DKP, new guild

[taishar68]

So, our guild has evolved to the point of fielding 25 people for our raids. While that is a good thing, it does present the problem of loot distribution. I was looking for some opinions along the lines of:

-is there a "perfect" system, one that rewards attendance and performance, but doesn't make players feel like they have no chance at loot?
-how do you handle those first few weeks, when everyone is more or less equal in DKP? Do you allow bids to push DKP to a negative, and if so, how far?

We are currently leaning toward an EPGP system, but we aren't sure about how to value items, how much DKP to pay out, etc. My rough draft has a piece of 264 armor costing as much DKP as could be earned in a week...does this sound logical?

Any helpful input will be appreciated, thanks.

[Vook]

My guild just uses DKP / bidding. 20 DKP for each night you show up, 100 DKP bonus every week if you show up to all the raids, and people just bid away at items. Minimum bid is 15, and you can pretty much bid as much as you want.

[Liquoid]

Assuming you have competent offficer team, Loot Council is the way to go.

[Deleted]

numbers aren't important if they just are in proportion to each other it will work. There is no perfect loot distribute system Loot council will make some people angry since they feel that others get more loot (even tho this isn't always the case)

I've used epgp,dkp and loot council and personally I enjoy loot council / dkp most

dkp can't be set up in different ways such as everyone place one bid and highest one wins (2 on same it's down to roll or if one of them passes it) this is done by /w to the master looter or whoever.

or you can use bids (by /w preferred) there are several ad dons helping with this

For epgp if you decide to use it remember to put a decay on the EP so that people can't stack insane amounts or get huge amounts of GP and not get any loot at all.

[Geekbustarz]

Assuming you have competent offficer team, Loot Council is the way to go.

This, pretty much. I used loot council in my old guild and it worked perfectly, we were a softcore 10 man guild, and we had a stable crew of 12-13 ppl ^^
No one went pissy about loot so, IF you have good officers, loot council, imo.

[LeperHerring]

Loot council is very problematic and I would advice against it. The main problem is that it's completely subjective and your raiders cannot know how the loot is distributed which leads to drama. Another problem is that a proper loot council must theorycraft every single raider's every possible gear set, otherwise you have no idea how big of an upgrade each item is to each player. Under DKP systems everyone analyzes their own gear and gearsets - don't try to centralize this effort when it works far better when distributed. Further, loot council is not a consistent nor stable since it depends on the people who sit in it and even what mood they happen to be in when handing out loot.

You really should aim to have a loot system that is transparent, simple, fast and consistent. This can be achieved through multiple means such as DKP or EPGP. Try to avoid stuff like handing out DKP for kills, having to put prices on individual items or having multiple rounds of bidding. A simple system where you give DKP to people that are available to raid, where the person with highest DKP wins the item and where the price is static for every item will get you far.

[Waterwings]

Ep/GP, most fair. gear might nog be spread "evenly" as needed, but atleast there'll be no whining from the guild.. (decay at every raid)

[timtim89]

My guild uses suicide DKP and we only get 1 point per raid but when we bid on a item we bid all our points at once so well be out, ive been in many runs that have differnt loot systems but i like this one the best

[Szyrex]

Using loot council, but I wouldn't recommend it for a 25 man guild. DKP is definitely the way to go for a larger group.

[boseguy22]

The guild I am in now uses a pretty fair DKP system:

3 Points Showing up on time
3 Points per hour
3 Points at the end of the raid for a full raid
6 points Show up DKP for nights the raids dont happen (ie like Sunday night on Memorial Weekend)

The usual raid is 3-4 hours 3 times a week, so average 54 a week. This total is given to people in the raid and standby raiders at full value.

The interesting addition is it maxes out at 300, use it or lose it. And the max bid on an item (excluding the role to start building a legendary) is 100. In the case of a 100 tie, Highest current DKP wins (one guy has 150, other has 200, the 200 gets it).

And the last thing, if you miss over 14 days of raiding, it suffers a 20% tax per week, so miss 5 weeks and start over (without a good reason of course).

Everyone gets loot, but when a max bid is for almost 2 full weeks of raiding, choose wisely. And not rolling on stuff that you only "might" want and emptying your pool, means on that 100 roll off you might lose the piece you really want.

