PIF Silvergate Raid Loot and Attendance Priority System

[Kailef]

Updated 4 July 2008


Overview

PIF Silvergate uses a DKP point system to distribute loot, and an Attendance Point (AP) system to determine priority for raid participation for Rotational members.  The Rotational AP system was added in July of 2008.

To clear up any confusion - DKP and AP are earned and spent by the player, not by the character.  Therefore, DKP/AP earned by your main can be spent by an alt, and vice-versa.

How the AP and DKP systems work is explained below:


Earning Attendance Points (AP)

All members start with 10 Attendance Points (AP) in this system if they have never used it before.

Attendance points are earned by members of the Rotational raid group.  When a Rotational member is online at the start of a scheduled raid, and has informed the raid leader of their desire to attend by adding themselves to the waiting list, they are eligible to either attend the raid, or receive Attendance Points (AP).

Rotational members add themselves to the waiting list by sending the raid leader a /tell containing only the words "wl add".  They will receive a whispered confirmation in response letting them know that they are on the list.  Please note that other methods of informing the raid leader of the desire to attend the raid, including guild chat, regular tells, and voice chat, may result in their being overlooked.

Ten (10) Attendance Points (AP) are earned by a Rotational member if they are not selected to raid on that night, and only if they are online at the start of the raid and are on the waiting list as explained above.

Note that if a Rotational member is selected to raid, and they choose to pass and not attend the raid, they do not receive any Attendance Points (AP) for that night.


Spending Attendance Points (AP)

After informing the Raid Leader of their intent to raid as shown above, a Rotational member might be selected to raid.  Whether or not a Rotational member is selected to raid depends on the number of Attendance Points (AP) the Rotational member has.  Higher AP totals confer a higher priority and a greater chance of being selected.

Rotational invites are performed in two phases:

1 - Healer invites.  Healers have priority over other classes and are invited first, with highest AP having priority, until the required number of healers that the raid needs has been reached.
2 - Other Invites.  All other Rotational classes will be invited, with the highest AP having priority.  In some cases, if a specific class is needed for utility purposes (crowd control, etc) a Rotational with lower AP may be selected over a rotational with higher AP, but we will endeavor to do this only when the raid's success would be compromised otherwise.

If a Rotational member is selected to attend the raid, their Attendance Point (AP) total will be divided in half, rounded up.

In the case of a tie where several members have the same number Attendance Points, the Raid Leader will ask those members to perform a random 1-100 roll to determine who is selected.

All points will be awarded or deducted at the start of the raid.  Members selected to fill openings if players drop out mid-raid will not have to spend points.  Conversely, people who were selected to raid initially who leave early will not receive a refund.


Earning DKP points

New attendees start with 20 points.

1 point per half-hour of raiding time.

2 points "on-time bonus" for being grouped, zoned in, stocked with consumables, fully repaired, and ready to go at the raid's scheduled start time.

2 points "end bonus" for being in the raid at the time the raid ends.  

- Players who are on "standby" to take over for people who leave early earn points as if they were actively raiding, regardless of whether they are called upon or not.
- Characters are not on standby unless they are specifically told that they are by the raid leader.  If you don't know if you're on standby or not, you're not on standby.
- Characters whom are are standby will earn DKP, but their AP will not change whatsoever - The will not earn 10 AP, and they will not spend half their AP.
- Characters whom are on standby are required to be able to zone in to the raid instance within five minutes of being called upon.  (They may be logged on with an alt, so long as they are prepared to be zoned in on their main toon in under five minutes)
- Other bonuses or negatives can be awarded at the discretion of the raid leader for special/unusual circumstances.


Spending DKP points

- A player may either bid one half (1/2) of their total points rounded up, or ten (10) points.  A player may not bid 1/2 unless they have 22 or more points.
- Players are responsible for insuring that they bid the correct (one half rounded up) number of points.  Inaccurate bids will not be considered valid.
- If a player has less than 10 points, or has negative points, they may still bid 10 points on an item, but only if nobody with more than 10 points is bidding.  This is to prevent otherwise unwanted items from being sharded.
- If a player bids 1/2 of their points and no-one else bids at all, they are awarded the item for 10 points rather than 1/2 their total points.
- The player who bids the most points wins the item.  In the case of a tie, the highest random 1-100 roll from each of the tied bidders determines the winner.


