the basic sets that I saw at the moment were small and large versions of the racial houses, and the rocket house. there are a shit tonne of plugs to put in sockets (gathering nodes, craft stations, the moonshine set, etc.
I'm not sure if more houses are found with fabkits or not. my money is on ''oh hell yes.''
also keep in mind that they froze content addition for launch, so they could polish the hell out of this thing for June 3rd.
they got guys still creating crap for the 1st, 2nd, 3rd month content patches, however so chances are good.
BeezelThere was no agreement little morsel..Registered Userregular
The good news is they removed a lot of the build restrictions from previous betas. All decor items are able to be placed free form in or outside of your house. So now you have dudes building skate parks on top of their houses and tree top bungalows. I think that is rad as fuck
PSN: Waybackkidd
"...only mights and maybes."
+2
Options
BeezelThere was no agreement little morsel..Registered Userregular
Ok, for the moment, my problems seem to be fixed? Do I get an email when the beta client is available for download, or should I be able to find that somewhere right now?
surge is the spellslinger ''R'' ability correct Kai_San? the signiture ability of the class?
Yeah sorry went to bed.
Its both the resource and the R skill. Full bar is 100, surging a skill boosts it (assault and support only, usually more damage/healing or faster casting) at the cost of 25 SP. It regens kinda slow, although twice as fast outta combat. The boosts tend to be significant enough that SSes tend to feel weak when they cannot Surge stuff. Which is more often than not.
You use R to turn Surge mode on, and any usable skills during this will consume the 25SP and be boosted. You hit R again to turn it off.
Hahaha, awesome. Now I'm having the same issues as with the original account. Guess each account I make only gets to log in the one time.
So apparently they pretty much don't allow you to connect with a VPN (which I use a lot since I'm not in the US at the moment). It only sends you the email to reconfirm your new IP address if you login on the main NCSoft site, not the Wildstar site. Whee. Thanks for letting me know, assholes! Hopefully this will mean I won't have these issues going forward.
surge is the spellslinger ''R'' ability correct Kai_San? the signiture ability of the class?
Yeah sorry went to bed.
Its both the resource and the R skill. Full bar is 100, surging a skill boosts it (assault and support only, usually more damage/healing or faster casting) at the cost of 25 SP. It regens kinda slow, although twice as fast outta combat. The boosts tend to be significant enough that SSes tend to feel weak when they cannot Surge stuff. Which is more often than not.
You use R to turn Surge mode on, and any usable skills during this will consume the 25SP and be boosted. You hit R again to turn it off.
I guess I'll play a spell slinger next beta so I can see what all the hubbub is about, but I really can't give any fucks at the moment.
esper R ability only gives me 1600~ temp health, 5 psy points over 5 seconds, and roots me in place for a bit longer, and is only usable every 30sec.
I just don't bother because rooting is akin to suicide if you get targeted for an instagib template attack
So I assume this is a major money sink based on past comments?
It looks that way but with some housing mods I got from doing PVP I got a nice bed some furniture for the house a garden/a hedge maze/ a festival that gives free food drink and a free flower garden. So my housing plot looks pretty nice without dropping a dime on anything.
0
Options
Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
edited March 2014
I kind of would have liked to do the clearing out of your plot thing. But they either never did it or took out.
If there was any one thing i would like for housing it doesn't already have (which isn't much), it would be more stuff happening on its own. Like critters appearing (like that rowsdower) And those bandit raids. Both of which I'm pretty sure didn't make it into the final design.
But as of right now? People can make freaking jumping puzzles!
They need something for the inevitable expansion pack if the game does well(which at this point, looks like it's going to do well enough to justify at least one). I expect more housing stuff and character creation options to be part of the first big set of things(along with probably a race for each side and new raids/dungeons/zones) for an expansion a year and a half from release.
Fuck, just let pre-orders play in the beta like they're testers.
Millions of people trying to bug shit out while playing. They've already pre-ordered, and the worst thing that's going to happen is they burn out a little, start playing at the end of the first month again, and pay for month two.
Plus, only a true fool would burn themselves out on a beta which will be wiped. I'd like to play, a little, every now and then. I'd like to PvP a lot to get good at it. I'd like to toy with builds in a real environment, so when I actually get to play... I'll know what I'm doing.
Anon the Felon on
0
Options
SaldonasSee you space cowboy...Registered Userregular
I'm curious how large of a group of PA people we'll have for the PVE server when the time comes. Like, will we be big and skilled enough to do some of the raiding I wonder. I could't seem to find much info during the brief search I did for raid sizes. I hear that 40 is a thing, but is there another size, like 12 or 20?
