3.70. The Perfect Loot System

Drecca is the lone survivor of a heroic Rotface kill,
Icecrown Citadel

What Makes the Raid Go 'Round

Heroic work began in earnest immediately following the Lich King's defeat at the start of April. Drecca continued to make a name for himself by being the sole survivor of a desperately close attempt on heroic Rotface, and the screams that filled Vent poured the concrete around his ankles -- he was one of us now, and there was no turning back. By this point, Drecca was not only charging head-first into heroic bosses for the 25-Man progression team, but was assisting Mangetsu with the Alt-25 with increasing frequency. As our roster grew, fewer spots were available in progression, so the Alt-25 continued to garner interest from both guildy and stranger alike. The good news was that both Mangetsu and Drecca felt strongly about keeping standards high in the Alt-25, and this trickled down in the form of a strict set of rules to be followed as described on the forums. It was nice to see guildies finally taking pride in their play, and the result was a surprisingly successful 2nd 25-Man team.

When Mangetsu picked up the Alt-25, GDKP was the loot system first discussed, the reasoning being that non-guildies could be persuaded to help out. The concept of pouring gold into a pot to reserve a spot in the lineup worked surprisingly well, and if players hoped to see any of that money back, they were forced to stay throughout the duration of the raid. We knew nothing about non-guildies, hadn't vetted them, and couldn't vouch for the presence of any integrity or reliability -- the promise of a "damage deposit" was a convenient method of due diligence. But the success of the Alt-25 grew to such a level that it was eventually staffed by all DoDers, and GDKP gave way to a simpler solution: Need Before Greed rolls, with one Need per night. As soon as you "Needed" on an item (and won), that was it -- you were relegated to Greeds for the duration of the run. I wasn't particularly fond of NBG, due to the randomness of the roll and the fact that it had no memory; players who had raided since forever could lose to the newbie of the week. But, it wasn't the loot system that the 25-Man used, and I was fine with Mang using it in Alt-25; if anything, the DKP system of the 25-Man progression team acted as a carrot for those driven to get out of Alt-25 and to one day be a part of the guild's historic first boss kills.

As sound as our progression team's loot system was, there were still problems creeping up. The first-round bidding system I developed as as a perk for the Elite rank had backfired a number of times already. The last time it bit me in the ass was when an "alt" or "off-spec" bid ended up winning an item, denying it from a player who was bidding for their own main spec. At the start of 3.3, I amended the system to allow players to categorize their bids by adding "off" (eg. 20 DKP off), and any off-spec bids would be cast aside if even one main spec bid was on the table. But that wasn't the end of the problems for our loot system -- very quickly into ICC heroics, more loopholes were becoming evident.

"Crimson Acolyte"
Artwork by Nancy Cho

Loot Fears Float

Players like Deathonwings the shaman had no main spec. Each week, players like Wings flipped back and forth from Elemental to Restoration, an incredibly helpful type of player for a roster in a guild like ours, as they could fill a variety of needs at any given moment. We called these players "floaters", floating from spec to spec as the guild needed them to. As expected, some floaters were good enough to qualify -- and eventually arrive at -- the distinguished rank of Elite. Once Elite, Wings fully expected to start 1st-rounding bids on some of the most top notch items falling off heroic ICC bosses. But...for what spec? Was it fair for Wings to 1st-round items that were Elemental and Restoration? Of course not! But the alternative was to forfeit his ability to 1st-round...which was one of the primary reasons guildies pushed for the Elite rank in the first place. Floating as a reflection of roster need should not have come with a penalty...but it did.

Another type of floater caused me great concern as well, but these players had more selfish intent behind their decision to change specs. These were the players who had simply grown listless, requesting a change to help alleviate the doldrum now apparently baked into their everyday raid life. I'd suffered this first hand, so tried to keep perspective when players came to me about expressing their need to switch to a role that was more exciting. And I had no problem with purposeful role switches...until it came time for them to leverage their 1st round bidding rights as an Elite. I became painfully aware of this loophole when it affected me directly: the night Omaric attempted to bid 1st round on a freshly dropped heroic Deathbringer's Will -- a trinket long sought by pure DPS classes that had been waiting patiently. I wasn't particularly happy with Omaric's decision to seek the trinket before other non-floaters had their shot...but there was nothing in the rule book that said he couldn't. My recently promoted 2nd-in-command, Sir Klocker, confirmed the issue in a forum topic expressing current concerns...and it had been going on longer than I cared to admit.

