I’m off on holiday for a week or so, to the American Midwest, to engage some of my other enthusiasms, namely roller coasters and tall buildings.
Updates will resume when I get back!
So far I’ve introduced simple loot systems, and basic DKP systems. We’ve seen that in a basic DKP system there’s nothing to stop people from hoarding their currency, and encourage people to spend their points instead, and even worse, there’s nothing to stop someone from taking a raid break during a period of difficult learning encounters and then come back and take all the loot for themselves after other people have worked out the strategies.
A basic way to do this is to introduce a decay to the system. Say every raid that each member of the guild is deducted 5% of their points. This is an intentionally low amount - enough that the raiders will see an increase in their points from raid to raid, but not so much that if someone stops turning up to raids they see a reduction. A good mantra for this is “Effort put in this week is always more valuable than effort put in last week”. Once it is clear in raiders’ minds that they aren’t being punished (deductions for, say, not turning up to raids are on the top of this decay, and reservists still get their points for being available), then most people are happy with this idea.
However, there is a problem here. And it’s this: While everyone pays the same proportion of their points in the decay, the decay is a much greater chunk of purchasing power for those people who have 1000 points than it is for those with 10. It’s necessary to balance this somehow.
Enter systems like EPGP.
EPGP, unlike most DKP systems, has two numbers. One - Effort Points - is the conventional DKP number - points are granted for downing bosses, turning up to raids, etc, etc. The other number - Gear Points - is a score based on the amount of gear that that raider has acquired in raids (nowhere else, just from boss kills, and the occasional trash epic).
Gear scores are determined by the item level of the item and its use (so a relic is much less valuable than a breastplate) and are fixed. By dividing the Effort Points a member has accrued by their Gear Points, a number, the Priority, is reached (the EPGP addon will do all this for you, in addition to assigning gear points for loot, effort points for turning up, etc). The person whose Priority is highest and who is interested in the item, is awarded it, along with the relevant number of Gear Points, which serve to reduce his priority. As he gains more effort points, his priority rises again. Think of it like Suicide Kings on steroids.
In this system, it is important to impose a decay. Both effort points and gear points are reduced by the same proportion each week. This means that purchasing power remains constant rather than being reduced. The one exception to this is to add a limit for effort points below which a player may not take loot that another player wants. This should ideally take no more than 2 or 3 raids to exceed. If a decay is not implemented, then a raider’s purchasing power declines over time. An increase in 10 Effort points is a lot more for someone starting with 100 than starting with 1000.
Of course, it could be that the item is an off spec item. Gear points should never be assigned for off spec items, and a different method of paying for them should be established. Within The Hidden Circle, a contribution toward the guild’s enchanting materials (currently this is 2 [Large Prismatic Shard]) is requested instead. These materials are then used to enchant raiding gear for any member that asks for them, free of charge. Similarly unwanted loot and green trash drops are disenchanted and added to this pile.
Of course, EPGP isn’t the only system that tries to keep distribution fair, but it’s the fairest I’ve come across yet.
So in the first part of this series, I examined the loot systems that have the lower administrative overheads, and I hope I illustrated that they have some serious drawbacks, though for some cases they will work more than amply.
In order to address some of the concerns, we can assign a currency for raiding - DKP, short for Dragon Kill Points. In its simplest form, DKP allocates a certain number of points to each player in a raid - not just each time a boss is killed, but perhaps also for turning up on time, for being around as a reserve in case a raider doesn’t turn up. We can deduct points if someone doesn’t turn up after they have said they will. It all sounds like a good idea so far.
However, we need to then decide how points are to be spent. The simplest way of doing this is to require a raider to spend all their points in order to obtain an item. However, like the Suicide Kings system we’ve seen before, this means that people with fewer points effectively pay less for items, and all items are valued the same, regardless of their usefulness, for example a situational use Shaman totem is valued exactly the same as a tier breastplate. We can improve a little by only docking half a raider’s points, but the issue of relative cost still remains, as does the issue that the cost is much greater for someone with lots of points than for someone with few.
