If you have class leaders and Officers who are intimately aware of their member bases focus and desires for their character I can admit a loot council makes sense and it allows you to get it in the right hands... Given the history I've experienced in councils...they go great at first and communication is provided behind the choice...over time it deteriorates into a good ole boy network and it goes to hell in a handbasket. When folks get upset you hear the "it's only Pixels man, calm down" as the defense.....
Being limited to Rogues in my raid experiences as raid leader/Class lead.. I always knew what rogue had what weapon and if they focused on AC, STR, DEX by keeping an eye on their gear and discussions had outside of raidtimes when they were farming their ups.
Either DKP or Loot councel can be abused...it boils down to managing your urge to be the uberest...vs making your guild the uberest...
As a side note...I think an interesting concept to entertain would be an Open Loot councel. So have a call for folks interested in guild chat link their current slot item (I have seen folks link items from their bag before to look worse..so again knowledge of gear is vital)...close taking links..then letting the entire raid force vote on it in guild chat... Only 1 reply of - . Tally up the votes...and award.. or if you wanted to add a flavor of American Democratic systems...let the Class leaders be the electoral college of the award council...but again... it breeds an atmosphere of don't piss off your class leader or give the perception you are pissing them off or you will suffer.
Every person on the raid makes the magic happen, and subtle contributions often go overlooked that may have made the win happen, and it is nearly impossible to satisfy every person in a raid unless you put the decsion power in their hands with a solid framework that you stick with and can minimize exploitation.
It is impossible to abuse an objective system like DKP. If you hoard 20000 DKP so you can outbid every other member in your guild for an item you really want, it's not an abuse of the system. That's how it works. Your punishment for doing so is sacrificing other loot to other people in exchange for hoarding. Unless an officer is randomly handing out DKP to specific individuals because of favoritism, that has nothing to do with DKP. It's simply favoritism, which is independent from DKP.
I reject loot council as a viable loot distribution method. 100%. Agree to disagree.
Liav said:It is impossible to abuse an objective system like DKP. If you hoard 20000 DKP so you can outbid every other member in your guild for an item you really want, it's not an abuse of the system. That's how it works. Your punishment for doing so is sacrificing other loot to other people in exchange for hoarding. Unless an officer is randomly handing out DKP to specific individuals because of favoritism, that has nothing to do with DKP. It's simply favoritism, which is independent from DKP.
I reject loot council as a viable loot distribution method. 100%. Agree to disagree.
While it might not be possible to 'abuse' you can make a very strong argument against it from an efficiency standpoint in terms of gear going to where it matters. I think most people who have ever done a DKP based system can attest to some individuals hording and not taking upgrades waiting for that 'one item', which can often cause a race to the bottom in terms of current itemization. As a raid leader, why in the world would I want to reward someone contributing less to each subsequent raid in terms of DPS, Healing throughput, survivability, whatever it may be because they're intentionally trying NOT to get upgrades because they want the one that sparkles not just gives a mundane upgrade.
There are a number of ways to handle DKP to mitigate the 'equity' aspect of absolutely burying new members behind the 8ball. Point caps with degradation, etc, all sorts of elaborate but objective measures. So I'll concede DKP can be done well... but it's a nightmare to maintain and update the rules on when you notice it's not working.
It boils down to this... in a loot council scenario you put the guild's ability to progress and its health first and personal itemization second. DKP is totally void of this consideration. It actively pits members against one another in terms of itemization. Blind bidding you say? Collusion is likely, I say. Only two rogues? Rogue only item drops? Work it out between them in tells and bid a lower amount, save your DKP for bidding against other classes.
DKP inevitably feels like a group of people coming together to achieve personal goals. Guildmates can in-fight, etc. Running officer based I cannot tell you the number of times we would get tells where someone would say it's an upgrade but it's more of one for someone else so hand it to them. Legitimate, intentional guildmates giving each other items. It fosters a collective, pro-social attitude instead of a me over you one.