I have to update the list, but, I have a RL friend joining me wherever I go. It's going to be in the PA group more than likely, he has already stated his love for a dominion healer of some type.
Im sure after a while they might reduce the raid size from 40 down to 20 or something but who knows, seems the devs are pretty much set on that being the raid size and if you dont like it, don't raid.
Morskitter wrote "Spikes, choppas, tentacles, magic? Can't hold a candle to Sergeant Pimp here."
0
Options
Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
I'm trying to separate the pvp people on my list, but i do believe we had about 25 signups so far and 4 of them said they were pvp only
Yeah, the two weeks prior, and the two weeks after, will see a lot of people comin' in here and going "WHAT'S ALL THIS THEN?"
0
Options
Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
We should coordinate our lists to make sure we don't have the same people.
Unless it's people who wanna be in both i guess. I just know stove people signed up on mine before you started the pvp guild.
Ot something, i dunno
0
Options
SaldonasSee you space cowboy...Registered Userregular
Man, 40 man raids feel like they were just a dream, it was so long ago.
I might occasionally PVP, but it's not really my thing. I remember having a lot of fun in Alterac Valley, the other BGs were okay, but it was just fun to have objectives and the massive battle.
we can have six characters per server , right? Or has it changed.
May determine if I decide to roll just dominion on the one iwth the dominon guild and try Exiles on the Pvp guild one.
0
Options
TIFunkaliciousKicking back inNebraskaRegistered Userregular
edited March 2014
Whenever raiding comes up the same memory replays in my head: raiding guild has decided to put DKP minimums on certain gear. The newest raiders have to watch as gear that only they out of 40 people can use is disenchanted right in front of them because they "haven't been raiding long enough with the guild to earn it"
What a community. The shame is that I really liked big group content in WoW but as you moved up the ladder the people became less cool and fun. more scary and weird
I think I have it in me to play one more online game as a raider now that I've graduated. I hope I can find a good crew because I'm just not willing to suffer fools like that for the best statted gear. Especially if I can dump time and money into having the sickest house or rare costume pieces.
TIFunkalicious on
0
Options
SaldonasSee you space cowboy...Registered Userregular
Oh god, I had forgotten about DKP. The guild I was in at the time would as least award it to someone that could use it, even if they didn't have enough, you'd just go in to the negatives I think.
At least 1 guild I was in had a loot council. That system went better than just about any others that I remember.
its just too much of a logistical nightmare to do 40mans.
in all likelihood, you have a core group of 15 to 20 people. these guys are in every raid. they show up 30minutes before the raid time and are always prepped. I've been one of these people.
then you will have about... 30 to 50 people that are not core raiders. for whatever reason, like kids, school, work, etc, they can't show up to every raid.
So that means that to do raids, you need a guild in the neighborhood of 70 to 80 people in order to reliably staff 40slots at any scheduled time. Sometimes, you only have 5 people left out, many times you have 15 people left out. it sucks for them, because they can't progress and it sucks for the raid leader, because he's got to choose who to leave behind, not because of their attendance, but because who's most likely to not fuck up the evening.
I'm lucky that my guild didn't have that kind of drama. Mainly because we were able to purge those self-centric players in our early days, and our guild charter and mentality was borderline Communist in that "Everything is for the progression of the guild. The guild comes first in everything." Luckily we had exceptional Guild Leaders that also believed this.
All garbage loot was sent to the guild bank. Only class specific gear would be auctioned off for DKP in raid. If it was the umpteenth Druid boots? sharded for the nexus crystal, sent to the guild bank. Looking back, that was a good thing. We didn't have to tax our guild members... not that we could in that iteration of the guild system, but it let the guild get some quick cash to buy books or recipes for our designated guild crafters, or provide Quel'Serrars at marked discount for our warriors.
Guildies were expected to:
Show up at raid time.
Pay your own repair bills
Have a full stack of the best bandages.
Have a full stack of healing/mana potions for bosses.
Have a Flask ready to drink if it was feasible to beat a new boss. (Sometimes the guild provided Flasks at cost. I certainly offered at cost)
this was only supposed to be a quick talk about logistics, and I just went into the whole shebang. Guildie requirements were not that much, but for some of the less committed members, it was a miracle that they had bandages and healing pots.