In order to correct this issue, we can define each item as being worth a fixed amount of points. Simpler systems address this by having every issue cost the same - again, a problem when different items have different costs - or, slightly more complex, each item cost a different amount. This helps a little.
However - the person with the most points might value the item less than someone lower down. If costs are fixed, he’s always guaranteed to get the item. We can introduce a system where the costs are not fixed - each person states the amount of points they’re willing to spend on the item, and it’s auctioned to the first bidder. However, there’s a problem here. Unless a sealed bid system is used, someone with lots of DKP can force an increase in the bid from someone who they know really wants the item, thus effectively wiping out competition for some other desirable item which might drop later.
The other issue is one of stockpiling - there is no motivation to spend your points on gear, and therefore some people may gain an insurmountable lead on the DKP simply by never spending any. By doing this their greed is working against the raid - by the time the raid is in Tier 6 content (for example) our theoretical stockpiler will have more points than anyone else and can suddenly and immediately lay claim to all the loot, simply through purchasing power.
So basic DKP, which is in use here, sucks. It contains no mechanism to prevent greed, and emphasises the individual over the team. Next time I’ll discuss how some loot systems avoid this state.
Democracy is the worst form of government, except all the other forms that have been tried.
- Winston Churchill,1947
Many (most?) raiding guilds use a loot distribution system of some sort. The vast majority of them, I’m afraid to say, have picked the wrong one. Which is to say that the system they have picked is fundamentally flawed. Unfortunately there is no good way of distributing loot that can even come close to pleasing all of the people all of the time. I was planning to discuss them in this post, but it turns out that would take forever, so I’m going to break it down into a few posts.
Of course the simplest loot system of all is the straight roll. It is also by a country mile the most unfair. There is nothing preventing anyone who can use an item rolling on it, or for one person, through a lucky streak, to walk away with everything, leaving everyone else unhappy.
Slightly better, but not by a great deal, is a loot council or loot master system. It ensures that the equipment gained is shared out eually between all the eligible members of the raid. At first glance this sounds great, but as in all walks of life, the humans on the loot council are fallible. No matter how they try to eliminate bias, it will creep in (and even if it doesn’t, raid members are likely to perceive a bias even when one doesn’t exist). Loot councils work well for a group of people who always work together and there are no more or less than the number of available raid slots available. That doesn’t sound like very many WoW guilds or raid alliances to me. In addition, there’s no way of accurately gauging how much effort a person puts into raiding - that priest who’s always late doesn’t suffer any penalty for wasting other peoples’ time. No, the loot council works as well as communism - a great idea in theory, but one that becomes ultimately corrupt.
From the Loot Council, one can move into the Suicide Kings system. Again, the increase in administrative overhead is minimal. There is a single list of who in the guild raids, and the order of that list dictates who gets the loot - if you take a piece of loot, you move to the end of the queue. Nice idea in theory, but it is open to abuse both in the raid leader’s choice of who raids and the ability for any member of the raid to take a piece that would be a huge upgrade for someone else out of spite. And yes, there will be people that do that, or people who can’t let an upgrade go even if it’s of much bigger benefit to someone else. Again, though, there’s no penalty fot those who cause problems through being late, not turning up, etc, etc.
Those are the most basic loot systems, which will of course serve many people well. I hope I’ve illustrated why these systems fall down as well as their advantages. Next time I’ll talk about some systems which aim to address some of these troubles, and, hopefully, illustrate why they also suck.
Finally, the Reliquary of the Lost (yes, that’s its name. No idea who came up with “Reliquary of Souls” but whoever they are, they were wrong. OK, pedantry out of the way). It’s an encounter which places unique demands on pretty much the entire raid, and is a lot of fun. Not that I’ve seen phase 3 of the encounter yet - having had our first two or three serious goes at it yesterday, we got health down to 13% on phase 2, and probably would have got further if people were able to stop interrupting Deaden.
