Officers' Quarters: The fall surge
by Scott Andrews 
Oct 12th 2009 at 1:00PM
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.
Back in June, I wrote about surviving the summer, when raider interest wanes and many players go AFK for weeks on end. Now that fall is back in full swing, all those players are back. Many guilds find themselves with a renewed roster of raiders clamoring for suddenly limited slots. This week, one reader asks how to handle all the extra bodies.
Scott,
I lead a casual raiding guild. We have 1 25-man a week and about 3 10-mans a week including ToC 10 and Ulduar 10. I don't force anyone to raid. I tell them that they can sign up for whatever they want but if they sign up and don't show up, then they are penalized.
My problem is that since I allow anyone to sign up and I don't have set groups, what do I do when I have more people signed up than I need?
Currently I just say whoever signs up first gets first priority. However, I plan the raids out 3 weeks in advance and some people don't know their schedule while others do. So some people have to wait till a couple days before to sign up so they are always the last to sign up. I don't want to penalize people for real life stuff like that.
I have thought about just getting everyone in a group that wants to go, having all the dps /roll and the top rollers get the spot. I think that this could be unfair for the player who can only come once every couple of weeks and always ends up losing the roll.
I am trying to think of some sort of "DKP" system for raid positions. How can someone "buy" their spot that rewards them for attendance but allows others a chance as well? We don't use any DKP in the guild and we don't intend too. We also don't have enough people for 2 10-man groups in ToC or Ulduar but we have more than we need for one.
Maybe some sort of Suicide Kings would work? Everyone is in a list and everyone who attends drops to the bottom of the list. So people aren't penalized for missing a raid that way?
So what is the best way to allow everyone a chance to go to a raid while being fair to everyone?
Let me know what you think.
Thanks,
Stephen
Hi, Stephen. This problem is definitely a headache for officers and raid leaders. You need to use a fair system that doesn't gimp your raids. However, it's always better to have too many than too few!
For a casual guild, you don't want to overcomplicate this process. The DKP or Suicide Kings approaches that you suggest are a bit much.
I'm also not a big fan of the "first signed, first slotted" approach. It definitely favors those with flexible schedules, and it gives an unfair advantage to the people who are online when the calendar items go up. Not to mention, this system can be "exploited" to a certain degree by guild members calling/texting/twittering/IM'ing friends when they see the events become available. You can wind up with the same people every time.
It's also an unrealistic system. What are the odds that the first 10 people who sign up will fill out the required roles and collectively have adequate gear and skill to succeed? You'll have to compromise no matter what.
My guild has been having this same problem for our 10s as well, and I'll share the way I've been handling it. It's similar to the rolling approach you suggest.
First, I invite everyone who signed up to the raid and see what we've got. I talk to my officers about the roles we need to fill and which roles have too many players.
We announce which players are guaranteed a slot, usually because they play a tanking or healing role with the right amount of players. If we ever have a large amount of new or undergeared players, we might designate a few veteran raiders for slots as well. Then everyone else rolls for a slot. The lowest rollers sit out that night.
However, anyone who has to sit is guaranteed a slot for the next raid they can run. That allows players with low-flexibility schedules to raid at a bare minimum half of the times they can make, if they somehow go on a cold streak with the dice. And if they really do have such epically lousy rolls, you can always step in and give them a slot anyway.
On a side note, I roll with everyone else. If I lose, I sit out. One of our newer players expressed surprise at this: "You're gonna bench yourself for your own raid?" I'm fortunate in that another officer is happy to lead the raids in my absence. This, to me, is just. If I'm going to ask others to subject themselves to this system, then I shouldn't exempt myself or any other officer from dealing with it.
It does suck leaving things to chance, so we only use this system for farmed content. For hard mode runs, we handpick our raiders, taking into account attendance, gear, experience with a particular fight, communication skills, class balance, etc.
Unfortunately, this surge in attendance that fall brings won't last forever. Finals, winter holidays, or sheer boredom will drive people away eventually. With Patch 3.3 on the horizon, though, it will probably last until beating down Arthas is as ho-hum as Coliseum dailies.
