Making the assumption that we didn't enforce "Need" because we didn't know how to is pretty crazy.
We actually had a big meeting about NBG loot options and during the meeting the majority of the attendees didn't feel it was up to the game to decide who needs something and who doesn't.
Maybe your group decides that its ok to press "Need" if you can use it for an alt. Or maybe the group says its ok for transmuters to press "Need" and then /random roll on the transmuted product. There could be many other situations I'm not thinking of, so why should the game enforce its own idea of Need on the players?
If you think you are grouping with dishonest people that won't make proper use of the NBG mechanic, then set the loot options to lotto and be done with it.
As far as the other complaints/ideas for loot options, I'm listening to what everyone has to say. I knew there would be different opinions on how we should handle No-Trade items even if they fall below the loot tier. I also assumed there would be feedback on whether or not we should pop a no-trade confirmation during round-robin assignment. My original proposal for these loot options actually included a custom No-Trade confirmation window that showed the item icon and name that you could mouse-over for the description. The existing no-trade confirmation isn't very informative, but is ok when the item is listed in the loot window.
We can easily tweak these settings for the next Game Update, I just want to see how people respond to it and make the right judgment call instead of changing 2-3 times.
As far as leader loot filtering by who can use an item, it already does this for many epic items. As a raid leader myself, I've seen it first-hand in zones like Protector's Realm where the final mob drops the wizzy epic update.
So if there are specific items that aren't behaving like this, let me know which ones because the bug may be with the item itself and not with the loot window.
One option I thought of was to have the chest revert to FFA after the NBG lotto is complete. So any items that get declined could be picked up by anyone. Also, if we implement a No-Trade confirmation for round-robin items. What happens if they decline? Currently, if you loot the chest, it would just offer it to the same person who was in line for loot. So we'd need to implement something like this FFA idea.
Keep in mind that one of our goals is to also design a system thats easy to understand for new players as well as seasoned vets. So adding 50-bazillion new options to cover every permutation of loot you could want isn't the best idea either.