What loot system do you like?

[VariaVespasa]

Varia said it better than I could hope to; I wish she had more time to make it a little shorter though

Short is not my middle name!

*Hugs*
Varia

[VariaVespasa]

Yes because if the majority says it's true, then it must be.

And the minority is always right....

*Hugs*
Varia

[VariaVespasa]

DKP is a system for mediocre guilds, OLS is one for uberguilds, those that simply want to be the best.

I'd be curious to see how many of the top EQ 'uberguilds' are using OLS to distribute loot. I'm going to go out on a limb and say zero.


(Ok maybe one just because I know someone will find one. Either way I'm fairly certain it would be a very small percentage.)

FoH was OLS I *think*. But CD, Sovereign, and CoE are/were all DKP. Dunno about CT. You would think it was OLS, but I'm not actually sure thats true. In any event, even if it was and you cherry-pick your time frame thats still half the uberguilds on Veeshan that were dkp, and during OoW all the top 3 were dkp. I think you'd have some difficulty describing CD as a mediocre guild...

*Hugs*
Varia

[VariaVespasa]

MMORPG DKP Uber Guilds = 1-3 Skilled Players that have dozens of mindless "worker bees" at their disposal to be able to issue halt/go orders to get things done. Its a game of ONE thinking for the MANY. The only thing it takes to be successful in an MMORPG is a command structure that is competant and a large group of listeners. That's all.

Let me get this straight- You object to the idea of one thinking for the many? You, a CAREER member of the military, wherein one thinking for the many is the norm and indeed the very foundation of its organisation, and serving in the branch of the military thats addicted to AWACS at that (the ultimate in one thinking for the many!), object to the idea of ONE thinking for the MANY?...

Excuse me, I'm going to have to go lock myself in my closet for a while and howl with laughter before I rupture myself.

*Hugs*
Varia

[Xyun]

I understand that many uberguilds use DKP and many mediocre guilds use OLS. I am not disputing this. My argument is simply about which system IS better, SHOULD be used, and why.

My argument is that if you prefer DKP you display:

1) A lack of trust in your leadership and your guildmates.
2) A lack of percipience of the concept of "guild"
3) Greed, or support for an environment that promotes it.
4) A belief that contribution demands reward and not vice-versa.
5) Individual rather than team mentality.

So when I say DKP is for mediocre guilds and OLS is for uberguilds, I mean it conceptually. It is the mentality and intentions of the DKP proponent (guild) that I'm concerned with. Hope that clears it up.

It can also be seen in this way:

It's just a matter of perception.

I disagree. It is not just perception. My argument is that OLS is in fact better at promoting cohesiveness, trust, unity, and progress of the guild as a whole.

My counter-arguments:

1. When guild leadership moves toward a DKP system, it is an abandonment of arrogance, and an acknowledgment that they are not omniscient.

1) It is incorrect to assume that a guild's leadership is arrogant or believes they're omniscient just because the system they use is OLS. In fact, moving away from OLS exemplifies an inability to perform their duty, which is to lead. In all situations, leading entails making the crucial decisions that have a direct impact on the progress of the group.

2. DKP displays a trust in guild members to know when to yield to others for the good of the guild.

2) Leaders are generally more knowledgable about the overall health and direction of the guild than members, which is why they are leaders. It is not that they do not trust members to make the decisions, it is simply their own responsibility! Members are more susceptible to making the wrong decisions and in DKP they are not held accountable. Greed runs rampant when accountability does not exist, and that's just human nature. If leadership fucks up in OLS they ARE accountable, and too many failures is a sign of incompetence in leading.

3. DKP promotes the concept of fairness.

3) So does OLS. Don't get me wrong, I've been in corrupt OLS guilds and they are painful as fuck to be a part of, but disregarding corruption, an OLS system is (should be) just as fair as a DKP system minus the lootwhoring. By saying DKP promotes fairness you are implying that OLS does not, and this is simply not true of a properly run OLS guild. The misconception is that OLS is in human hands while DKP is mathematical and therefore more accurate. The fact is both systems require human judgement, the difference being who is making the decisions.

[Winnow]

DKP is the way to go. Just because your guild is DKP doesn't mean everyone is an immediate lootwhore and won't consider what's best for the guild.

If you have quality players in your guild, using DKP with an awareness of what's best for the guild is the best balance. Guild leaders and officers usually do know what's best for the guild but lets face it, they aren't always the brightest people in the guild just because they are in the leadership roles. Many times, officers are people that have more time to dedicate to playing the game and the desire to track information but anyone with half a brain is going to have great suggestions from time to time even if they are lowly grunts.

