The power of dkp, and a bonus story of delightful irony
So it’s official, my guild runs DKP. Were this a few months ago, I might be disappointed to report such a development, but today I’m actually quite happy. As you could tell from my raid recaps lately we’ve had major attendance issues, and after the last few nights I am feeling positive about DKP’s ability to fix these issues.
Sure, we’ve hit the same hiccups you’d expect from a guild adopting DKP for the first time. We had the dissenting quarters, populated mostly by those that raided very seldom and liked the thought that they could hop in once a week and maybe snag a purple. Which is all well and good, but ultimately this laissez faire attitude was hurting the guild and progression.
I look at DKP from the perspective of a hardened pragmatist. Human beings are rational creatures, and invariably will act in their perceived self-interest. Likewise, WoW players will act in a way that will maximize their loot intake. If a player knows that they’ll get the same amount of loot raiding one night a week then they will do that. However, shake up the system like we did and make it so raiding one night a week supresses how much loot you get on that one day (rather than having an even shot with everyone else in the raid) and they will be compelled to raid more often.
It’s simple economics.
There have already been several comments by guildmembers saying something along the line of “when’s the next raid?”, “does x raid I never attend give DKP?”, and so on. They feel compelled to accumulate the green points, to maximize their shot at loot, and will act accordingly.
We did Naxx25 as the inaugural raid for the new system and it went very, very well. Looting was smooth and very, very fast. No multiple rounds of calling for rolls, just one box pops up. Everyone puts in their maximum bid and the system resolves winners eBay-style. Whatever doesn’t get bid on comes up for a second round of offspec bidding. I’d go so far as to say it’s flawless thus far.
Only worry I can perceive of is (1) dealing with recruitment when people will come in and find themselves at the bottom of a DKP pile, and (2) dealing with raiders ceasing to attend raids once they are sitting on a fat pile of points. We’ll have to see how those two situations operate when and if they appear.
Now for a funny ironic story:
We have this one raiding healer who I’ve mentioned in the past. She was first mentioned on these pages for disappearing once she snagged most of the loot she wanted from Naxx25, and only recently reappeared in the week or two before Ulduar came out. I don’t think it’s unfair to characterize her attitude as selfish. We’ve had issues finishing Naxx25 in one night this last month, and when told we probably wouldn’t devote a second night to old content, she informed the guild she only runs Naxx for the chance to get a ring from Kel’Thuzad.
Gee, thanks. Screw gearing up folks to help the guild, right?
So on Wednesday we scheduled a Naxx25 so we could fine tune the DKP system and not let it hamper an Ulduar run. Seems reasonable, I thought. Well, like I said, despite it being an exceptionally smooth Naxx run, she bailed out after Maexxna (our first wing), probably assuming we’d stall after two wings like the last few weeks. And a boss later we noticed she was in Obsidian Sanctum.
Okay…
We continued through Naxx, steamrolling everything in our path, and once at the last wing I noticed she was still in OS. They must be working on 3D, I suspected. I /who’d her fiance who is not in our guild, and he was in Naxx as well. She dropped a guild raid to do a PuG achievement run in OS.
And not long after the achievement for 2D popped up in guild chat. No one grats her as far as I can recall.
So the point where irony kicks in is, and I’m sure you’ve seen this coming (and you especially see it coming now that I’ve foreshadowed the shocking twist), we downed KT and the Signet of Manifested Pain dropped.
Sweet revenge! Four different people linked it in guild chat to flaunt it.
More so, we did Ulduar last night and Ignis dropped the Pyrelight Circle (and the Heart of Iron, woooo). Because she skipped out on Naxx, she didn’t have near enough DKP to compete with the other people that rolled on it, and lost that ring as well.
The lesson here, kids? Be loyal to your guild, or irony’s gonna git you.
(Lastly, before I get ambushed by an English major, I know that story wasn’t technically irony… but I’m lazy and it’s so much easier to type that than “unfortunate coincidence” so many times.)
Armory Feed
@iamapaladin
29 May 2009 at 3:09 pm #
Well, someone got their just deserts =)
I have both those rings, muhahaah! But I haven’t missed a raid so far and I was able to get the epgp lead for it…
If you are worried about newcomers being screwed out of loot, just do a DKP decay so that people can’t just earn DKP forever. Make it a %age decay so that people that don’t use their DKP will lose more than those that do use it. Or you could convert to EPGP, which is a modified DKP system. DKP can be modified any sort of ways so I think it is a relatively fair system though it does treat everyone as equal performers with attendance and loot as the only variable.
@honorshammer
29 May 2009 at 3:36 pm #
Most new recruits know they will not have a great shot at loot starting off new in a guild (or at least they should). Some guilds even have a 2 week waiting period before a new person can get loot (unless its going to be sharded).
Best of luck with your system. If you are worried about people bailing after they have a bunch of DKP, a system that slowly deflates your DKP (say by 10% at the end of each month) will help.
Well, i think right now its not a “Big” issue the whole “I’m new and wont get loot” thing since most of the “veterans” on a guild (assuming they have old content on farm) will already have almost if not everything they want from places like naxx, and its opretty much what has happened to our guild, like i had mentioned before, we had a “recruiting wave” of arount 6 people to strenghten our ranks again, and we have been sharding around 10 or more epics per raid, and the rest go to the new people, maybe except for the KT items (and we did tell the recruits in advance that those items were going to the veterans), and so far we have had no issues.
Are you using a mod for DKP? Your description of a box popping up intrigues me.
Hi Rhi, so… you’ve turned to the darkside now haven’t you >-<;
I understand the need for DKP but i usually find it is what corrupt officers who exploit it behind the scenes.
A /roll 100 is more transparent and straightforward then DKP that is a made up currency managed by guild officers that can be artificially adjusted on a whim.
My current guild is using EPGP. What it is, EP = points gained by killing bosses and showing for attendance on time. GP is points you gain whenever you bid for an item and win. PR = Priority which is calculated by EP divided by GP which then determines your PR. Basically you ignore EP, and GP, just look at PR to see whether you win the loot over another person when bidding for loot.
There is a 10% diminish for EP and GP each week.
Anyway i can see where that greedy healer is coming from. I run raids to gear myself and that is why i play the game, each to his own reason why they play the game. But i also find it fun for raid progression, meaning it’s not just about loot, but also achievements in downing bosses.
I do see a need for helping your fellow guildys to gear up, but what irks me is most people who need gearing up tend to mooch off better geared players. Meaning it doesn’t bother them if you bring this undergeared character to an encounter they are not geared for and which may result in a lot of wipes due to the lack of whatever it is their suppose to be doing.
I’m proud of the fact that i have been very responsible for making sure i am geared for raids and know the basics at least of what to do. And this is why when i create pugs and don’t invite people including my own guildys who i considered undergeared, i create enemies.
Anyway back to topic. Word of advise, keep your DKP system transparent and also keep a backup. Our former gm deleted all our EPGP and nobody had a backup. Many players were pissed especially the old ones who were stacking EPGP. This resulted in us losing a lot of members.
Just to reclarify.
New lv 80s can do the lv 80 dungeons to get basic gear. The best way is to most get crafted which will serve you fine for this purpose. After that do the easy lv 80 heroics. Then progress onto the harder lv 80 5man heroics. You may need to re-farm these places daily, but a smarter thing to do is use atlasloot and determine which places drop more loot that you need so you have bigger odds of winning a drop. Also make your own groups and only invite classes that won’t compete with you.
This is how i got ready for Nax 10 raids and geared up there and then progressed to Nax 25 and finally to Ulduar.