There was no such thing as the perfect loot system, but I often daydreamed about what that might look like. I theorized that it would be a DKP system that weighted your earnings based on the role that you played. In this alternate reality, a player would keep four pools, separated by role: melee, ranged, healing, and tank. As raiders toppled bosses, logs were generated and uploaded to sites like World of Logs, and a breakdown of their contributions would appear there. In my mind's eye, I foresaw a report that read like so:

Tank / Melee / Ranged / Heals
-----
Bretthew: 98/2/0/0
Mangetsu: 0/0/100/0
Wfredlund: 0/12/0/88
Mature: 48/52/0/0
Gunsmokeco: 0/0/0/100
Deathonwings: 0/0/76/24

If such a magical tool existed, breaking down an individual player's contributions, bids on specific types of loot would be far easier to manage. If Wings saw an exceptional elemental staff, he'd know that he'd have 76 DKP to bid on it...1st round, if he so chose. Likewise, those who took to a new role out of boredom would be free from facing the wrath of the fellow guildmates as being deceptively evil with their 1st-round bids. A player freshly floating from tank to melee, for example, would have no melee DKP accrued at that point, and would have to work towards it from scratch. If such a loot system could be, no player in my guild -- regardless of rank or contribution -- could argue it was unfair: players bid exactly what they earned, and their earnings were exact reflections of level of contribution.

It was a wonderful make-believe system. The problem with it was primarily the 'make-believe' part. Could I build it, I wondered, perhaps as a plugin to eqDKP, or maybe even reach out to the owners / administrators of World of Logs. Maybe there was a set of rules we could come up with to determine how to break that analysis down, displaying it in subsequent reports. But it ate away at me. This is too complicated, too much to administrate. There's no guarantee the people at World of Logs will ever get on board with this craziness. Keep it simple and compartmentalized within DoD. So, back to the drawing board I went.

Contributions vs. Consistency

A sample of Hanzo's notes during one
of several attempts to theory out a
better loot system for DoD

"I've been pouring a lot of energy into a theoretical new system I've come up with. And I need it picked apart. Can I forward you my scribblings?"

"Sounds good."

I flipped over to Google Documents, and shared various drafts of my high level concepts over to Cheeseus. The loot system centered around an emergent behavior of players wishing to fill multiple roles, "floaters", and how they would be handled fairly when going up against players uninterested or unwilling to do so. My initial idea was to split DKP into four pools, then using a custom tool to analyze raid reports would subdivide the player's earnings appropriately, weighted by the percentage of contribution per role. A player that tanked 100% of the raid, therefore, would receive 100% of their DKP in the tank pool, and would only ever be able to use that pool to bid on tanking items. But there were problems with the concept from a practical standpoint.

Administratively, four pools were too much to track and too confusing for the player. Furthermore, no such "custom tool" existed to perform the calculation telling me that Drecca and Bretthew had both earned 100% of their pool as a tank, while Deathonwings had earned a 50/50 split of ranged DKP and healing DKP. Most importantly, what would stop greedy players from simply switching to whatever role they felt like playing, just to scoop up loot? After having earned a healthy amount of DKP in two pools, selfish players were free to "go to town" on whatever dropped, not caring for a moment what was being denied to the rest of the roster. It was a self-serving mentality that harmed the non-floaters in the long term.

My second pass felt much closer to the mark. I had to shift my mentality from rewarding your contributions to rewarding your consistency. If people were going to switch at the drop of a hat, I was fine with it, but the switch needed to come at a cost, which meant losing the right to 1st round bid (if they were Elite). Over time, they could earn the right again, a concept I sketched into my notes as a yellow bar growing into a green one. Hence, consistent players in a particular role were green, while floaters remained a neutral yellow. Both had upsides. Green players earned the right to 1st-round bid, and yellow players would never have to bid off-spec on anything -- to a floater, all loot would be main spec.

Cheeseus got straight to the point.

"Overall, I really don't like the way this reads. So you're saying that if Dalans decides to come back and fill his old role of tanking, that Mature...who was tanking in his absence...now has to pay the penalty of switching back to DPS? Sorry Dalans, You're an asset to the organization, but you're not worth the 458 DKP I’m going to lose as a result of your return."

His comments continued to flow in.

"The 1st round bit seems very counterintuitive. Why would an Elite, who has proven himself as quite capable of doing whatever is needed, want to remain neutral in bidding? They're just like everyone else now, except with more responsibilities."

I took that as the "no off-spec bids" perk wasn't enough of a game changer.

"A non-elite can main bid on any role they're neutral to, any role they're switching amongst."

"So why would they want to go green? Alternately, why would you, Hanzo, want to let an up-and-coming DPS Death Knight...bid on tanking gear? And your most capable people, who would only benefit from being green, couldn't be used for any other role.”

Cheeseus continued to poke holes into my theoretical loot system until it looked like a used kitchen sponge.

"I know people wouldn't want to be neutral. The point is...they are now. This is how Deathonwings, Omaric, etc...are treated today. I don't want to have to go to them and say 'I need you to pick a role and stick with it, because it's not fair to the others.' I want a system in place where I can say, 'Do what you want, and what you do defines what you get.' In my eyes, that is the path of least resistance and gives them the greatest freedom."