I'll give you that DKP is 'safer'. DKP done poorly isn't nearly as bad as officer appointed loot done poorly. But it's also not nearly as effective as officer appointed loot done well either in terms of team-building or in terms of guild/raid effectiveness.
It's not really a nightmare to modify the rules of your DKP system, I don't know where that comes from. Degradation is almost required, and has been present in every iteration of DKP I've seen. Any concern one can posit against DKP has an equally bad or worse counterpart in a loot council system.
In an absolutely ideal world, an item would always go to the ideal person, creating an ideal beneficial scenario to the strength of the guild. The lack of practicality in applying ideal scenarios to reality is what necessitates fair, balanced, objective systems immune from as many variables as possible.
Team building is also an overrated aspect of loot council. Bribing your members with loot as a means to foster cooperation doesn't really seem genuine to me. If someone succeeds at being a functional member of the guild, they will build DKP and get the loot they want as a side effect anyway.
The team building aspect is because generally speaking in DKP systems I have seen people that are going after the same loot tend to view each other as competition instead of as guildmates. When you have a third party decide it, you can dislike the third party but the likliehood of resenting the other person is less. The officer corps should be more concerned with perception of their behavior and the consequences for poor behavior than someone allocating their DKP spending. They can always point to what they did being within the rules. Even if they're assholes for doing it. And they won't have a consequence. They're not officers so people won't leave over bad/stupid behavior. It's within the rules so the officers aren't likely to do much either besides maybe try to change the rules so it doesn't happen again.
As for changing the rules... any time you go to change the rules of DKP you're doing so for a reason. People that were benefiting from that reason are usually resistant to it. Any sort of retroactivity is even more controversial. (I've seen forum wars between members over both). I've seen DKP run without degradation in an open bid system multiple times. Terrible system, but I'm assuming you'd blame that on the implementation not the DKP system itself. Same could be said about officer appointed, but you're just going to point out increased risk of it being a poorly implementation vs. the ability to start off with a 'guaranteed' fair system.
Again, I'll concede that DKP is lower risk. You'll rarely see a guild just absolutely implode over DKP management whereas that can certainly happen with loot council. It's much higher risk with marginally higher reward. Guilds are small communities, though, and one where I get to pick what community I belong to. I would never remain in a guild where I didn't trust the officer corps, regardless of loot system. So the higher risk, for me personally, is counter-balanced by some underwriting I do both before aplpying and during my recruitment period.
Liav said:Team building is also an overrated aspect of loot council. Bribing your members with loot as a means to foster cooperation doesn't really seem genuine to me. If someone succeeds at being a functional member of the guild, they will build DKP and get the loot they want as a side effect anyway.
This is like saying " you did your job so here is your paycheck." While it is an implied message, it is still not as effective to boosting and maintaining high morale such as you would recieve from an "atta-boy" bonus or employee of the month type recognition that can come from the decision to give that awesome melee weapon to YOU out of the 10 melee DPS'ers in the raid.
The benefits of a high morale in a raid force (or guild in general) should not be underestimated in my opinion.
Yeah, but why does that one person deserve that melee weapon out of the 10 melee DPS in the raid?
Morale is an important aspect of a successful raid force, however, selectively handing out loot to make people feel like a special snowflake doesn't really seem like a good philosophy to me. You're improving the morale of one guy and throwing 9 other viable players under the bus for it. We can pretend that everyone's going to be on board with that, but they won't. I sure as hell won't.
Giving your entire guild bonus DKP because they had a particularly productive night raises everyone's morale.
To address Jayko, competition doesn't necessarily imply a negative. Competition within a guild breeds better players. If your 3 Rogues are all trading places on DPS you know something good is happening. One of your three Rogues winning a weapon via DKP just means those two Rogues have more DKP to spend for other items or the same item if it drops again.
Liav said:Yeah, but why does that one person deserve that melee weapon out of the 10 melee DPS in the raid?
Morale is an important aspect of a successful raid force, however, selectively handing out loot to make people feel like a special snowflake doesn't really seem like a good philosophy to me. You're improving the morale of one guy and throwing 9 other viable players under the bus for it. We can pretend that everyone's going to be on board with that, but they won't. I sure as hell won't.