The encounter, however, brings a lot to the fore, in particular with respect to what’s coming up in the not too distant future with respect to Shield Block and Block Value. At the moment shield block is twice every few seconds, and blocks a small amount of damage. It’s changing to once every 20s (at most) and blocking a lot more. This is important for Reliquary, because for the first phase (2 million damage or so) you get no healing, apart from Last Stand (if you think that counts - it definitely helps). With the incoming changes to block value (you get 250% of block value from strength compared to TBC), suddenly if you have a high block value you’ll take loads less damage from every blocked hit, even if you can’t rely on the blocks happening as often. The entire first phase will suddenly become so much easier.
And it’s here that a thought occurs. What we currently call “passive uncrushable” will be hugely desirable for tanks in Wrath of the Lich King. Every block will block a huge chunk of damage, even more so given the itemization of warrior gear in the expansion toward Strength. I’ll coin a term now - passive defense. As your passive defense (ie what we used to call block plus parry plus dodge plus miss) tends toward 102.4%, the amount of damage you take will fall off rapidly. I won’t go so far as to say that every unblocked attack will have the effect of a crushing blow today, but a slightly lesser version perhaps. Effectively the crushing blows have been removed from the combat table by making every blow crush. Ouch.
And in case you were wondering, yes, all bosses including WoW classic and TBC will lose their ability to crush too - the mechanic is being changed so that only adversaries 4 levels above or more can crush. Bosses are fixed at 3 levels.
One last thing - Blizz, if you’re listening, can I please have a new shield that doesn’t look just like my old one?
Not sure what I’m going to do with my new-found [Fist of Molten Fury] and [Claw of Molten Fury] but they sure look badass.
(Normal service will be resumed shortly - I’ve got a few ideas for my usual discussion-type essays but little time to write them in).
On Bloodhoof-EU, like many servers I guess, there is a proliferation of many players who are too lazy to go out and get the money they need by running quests, killing mobs and the like. BigRedKitty has his own way of dealing with them, but I have to say I’m much more of a stick than a carrot person.
The trick is a really simple one - give them what they want. Almost.
Sit there, with the cash in your trade window and wait for them to get bored. Say nothing, do nothing (except type 10G or whatever in every time they present a trade window). Generally speaking, I’ll only do this if I’m not busy, but if the beggars get their time wasted by at least one person a day I imagine they’d stop doing it. And the length of time and creativity they will go to is amazing - I went off to dinner and came back to this:
Apparently I’ll be willing to trade those wonderful low-level crafting materials for 10 of my hard-won gold coins. I can’t imagine anyone who’d think twice about making that trade - it’s obviously a great deal.
In this case my unsuspecting victim gave up after half an hour of their time wasted, but I’ve gone for over an hour before. If we all took this action when we could, I reckon there’d be rather less beggars about. And that’s a permanent change in the world that you can claim to have had a real part in.
EDIT: Did I mention I hate people asking for boosts too? I do seem to be in a bastardly mood today.
It occurred to me that I have a few unwritten rules that I use to govern my time playing WoW; they keep the burnout away and in a discussion with a friend the other day they were set down, more or less. I’ll discuss my reasoning for them below, after the rules themselves, which are:
Namthe doesn’t do:
Namthe does do:
Exceptions:
They’re quite simple, really. I’ve seen most 5-mans and Kara so many times I can tank them one-handed in my sleep, and I don’t need badges, so I skip those. Similarly Gruul and Mag are just plain dull for the same reasons - and they don’t even really have the badge argument to swing for them. Of course come the expansion you’ll be struggling to pull me out of 5-man instances again.
I’ve seen too many bad pick-up groups in my time to trust that they’ll get things right, and while I’ve met many excellent players in pugs, I’ve met just as many bad ones. I want to enjoy my raids without getting frustrated by the one or two people that just don’t listen to instructions. If I’ve grouped with you before and found you know what you’re doing, you’ll rapidly find your way onto the “known and trusted” list. Best way to get on that list? Be recommended by a friend. Whispering me at random begging for a tank generally doesn’t do it, especially if I’ve never heard of your guild (and sometimes if I have, too).
I find my raiding consumables and repairs are more than paid for just by cash drops in raids from bosses, and dailies are just another way of dressing up “go grind”. I’ll do the odd daily occasionally, but I won’t sweat if a couple of weeks go by and I don’t get to do them. Even when we’re spending three nights a week wiping on a new boss, my cash reserves (about 1500G, usually) are fine to take that kind of hit. If I really get desperate, then the 350 [Badge of Justice] I have in the bank can easily be converted into ready funds though gems or [Primal Nether].