Rolling for slots has worked out great for us so far. If anyone else has come up with a good system now that fall has brought so many raiders back online, share it below!
/salute
Send Scott your guild-related questions, conundrums, ideas, and suggestions at scott.andrews@weblogsinc.com. You may find your question the subject of next week's Officers' Quarters!Filed under: Officers' Quarters (Guild Leadership)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
revan Oct 12th 2009 1:04PM
My guild doesn't use the DKP system, instead we have a Loot council which is way better in my opinion.
bushkanaka86 Oct 12th 2009 1:11PM
The article has nothing to do with loot distribution...it is about deciding who gets to attend raids.
Zach Oct 12th 2009 1:17PM
/facepalm
Iwanttobeasleep Oct 12th 2009 1:41PM
The other guilds on your server are probably very happy to get the members from yours who leave because of that. I know my guild is.
ElderDruid Oct 12th 2009 1:50PM
For casual guilds, loot council is very bad.
But some of the top guilds, e.g. Premonition I believe, go with Loot Council. For them, it makes sense because the loot if secondary to the goals of being first in realm/continent/world with boss kills.
Erogroth Oct 12th 2009 1:58PM
Although this article has nothing to do with loot I wanted to comment on the last reply to this. My guild is a casual raid guild very similar to the one described in this article. We do mostly 10 mans and occasional do a joint raid with another small guild. We have done DKP and roll systems before but now we do loot council and the officers are very fair. We have not lost a single person due to this system and everybody gets geared up and is very happy. We have cleared 10 man Ulduar and 10 man Trial and have done many hard modes in Ulduar. This system is not for every guild but we have a strong core group and most of us have raided together for years (since launch even) and it works for us.
I would not generalize too much and say this system doesn't work. I think loot systems have to vary from guild to guild.
Sarah Oct 12th 2009 2:22PM
DKP in the case of this question would only relate to raid spots. Not loot. I still prefer the DKP system to a loot council as far as loot goes, though. I'd prefer to rely on numbers to determine who gets it than someone's opinion.
Iano Oct 12th 2009 5:44PM
I'm a PuG raider, in general, in a casual guild too small to field our own raids. Sometimes we form our own 'PuGs' with my wife at the head (she's an incredible raid leader), and sometimes join up with others.
Last night, we joined with a 25-man ToC that used loot council. They hadn't raided in a number of months, and assured us they would be 'fair' when it came to loot distribution, and would take all kinds of factors- performance, attendance, etc. into account.
While slightly skeptical, we went with it.
She moved between 1st and 2nd DPS through the night, I was consistently top heals (for what it's worth, between 5-10% higher than the next person) and felt like I was carrying the healing- whenever I just stuck to my assignment, we wiped.
We took down only two bosses, loot distribution took a solid 45 minutes after each of the two, meaning loot council was going for half the 3-hour raid time.
Lots of lovely healer loot dropped, and I was passed over for each piece- often to a member of the guild alliance who simply wasn't able to keep themselves up through the fight, replacing a piece on-par with what I would be replacing. I'm technically undergeared for 25 ToC, and I would really like to get myself up to a spot where gear checks don't count me out.
I imagine it was discussed, and thought about, and all that, and in the end, the loot council did what loot council's do, and put the loot where it would benefit the guild/alliance the most, which was not with me.
The problem is that all I saw of it was piece after piece of fine, lovely pixels going to folks who just weren't able to contribute to the raid. To me, all I could see was a loot council giving loot to its buddies, and it stung, oh boy, did it sting!
As such, I won't be raiding with the group again, and I certainly won't be joining their alliance (being a mostly PuG raider this long makes me leery of joining groups where people in my position feel so shafted).
TL;DR: Last night I learned a little bit about just why it is that loot council is so nearly universally looked down upon. At least I got 'knowledge loot' of why, and now have the wisdom to avoid it myself.