TIFunkaliciousKicking back inNebraskaRegistered Userregular
I don't really care if 40's are in the game. But I don't think raids should scale up with difficulty AND size. I just beat genetic archives with 19 jerks and now I have to find another group of 20 jerks to somehow cooperate with the group I already have? Wouldn't it make more sense to condense and refine your raid group to the most powerful players as you move up? I think more legitimately skilled and dedicated players would enjoy the content that way rather than being swept aside by the logistics of turning 2 different 20 man groups into a single unit. Somebody posted something about that in the last thread and I should have been to able to agree 100 more times than I did
Oh god, I had forgotten about DKP. The guild I was in at the time would as least award it to someone that could use it, even if they didn't have enough, you'd just go in to the negatives I think.
At least 1 guild I was in had a loot council. That system went better than just about any others that I remember.
Yea, we used a DKP system as well, but as I said, with exceptional players that were human, we made exceptions with new people that could use that gear. Its somewhat funny when they are like... -60 dkp on their first raid with us because they got most of their suit in one go. (avg DKP per raid was about 10~ish), with the potential to earn about 30 or 40 per week if you got into all of them.
The warriors had a good rap with each other, but man, that's a hard set up. All new tank gear went to the Main Tank, no exceptions. The Main Tank was there 99% of the time anyways. Raid progression was linearly tied to Main Tank Gear so that was that. I was the Off-Tank (also attended 99% of the time), so I made a truce with our other 3 warriors that I would only bet on tank gear that was absolutely better than what I currently had equipped, and that all dps and lesser tank gear was theirs to divide among themselves.
but as I said... LOGISTICAL NIGHTMARE.
edit** we had a guild *accountant* that took care of dkp point totals and expenditures for everything from raids to certain materials that we needed asap. He even in-game mailed *receipts*. He was also the Master Looter in the raid, so that everyone would focus on just burning away the trash mobs and not stop to pick up loot (which you shouldn't be doing anyway) every couple fights if something interesting dropped. Raid times for clearing a Dungeon were just about cut in half. At the end of vanilla, we could clear MC in 2 hours, BWL in 2 hours, AQ40 in 2.5hours, and Naxx in 3.5 hours. ZG and AQ20 were cleared 3hours each.
Yes he was eccentric, OCD, and had a speech cadence of a robot.
wish they would put in a raid vote / loot system. Loot drops, list of those who can actually use it pops up, click one name, who ever wins gets it and is than ineligible for the next big loot roll, tell the rest of said classes have gotten a piece of loot. You can't vote for your self. this way it would seem a bit more diplomatic, granted those who always show up will vote for their friends etc , it would just mean that everyone would have a theoretical shot. I knew a guild in wow that didn't use a dkp system, the ring of guild leaders just decided who got what and it turned out to work pretty well since most of them weren't elitist pricks and just wanted to see the guild prosper
Morskitter wrote "Spikes, choppas, tentacles, magic? Can't hold a candle to Sergeant Pimp here."
Look, man. I hear you. I hear your cries and wails of agony at what was.
But let me tell you what is.
(Herein I wax philosophic about MMO's and raiding)
Ages ago, some... Seven years, Ultima Online was my jam. They had these things called Peerless.
Peerless involved a player or group of players killing some of the hardest monsters in the game, in the hardest area's of the game, to collect some "key" items which decayed over time. After you picked up a key, you had an hour to collect and use the rest. Once you used the key(s), you and your party got an item which allowed you to teleport into the "Encounter" (some times it was a clothing item you used to walk through an otherwise locked door). Once in the encounter, you had to navigate the puzzle/dungeon to get to the boss. Some of these were traditional multi level dungeons with increasingly difficult monsters and traps. Others were simple "hordemode" encounters you had to survive. All of them involved multi-stage puzzles and phased elements. Once you completed that, you could do the boss. Most people (85%) failed at this stage.
Each boss was radically different (there were 5). One was a unicorn which cursed you so bad you'd drop all your gear, you had to cycle out who was tanking him once they were cursed, and get a group of players to spam cleanse spells on him until one of them removed it. Another was a tree-ent lady who could kill you when you were a ghost (when you died you became a ghost who needed to be resurrected), permanently removing you from the encounter. One player had to be trying to interrupt her "specter" spell, while another was quickly ressing the dead, and the others were applying damage/fighting adds. They got progressively more difficult. One was pure magic.
Anyway. These guys all dropped a fuck ton of loot, their minibosses and the key holders all dropped valuable gear, and there were "Peerless Loot" items which could drop (2% chance, 0.25% on some items due to loot tables), and everyone wanted.