Cheeseus remained unconvinced, "Right, but why should a potential Elite...who is giving up his rank...be punished further? They already can't raid consistently, am I right? They should be motivated to raid and excel, not threatened with a loss of perks if they are unable to keep it up."

"Because Elites that have done that to me already don't care!! 'Hey I got everything I needed, I'm off to go skiing! Oh, hey, remember me? I'm back now, I just broke my legs in a skiing accident...remember I used to be an Elite?? I can still 1st-round shit, right' No! There needs to be some repercussions to coming and going as you please!"

Cheeseus loosened his stance, "OK, I'll rethink that a bit more. But overall I still think that something is missing, this needs a bunch of work. Personally, I still think you should go loot council, but that's just because I'm pro-communism ideology. It fits the raid mentality well, everyone contributes, everybody gets a slice of the pie."

I glared back at the instant messenger window with narrowed eyes.

"I'll never go loot council in DoD. Ever. Too easy to manipulate by those in power. Too easily corruptible."

"Oh, I know. It would never work, just as communism would never work in the real world, but if you look at it on paper, isn't it an excellent idea?"

It would be...if we were all the bestest of buddies in real life. If we had to face one another the next day at work, have to deal with the fallout of making a horrible decision the night before. To be made to feel guilty about being selfish and dishonest, and to have that paraded around the office until we learned our lesson. Be excluded from social gatherings, to not have our phones calls answered or our emails replied to when we decided to take whatever the hell we wanted off of bosses. Yeah...then loot council would be fantastic.

How wonderfully simple World of Warcraft guild leadership would be if people could be held accountable for their actions.

3.2. The Grand Reveal

Zanjina sees a bugged core houd pet at
the release of the 3.0 patch,
Shattrath City

Officers React

"So", I said, "any questions?"

Silence followed, as the new looting system began to sink in. What remained of my officer core at the end of TBC sat in a admin-only channel in Vent. The leadership roll-call consisted of:

Priest Officer Neps: Having been with us since the tail end of Vanilla, Neps rose to the rank of priest officer, taking over for Haribo. Humble and quiet, Neps spoke volumes with his healing ability in both raids and PvP; he was the type of person who would drop everything to help a complete stranger in need.

Warrior Officer Kurst: One of the older players, Kurst was a family man and recently became a father. He, too, dated back as far as Vanilla, acting as one of the most consistent warriors throughout our illustrious career. Kurst had recently taken the responsibility of officership at my request, after Ater's exit from DoD and WoW.

Warlock Officer Eacavissi: Eaca (pronounced "ekka") was a university student, pursuing a PhD in physics. He'd been with us throughout The Burning Crusade, and was the only reliable warlock in progression to speak of. Eaca had built a reputation for doing extraordinary amounts of damage -- so much that he would often pull mobs off even the best of tanks. As his impending fate stomped towards him, Eaca would exclaim "DPS HARDER!", an in-joke demanding the boss die before it reached the warlock.

 
Hunter Officer Larada: Larada had become a major contributor to DoD's progression throughout TBC, and with my previous officer Skarg retiring (taking his radio-quality voice with him), Larada became the next best candidate.

Paladin Officer Klocker: A funny and extremely well-played healer, Klocker stood side-by-side with Kerulak throughout our 40-Man career. His time in DoD surpassed all the other officers, prompting the guild to knight him "Sir Klocker".

Rogue Officer Blain: I knew Blain was already on the way out, as we had previously discussed. Nevertheless, I made a special request that he be present for the discussion.

Druid Officer/Number Two Dalans: I trusted the hot-headed, take-no-prisoners guild member to rule DoD with an iron fist in my absence; he had essentially become the guild's new main tank (post Ater), and had little tolerance of incompetent players. His treatment of Wyse remained especially fresh in my memory.

Vacancies remained in both mage and shaman officership. Goldenrod the mage exited WoW in frustration at Blizzard's handling of PvP and BlizzCon '08 ticket sales. And as for the shamans, I'd not yet come to trust anyone as deeply as Kadrok since his departure for Elitist Jerks; the role of shaman officer remained unfulfilled. Until which time that a suitable replacement made him/herself known, I unofficially managed the shamans (which meant I managed Ekasra), and the other officers ran their own ship.

...until today. 

It was the proverbial come to Jesus meeting, where all hands were on deck to listen in on the changes, provide whatever feedback they needed to, and then make a judgement call as to whether or not they were aligned with our new direction. As predicted, the officers got directly to the point, addressing what they felt was the biggest question mark on the list: loot.

50 DKP Plus

"So...certain people will get to bid on an item before anyone else?" asked Dalans.

"Correct", I replied.

"What's going to keep people from cleaning up and preventing noobs from gearing out?"

