Guild Point Systems

[FuckYou]

here's the quickest way to get up and running with a dkp system i approve of (like you care!):

1. compile a list of every item you can obtain by raiding. do this in excel. for each item put a link to it on thottbot or wherever.

2. break them up in to groups. plate chest pieces. 1h swords. 1h daggers. etc.

3. order them from the top down best to worst by category.

4. assign the top one in each category an arbitraty DKP cost. say 80 dkp. go down each category and price the items in relation to the top, best item at 80.

5. go to a raid.

6. announce the drops with prices and have people who want to aye /tell one specific officer.

7. highest point holder wins the item at the set cost. (we chose to give an "only-aye" discount, meaning if you are the only aye you got the item for 65% of the fixed cost).

8. at the end of the raid, the DKP value of the raid = the total points spent divided by the number of raiders.

done

now there are lots of sub issues, but that is really the simple, simple core of a very flexible, easy to maintain, and fair DKP system.

[Yermum Onceme]

So the big problem with auction dkp is the time constraints? Couldn't you have everyone send a silent tell with how much they're willing to bid, and the highest bidder gets it?

Something along those lines, tailored of course to your guild's whims, would completely remove the time aspect. You could add a 2nd round to it, where the person taking tells simply announces the highest amount and everyone can resend tells if they really want. You can make it go for 1 more point than the second highest tell. You could limit the max bid on an item based on attendance.

The system is flexible, and while I personally do not like dkp over merit, I can't imagine why a single problem couldn't be worked around.

[Malvesti]

Yeah, earlier I mentioned some of the time work-arounds.

I once supported the private tell auction system, but I just don't think it's transparent enough anymore. Trust is essential, and there's just too much power and potential for abuse if one person is receiving the tells and announcing the winner. The open-bidding has its drawbacks (collusion and other manipulation) but I think problems are more likely to be caught when everyone can see the bids.


I just feel that FY's system can require too much out-of-game work by an officer (steps 1-4, 6-8). The auction system lets you just give people a fixed amount of points per hour or per taget, and they decide for you how much the loot is worth. Raiding itself can already be like a 2nd job. Allocating DKP item values becomes a 3rd job for your officers.

[FoghornDeadhorn]

Seems like when we were discussing this last time, most people thought good DKP systems were nearly flawless. Now without the naysayers in the thread it's a list of woes again. I don't feel like getting into the argument again, but here I am months later and we still don't have loot issues, although I was interrogated recently about why I was having BoE instance loot sent to me instead of awarding it on the spot. Why? Because I fucking hate the luck of the draw with the 'Joe just happened to be there although I've done that run fifty goddamned times for the guild and never gotten that item' shit. Loot in our guild has always gone to who it serves best and who deserves it most.

Anyway, different things work for different guilds, but a bad DKP system can be just as detrimental as a corrupt officer-awarded system, so yeah you'd better plan well.

[Zinke]

You don't get complaints BECAUSE it's a corrupt officer system. The more we complain, the less loot we get. Fog is the loot nazi. NO LOOT FOR YOU.
I still say the myrmidon's signet is a rogue ring damnit.

Seriously though, did you get that 100g 'campaign contribution' ? :-P

[Duppin]

Honestly, as far as I'm concerned; officer-awarded loot is the way to do it. But this presumes that the officers in your guild don't suck and can be unbiased.

The reason that this need isn't really an argument against officer-rewarded loot is that if your officers suck, you're not going very far as a guild anyway.

DKP rewards one thing; attendance. While attendance is a good and happy thing, I can recall numerous people in my EQ guilds who were at every raid, but were basically useless when they were there (ironically, several of them were rangers, but that's neither here nor there).

I just think that officer-awarded loot has a better chance of getting loot into the hands of people that are actually going to help the guild advance.

As long as you do it in a fair way, and officers are willing to explain in private WHY something was awarded the way it was, I think officer-awarded is the loot system to use.

[Malvesti]

Originally posted by Duppin
Honestly, as far as I'm concerned; officer-awarded loot is the way to do it. But this presumes that the officers in your guild don't suck and can be unbiased.