Most people failed when trying to collect the keys. My friends and I were rather good at it, and figured out how to build characters specifically tailored to gather keys and fight bosses. We got so good at it, that we could three-man all these bosses. Most people had to come in groups of 20+. Personally, I could solo the unicorn boss. It wasn't time efficient, but it was a feather in the cap. This became known (other players could spectate the boss fights, plus one of my friends was a bit of a braggart). After a bit of a haranguing by people, we built a guild. At the peak, we had 300 people in the guild. We set up a forum, published tutorials for each stage, took groups of 10 on "educational" runs.
But, everyone wanted that loot.
What we ended up doing was this:
Organization:
The entire "raider" population is divided into squads of 5. People pick their own squads, and name them funny things. (This was the average group size necessary for any particular boss)
When you do a raid, you post it on the forum, and list the people participating.
Each raid elects a "leader", and posts this as well. If everyone agrees that they don't need a leader (I.e. an expert group), they said as much and that's fine.
Each person on a raid gets 1 point.
If you succeed in your raid goal, the raid gets 1 point.
If you succeeded, and had a leader, that leader gets 1 point.
If the raid agrees that there was an MVP or powerplay that happened, list the person(s) involved, "Guild Council" decides if it's cool enough and if it is... They get 1 point.
Loot Distribution:
1. Only the people on a given raid are eligible for loot. No "holding".
2. When an item comes up for looting, people declare interest. The person with the most points gets the item, and loses 8 points (to a minimum of 0).
3. If two players are tied, they must be honorable people and come to an agreement. Any kind of agreement is fine ("I'll give you 3mil gold if you let me have this"), but it must be made quickly and with integrity. If this rule is violated (someone starts acting foolish), the players involved come up for review to "Guild Council". If no agreement is made, but it was done "maturely" ("I refuse, I want this." "So do I, I will not bend.")... And/Or someone with more seniority is required to be notified, all involved players lose all points, and the item is given to any interested party for 3 points. If no one wants it, it is destroyed in some way. (This was our "Anti-Greed" rule. Don't be a dick, we're all playing together. Also the "Don't be a baby" rule.) If at any point a player is told to act more maturely, or less greedy, they come up for review.
4. If all players in the same squad, loot only costs 7 points. (Play together, get familiar with each other, be better at raiding)
5. If all players are evenly distributed between squads, or all from different squads, loot only costs 7 points. (Play with everyone, don't profile or form cliques)
6. If all players agree, an item may be given to another player for 1 point (This is the: "You're the only one who needs this" rule).
7. If no one can afford the item, it goes back up at -1 point (To a minimum of 1). If no one selects the item, it is given to any interested party (See rule 3).
8. If anyone tries to "Sweep the loot" (take everything), they are immediately ejected from the guild.
In the background:
We organized by squads because we did fun "events". Certain squads would challenge each other to do a particular raid in a particular way, and wager on it ("Do Lady M, but no one can bring a spell book."). If the challenged squad succeeded, they'd get the points. If they failed, the challenger got 50% of them. We also used this to gauge how active a given squad was, how good they were, and so on and so forth. It was mostly just for guild administration. When new content rolled out, we'd tell the best squads to come with us and test it out, so more people could teach the less skilled groups.
It was also mad easier to organize people in these categories.
We used a lot of the honor system, and only had a few incidents of corruption and collaboration. Both times we removed the jerks, and publicly shamed them.
Under that paradigm, we never once had a person complain. We even found incidents where groups wouldn't even register the raid, because everyone was such friends that they agreed on how loot was going to be divided up before hand.
What would I do to change this for Wildstar?
First, I'd create point categories, for each type of content. You'd have a category for any kind of content which required players to moderate loot. If the game manages drops in any way, points are not necessary and I'd do something more fun.
Then, you'd be able to exchange points. 5 dungeon points for 1 raid point.
I'd also change the costs, probably creating a few categories for that. (i.e. Jewelry costs 3, armor 6, weapons 5)
All looted items are registered with the guild. If you have received an upgrade to a given slot, it costs 2x as many points to take another upgrade to that slot, within X time. (Let me explain this: Joe gets raid 1 legs. Jim has really good legs, but not raid 1. Next week you do raid 2, and raid 2 legs drop. If Joe wants to upgrade his recently upgraded legs, it'll cost him (probably) all his points. This is so Jim has a chance at the direct upgrade. It's better to have more people geared, than one guy geared the best).
That's probably it.
You raid, you earn points, you spend points. There's no more finesse to it.
Within six months (there were no lockout timers. As fast as you could get keys, you could do bosses), every single person in the guild had the items they wanted, and we dissolved it. Our techniques had become so well known and publicized, I was regularly standing around discussing ways to solo or duo this or that boss. Granted, we destroyed the economy on the server (peerless loot was end game loot, and now everyone had it), but that's not the point.