Communication between all guild members on guild status and direction will go a long way loot finding the right owners. Unless things have changed, I recall Sovereign's shaman always discussing their class, equipement, etc. I also recall /tell conversations with rangers who many times could use the same items as shaman.

It comes down to the quality of people in the guild, not the loot system. DKP is an excellent way to track things in a larger guild that gets more than one loot a week. It becomes too daunting for anyone to track everything in a 40+ member guild. As I stated before, officers don't need to keep secrets. An open DKP system with minor tweeks (recent play time percentage etc) is hands down the best way to go.

[Lisandre]

Let me start off by saying that those statements were just another way of looking at the DKP system.

1) It is incorrect to assume that a guild's leadership is arrogant or believes they're omniscient just because the system they use is OLS. In fact, moving away from OLS exemplifies an inability to perform their duty, which is to lead. In all situations, leading entails making the crucial decisions that have a direct impact on the progress of the group.

In order for the OLS system to be fair, it would require the guild leaders to spend an inordinate amount of time keeping track of attendance, loot quality, and loot history for each member of the guild. It would be almost impossible for a person without total recall to remember and evaluate all those details at will. And while administrative work like this is important, I would argue that a good leader would minimize the amount of work required to do such tasks in order to do more crucial things like organizing and leading raids. Therefore, guild leaders who move toward a DKP system are not doing their guilds a disservice by doing so. In fact, moving toward the DKP system can be seen as a guild leader’s push toward better efficiency for the guild.

2) Leaders are generally more knowledgable about the overall health and direction of the guild than members, which is why they are leaders. It is not that they do not trust members to make the decisions, it is simply their own responsibility! Members are more susceptible to making the wrong decisions and in DKP they are not held accountable. Greed runs rampant when accountability does not exist, and that's just human nature. If leadership fucks up in OLS they ARE accountable, and too many failures is a sign of incompetence in leading.

The fact that you think members are “more susceptible to making the wrong decisions” is an indication of a lack of trust in their ability to see the big picture. One of the marks of a good leader is his ability to persuade. If you think the person who sends a /tell for an item should yield to another member, then try to persuade him to see how it would benefit the guild more to see it your way.

In an OLS system, who are the leaders accountable to? They seem to have total control of everything.

3) So does OLS. Don't get me wrong, I've been in corrupt OLS guilds and they are painful as fuck to be a part of, but disregarding corruption, an OLS system is (should be) just as fair as a DKP system minus the lootwhoring. By saying DKP promotes fairness you are implying that OLS does not, and this is simply not true of a properly run OLS guild. The misconception is that OLS is in human hands while DKP is mathematical and therefore more accurate. The fact is both systems require human judgement, the difference being who is making the decisions.

The DKP and OLS systems are not black and while. Implying that of one system does not preclude the other. For the most part, I think the intention of guilds using the OLS system is to be fair. But, we are only human. Imperfect memory and emotions will sometimes get in the way of that. With the DKP system, everything is an open book. People can dispute the points awarded to certain items, but there will be no question about favoritism and the like.

[VariaVespasa]

For: all the fanbois of DKP inside of MMORPGS...

*Insert really quite a lot of stuff here, most of it unsupported and/or ad-hominem crap, sorta like the ad-hominem derogatory label in the very first line...*

Dkp leadership wants you online 24/7? What leadership doesnt want you on 24/7, or at least every time they wanna do stuff? ALL leaderships WANT you on EVERY time they wanna do stuff. ALL. Whether or not they actually expect it, or have any methods to encourage it is a different story, but they ALL want it. You dont get to imply that its somehow only dkp leaderships that want it, and that somehow makes them "bad".

"They know that their followers will come, regardless of time of day, because those dkp are up for grabs". And those guild-advancement-above-all members wont come regardless of time of day, even though not coming would hurt the guild advancement thats most precious to them?

"Or else risk dropping in favored status". Typically "favored status" is 50% raid attendance, which, given that most guilds have at least 1 day a week of non-raiding means that you only have to play 3 nights a week, hardly a no-life, chained to the keyboard existence.

"You...accumulate your dkp basicly ...by default" To some degree true, and I think the only true thing you said in your whole post. But if the person in question is a no-talent time-server then why did you let them into your guild in the first place? And if they have at least medium talent then theyre contributing to the success of the guild by being there. Successful guilds are as much about appropriate numbers being online as they are about skill, or gear, or discipline. Even medium talents can be very valuable to a guild, if properly used, and thats down to the officers.