"The point is not to use 1st-round bids on every item that drops", I answered, "The point is: we're giving players...the really good ones...an opportunity to bid first. If an exceptional item drops. Part of this is going to be educational. We're going to get the raiders into the habit of learning when the appropriate time to engage in a 1st-round bid is."

"When do we figure out who gets these Elite promotions?" asked Kurst.

"We're gonna have a trial period, the first tier of raiding in Wrath. At the start, everyone will be on the same playing field. We'll watch signups, rotations, run damage and healing reports, see who performs at the top of their game and is reliable. Those are the folks who'll receive the first round of Elite promotions."

"Ah, OK...so everybody gets a shot at loot out of the gate, then", said Dalans. They're starting to get it.

"Exactly. From our perspective it's business as usual when raiding starts. Because we won't know, right? It's going to take time for some players to ramp up and demonstrate ability. Find out who the rock stars are. By the time everyone's fully decked out from that first tier, and we transition to the next, then the Elite rank will demonstrate its effectiveness. We're going to lose people...I'm planning on it. The difference this time around is that I want to make sure to protect the players that are in this for the long haul."

Blain broke his silence, "Do the Elites have to pay any special prices?"

"Nope", I replied, "they follow the same rules as everyone else." 

Suddenly, a bunch of voices all chimed in once with groans of concern. Blain spoke for them, "You're gonna have an inflation problem."

"Yeah," Klocker added, "if these 'Elites' pay no penalty for first rounding, and they don't go up against anyone else, they're going to sit on huge pools of DKP."

"Massive!" laughed Blain, feeding Klocker.

"Right...like we need any more reason for folks like Blain to hoard DKP."

I pivoted. "OK, let's talk this out. What do you all think is a reasonable minimum bid to get into the 1st-round?" Various answers shot out as the group weighed the pros and cons of each numerical value. Eventually, they came to an agreement on 50 DKP.

"Alright", I said, "I'll amend the rule so that if an Elite wants to exercise his option to bid in the 1st round, he'll have to start the minimum bid at 50." The officers in Vent agreed this was a good move to make.

Blain added a final note, "It's still not going to solve the inflation problem...but it'll be better." A few folks remained quiet. "Eaca, Larada...thoughts?"

"It's good. The changes are good", Eaca answered, "I think people have an incentive now to actually show-up and perform." Larada concurred.

"Neps, what do you think?"

"I think they're horrible and I'm gonna go join Pretty Pink Pwnies!"

Everyone laughed.

I breathed a sigh of relief; the officers were on board. Next up: revealing our intentions to the rest of the guild.

Uld the Rogue,
Darkwhisper Gorge

Frequently Repeated Questions

I obsessed over revealing my intentions to Descendants of Draenor so much that I mapped out my entire 'reveal' schedule in a spreadsheet. The plan was to slowly dole out bite-sized chunks over the weeks leading up to Wrath. I didn't want to overwhelm them. The reveal began with a forum post entitled Who We Are, and Who We Are Not, the intent of which was to realign our goals as a guild. If there was ever any doubt as to what we were here to do, that doubt would be gone by the time the guild had completed reading that post. No more excuses. No more "I didn't know that's what you meant."

Next, I revealed the age restriction, limiting new recruits to 21 years of age. Soon after, out came the new hierarchy of ranks, listing out every specific requirement that needed to be met. I made an effort to draw attention to the matching reward structure for each accomplishment, easing anxiety that no particular rank was expected of you. Participate as much (or as little) in the guild as you want to -- and you will be treated appropriately. After that, I revealed the new application process, concluding with the changes to raiding rules and how the Elite rank would be affected by them. Now that the floodgates were wide open, I funneled the rush of questions toward a forum topic, encouraging one and all to engage.

Initially, the discussion was heated. Many players began to express concern around the rigid structure. The officers swarmed into the forum topic and began to defend the changes I proposed. They voiced opinions on how many of our rules were simply "written down versions of common sense" things, to which I clarified, "common sense is something we've noticed a lot of players lack." Better to be safe than sorry.

"Do we have to become an Elite?" -- Absolutely not, no rank will be enforced. You play as you like, and based on your level of commitment, and you'll earn the appropriate rank that matches said level of contribution.

"Are Elites going to bid 1st round on everything?' -- No, they'll save their 1st round bids for important items, so that brand new players can't come in and take away your hard work in one raid night.

"Do I have to be a Raider to earn Avatar?" -- Not at all, players of all shapes and sizes can be great contributors to this guild, and we'll recognize all of the players that do so.

One by one, the officers and I put their minds at ease.

Do you hear that sound? That's 'buy-in'. It's working.

Indeed, it seemed like my once biggest fear, the total collapse of my guild, had been averted. On the contrary, players were warming up to these new rules and this new structure. With the officers and the troops both won over, it was time to lead by example once again.

I had to start by applying our new rules and vision to myself.