Giving your entire guild bonus DKP because they had a particularly productive night raises everyone's morale.
To address Jayko, competition doesn't necessarily imply a negative. Competition within a guild breeds better players. If your 3 Rogues are all trading places on DPS you know something good is happening. One of your three Rogues winning a weapon via DKP just means those two Rogues have more DKP to spend for other items or the same item if it drops again.
Competition for performance enhances a guild pretty much by definition. Competition for loot is more likely to breed animosity than productivity, especially if your officers are smart enough to judge performance in the context of capacity (via gear).
All of your posts in this thread ooze a 'me first' mentality. As an officer, it's a guild first mentality and that's also what you want in your members. When another member of my guild got loot over me, I was happy the guild got an upgrade, not happy that I was next in line. That's what you're not getting and it's the mentality that some of us are speaking to that your perspective doesn't either a.) value, b.) believes exists or c.) understand.
If there's a raid and 5 items drop and you don't win any of them... on a DKP raid you're happy you gained DKP, and those 5 folks spent it. You're not happy they got the item, you're happy they spent DKP. Meanwhile, I'm just happy as an officer we got 5 upgrades. And I really hope my guildmembers are as well. It's a small but powerful difference. Does it exist in many people in guilds that use DKP? Absolutely. But it exists in spite of the system and not because of it.
In most scenario's, loot council is my preferred method. It always gear to go where it needs to in order to better the guild as a whole. However, in a game like this, DKP is almost essential. The larger group standards for raids makes loot council a nightmare and opens up a ton of room for favortism, even when it doesn't seem or isn't meant to be that.
DKP systems can easily be made to prevent some of the things people are arguing against here. Want to stop point hoarding? Add a hefty weekly decay rate. Want to make sure the loot is spread evenly? Make it zero sum so that once you get loot you go to zero dkp. There are ways to work around all of it. Personally, I plan to do both. 20% per week decay and zero sum with low DKP given out in general. Keeps all totals small and while hoarding can happen it is unlikely when you will start to lose a lot.
Enitzu said:Panda said:EPGP
/endthread
Without an in game addon, this is known as DKP.
Sorry, didn't know that. In my experience, EPGP and DKP are two totally different systems.
How does an in-game addon change that?
No, I haven't read the entire thread. Sorry, was being lazy.
EPGP is essentially DKP. It provides a point score based on parameters the leadership set and when awarded loot it deducts a set amount. That is DKP. The difference is that the EPGP addon automates the process where with DKP a person has to keep track. Well basically anyway. EPGP tries to use math to make it seem more complicated than it is but in the long run it's literally the same thing. The only real reason it took off was because of the in game addon for wow that did everything for you.
Enitzu said:EPGP is essentially DKP. It provides a point score based on parameters the leadership set and when awarded loot it deducts a set amount. That is DKP. The difference is that the EPGP addon automates the process where with DKP a person has to keep track. Well basically anyway. EPGP tries to use math to make it seem more complicated than it is but in the long run it's literally the same thing. The only real reason it took off was because of the in game addon for wow that did everything for you.
Ahh, I see your reasoning. I have never used an addon for EPGP. I've always done it manually on a spreadsheet.
As for the OP tho, the complaints he used against DKP or loot council can all be settled with a well-formulated, transparent EPGP spreadsheet (which, i guess, is similar to zero-sum dkp in ways).
Crazzie said:(...) Sometimes even the officers used it to loot everything up, trade off to other accounts. Sad, it really is.(...)
I've seen that too, yes. But I've always blamed people's corruption and greediness and not thought that the DKP system is more exploitable in itself. If someone has set up his mind in screwing people over, I guess he or she will use any given loot distribution system no matter what.
Jayko said:Competition for performance enhances a guild pretty much by definition. Competition for loot is more likely to breed animosity than productivity, especially if your officers are smart enough to judge performance in the context of capacity (via gear).