Again, to stress the point, it doesnt matter how good a player you are, IF YOU DONT SHOW UP. Showing up, being online, whether you do it to help the guild or to earn your dkp, is a thing of considerable value in itself. More than one guild has failed due to people not showing up, even though they had skilled players.

It is implied that dkp is some magical coercion that forces players to log on. It is not. There can be a (self imposed) element of that when dkp is first introduced to a guild, but it fades within a few months. It is NOT a major attendance lure in the long run, although it may have some modest effect in influencing people around 40-50% attendance to up it to 51%.

"TUH is judged by effectiveness, not time played" Well, yeah, duh. FoH was uber because of what they achieved. So is CD. So was Sovereign. KoE members play as much as FoH people did, but they are not an uber guild (or werent last time I played, anyway). But you havent actually shown any link to support your implication that dkp guilds are somehow incapable of being TUH.

Hardcore/Core of the Guild. Core means on for nearly all the raids. Says nothing about playing outside of raidtimes. Some do, some dont. Their "required" playtime is whatever the length of the raid itself is. Exactly the same as the playing-for-the-guild peoples "required" time, and not an iota more.

"You wont get the dkp you need to do your job" Bullshit, except in the case of the 2 main tanks. The 50%-ers are still effective, as I've shown before, due to how dkp actually works in practice over time vis-a-vis the lesser loots and bulk purchasing. Only the tanks actually need gear to do their jobs. If youre going to gear a tank then who are you gonna pick- the guy who's always on for the raids, or the guy who's only on half the time? Yep, the guy who's on for all the raids, so you dont have your raids potentially cancelled for the lack of useable tanks. No, you cant divert enough stuff to make them all useable tanks without causing trouble in the ranks. With a dkp system he's on a lot so he has points to buy the stuff he needs to be main tank, especially when guildies pass on first-drops in favor of the main tank. Oh, you didnt know they do actually do that? Well, they do. Sovereign certainly did. With officer loot the main tank gets toys too. If he doesnt then youre sabotaging your own progress. But if you give him too many toys youre sabotaging yourself in different ways- too many eggs in one basket, and annoying your other members. If you boost all your tanks then you dont have all your eggs in one basket, but you have a lot more annoyed players.

ToN on Saryrn did the feed-the-main-tank thing back in the day. Full Dozekar lewt and everything else they could scrounge for him. Gave them a good tank. And annoyed a lot of the other members who didnt even have 1 quest toy yet. Continuing that loot-stacking tradition nearly destroyed the guild it initially seemed to benefit. You may say "oh theyre selfish". No, theyre human. A certain amount of self interest is inherent in nearly every human alive. Saying "ideally it should be some other way" doesnt negate the reality that it isnt. Communism espoused much the same thing- everyone should work for the good of the State. Self wasnt important. And we all know how that turned out. Self IS important, to at least some degree. People want to be uber and kick ass and grow the rep of their guild, but unlike a fps, in a mmorpg that also means growing yourself too at least to some degree. Indeed you have to, or else you dont have the gear necessary to survive the environment. Both dkp and ols can do that, and do do that. The only difference is that dkp formalises how it works and guards against corruption and oversights, while ols doesnt. Even if the officers are peachy and doing their honest best, dkp removes an uncertainty, which is good for morale, which is good for attendance and retention.

Ugh, I'm sure I could tighten the above couple paragraphs up considerably but I'm nearly out of time, so suffer.

"Uberguilds dkp guilds = 1-3 skilled players and dozens of mindless workers" Dont judge all guilds by CT's example.... Ok, cheap shot, but honestly, who could resist that?? In what way does that differ from a OLS guild? How, PRECISELY, is that inapplicable to ANY successful OLS guild?

"Listeners" Well of course guilds need people who listen. Discipline (or listening) is the mainstay of any successful guild. Without it, no guild is successful, or efficient, regardless of gear or numbers, except occasionally and by accident. It is the single most important element. As a member of the military you should be well aware of that. No matter how skilled each individual is, it amounts to nothing without discipline and teamwork, and that requires a chain of command- few thinking for the many, in fact. Yes, individual skill is good for dealing with the unexpected, but discipline is more important. The discipline to stick to the plan. The discipline to hold your ground and keep doing what youre supposed to be doing when something goes wrong. The discipline to not run over to deal with the add because you know you can, and arrive at the mob in a group of 10 other people who also knew they could, leaving something else vital unattended. All these TUH people youre fond of still must be organised, or theyre nothing. Youre elite airforce pilots may be uber, but they still listen to the AWACS that does a lot of their thinking for them, and for very good reason. So effectively ANY successful organisation is comprised of some officers, and a heap of listeners. What was your complaint again?

