People who ninja for their companions

People like to argue this topic but at the end of the day if the companion did not clear the instance then they should not be eligible for loot.

Players do X dps/healing, while companions do Y dps/healing.

X > Y

(this is for 99.9% of players who are honestly playing the game, pressing buttons
, etc. Do you agree?)

Therefore, upgrading players first better serves the community. The community ity as a whole does more dps/healing.

This is the most basic way I can express it.

Without taking into account variables for individual player capability (some players are legitimately not very good at optimal use of their class' abilities), your argument potentially falls apart, as there may be instances in some cases where a companion's output exceeds a player's. I've frequently found this with starting characters, where someone would be busy on one mob while their companion takes out a couple of others, then come and helps out the player. It's what they're programmed by BioWare to do, but it points out a simple inefficiency: with variable output from the different classes and variable capability from different players, it's hard to set up a simple algebraic equation to shore up your point.

You can't appeal to a service to the community at large since most players aren't taking part in the full macrocosm of community on their server, much less the game as a whole. They're taking part in microcosms of it that are often quite split apart from one another. One night they'll run some Flashpoints with PUGs, the next night they'll do a guild run, the following night they're off doing solo questing, and might possibly group with up to 3 other players for a non-instanced Heroic zone. The only recurring group in this is their guild, where disagreements on loot distribution are much less likely to begin with, as they're unlikely to be part of a guild whose loot distribution method they personally disagree with.

We go into group content to assist each other in downing bosses, but we then roll on gear for ourselves. For some players that includes companions, for some it doesn't, but the very existence of an impartial loot system shores up the point I just made: we're each rolling to improve our own gear. We won't roll on something that doesn't provide some manner of appreciable improvement to our play experience, whether that's because our class can't use the item, it won't get us enough from a vendor or on the GTN, or just because we want to let someone else have it.

Cooperation for downing bosses.
Individual claims for gear from those bosses.

That's how it is.

Pretty amazed with the people who actually think it's ok to need on gear for your companion. Good job I'm in a guild, so don't have to pug.

So you're the one clogging the ticket system with useless complaints.

Eldren, there is one single way I will concede that your point of view is not selfish and inefficient: if you say you can't personally out perform your companion.

Honestly, everyone can. Easily. Very easily. And if you can outperform your companion, by simple logical implication, you,as contributing to the community, are being inefficient.

So either you're bad or selfish and inefficient.

There is no third option.

But seriously, it's selfish. Think on it long and hard. Ayn rand would agree. Im done.

If your companion wasn't part of the group when the mob died, then that person is a ninja. Nice and simple. Otherwise everyone might as well roll need on everything.

I currently have 6 companions, most of which wear a different gear set. If I include companions in my need determination, I could roll need on everything that drops.

Ahhh, and here we go with the false dichotomies again. I recommend, if you're still in some manner of ongoing education, not ever entering debate as a pursuit. I have a feeling you'd be torn apart and demoralized rather quickly.

You can't objectively point out my position as being either "selfish" or "inefficient". You can't appeal to the morality side of it ("selfish") because morality remains subjective, and also, on a more objective level, because the instant anyone rolls against another player on a piece of gear, they're placing their own needs above that player's, and are thus being, in a textbook literal definition, "selfish". If you've never done this, you can claim altruism and selflessness. But I have a feeling you have rolled against other players for gear, in which case you have then been selfish. It removes any ability you might have had to lambaste someone else for the same behavior. "Don't point out the speck in your neighbor's eye before you remove the plank from yours."

You also can't appeal to the objective notion of efficiency, because a) resources are infinite (removing any application of efficiency principles) and b) you have no objective data with which to back up a claim like that.

Second strike. Care to try for a third?

You think Ayn Rand would disagree with someone staking a legitimate claim to a resource at the expense of others getting that same resource? Such behavior was the very central foundation of her heroes in "Atlas Shrugged". Hank Rearden and Dagny Taggart fought like wildcats to retain their ability to seize resources and use them to better their own lives. They never acknowledged someone's "need" as a legitimate claim on the work of their own hands and minds. They never placed the group's needs ("society") above the individual's needs. They believed the worst evil that one could commit was to subscribe to the Socialist concept of "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need."

Happy to debate literature with you, JMS, but make sure you're aware of the actual contents of a piece before you quote it.