ALL dkp systems have limits, but this one seems to work.

[Tesoni]

Loot council tends to work well for 10 man guilds, and hardcore 25 man raid guilds. For most others, it tends to foster drama without helping out the raid much.

I personally like fixed cost DKP systems (person with the most DKP gets the item for a set price. Say, 20 for *minor* armor pieces, 40 for major ones, 60 for 1h weapons and trinkets, 80 for 2h weapons, or something like that).

For one thing, this saves the time normally spent on bidding, and you don't have the problem of items like Frozen Bonespike heroic going for 100 DKP one week and 700 DKP the next week because the raid comp changes. It also prevents collusion on bids (we had a case where our rogues were agreeing not to bid against each other so that on any item where they had to compete with others they had wildly inflated DKP totals).


TL;DR Bidding systems are clunky, and easily *gamed*. (It also favors tanks to a retarded degree. My last 2 guilds had 2 tanks. At one point they had more DKP between the two of them than any 5 other people in the guild, simply because they never had to spend any).

[Adysux]

EPGP is a rly bad system imo its made so even if you raid twice as much as someone else that someone else can take and item that you want since you alreay took an item befor him ( il rather /roll and EPGP ).

Dkp on the other hand is a nice and fair looting system you just need to reset the dkp every new major patch so that new ppl can have a fair chance at those item that droop in the new raid.
Also in the first weeks there will be some dkp drwas but you just /roll for the item and the one that roll the highest spend the dkp and take the item

If you are friends and the guild is 100% progres orientated Loot council is they way but for new formed guild it wont work proly

[Pojodan]

My guild started out using Suicide Kings and discovered that it was highly exploitable and switches the straight rolls at the start of Wrath with an honor system in place, one that also got exploited. Thus, we started using a EP/GP system at the start of Ulduar that worked pretty well initially, trouble was that once people started filling out their main gear sets we ran into serious problems with people winning bids for off-sets, and drama got kicked up over matters such as people that were called upon to keep two gear sets in case we were missing a key healer or what-not.

In the end, the single-set classes, like Rogues and Hunters, had massive DKP stockpiles, ensuring that they'd win any remaining item they were after, those that dual speced were always hoplessly undergeared in both specs, and I, as the loot master at the time, was constantly fielding gripes, begs to adjust ratios, hissy fits over the slightest change DKP, and just general disconnect and frustration.

Thus, I designed and implimented our current Loot Council system which ultilizes Role leaders (Tank, Spell DPS, Physical DPS, Healer) and a Loot Master (I've since passed on this role to another member), whom asign loot based on desirability (Those that want it will link their current item and assign a number based off if it's BiS, not BiS but upgrade, sidegrade, or off-set), raid attendance, general raid performance, and the usability of the item, since a trinket with haste will be more useful to a rogue than a hunter, for example.

I definately don't advice using Loot Council as a new guild since it requires trust on everyone's part to ensure that Council decisions are based off fair considerations and not favortism (An element I zelously refused to include in my design and struggled with battling in the initial month of its inception).

LC is the most 'perfect', when trust and fairness are the top order, but also the most likely to be corrupted.

Really, your best bet is to lay out the options to the rest of the guild and find what is generally desired, run some experiments, and find out which has the least ammount of headache and drama for your guild.

[taishar68]

Thank you all for the replies, I greatly appreciate it. This is the type of input we needed. Just another question, in regard to item values:

If we choose to go with a fixed price system, is there a consensus on the ratio of item cost:time spent raiding? My initial thought was 264 armorne week worth of DKP, weapons and trinkets somewhat higher; if we go with a bidding system, is it fair to keep that cost as a start price, or to lower it?

[Cilraaz]

My guild uses a DKP system. We get 10 DKP per boss, with bonuses for first kills and achievements. A "main" bid is half of your current DKP. An off-spec or alt bid is a minimum of 5, but done on a "silent auction" system and always loses to a main bid. It's a decent system, as forcing half bids makes sure (for the most part) that people don't hoard DKP, but the off-spec/alt bid is a potential way to get upgrades on the cheap.

