Posts with tag dkp-system

Ready Check helps you prepare yourself and your raid for the bosses that simply require killing. Check back with Ready Check each week for the latest pointers on killing adds, not standing in fire, and hoping for loot that won't drop.

Welcome back, raiders. In our last edition, we talked about the importance of having a solid loot system as a part of a solid raiding team. Loot is the end result of playing this game, no matter which sector it is that you choose to focus on. Having a great distribution system for all the shiny trinkets that your raid stumbles across insider the corpses of giant beasts helps to ensure that everything runs smoothly. As was mentioned last week, each loot system is judged based on how equally it distributes loot as well as how well it rewards player participation.

This week, we'll be taking a look at one of the more common loot systems that you come across in WoW and how they all rank. Remember, loot distribution is always something that should be taken seriously, but more than that, there is no one right answer. Which system works for one raid group might not pan out for another. The ultimate goal is to avoid any and all loot problems in a raid; provided that a system avoids that, then the rest doesn't matter.

No matter what the reason that you play World of Warcraft, there is one singular topic that all players must come across at one point or another: loot. Whether it be in dungeons, raids or PvP, loot is going to drop. When it comes to the end-game PvE side of things, you are more than likely going to run into various loot systems. There are really only four basic types of loot systems out there: DKP, loot council, open rolls or GDKP; the reality is that virtually every loot system created does fall into one of those four categories. Players are probably familiar with more traditional DKP loot systems or modified variants thereof, while loot council and open roll systems pretty much speak for themselves. GDKP is a somewhat newer phenomenon that's been sweeping the PUG scene these days.

But really, I don't want to talk about those systems. The debate over which of these is the best option has been done to death. Instead, I'd like to introduce three off-the-wall loot systems that I've seen in my day that I've personally found to be highly interesting. Are they "better" than others out there? Who can say? It's all a matter of opinion, really, but -- I think, at least -- they are worth taking a look at.

I'm finding myself really fascinated with loot systems lately -- the old DKP is pretty good, but even that has drama, and it seems like there's a lot of interesting ideas going around about how to evenly and fairly distribute loot amongst a group of people. OutDPS has a writeup about a loot system called SWAPS. Instead of sending "points" off into the void, you actually "give" your spent points to everyone else in the raid. You start out with 1,000 free points (though those are distributed over time, to prevent new players from having tons of points early on) and then when an item comes up, everyone bids on it: the highest bid gets the item and the points they bid are spread around to the rest of the raiders. In other words, if someone in a 10-man raid bids 500 points and wins an item, those 500 points are distributed evenly amongst the other nine raiders. While the winner loses the 500 points they spent, everyone else gets a bonus 56 points. The person winning the item "pays" for the privilege of taking it by beefing up everyone else's point totals.

It is probably not a perfect system (there's no way to reward points for anything other than loot dropping, for one thing, and while some people have modified the rules to create a separate bidding pool for class items, the basic system doesn't cover class or offspec items), but it does solve a lot of the questions of fairness, and it keeps everything pretty above-board: if you are low on points, the only reason would be that either you just started raiding, or that you've just spent a lot of points on an item. There's an addon, of course, and it will give you all sorts of reports and updates on where all of your raiders are at in the system. If you've been poking around for a DKP system that is based on being open and fair, it might be worth trying out in your guild.