I often hear, and participated in, other systems. DKP, and it's many different colors, are strange systems. They are often overly micro managed and create problems because they are overwrought. Because, honestly, they are often rigged in the "pro raider bro" guys favor (this is often the leadership).
Look, I know that's a lot of text. I'm just going into this with the idea that I, and the PA guild, will probably dip my/our toes into raiding. Even if it's not the 40 man's, we'll need some kind of organization and system. The dev's have gone to great lengths to try to mitigate that, but it's also pretty clear loot's gonna drop, and we're gonna need to divide it up. I'll gladly help set that up, and/or provide my input. I'm not sure how many raid leaders/organizers are hanging around these parts.
yeah, regardless of the system used for distribution, it all comes down to trust and forgiving each other if a mistake happened.
for us, our crazy dkp system worked for us, even when we had gluts of 1100+ dkp on people.
It was interesting to say the least. For most guildies, it meant that you talked with your fellow classmates and would come to a mutual agreement on loot prices. If it was highly sought after gear, all bets were off, you spent the dkp and accepted that you probably would not get the next 5 or 6 pieces of gear as you rebuilt your dkp account.
The only time it was incredibly funny was when we had 4 Ephimeral talismans drop on the same raid night. 1% world drop rate, best neck item for mages until... Naxx? I think? price payments were 1100 dkp, 800dkp, 500dkp, and 150dkp. It was the one time we did a restructuring and refunding of some dkp because fucking seriously, it was a 1 in 1trillion occurance.
Kai_SanCommonly known as Klineshrike!Registered Userregular
Back in the old WoW days, when that first 20 man came up, the raid leader of OS came up with this cool system.
Before the raid you called 2 items. And only 2. Or you could double call 1. From the whole loot table. If the item called dropped, anyone who called could roll. Double calls got a double roll. If no one called, anyone interested could roll.
This might seem simple, but it got meta. People would check what was called and then call something no one else called, risking getting nothing if that thing didn't drop. People would double call just because they needed one thing. People would purposely no call something because no one else called it in hopes to get lucky while also having a call for something else they wanted. Etc etc. As far as fun loot goes, this was pretty genius. Of course, this depends on deep loot tables. If the whole raid you do has like 20 total drops and there is only like 2 that each class and spec would want, well, it becomes pointless.
0
Options
SaldonasSee you space cowboy...Registered Userregular
Man, those are some pretty exciting stories. I really hope we get some raiding going on, even if we have to do something like a guild alliance.
Posts
I'm not sure if more houses are found with fabkits or not. my money is on ''oh hell yes.''
also keep in mind that they froze content addition for launch, so they could polish the hell out of this thing for June 3rd.
they got guys still creating crap for the 1st, 2nd, 3rd month content patches, however so chances are good.
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
"...only mights and maybes."
Okay so the protostar origin is way fucking creepier than I initially thought it would be.
Edit: also if folks want to read the rest of these, search TFBTF in the wildstar subreddit on Reddit
"...only mights and maybes."
PS4:MrZoompants
Yeah sorry went to bed.
Its both the resource and the R skill. Full bar is 100, surging a skill boosts it (assault and support only, usually more damage/healing or faster casting) at the cost of 25 SP. It regens kinda slow, although twice as fast outta combat. The boosts tend to be significant enough that SSes tend to feel weak when they cannot Surge stuff. Which is more often than not.
You use R to turn Surge mode on, and any usable skills during this will consume the 25SP and be boosted. You hit R again to turn it off.
So apparently they pretty much don't allow you to connect with a VPN (which I use a lot since I'm not in the US at the moment). It only sends you the email to reconfirm your new IP address if you login on the main NCSoft site, not the Wildstar site. Whee. Thanks for letting me know, assholes! Hopefully this will mean I won't have these issues going forward.
PS4:MrZoompants
I guess I'll play a spell slinger next beta so I can see what all the hubbub is about, but I really can't give any fucks at the moment.
esper R ability only gives me 1600~ temp health, 5 psy points over 5 seconds, and roots me in place for a bit longer, and is only usable every 30sec.
I just don't bother because rooting is akin to suicide if you get targeted for an instagib template attack
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
It looks that way but with some housing mods I got from doing PVP I got a nice bed some furniture for the house a garden/a hedge maze/ a festival that gives free food drink and a free flower garden. So my housing plot looks pretty nice without dropping a dime on anything.