All of your posts in this thread ooze a 'me first' mentality. As an officer, it's a guild first mentality and that's also what you want in your members. When another member of my guild got loot over me, I was happy the guild got an upgrade, not happy that I was next in line. That's what you're not getting and it's the mentality that some of us are speaking to that your perspective doesn't either a.) value, b.) believes exists or c.) understand.
If there's a raid and 5 items drop and you don't win any of them... on a DKP raid you're happy you gained DKP, and those 5 folks spent it. You're not happy they got the item, you're happy they spent DKP. Meanwhile, I'm just happy as an officer we got 5 upgrades. And I really hope my guildmembers are as well. It's a small but powerful difference. Does it exist in many people in guilds that use DKP? Absolutely. But it exists in spite of the system and not because of it.
I think you assume a bit much here. Not everybody who thinks DKP is better than loot assignment is a "me first" player. I surely didn't read as much. I can only speak for myself, but I prefer DKP because I had a really, really bad experience in a guild with loot assignment. I've seen loot officers slowly giving in to the constant sycophancy of their members. That was really painful to watch and absolutely not healthy for the guild nor the raid. Gave me the creeps, really.
And since we are playing assuming games, I assume that people absolutely try to be 'nicer' when around the loot officer. Some more, some less subtle. So DKP for me, because I think that it's not as prone to exploitation as loot assignment.
Any system that is designed to be followed within a rule system will work. If you have the officers work exactly on those rules there should be no reason why it can not be followed.
1. First new raid boss, Warriors are bid first. (if better items then they have) Progression issue....
2. Concrete rules, everyone can follow, if you dislike this, you can go to another guild.
If you set certain rules then there is no need to concern yourself with raid loot. Standard crap loot is looted by officers, to reduce lag and anything else gets purchased for guild banners etc.. example.
3. find officers, and guild leader changes after a length of time works. Again rules you can decide on.
Also if you have in game parsing tools to tell you things like who all was at the raid, 1st hour, 2nd hour etc.. points can be distributed correctly. You as a player should record your times on those raids.
Not all parsing tools will be available why we need the game devs to allow for some stats to be exported to parsing tools. Unless they can include some form of record keeping within the game itself, we should be ok to use a DKP system.
NBG is too time consuming, and unfair system with a larger guild.
You put the time in, you deserve to bid on items of higher quality. To fight over the loot reduces the progression. So having a system that deters that, will benefit the guild in the end.
I am trying to remember this system that was in one of my old guilds, I do believe it was a mix of /random and DKP and it was quite interesting. If I remember right, each progression item was a specific amount of DKP, let's say in this example, any new item that dropped through the guilds progression would automatically cost 50 dkp and as the guild progressed, these item values deteriorated through time depending on guild interest and guild progression.
In this system, everyone was allowed to roll providing you had the amount of DKP required to buy that item, so say an item dropped that cost 20 DKP. Player 1 had a total of 200 DKP while Player 2 maybe just recently got an item and was down to 50 DKP (numbers did get quite high for those that never needed upgrades after getting geared to a certain point which would rise to 500+ DKP). This is where every player that would be interested in the item and had the required DKP cost would roll.
Now in this example, would roll that is interested in the item 1-1000 BUT, those players would then add their DKP to their roll, so for the example: Player 1 would enter /random 200 - 1200 while player 2 would roll 50-1050. Depending on who won, the dkp would be deducted, this gave everyone a chance at getting that loot while some would have a better chance. It was an interesting system and I actually liked it quite a bit.
@Aposi
I really like that take on the DKP system!
Aposi said:I am trying to remember this system that was in one of my old guilds, I do believe it was a mix of /random and DKP and it was quite interesting. If I remember right, each progression item was a specific amount of DKP, let's say in this example, any new item that dropped through the guilds progression would automatically cost 50 dkp and as the guild progressed, these item values deteriorated through time depending on guild interest and guild progression.
In this system, everyone was allowed to roll providing you had the amount of DKP required to buy that item, so say an item dropped that cost 20 DKP. Player 1 had a total of 200 DKP while Player 2 maybe just recently got an item and was down to 50 DKP (numbers did get quite high for those that never needed upgrades after getting geared to a certain point which would rise to 500+ DKP). This is where every player that would be interested in the item and had the required DKP cost would roll.