Tracking DKP and Attendance Points

The current DKP standings can be viewed here:

http://www.wowguild.com/dkp.html

[Jason]

Not sure if this is the right place to ask, but I have a few questions about the loot rule.  I have never had to deal with loot rules before so sorry if these questions are idiotic.

Is this per character or per person points?  If you bring in an alt character do you roll with a fresh set of points or can you use points from your other character?

Once a person is in the negative are they still able to bid 10 points on items?  It would be nice to give out items if no one wants them, but the person with positive points would have to lose half of their points to get the item if they are going against them.

Are people able to roll on loot from a spec that they are not?  Would a healer be allowed to roll on DPS gear even if the DPS class could use the gear more and would help the raid more?

Are people only allowed to bid half or 10?  So if someone with say 100 points bids against someone with 22, the person with 100 points would have to lose 50 to beat the other person, where the other person would only have to lose 11.

[Perrin]

Good set of questions there Jason.  Some where discussed in our meeting and some weren't.  You did very well in addressing a lot of the same issues we brought up during that meeting, which means you're thinking very clearly and well regarding this issue.  I'll let Kai address all of your concerns, but I was impressed with your list of questions!




Perrin

[Kailef]

Currency generally belongs to a particular character, not the person.  This is to discourage abuse and frequent switching of main characters.  Exceptions can be made, but only at the discretion of the raid leaders and officers.

By (apparently) popular demand, a person in the negative is always able to bid 10 points.  They will never win when someone with more than 22 points bids half their points.  I'm open for discussion on this, though, because I prefer not being allowed to have negative points.w

While your term "roll on loot" is not accurate since rolling only occurs if there is a tie, the general idea is correct:  People can bid on anything they want, regardless of spec or class.  I'll even let people bid on items they can't even physically use.  I'll probably kick them out of the guild later, but that's besides the point.

As far as the rules regulating what you can bid, you are once again correct.  People may bid ONLY 10 points or one-half of their total points.  So, as your example illustrates, if a person ith 100 points bids against a person with 22 points, the person with 100 points would win, and would pay 50 points.  The more points you have, the more point you lose when you win a 1/2 bid.  This system discourages the "point hoarding" that is so prevalent in many DKP systems, by making it difficult for one person to completely dominate the bidding, but at the same time a person with a lot of points would still have an advantage.  For example, if the two people above were to bid against each other again, the first would have 22 points and the second would have 50 points.... The person with 50 points would win again, taking his total down to 25 points.  If they bid against each other yet again, 22 versus 25, the same person would win yet again, and take his total points down to 12 (he'd bid one half of 25 rounded up)  Now, if the same two bid against each other once more, finally, the person with 22 points would win.

[Arkana]

I understand the reservation about bidding with negative balance.

A suggestion that might help is to ONLY allow negative balance bids if no one else is bidding at all.  This will allow loot that would be sharded to get used.  It would also place people with negative balances at the tail of the priority list.

[Kailef]

I like it.  I like it a lot.  Great idea, Ed.  Anybody disagree?  You have four seconds to answer.  Okay, time's up.  I'm implementing that change now.

[Mushen]

Good questions Jason, and good idea Ed!

[Edgeburner]

This seems like a fair system for all, albeit a bit complex to manage.  My guess is it's automated and won't be a huge PITA to maintain.

However I do have a question.  What is the need for changing our current KZ loot rules?  Since the vast majority of the raid with be from PIF (80% if the regular KZ groups go) what is driving the need for change?  I feel that the current KZ system is very fair and I see items going to the classes and players that could best use them.  I can't even count how many times Shanni has passed loot to me, because the item would be a bigger upgrade for me than her. 

Just want to make sure that need vs greed feel of our current raid system isn't lost. 