[Modez]

With a fixed price system we reset the DKP totals at each tier to 100. Everyone who is a raider once the new tier comes out resets to 100 across the board. This prevents hoarding, and those who may have joined halfway through the prior tier but have proven themselves get put onto an even playing field.

You have to balance the DKP earned per boss by the DKP spent per week to prevent inflation. We earn 4-6 per boss, and items range from 52 to 120. 2h weapons cost exactly twice as much as 1h weapons, that way a 2h weapon user doesn't get an advantage to the same trinket a rogue may want. That keeps it fair.

Any off-spec item is 5 DKP. Anyone can roll offspec (even myself as a warlock) as this allows me to get that sidegrade item or the item I may want to use in Cataclysm leveling. It also allows dual-spec people to not be deep int he hole when at times we do need their off spec.

The hierarchy is as such:

If at least one person bids main spec, the highest total DKP person wins and is charged that items cost.
If nobody bids main, the highest DKP offspec person wins and is charged 5 DKP.

- You don't have to worry about inflation too much with the forced reset per tier.
- Fair to new members once they stick around to the next tier and have proven themselves.
- Hoarding doesn't really help you, as you lose your DKP later.
- You have more DKP the more you go to raids.
- If asked to sit due to too many signups (not performance issues) you get to earn DKP at the same rate as people in the raid as long as you are online (and we check in a chat channel) every time a boss is killed. You must reply at each boss within 1 minute to get the bonus, but you can do so from an alt.

NOTE: People can go less than 0 DKP. We do not use a negative cap, because at that point people would win items for 'free', which isn't fair. A negative main spec still beats a positive offspec roll.

This is how we did it, we don't 'roll' but have people check DKP totals.

EX: Roll for [Dagger of Awesome]
[Person1]: Side 500
[Anti]: Main 350
[Person2]: Main -200
[Person3]: Side 400

Anti wins the item. Had Anti not wanted the item, Person2 would have won as they were also a main spec bid (even though negative). If there were no other rolls then Person 1 would have won as Person 3 bid side but has less DKP.

This is the system I have used for 3 years, and have never heard a bad thing about it. It's fair.

[Harvesting]

Ni Karma is a cools system it uses points plus /roll to distribute loot. Our old system used half of your points and your roll.

Player A has been with guild since progression and has 150 points. Player B has only been with guild for 3 weeks and has earned 75points but has never spent any.

Item drops player with 150 points would have to use (minimum) +75 to his /roll Player B still has a small chance to get this loot by rolling a 100. IF player A wanted the item he sould use more than minimum points and get the item and not be reached.

This system imo lets guildies get the gear they want as well as creates and enviroment that allows new recruits (after some points are earned) to get shots at loot.

So the next item drops and Players A&B /roll for second item and now they both have 75 points and its level.

The anology used is just for numbers, I was in this guild and had 450 points at the highest (after you have pretty much BiS) and just waiting those last few items you want.

My current guild for 10's just uses open rolls but we are a tight group and have NEVER had an argument about loot except who is going to get it. Something like you take it, no you take it.

[Vidal]

Loot council is one of my favourites, and I always love using it.

The people in my current guild are all very trusting, and we all agree with loot choices. Sure we'll qq to each other that, yet again, we didn't get DBW and the other DK got it, but hey, they needed it more than us and fairs fair.

Officers know whats best for people so no miscalculations, and as a greatly packed together group of 30+ friends, it really is the best way to go. We tried DKP towards the end of ToC, and it ended in lots of QQ.

[Halicia]

i prefer GDKP, it provides most/all the benefits of a basic DKP system while being much more transparent.

and while all loot systems are equally unfair in that 24 people ARENT going to get the item, GDKP helps soften the blow by providing reasonable compensation to those which generally results in good feelings at the end of a raid, whereas I've seen most loot systems create only QQ and drama.

[taishar68]

Again, many thanks for all the input. We have decided to go with the EP/GP bidding system for now, and see how it works. We want something transparent that our newer members can feel safe in that there is no monkey business going on. As we continue on, when everyone is more comfortable, we may switch things up at that point.

Good luck to you all!