"People sitting in front of their comps for 6-8 hours a day" Practice makes perfect. This is an axiom, and cannot be disputed. Do you imagine that people can play their character long hours and yet not improve? Do you imagine that they raid a lot and yet never get a feel for how the guild works to know when to break off what theyre doing to deal with the unexpected, and when not to? It defies all evidence and logic to believe otherwise.

FPS- As has been commented on, fps are a different type of game, with different parameters for success. The comparison is not valid.

Now I'm 30 minutes late, so I'm going poof. Toodles.

*Hugs*
Varia

[Tinkin Tankem]

Magister is also OLS, it's somewhat closed DKP since they have a record of what raids everyone attended. However they don't show any DKP. Carry on...

[Winnow]

Magister is also OLS, it's somewhat closed DKP since they have a record of what raids everyone attended. However they don't show any DKP. Carry on...

Never heard of them!

[Raistin]

When I was in fires, of all the loot systems < GL compared to DKP in COE > Furors choice was much better imo.

I think it really depends on the Guild Leader. As in Furors case, he was on for 99.9% of the raids. He was able to tell who was online the most for raids and who didnt show up for the attempt for soandso mob the time before. He was able to award loot based on attendence, and time put in to the guild as a whole. Fires was diffrent in every way. It seemed up till SoL it consisted of the same 40 or so people, with 25ish of the same people from the start. So naturally the 25ish will normally get first choice. Of course it got a lil fucked when he made "class" officers. Im quiet sure everyone knew not everyone really got along and had their own lil clan within their classes.

Of course when he relized that some of the Sr. members wernt at events and we get the first kill and they ask for loot. He passed them over. Also the case of loot call as in " Send me tell of what you have now to replace with this". It was pretty logical that the person with the 50+ mana/hp increase compared someone with only 5hp 20 mana upgrade would be awarded the item. As compared to the DKP system it doesnt matter. You have the eqranking dickheads who will ask for that 5hp/0mana sv+2 all item just to inch further to the #1 spot of badass compared to the person who has 10 less DKP as that person and would get a upgrade of 100 hps/100 mana. yes Ive seen it happen.


So 80% of the time DKP isnt fair. You can have a friend log you on, and attend raids for you and pretend its you or some other random crap. Ill take a Guild Leader who can hand out loot evenly to a guild full of dickheads,assholes and bitches who typically hate eachother over DKP any day. When you throw in Officer opinions in to it, it just gets all fucked up. At least with 1 person controlling the loot pool, people can see when their is something messed up and just go find another guild.

I was a loot whore to a point. It started to work out pretty well with SOL when their was a ton more loot for casters. The wizards would ask in our channel if we wanted the item, and if 1 person who had the most of a upgrade wanted it, we would pass it to them. And typically if 2 people needed it the most with the same upgrade, then Furor would decide who got it based on time in guild/and how often that person is on for raids.

[Kilmoll the Sexy]

I would always prefer an OLS to DKP. It definitely allows more flexibility and it is oriented towards making sure your GUILD is stronger versus making your personal Ebay value higher. The earlier days of EQ would have been a nightmare if the top guilds used DKP throughout it. Sure DKP works great now as there are not the enormous differences in levels of equipment that your members would have had then.

Tanks were especially important to make sure you had equipped and if your main tank was lost for a period of time, you had to get a new one up to speed and you could not do that with DKP, thus hurting your entire guild. For the most part, people got equipped via the guild by people who were thinking longer term than just "hey I need a new toy". There were a lot of times when I wanted an item but did not ask for it or even refused it when offered simply because it would strengthen our guild to upgrade someone else first. I bet I passed the dagger from Tunare a good 8 or 9 times......but always because there was someone who we felt deserved it and would benefit. If it was a DKP deal, I would probably have bid on it just so that someone who didn't need it would not take it. People's individual greed will always lead them to do stupid crap and if they have the DKP, then you can't stop them from taking it. With an OLS there is control to stop stupid things like that from happening (as long as your officers are not retards).