My 2 pennies...

Edgey

[Jason]

Excelent, thanks for clearing up those questions.  I really like the idea that Ed came up with too.  ...though I have a few more question.

How is the voting going to be done?  Will you just announce in raid chat that you are going to bid, or do you whisper the raid leader, or something I have no idea about.

Also is the loot system in Kara going to change along with this or is this going to be only for Gruul's?  I know our Kara raid is going to be less people and AG does not normally come with us so this might cause some problems with points.  Personally I think the Kara loot rules are fine, but if we do move Kara over to the new system we should at least have 2 separate point queues.

[Shanni]

This loot system is for the 25 man stuff only. KZ will continue to be a need/greed roll deal.

The bidding will be done privatley, i believe, by sending a /tell to the master looter. And it's not that difficult to manage, once you figure out the little kinks. Pretty simple actually.

[Kailef]

This seems like a fair system for all, albeit a bit complex to manage.

Oh, man.  Don't make me laugh out loud like that while I'm at work.  ;-)  Our system is easy, I tell you!  :-)  You should see some of the more conventional DKP systems out there.  Oh, Lord, it's a nightmare.  Imagine if you got points for boss kills.  Imagine if the number of points you got changed depending on whether a particular boss was on farm status or not.  Imagine if the guild had to decide on an individual point "cost" for every single piece of loot.  Imagine if you got different amounts of DKP depending on your rank in the guild.  And God forbid, imagine if you could bid any number of points you wanted.  Talk about strife between guild members.  Yikes.  For example... go look at this:  http://incite-guild.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=21

Shanni is correct, by the way - The loot system is for 25 man content only, and bidding is entirely private, nobody knows who is bidding, or what they bid.  You can, however, see how many points you have any how many points the people in the raid have using a few simple whisper commands sent to the loot master.

[abner]

Well, this seems thorough and well-thought-out, congrats.

(While I don't recommend it for PIF, I participated in one of those complex DKP systems way back in EQ... once you get going it's actually not that difficult, as long as your source data is well presented and publicly available, and that was in a "public raiding" system with hundreds of raiders participating...)

[AncientOne]

Just my 2 cents. I think there is a need for a loot system of some sort when it is not a PIF only event. The sk system used in mag was mostly fair but there were a lot of questions about progression. From what I have read about this system it is much more fair than sk was. Kudos Kai.

[Tigs]

Are people able to roll on loot from a spec that they are not?  Would a healer be allowed to roll on DPS gear even if the DPS class could use the gear more and would help the raid more?

What I've seen done before and would recommend we do regarding this is have everyone state their primary role for multi role classes.  You are then allowed to bid on items for your primary role, or if no one wants them for that, then you may bid on them for secondary roles. 

eg, my shammy is enhanced, there is no way I should be able to bid on a healing item over a dedicated healer.  Similary, I shouldn't be able to bid on a pvp toy over someone who would use that while actively raiding for us.  Thus, I believe we should have the first round of bids for primary roles and if no one takes the item, then open it for secondary role use.

I would also suggest that rules for bringing alts (those specifically asked to come for raid balance, vs I want to bring my alt), and main changes, or multi role class changes be settled now instead of trying to figure something out when it happens (as it invariably always does).

I would think the old Main > Alt rule would still apply, the only exception being an alt that was specifically needed for that raid, and asked to come along by the raid leaders.  eg, we are short healers and heavy on dps, and thus someones healer was asked to come along. They would be allowed to bid on items as if they were a main for that raid.

[Arkana]

Tigs regarding what loot you roll on, you can roll on anything you want regardless of what your role is. 

From an earlier post by Kailef:

People can bid on anything they want, regardless of spec or class.  I'll even let people bid on items they can't even physically use.  I'll probably kick them out of the guild later, but that's besides the point.

Points in support of this:
a) we are trying to keep it simple, fewer rules etc.
b) presume that people are going to be reasonable for the most part. 
c) individuals will know what loot makes the most sense for them; let the individual decide.