Docp Oct 12th 2009 6:55PM
@lano
Running loot council with PUGs seems pretty stupid, but if you were part of the guild passing you over for the underperforming raiders makes perfect sense, if their healing was low because of gear that is. why give you a minor upgrade when you could give another member a major upgrade and really increase the overall healing of the guild. Like I said using loot council when you have Puggers is stupid, it's unfair and likely to make people feel they've had their gear politely ninja'd but in a guild it can be a very good system for getting everyone geared which means more progress in content and smoother runs, it can also help create a tighter bond between guild members than the adversarial system of DKP
Also 45mins for loot distribution is stupid as well.
Jafari Oct 13th 2009 10:22AM
"knowledge loot" is half the battle
Oniahs Oct 12th 2009 1:10PM
Wow, great article! I think there are probably a lot of guilds in this situation right now; I know my guild is. As a GM myself, it's great to hear that there are equitable, non-clique-y answers out there. My guild has been having a hard time making sure that everyone has enough to do with other guildies, and so working out a "raid rotation" system like described here is something we're going to have to do.
arindar Oct 12th 2009 6:31PM
Our guild is casual also and uses the first signed up goes first method but we also use templates and minimum gear scores to ensure we have the right mix and quality. When someone does not make the cut for the raid they are given an autoconfirm for the next raid they sign up and qualify for. We track who has autoconfirms in an officer only thread on our forums so there is no confusion.
Josin Oct 12th 2009 1:12PM
So far as loot goes, I highly recommend Shroud. It's a very fair system overall, and doesn't make loot totally inaccessible to new guild members.
As far as raid slots, our officers evaluate players' performance to determine their rank within the guild. That's based on skill, availability, etc. We use that to determine priority for raid slots.
Josin Oct 12th 2009 1:29PM
Another incentive to keep signups going, even when a raid is in progress: Our guild leader gives Shroud points to standby members who complete Heroics during the course of the raid. Frequently, this will help get some of our newer members through dungeons for gear, as well as collecting conquest badges to gear up the folks who are on standby. (Plus it gives them extra Shroud points without being in the raid!)
Last week, we had a few motivated standby people who ended up with more points from doing Heroics during the raid, than the raid did from doing ToC. It's a pretty nice deal, and keeps people pretty satisfied.
Josin Oct 12th 2009 1:30PM
Seriously? I got voted down? Read past the first sentence! I addressed the topic at hand!
God, you people are so fast on the thumbs-down button sometimes.
Sorcefire Oct 12th 2009 3:16PM
LOL I voted you up!
Bobo Oct 12th 2009 1:29PM
Reward the people that were there for you during the summer bleak months first by guaranteeing them raid spots. Then fill in with the people returning from their "summer break".
Hasteur Oct 12th 2009 1:29PM
In my guild the raid invite usually goes on the calendar a week in advance. Most people can get into the raid. A day before the raid the invite is locked and the roster of who is accepted to the raid and what role they'll be playing is posted. At this time the Standby priority list is also declared. You can then request standby or decline if your availablity changes. Yes we will sit between 5 and 7 people on standby (getting 1/2 the rewards that the in-raid people are getting) but it ensures that we have the ability to swap out someone for a difficult pull or whatnot.
In my opinion this is better rather than being online and ninja-invited if the raid leader feels like inviting you. It gives people the opportunity to say "No, I'm not raiding this week", "Yes I want to raid, but I acknowledge that I may not get in this week".
Ect Oct 12th 2009 1:32PM
Gratz to revan for not reading one word of the article, yet feeling inclined to comment.
Erogroth Oct 12th 2009 1:53PM
My guild does basically what Scott's guild does although we will rotate players in and out for fights. If we have an extra tank, one tank will sit a fight or 2 and then the other tank comes in and 1 sits. Or some fights require 1 tank some require 2, so 1 tank will sit for a dps then we will roll to see what dps will sit for the tank, although many times people volunteer to sit. We are pretty close knit group and those that raid a lot are always willing to sit for those who don't get the chance to do so as often (as long as balance and needed roles are filled).