I can't think of too awful many cases in the thousands of loots being passed out in CT where the officers botched things to where I was shaking my head. For the msot part, the only people who got pissy would be the ones who only showed up after they knew we were going to win and that they might get loots. DKP doesn't necessarily reward the people who do the other little things either....the ones who spend hours talking to recruits or solving problems in the guild.....or doing CR's all night or a number of other things that good guildmates do to make the entire guild stronger.

[Winnow]

If we had DKP in CT when we first got into Sleeper's Tomb I would have used them to take a 1H Primal Spear from a Rogue!

Some discretion is a must with any system. Sleeper's Keys, for example, were given in a way to the allow the guild to get a group up there as soon as possible (didn't give 6 straight keys to warriors) As I recall, Sleeper key distribution and raids were one of the hottest topics of debate. ...to progress and get primal or do a raid that everyone could participate in.

Backflagging and loot issues suck. If the EQ developers had a clue, they'd make equipment be owned by the guild. That way, if you left a guild, the items would stay with the guild...which wouldn't matter as you would most likely be moving to another guild that had their own equipment. "Thx epic" would become a thing of the past and guild raids would add to guild coffers where everyone could benefit and those that went on raids could go to the guild bank and load up...by practice, guild members logging would put the items back in the bank so they'd be usable by others. Same tagged guild members could trade guild items between each other. Guilds would earn flags and anyone in that guild would have the flags regardless of whether they attended every single flag event...you'd lose your flags when you left and gain the flags your next guild had acquired.

You could still loot whore during non guild events.

[Sneekz]

I preferred loot being awarded by the GL over any other system myself. Not officers, just the GL, if the GL isn't online enough or isn't bright enough to do it himself then he shouldn't be the GL if you ask me.

Long story short Ive been in two real raiding guilds during my eq career and there was much less whining and drama in the guild that awarded loot as opposed to the guild that used dkp. You would think with dkp it would be cut and dry, or at least I did but it didn't turn out that way. With every raid, someone either was missed because they showed up 2 mins after the dkp SS was taken or left 2 mins before it and thought they should get dkp. And then there were the arguements over how much raids should be worth and items etc or the dkp not being entered fast enough so it wasn't 100% accurate all the time. I was surprised by how many conflicts occured in a system that on paper sounded flawless.

[Apostate]

The weakness of officer-loot is not that it is susceptible to corruption, it is that it is susceptible to the perception of corruption, which is far more common and therefore more destructive.

[Ajran]

I was never in a true DKP guild. But I've always liked the concept. Officer decided loot in the 3 guilds I was in caused nothing but problems the exception being HOOAC. Farstorm eventually used the EQDKP program but we mainly used it for attendance tracking and the ability the software had of showing a loot to raid ratio. We figured if everyones loot to raid ratio was relatively equal then everyone was getting their fair share.

It worked for the most part but people still bitched about it, mainly those who really couldn't grasp the concept that it wasn't true DKP but more of a tool for the officers to use to see attendance and point out any glaring inconsistencies like people who had been to 40 raids and gotten nothing or people who had been to 20 raids and gotten 10 items. Mainly it was the people in the latter category who were exposed for the loot whores they were that were bitching.

The WoW guild I am in is just getting to the point where we need to really decide how we are going to handle loot. We want to do it right from the beginning. At the very least we will be using EQDKP as we did in Farstorm. but after reading over the points in = points out version I really really like that idea.

-Ajran

[Xanupox]

The only DKP system I would support would be an "in-game" DKP system. Whereas the actual game you where playing tracked when and where you were at for "raids".

In WoW and I guess EQ2, and future games there are Raid groups, and so it would be easy for the server to know who is there and who is not.

You travel with the guild, you go on raids you get points. It would go on well beyond that though. You could also get points for crafting for the guild, donating items to a guild storage etc.,

Many ways, many components to gettings "points"... shows the "whole person concept" for the advancement of the guild.

When an item drops on a raid, it goes into the guilds "raid aquired loot distribution pool". Leaders could designate how long it would remain there by default... minutes, hours, a day perhaps?

Give people on and offline the time to view the items that thier guild has aquired and possibly spend thier points on that item.

You raid 99% of the time, but cant be there that 1% on which your item that you need and wanted for weeks dropped? No problem your guild loot distribution vault would have the item there for you to possibly bid your points on.

DKP is flawed now, because it relies on a human to input data on some external spreadsheet, which can be altered by corrupt individuals. Others may just make a mistake and overlook someone... it happens, human error...

Some kind of extravagant in-game system like I briefly went over above would be out of the hands of the players, but in essence give the players more of a reason to work for bettering thier guild, and not just themselves.