Now in this example, would roll that is interested in the item 1-1000 BUT, those players would then add their DKP to their roll, so for the example: Player 1 would enter /random 200 - 1200 while player 2 would roll 50-1050. Depending on who won, the dkp would be deducted, this gave everyone a chance at getting that loot while some would have a better chance. It was an interesting system and I actually liked it quite a bit.
How is leaving the rewarding of an item up to a coin toss a fairer system than DKP? Literally none of these systems work plausibly in a guild where the members actually care about being rewarded for their efforts. Either that or I'm just incapable of seeing things from a casual guild perspective, because most people I've raided with would TP my house if I said something like that if they thought I was even remotely serious.
Think of it this way, would you like a member to bid on something from progression that maybe plays once a week (aka not really assisting the guild in progression) but is still able to bid and not show up the future progression raids where as a member that is using their dkp for upgrades and shows up to 90% of the raids still be able to have a chance to help the guild progress? DKP can still be a broken system, how is a normal DKP system fair other than the fact that the players can hoard their DKP and just outbid someone that could be more deserving of the item. Some systems require a minimum of a certain % of raid attendance, yes, but still doesn't give DKP justice being "the best" out there.
In reality, there are all sorts of variables that make each good and each bad, but if we chose to go with a system if everything was perfect, then the loot council would be the best loot system. I say this because if everything was perfect, you would not have the said loot council having favorites and actually consider who raids more often, who would have more of an impact on progression and who would deserve the item the most. All while not focusing on overgearing a select core of players and ensuring everyone in the raid is being consistent with their upgrades.
Alas, nothing is perfect, and just because a player can hoard and keep the minimum requirements to be able to roll on loot, does not mean that this player should be the most deserving of an item and make it fair. The system I brought up still gives everyone that has the required amount of DKP to be able to roll on the item a chance, while people with higher DKP still have a much higher chance. This system also had a attendance requirement, believe it was 90% attendance for the month.
To note, this was a raiding guild, this was one of the top three raiding guilds on the server at the time, and everyone agree'd to it, and out of every single loot system that I have experienced and been a part of, was probably the most fair dkp system giving everyone a chance on loot, because overgearing one person does not matter if that other player of the same class is so undergeared that they are unable to make any difference on the raids.
"You meet the bare minimum requirements, but you're not allowed to have it because the bare minimum isn't good enough."
Any distribution system that relies on an ideal outlook on human nature is doomed to fail. Objective number systems that transcend human subjectivity are the only hope we have of guaranteeing fairness.
Here's the difference:
In non-DKP, if you lose an item, there's always an element of subjectivity. Oh I pissed in an officer's cereal, guess I don't get loot this week. Oh the new app who just made member has terrible gear, guess no one who actually matters in this guild gets loot. Oh this officer is real life friends with this guy, what a coincidence that he won that piece. Yeah, no.
In DKP, if you lose an item to someone else, you have only yourself to blame.
I've used almost every popular loot system out there, and I am a fan of capped DKP (use it or lose it) myself. Cap max DKP at 100, then any tie breakers are based on lifetime DKP. That way, you encourage members to spend and not hoard, and vets still get the upper hand in tie breakers. Loot council is OK if your guild is fine with it, and your council is impartial (heh, good luck there). EPGP is the "fairest" system, and I like the decay mechanism, but without some kind of addon or 3rd party program, it is a pain to work with and explain to new members. Suicide Kings is probably good for casual guilds, and tbh I've only ever used it for secondary items like spell books, consumables, war runes, etc. And if you're using /random to distribute loot, well, good luck to you.
Realistically there really is no "best" system, since they all have their flaws. Really the "best" system is whatever the leaders and membership are happy with and works for them. For me, DKP has the best ratio of pros vs. cons. But most of the problems with loot systems are human resource problems, not problems inherent with the system itself. And really, those problems are ultimately the product of bad leadership.