of loot is just too high. I know some will disagree, and its hard to "nerf" something like this at this point, but if they were to do this ruleset again, they should consider perhaps a single additional item instead of named dropping 4+ items and raid bosses dropping 3-4 full corpses worth of loot.

- Free trade is great and will be hard to ever play a normal server again! However it does have the side effect of group loot becoming worthless even quicker as expansions progess. Compounded of course with the abundance of loot just makes it even worse. Within a week of a new expansion I'm already leaving all group-named loot on the corpse.

It's not fun going through all the pop raids 1 time and then being restricted to potime once a week.

How is that fun?

Neglecting 90% of the expansion's content because the loot isn't worth it.

That is the opposite of fun.

This server is fun.

I enjoy doing every single bit of raid content from grummus to time

it's all fun.

My perspective is from someone who played on Agnarr, Selo and now Mischief while playing live content. As with all opinions feel free to ignore it.

98% of all the PoP gear dropping is meaningless within months. Complaining that loot is flowing is absurd. I think people trying to sell a single item for 10+kr at a time are insane. Why do people want to empower these types of people? Crank the loot up another couple notches so I can deck out even more boxes.

If you think you are getting too much loot you need to look at your loot more closely. The rare items are still rare. Shift your focus from collecting your BiS set and work towards your long term goals for the server. In luclin era my main focus was collecting a braclet of the shadow hive to shrink my group as a lifetime use item. 2nd was a ring of immobilization. No matter if you're spending dkp or straight kr for upgrades think to yourself how long does this truly help me? Is it a stat upgrade or something that might make my gaming more enjoyable? For PoP it's about collecting those long term clickies that last for years like Songblade, TA, enchanter slow stick etc. The sucker play is to give in to those +20kr sellers for +4 Hsta gear. Come on now, be better humans.

If the server makes it past the level 70 deadzone without a better ruleset tlp offering it will be neat to see. Right now in the current state it is a wonderful place to gear out characters very easily with an incredible level of gear that most toons would never have been able to attain. I've been enjoying rolling through content with a small group of friends while being able to share and swap around drops we can see our group climb in power week by week.

That is twisting logic a lot and I don't think it takes much effort to determine that they don't want the loot from some of the harder raids in an expansion to come from some of the easier raids. And it should be noted when comparing difficulty you also want to include what is needed to unlock those raids as well.

The idea of random loot server is to do all the raids, not just the top end stuff.

You have had 20+ years of only doing the top end raids for the best loot while neglecting everything else because it's not worth it.

Also you have the option of playing on a non random server if you like.

Furthermore doing a lot of the other raids with smaller numbers is MORE of a challenge than doing potime with a full raid.

As a grouper I love the random loot, it has opened up a lot of lesser used zones that used to drop undesired loot, now you have a chance of getting decent loot off the beaten track. I've enjoyed playing in zones I wouldn't usually visit.

For me it was the overflow of loot that killed the mischief excitement, and I was really looking forward to a free trade tlp. I might have been ok with the random loot, in smaller buckets, but dumping tons and ton of loot for next to no effort made this a super casual server. I played a warrior to level 10 and equipped him with raid gear, just selling pelts. Logged out and back to Mangler.

If theres no effort, or competition, there's no fun. Might as well be one of those stupid railroad rpg's where you just click to win, and it feeds you more and more dopamine, but no sense of accomplishing anything.