If there was any one thing i would like for housing it doesn't already have (which isn't much), it would be more stuff happening on its own. Like critters appearing (like that rowsdower) And those bandit raids. Both of which I'm pretty sure didn't make it into the final design.
But as of right now? People can make freaking jumping puzzles!
They probably cut a lot of window dressing to get the core done.
All creative idea's need to be edited down, even as they walk out the door.
http://www.reddit.com/r/WildStar/comments/21foay/we_are_the_pvp_team_for_wildstar_ask_us_anything/
"...only mights and maybes."
its next weekend.
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
Millions of people trying to bug shit out while playing. They've already pre-ordered, and the worst thing that's going to happen is they burn out a little, start playing at the end of the first month again, and pay for month two.
Plus, only a true fool would burn themselves out on a beta which will be wiped. I'd like to play, a little, every now and then. I'd like to PvP a lot to get good at it. I'd like to toy with builds in a real environment, so when I actually get to play... I'll know what I'm doing.
Switch: SW-1493-0062-4053
Unless it's people who wanna be in both i guess. I just know stove people signed up on mine before you started the pvp guild.
Ot something, i dunno
I might occasionally PVP, but it's not really my thing. I remember having a lot of fun in Alterac Valley, the other BGs were okay, but it was just fun to have objectives and the massive battle.
Switch: SW-1493-0062-4053
May determine if I decide to roll just dominion on the one iwth the dominon guild and try Exiles on the Pvp guild one.
What a community. The shame is that I really liked big group content in WoW but as you moved up the ladder the people became less cool and fun. more scary and weird
I think I have it in me to play one more online game as a raider now that I've graduated. I hope I can find a good crew because I'm just not willing to suffer fools like that for the best statted gear. Especially if I can dump time and money into having the sickest house or rare costume pieces.
At least 1 guild I was in had a loot council. That system went better than just about any others that I remember.
Switch: SW-1493-0062-4053
in all likelihood, you have a core group of 15 to 20 people. these guys are in every raid. they show up 30minutes before the raid time and are always prepped. I've been one of these people.
then you will have about... 30 to 50 people that are not core raiders. for whatever reason, like kids, school, work, etc, they can't show up to every raid.
So that means that to do raids, you need a guild in the neighborhood of 70 to 80 people in order to reliably staff 40slots at any scheduled time. Sometimes, you only have 5 people left out, many times you have 15 people left out. it sucks for them, because they can't progress and it sucks for the raid leader, because he's got to choose who to leave behind, not because of their attendance, but because who's most likely to not fuck up the evening.
I'm lucky that my guild didn't have that kind of drama. Mainly because we were able to purge those self-centric players in our early days, and our guild charter and mentality was borderline Communist in that "Everything is for the progression of the guild. The guild comes first in everything." Luckily we had exceptional Guild Leaders that also believed this.
All garbage loot was sent to the guild bank. Only class specific gear would be auctioned off for DKP in raid. If it was the umpteenth Druid boots? sharded for the nexus crystal, sent to the guild bank. Looking back, that was a good thing. We didn't have to tax our guild members... not that we could in that iteration of the guild system, but it let the guild get some quick cash to buy books or recipes for our designated guild crafters, or provide Quel'Serrars at marked discount for our warriors.
Guildies were expected to:
Show up at raid time.
Pay your own repair bills
Have a full stack of the best bandages.
Have a full stack of healing/mana potions for bosses.
Have a Flask ready to drink if it was feasible to beat a new boss. (Sometimes the guild provided Flasks at cost. I certainly offered at cost)
this was only supposed to be a quick talk about logistics, and I just went into the whole shebang. Guildie requirements were not that much, but for some of the less committed members, it was a miracle that they had bandages and healing pots.
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
Yea, we used a DKP system as well, but as I said, with exceptional players that were human, we made exceptions with new people that could use that gear. Its somewhat funny when they are like... -60 dkp on their first raid with us because they got most of their suit in one go. (avg DKP per raid was about 10~ish), with the potential to earn about 30 or 40 per week if you got into all of them.
The warriors had a good rap with each other, but man, that's a hard set up. All new tank gear went to the Main Tank, no exceptions. The Main Tank was there 99% of the time anyways. Raid progression was linearly tied to Main Tank Gear so that was that. I was the Off-Tank (also attended 99% of the time), so I made a truce with our other 3 warriors that I would only bet on tank gear that was absolutely better than what I currently had equipped, and that all dps and lesser tank gear was theirs to divide among themselves.
but as I said... LOGISTICAL NIGHTMARE.
edit** we had a guild *accountant* that took care of dkp point totals and expenditures for everything from raids to certain materials that we needed asap. He even in-game mailed *receipts*. He was also the Master Looter in the raid, so that everyone would focus on just burning away the trash mobs and not stop to pick up loot (which you shouldn't be doing anyway) every couple fights if something interesting dropped. Raid times for clearing a Dungeon were just about cut in half. At the end of vanilla, we could clear MC in 2 hours, BWL in 2 hours, AQ40 in 2.5hours, and Naxx in 3.5 hours. ZG and AQ20 were cleared 3hours each.
