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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsThe drama of DKP
by Mike Schramm 
Mar 18th 2009 at 5:00PM
Donnyman is going through an issue with his guild that many a guild has faced before: the drama of going to DKP. Especially lately, it seems like lots of guilds are aiming to make the jump to DKP: because the endgame is relatively easier lately, lots of folks are getting into raiding seriously, and unless your guild is the closest of friends, you can really only go so long without people starting to wonder why the other guy got that roll when he's only been to two raids in the last month when they've been to five. At that point, the guild either breaks up due to loot drama -- or you decide to settle on a system like DKP.The good news is that lots of guilds have been through this before, and there's a lot of great guidance out there about how to switch to DKP and what kinds of systems you might use if you do. I've only been in one guild that decided to go from a free-for-all roll to a loot system -- they chose Suicide Kings, everyone agreed it was fair, and they've never looked back. Donnyman's having an issue with his guild leadership's decision to put a little erosion on the DKP, and it's true -- if the whole guild isn't behind a disagreement like that, there could be some breakup. There's lots of great discussion in the LJ thread about how decay actually affects people who can't raid from time to time, and Donny ends up with two choices: be OK with it, or find another guild (there's plenty of them around).
It's not impossible to pull off a switch to DKP from a free-for-all system, but you need to a) make it clear that it's in everyone's best interest (if loot drama is starting to sneak up, it probably is), and b) make sure it's as fair as can be. Consider what your guildies want (more loot, just to have a good time raiding, or to reward people who do well or people who need the gear), and then go with a system that meets those needs.
Filed under: Tips, Virtual selves, Guilds, Odds and ends, Raiding
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 4)
Rastas Mar 19th 2009 4:25AM
Couldn't have said it better myself ^^
This is a fool-proof logic and never fails. Even the more casual players need to be rewarded of their effort (even if it's less than the hardcore raider's effort timewise), or they'll lose their interest completely.
somethoughs Mar 18th 2009 11:22PM
Imo fixed priced dkp systems are inherently flawed, the person with the most dkp gets all the loot and the rest of the raid sits in sub par gear.
Apart from that its not a matter of dkp or loot council (I prefer dkp), its a matter of corrupt management or not. Infamous examples:
- You can leave dkp unreset through expansions so that some people can go grab their t7 with Karazhan dkp, or you can skip running heroics and say ooh I need that upgrade more than him, I still got my t6 pants.
- You can arrange the spots not with raid viability in mind, but rather with what drops in mind
- You can invent silly rules, eg the Malygos neck quest item goes to officers first because they must be able to summon Malygos (all of them...)
- You can deny cross armor type loot distribution to classes and if you want your cross armor item simpy dont bing slong the guy that can get it.
- You can bypass any loot rules by sticking labels like eg "this is a healer item" to items which are clearly not healer only.
- You can require the rest to rotate but not rotate yourself in order to gather dkp or simply have more chances to "upgrade"
- You can pass real upgrades in Naxx, stay with your heroes t7 /roll pieces so that you can grab Icecrown gear because you need the upgrade more or because you have , simply put, hoarded dkp.
- You can prevent your raiders from puging while at the same time they have not been given spots and reset is next day, sure thing to keep the economy closed and make them spend dkp.
- You can deny people running Naxx25 for a month (/gkick else), you can slack in that time, let them clear Naxx 10 while you are picking flowers, they get 0 dkp out of that and then say now we can start doing 25 mans. the 10 fools clear 25 man for the rest 15 who get carried along (zero tacts knowledge, undergeared etc), then dkp switches on and a people that were being carried get the loot.
Rather luckily, I dont have to put up with that kind of sheeet anymore, the guild to where I belong, is very well managed and we use dkp. But the real point is that the management is good, non-corrupt, rules are made with raid improvement in mind and officers dont bend.
Seen all of that tho in the past and tbh I know servers where only 4-5 guilds arent managed by lewthog officers. Guilds which do the above things will never have an elite progression just because of their totally flawed management, but I really pitty their members who get the raids going so that officers can ninja what they want.
Charlie Mar 18th 2009 11:34PM
Honestly, the by and best far system I have ever been apart of is a ranking system with random rolls, with a side of Loot Council
Raiders get first priority.
Members get second.
Alts/Inactive get third
Recruits fourth.
The key to this system is officers being on top of promotions/demotions. Raiders show 1-2 months dedication and performance, if you miss a week or two without reason your demoted. If your afk from the game from a month your put on inactive. Even if officers are inactive for a month or two they are demoted.
The bad part of this system is that favoritism can play a roll. I'm a member working towards raider. I can get passed over sometimes for raids, sometimes fairly, sometimes because an officers friend wants to go. But there has never been any loot drama in the guild.
But that just works for us. The best loot system is the one where everyone agrees to it and thinks it's fair. Loot drama only happens when someone thinks that the system is unfair to them.
red2me Mar 19th 2009 1:44AM
Our guild uses DKP for 25 man raids and we've been relatively drama free.
- We earn points per boss kill. This speeds the raid up as people aren't inclined to screw around to stretch the payout.
- Points cap out at 300 our bidding is done in increments of 5. This keeps people from hoarding points, because after 300 points, you're essentially raiding for free.
- We don't stand around picking our noses while we wait for bidding, we move on to clear toward the next boss. this speeds the raid up.
- Main spec ALWAYS gets priority. Off spec costs a flat amount and it's rolled on if there is more than one bid. No drama. Our officers know well the classes/specs/stat requirements and if someone makes a bonehead bid, it's handled quickly and privately.
- We give new members a starter pool once they've been voted into the guild after their recruitment period is up. This gives recruits something to look forward to since they won't be completely left behind.