The reason that this need isn't really an argument against officer-rewarded loot is that if your officers suck, you're not going very far as a guild anyway.

DKP rewards one thing; attendance. While attendance is a good and happy thing, I can recall numerous people in my EQ guilds who were at every raid, but were basically useless when they were there (ironically, several of them were rangers, but that's neither here nor there).

I just think that officer-awarded loot has a better chance of getting loot into the hands of people that are actually going to help the guild advance.

As long as you do it in a fair way, and officers are willing to explain in private WHY something was awarded the way it was, I think officer-awarded is the loot system to use.

I actually agree with all of this. It's like the common belief that a benevolent dictatorship would be the best world. And I agree that loot distribution should be forward-looking (expectation of future contribution), rather than backward-looking (points from past contribution). If you can have a very smart leader that everyone trusts, and who puts a lot of time into understanding all the classes and all of the loot, then that person will do a much better job at allocating loot for the guild than any DKP system.

The facts that that kind of leader is hard to find, and that power can corrupt even the best of us, are what leads me to support the DKP concept.

[Tripamang]

We're doing open auctions, but if only one person bids/min bid is 33% of your dkp gone. Only done one raid with it so far, and only one case of colluding (two warlocks, who i bitched out for said instance).

I guess I'll see how it works out in the end, we decided to try this for a month before we convert to another system (mainly because i'm horribly lazy/busy and this is easy as fuck).

[Seryne]

A guildmate of mine and I have developed a system for distributing loot in our guild, trying to strike a fair balance for all players, and get rid of most of the arbitrary decisions which call normal DKP systems into question.

I created rules/formulas (you can view it http://www.cynosureguild.org/index.php?body=epicfaq if interested), and my guildmate programmed some applications to make it extremely easy to manage.

First, there's an in-game LUA which allows us to auto-log raids based on the rules above, which also auto records/calculates all loot items which are looted. Then that information is parsed and uploaded by an EXE program to the web server, where it can be viewed/managed by a PHP frontend. The best part of the entire thing, in my opinion, is that the collection of data by the UI allows any item linked in game to be auto-collected and stored within our database (along with the values assigned by formula), so that we also have a fully viewable database of in-game items (ala Lucy).

The guildmate who programmed it (Maldivia of Sargeras) is a computer genius. He has yet to decide whether or not we intend to release this publically, but if it is I'll be sure to do some rounds because I know many guilds would love to use a system that basically does everything for you.

Previously, our guild on EQ used merit (I personally attended almost every single raid to do so in a three year period). I absolutely hated the responsability, and tried to vote to move to points in EQ three times, but all got rejected by a wide majority. So when we moved to WoW, I didn't give the vote option. :P

[Whyme]

If you and your guildmate do decide to take the system public, I would suggest revising the FAQ to make it a bit easier to understand. I consider myself a pretty smart guy and I've ran one or two DKP systems so I understand some of the basic and more intermediary concepts; even so I was pretty much lost while reading it.

KISS.

[FuckYou]

as an officer in a raiding guild that was at one time merit (pre-DKP) it is impossible to be unbiased. you think you can, but you cant. its not a malice thing, its a perception thing. and the more people you add to the equation the less possible it becomes.

[Grabbit Allworth]

I recently made the decision to move my MC capable guild from officer award to a DKP system.

I've been keeping track of our DKP on a spreadsheet, but it's cumbersome. Might any of you have a recommendation for a program I could use to track it any easier?

[beepbeepbeep]

Originally posted by Grabbit Allworth
I recently made the decision to move my MC capable guild from officer award to a DKP system.

I've been keeping track of our DKP on a spreadsheet, but it's cumbersome. Might any of you have a recommendation for a program I could use to track it any easier?

Learn PHP and program it yourself to fit your needs.

[chimbumban]

Or get EQdkp and its WoW mod. *shrug*

[Quineloe]

too high fixed costs for items promote rott. (or disenchanting in that matter), bidding starting at 1 is the way to go