Yes he was eccentric, OCD, and had a speech cadence of a robot.
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
But let me tell you what is.
(Herein I wax philosophic about MMO's and raiding)
Peerless involved a player or group of players killing some of the hardest monsters in the game, in the hardest area's of the game, to collect some "key" items which decayed over time. After you picked up a key, you had an hour to collect and use the rest. Once you used the key(s), you and your party got an item which allowed you to teleport into the "Encounter" (some times it was a clothing item you used to walk through an otherwise locked door). Once in the encounter, you had to navigate the puzzle/dungeon to get to the boss. Some of these were traditional multi level dungeons with increasingly difficult monsters and traps. Others were simple "hordemode" encounters you had to survive. All of them involved multi-stage puzzles and phased elements. Once you completed that, you could do the boss. Most people (85%) failed at this stage.
Each boss was radically different (there were 5). One was a unicorn which cursed you so bad you'd drop all your gear, you had to cycle out who was tanking him once they were cursed, and get a group of players to spam cleanse spells on him until one of them removed it. Another was a tree-ent lady who could kill you when you were a ghost (when you died you became a ghost who needed to be resurrected), permanently removing you from the encounter. One player had to be trying to interrupt her "specter" spell, while another was quickly ressing the dead, and the others were applying damage/fighting adds. They got progressively more difficult. One was pure magic.
Anyway. These guys all dropped a fuck ton of loot, their minibosses and the key holders all dropped valuable gear, and there were "Peerless Loot" items which could drop (2% chance, 0.25% on some items due to loot tables), and everyone wanted.
Most people failed when trying to collect the keys. My friends and I were rather good at it, and figured out how to build characters specifically tailored to gather keys and fight bosses. We got so good at it, that we could three-man all these bosses. Most people had to come in groups of 20+. Personally, I could solo the unicorn boss. It wasn't time efficient, but it was a feather in the cap. This became known (other players could spectate the boss fights, plus one of my friends was a bit of a braggart). After a bit of a haranguing by people, we built a guild. At the peak, we had 300 people in the guild. We set up a forum, published tutorials for each stage, took groups of 10 on "educational" runs.
But, everyone wanted that loot.
What we ended up doing was this:
Organization:
The entire "raider" population is divided into squads of 5. People pick their own squads, and name them funny things. (This was the average group size necessary for any particular boss)
When you do a raid, you post it on the forum, and list the people participating.
Each raid elects a "leader", and posts this as well. If everyone agrees that they don't need a leader (I.e. an expert group), they said as much and that's fine.
Each person on a raid gets 1 point.
If you succeed in your raid goal, the raid gets 1 point.
If you succeeded, and had a leader, that leader gets 1 point.
If the raid agrees that there was an MVP or powerplay that happened, list the person(s) involved, "Guild Council" decides if it's cool enough and if it is... They get 1 point.
Loot Distribution:
1. Only the people on a given raid are eligible for loot. No "holding".
2. When an item comes up for looting, people declare interest. The person with the most points gets the item, and loses 8 points (to a minimum of 0).
3. If two players are tied, they must be honorable people and come to an agreement. Any kind of agreement is fine ("I'll give you 3mil gold if you let me have this"), but it must be made quickly and with integrity. If this rule is violated (someone starts acting foolish), the players involved come up for review to "Guild Council". If no agreement is made, but it was done "maturely" ("I refuse, I want this." "So do I, I will not bend.")... And/Or someone with more seniority is required to be notified, all involved players lose all points, and the item is given to any interested party for 3 points. If no one wants it, it is destroyed in some way. (This was our "Anti-Greed" rule. Don't be a dick, we're all playing together. Also the "Don't be a baby" rule.) If at any point a player is told to act more maturely, or less greedy, they come up for review.
4. If all players in the same squad, loot only costs 7 points. (Play together, get familiar with each other, be better at raiding)
5. If all players are evenly distributed between squads, or all from different squads, loot only costs 7 points. (Play with everyone, don't profile or form cliques)
6. If all players agree, an item may be given to another player for 1 point (This is the: "You're the only one who needs this" rule).