PvP should be obvious - I’m a protection warrior, what on earth do I want a battleground for? Some people are really into PvP. I’m not one of those people, and my raid role attests to that.
Basically I guess the condensed version of this list is “Don’t do anything you don’t really enjoy”. It’s good advice, I think. If I think I’ll enjoy something on the “Don’t” list, I’ll do it - like the trip to Karazhan I did yesterday with a bunch of undergeared alts of various friends.
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too…
I’ve been a raidleader in my time (though I don’t currently lead anything other than the odd Zul’Aman) and after hearing from various friends about how their raid leaders operate, I’d like to think I have a handle on what makes a good or bad raidleader. We should bear in mind, though, that the best raidleader in the world will have an off day.
Anyone can raidlead, but some classes’ players are going to be better disposed toward leading than others. In particular the “big picture” is important here. Knowing exactly when to call a wipe is important, so as many attempts at a boss can be made in as short a time as possible. Also it helps to be at range so that you can see what is going on in a physical sense - who’s failing to run out of the fire, who’s beig slower to pick up than you’d like, and so on.
For this reason, I think the best raidleaders are healers. They already have the information at their fingertips and they’re far away from the action that they can keep an eye on other things that might be happening. That’s not to say other classes can’t raid-lead - part of the reason for my information-junkie UI is so that I have a good idea of what is going on - but by having your raidleader heal, they’re paying attention to all the information they would be paying attention to anyway.
Good leadership starts well before you’ve set foot in the instance. It involves picking a group that you think will do well against the bosses that you’ll be facing, but also not min/maxing too much. If you down a boss much more quickly than you expect, you may well find the next boss is impossible if you’ve tailored the group too tightly to a single encounter. More than that, ensure that you’re giving a fair exposure to each of your raiders to the content. If you stick with the same team for too long, the members you pick will get complacent about their position and those on the outside will start to resent their own situation.
Also, make sure that everyone knows the tactics for the fight. Drop a link to somewhere like BossKillers or MMO Champion on your guild forums, and start a discussion based on it. Usually there are a few different options you can try, and by getting everyone involved in discussing what they think is going to be the best way, you’re that much more likely to have your raiders actually read up on the encounters.
In the face of insurmountable incompetence this is sometimes hard, but it’s absolutely necessary. Nobody enjoys being shouted at. Different people have different strategies for managing this. The first, and most prime of these is to have an area you can vent into - whether that be your guild’s officer channel, a private chat channel containing your closest friends, or whatever. Just make sure the people in that channel know that you’re merely venting and don’t mean anything by it.
Don’t raise your voice over TeamSpeak / Ventrilo / Voice Chat. It doesn’t help, and especially don’t swear. There are exceptions to this latter rule. If you’re like some people I know who curse every third word then so long as it’s in your normal tone of voice it’s not going to cause too many problems. Other than that, try not to be confrontational - if someone’s having problems with something then approach them in private, or better yet get a member of their own class (perhaps an officer) to have a few words. Giving criticism and approaching people in private with concerns in a positive way speaks volumes for how much you view them as a raider, even if deep down you’re cursing their very existence.
Different leaders have different ways of dealing with frustration. I tend to use an air of enforced relaxation to assist with this. After the tenth attempt on a boss with frustration building throughout the raid, everyone will be annoyed with progress. Even if you as the leader are too, don’t let it show. Put on a relaxed, calm and confident voice, discuss what’s going wrong with your raiders and keep at it. If you sound confident, your raid will assume you are confident, and that confidence will spread to them. On the other hand, don’t overdo it and sound cocky - that will get you and the raid nowhere fast.
Finally, and most importanly, if you’re not enjoying yourself, the rest of your raid won’t either. Let your enjoyment be infectious!
Good raid tonight, it ended with Bloodboil dead on the floor and a first foray into the Reliquary of the Lost’s domain. A 5% wipe, followed by a 1% and we had him! Congratulations to all who where present.