DKP does reward those who raid more and that is exactly how it should be, imo. If you make time for raids, prepare consumables, and consistantly contribute you should get a leg up over the guy that shows up once every two weeks and says "plz drop feast thx" because he can't be bothered to do more than type his password. The attitude that you should be rewarded with hard earned loot because you deigned to grace the game with your presence is BS.
Our guild is not uber hardcore, but we don't carry people either. We are all adults with RL responsibilities and limited play time, so our in game goals are taken seriously. Depsite Naxx being stupid easy, we DO work hard to reach them. If you want to raid, come on and do it. If you don't, that's fine, too. Just remember, raiding is like most things in life - you get out of it what you put into it.
Rastas Mar 19th 2009 4:17AM
Mine is a medium-sized semicasual guild that got seriously into raiding in WotLK. Before we never had the need for DKP as we only did Kara and ZA and people had been in the guild long enough (and there were few enough people) so that the loot was distributed evenly without. But now as we've progressed into 25-man raiding, some of our members have suggested we move into a DKP-system.
Both I as guild leader and our raid leader oppose the idea, when other two officers somewhat support it. Our opposition is based on the fact that some people are essential in our raids and would soon sit on top of a huge heap of DKP (as they have somewhat a lead in loot already).
I and the raid leader are both in almost every raid, as she is our best-geared tank and I about the best geared healer due to being the only holy pally (and thus getting all plate heal gear almost automatically). Thus we'd have multiple times the amount of DKP than for example the DPS (who are steadily rotated) or priest healers (who we have a plethora of) and in Ulduar we'd be sitting on a heap big enought to afford every single piece of loot.
We do have a priority-system of sorts, though. Main-spec > off-spec, naturally, but also so that the main-character > alt (as we have many people with well-geared lvl 80 alts too). We make exception to this rule only to those alts specifically asked to come with an alt instead of main character. This gives everyone about an equal chance of getting gear and everyone who wishes can have a good off-spec gear too eventually. We experience zero loot drama ^^
This method works for us well, as we're still a close-knit society and know about every guildie quite well. Sure, if we were a pure raiding guild this would never work.
Hagen Mar 19th 2009 11:27AM
We use SKG in our guild. We have a T7 token list and a T7 all other item list. We use this for our inhouse 10 man runs. We also have a separate set of lists for 25 man stuff b/c we work w/another guild for 25 man content. This keeps the old issues we saw back in Molten Core where people would run Ony and MC on Thursday and then go to the Saturday BWL run and use their improved slot on BWL gear. One set of lists per tier of loot.
No, we don't care about T6 and lower, people just open roll for those. We open bidding to main specs first and if no one needs we then open to off-specs. Off-specs are handled w/rolling and do not use your SK slot. We'd rather see off-spec gear get taken and used instead of sharded. Our guild does have people declare main character and main spec. main toon/main spec > alt toon/main spec > off-spec
Sybrant Mar 19th 2009 11:37AM
We use EPGP which is far superior to DKP, which mind you is starting to get phased out by alot of the web hosting companies.
Evi Mar 19th 2009 1:23PM
We use Suicide Kings. One list for gear, one list for T7 tokens. We were looking for a low maintenance distribution system that was more fair than random rolling. People seem pretty happy with it.
The only problem I have with SK is the addon we're using to manage it. It always seems to break when multiple raid members are running it. It's a problem for us because two "co captains" run our raid team and are sometimes present on the same nights. That always seems to be a recipe for disaster for the addon, and we waste 10 minutes getting the loot lists straight.
Quinnaria Mar 19th 2009 3:01PM
Our Raiding Alliance (Leftovers-Silver hand) uses the Shroud System.
For us, it works well - however, we are a very "Raider First" organization. Points belong to the character, and can be used in any alliance raid equally.
For those that have never heard of it - you get points based on time raided. When an item you want drops, choose one of three types of rolls. Shroud, Standard or Save.
Shroud>Standard>Save
If you roll (and win) with a shroud, you pay half your current point total. If more than one person rolls shroud, the person with the highest point total wins.
If you roll (and win) with a standard, you pay 10 points. If more than one person standard rolls, all /random 100 to see who wins.
Save is treated just like standard , point cost and all - but is a way to politely say "I'm not really that interested, just don't want it to get sharded"
If you really want it? Shroud for it - pay half your points and purchase priority. If you don't? Standard. Its only ten points then, but you risk being out /randomed or someone dropping the "Shroud Bomb" as we like to call it ;)
Frankly, for our raiders, it works like a charm. BUT, we are a rather large raiding organization where raiders move between raiding groups often. We wanted the points to be transferable between groups. I'm sure loot council would work much better for small or tight guild groups.
Kryxx Mar 19th 2009 4:46PM
Yeah, the key to loot council is definitely smart officers. That system works wonderfully if the officers know what they're doing.
Unfortunately, that's not always the case in my guild. I'm in the fun position in our 25 mans of being the second highest dps rogue. The guild has a woody for this rogue, so any piece of gear, no matter how tiny the upgrade, ALWAYS goes to him first. What people fail to realize is... the reason he is top dps is because he gets ALL the gear he wants first.
This kind of thing is what destroys a loot council system. It needs to be structured with a council that keeps their biases out of the picture.
ALF Mar 19th 2009 10:32PM
My guild's going to a DKP system. SWAPS I think it's called. :( One of the things that bugs me about it is that they are using it to solve two issues: 1) people showing up 2) keeping PuGs from "taking" loot from dedicated guildies.
Why implement this complicated system when you can just schedule raids at better times for your guildies? More guildies on = people able to show up AND you don't need to invite PuGs. Problem solved.
-sigh-