7. If no one can afford the item, it goes back up at -1 point (To a minimum of 1). If no one selects the item, it is given to any interested party (See rule 3).
8. If anyone tries to "Sweep the loot" (take everything), they are immediately ejected from the guild.
In the background:
We organized by squads because we did fun "events". Certain squads would challenge each other to do a particular raid in a particular way, and wager on it ("Do Lady M, but no one can bring a spell book."). If the challenged squad succeeded, they'd get the points. If they failed, the challenger got 50% of them. We also used this to gauge how active a given squad was, how good they were, and so on and so forth. It was mostly just for guild administration. When new content rolled out, we'd tell the best squads to come with us and test it out, so more people could teach the less skilled groups.
It was also mad easier to organize people in these categories.
We used a lot of the honor system, and only had a few incidents of corruption and collaboration. Both times we removed the jerks, and publicly shamed them.
Under that paradigm, we never once had a person complain. We even found incidents where groups wouldn't even register the raid, because everyone was such friends that they agreed on how loot was going to be divided up before hand.
What would I do to change this for Wildstar?
First, I'd create point categories, for each type of content. You'd have a category for any kind of content which required players to moderate loot. If the game manages drops in any way, points are not necessary and I'd do something more fun.
Then, you'd be able to exchange points. 5 dungeon points for 1 raid point.
I'd also change the costs, probably creating a few categories for that. (i.e. Jewelry costs 3, armor 6, weapons 5)
All looted items are registered with the guild. If you have received an upgrade to a given slot, it costs 2x as many points to take another upgrade to that slot, within X time. (Let me explain this: Joe gets raid 1 legs. Jim has really good legs, but not raid 1. Next week you do raid 2, and raid 2 legs drop. If Joe wants to upgrade his recently upgraded legs, it'll cost him (probably) all his points. This is so Jim has a chance at the direct upgrade. It's better to have more people geared, than one guy geared the best).
That's probably it.
You raid, you earn points, you spend points. There's no more finesse to it.
Within six months (there were no lockout timers. As fast as you could get keys, you could do bosses), every single person in the guild had the items they wanted, and we dissolved it. Our techniques had become so well known and publicized, I was regularly standing around discussing ways to solo or duo this or that boss. Granted, we destroyed the economy on the server (peerless loot was end game loot, and now everyone had it), but that's not the point.
I often hear, and participated in, other systems. DKP, and it's many different colors, are strange systems. They are often overly micro managed and create problems because they are overwrought. Because, honestly, they are often rigged in the "pro raider bro" guys favor (this is often the leadership).
Look, I know that's a lot of text. I'm just going into this with the idea that I, and the PA guild, will probably dip my/our toes into raiding. Even if it's not the 40 man's, we'll need some kind of organization and system. The dev's have gone to great lengths to try to mitigate that, but it's also pretty clear loot's gonna drop, and we're gonna need to divide it up. I'll gladly help set that up, and/or provide my input. I'm not sure how many raid leaders/organizers are hanging around these parts.
for us, our crazy dkp system worked for us, even when we had gluts of 1100+ dkp on people.
It was interesting to say the least. For most guildies, it meant that you talked with your fellow classmates and would come to a mutual agreement on loot prices. If it was highly sought after gear, all bets were off, you spent the dkp and accepted that you probably would not get the next 5 or 6 pieces of gear as you rebuilt your dkp account.
The only time it was incredibly funny was when we had 4 Ephimeral talismans drop on the same raid night. 1% world drop rate, best neck item for mages until... Naxx? I think? price payments were 1100 dkp, 800dkp, 500dkp, and 150dkp. It was the one time we did a restructuring and refunding of some dkp because fucking seriously, it was a 1 in 1trillion occurance.
Steam - NotoriusBEN | Uplay - notoriusben | Xbox,Windows Live - ThatBEN
Before the raid you called 2 items. And only 2. Or you could double call 1. From the whole loot table. If the item called dropped, anyone who called could roll. Double calls got a double roll. If no one called, anyone interested could roll.
This might seem simple, but it got meta. People would check what was called and then call something no one else called, risking getting nothing if that thing didn't drop. People would double call just because they needed one thing. People would purposely no call something because no one else called it in hopes to get lucky while also having a call for something else they wanted. Etc etc. As far as fun loot goes, this was pretty genius. Of course, this depends on deep loot tables. If the whole raid you do has like 20 total drops and there is only like 2 that each class and spec would want, well, it becomes pointless.
Switch: SW-1493-0062-4053