Greetings,

I am a new user of your site and our guild did its first RAID Sunday Night. Using your software went better than expected. A lot of people were doing screenshots as backups, but your stuff worked like a champ..

Of course post RAID when importing, we had to tweak certain things.... and this raised some questions as to how best to manage our DKP.

Q1. If you set up multiple RAID Zones, is the DKP earned in each RAID zone totaled up on the Current Standings, or will there be multiple "current standings for each zone"?

Q2. I was trying to figure out during the RAID import, how to give everyone points for item drops based on the items themselves. We want to use a base 40 system for item drops, and divide by 40 to award points for drops. (Example: All of our Tier 1 armor awards 1 point per drop to the RAID, but the belt and bracers are charged 20 DKP to the person that gets the drop, and 40 points for gear above the bracers and belt.) I am not sure, but do you recommend that we setup the items ahead of time for points worth, or upon recieving them and establish the points then... then when we import, assign the actual value of the item to be reduced for the DKP?

I know that was a pretty complicated question. So simply put, we want to award the RAID points for item drops (Much like bosses.) How do you recommend doing that?



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I'm still new to DKP and the systems also however this is what we do..
We are using 1 system for all DKP. All zones are initialized and usable in the one system. When we import any Destination all DKP totals will be current across everything. If you want to use separate DKP for say 20 man and 40 man instances then I would suggest you use 2 systems...1 for each. This way you can import each the 20 mans to 1 system and the 40 mans to another. Just as an example.



So when you import your raids your given the option of importing the loot for the raids. I would use this assign points for loot as this will begin building to your table for you without having to go through and manually enter something runnig the risk of mispelling it (I'm lazy). It also give you the oppurtunity to review the loot recieved so you can total the point values to award the correct amount of DKP.

Anyway everyone does it differently and this is just my 2 cents based on how you described your system.

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Six Demon Bag
Jack Burton: Hey, what more can a guy ask for?
Egg Shen: Oh, a six-demon bag!
Jack Burton: Terrific, a six-demon bag. Sensational. What's in it, Egg?
Egg Shen: Wind, fire, all that kind of thing!

I was thinking more on the lines that you might create a seperate DKP for Learning zones and adjust the points accordingly.



I didn't notice that there was a section to assign points for the items. All I saw was a section to determine how much the item cost in points.

What I would would like to see is if there is a way to enter in points awarded, and then a section that says DKP cost and to who to charge against.

What I am wondering is that there is a section to setup the loot manually, and I wonder if you make that points awarded there.

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Not from what I have seen. Would have to let Chops chime in if I am wrong however I believe your going to have to add up the points manually and then divide it out and assign it that way. So if like Magmadar drops 1 epic and 2 tier ones that would be 120 points total divided by 40 for 3 points to each member.

And in the loot table yes that is pretty much the point cost assignment but if your Item Table is empty it will start buildign that table for you is all I was refering to.

--
Six Demon Bag
Jack Burton: Hey, what more can a guy ask for?
Egg Shen: Oh, a six-demon bag!
Jack Burton: Terrific, a six-demon bag. Sensational. What's in it, Egg?
Egg Shen: Wind, fire, all that kind of thing!

Thanks, I am glad you confirmed that. I guess a way to get arount that for now is just to assign higher points awarded for bosses. Figuring most bosses drop three items. The thing about using variable loot awards is that sometimes the boss drops loot that has a lower drop percentage and it would be nice to give a small bonus to the RAID group that is present for that.

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Reading right now...gimme a few seconds to finish, then I'll chime in.

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It's all in the reflexes.

Ultimately, what you are referring to is the concept of Zero sum: All points spent get redistributed to the members in attendance at that time.

To effectively do that with this site, I strongly suggest using the CT_RaidTracker importer function. That importer was written specifically to tailor Zero Sum systems such as your own, such that all item drops that get bought, the point spent form a "raid" that gives points to everyone else.

Give the CT_RaidTracker importer a whirl, and see if you like it. There are a few tweaks coming to the rest of the system (GRSS Importer, Manual Raid creation, etc) that will automatically redistribute those points for you.

As for the multiple DKP Systems, thing....

By default the system comes with one DKP System cleverly named "Default." If you wish for the new zones to be their own System, you can do this. If you wish for all the zones to be their own system, you can as well. There's even one guild that gives each 40-man zone 3 systems (one for armor, one for weapons, and one for somethign else, I forget what). It really comes down to how many systems do you want to maintain?

If points earned in one zone should be spent in another zone, and vice versa, then at least those two zones should be linked. If points earned in one zone, should be spendable in all the zones, then you should stick with a single "DKP System" into which ALL your points go.

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It's all in the reflexes.

Thanks Chomp... that makes sense now.



For now I think we will just increase the points awarded per boss to compensate for lack of zero sum functions for now.



I think the key term you used here is to "link" the systems if you want to points to be transfered between RAIDs. Once again, I was thinking more of creating a seperate system for Learning RAIDS verses Farming RAIDS using different default point assignments per boss.

One follow-up question about RAID snapshots. When you do a snapshot, does the utility denote if someone who was at the start of the RAID, if they were there for the boss kill, or is it possible that people could get credit for a kill if they are AFK or not in the zone, but are in the RAID? The reason why I ask is because when I did the import last night, it seems that some people were checked when we downed the first boss, but that some people were not, and I wasn't sure if they were AFK, or DEAD when the snapshot is taken.

I think one person asked if your snapshot could list the zones for players during a snapshot as a possible workaround.




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It's worth noting that you CAN still use zero sum without the additional tools to aide it. Instead, you simply add up the total points spent and divide it, and that will determine the number of points to award for that particular boss.

The GRSS doesn't make any sort of flags for AFK, DND, Dead, or otherwise. It also doesn't track the Zone, but that's slated to be added.

As for determining if they were there for the start of the raid, you simply need to initiate your own manual snapshot or the start of the raid by typing

/grss Start of MC Raid

(or something similar - "Start of MC Raid" is an arbitrary name). Automating the "Start of the Raid" is an almost impossible task, since the program doesn't know when your raid is scheduled to start.

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It's all in the reflexes.

Also Toddler, if you haven't yet, I strongly advise reading the guides "Planning your Loot System" and "Building your DKP System" in the "Articles" section on the left.

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It's all in the reflexes.

Thanks Chop, I did read both guides there prior to posting. I might create an add-on supplment since I am such a noob. Sort of like Best Practices for managing WoW DKP using this site. Since there are so many ways to skin a cat in DKP.

Last nights RAID import went pretty well, but we noticed something strange.

I did a Guild Import Sunday night since there were a lot of additions to the guild since the Guild leader setup the site. When I did the import, it seem to reset several members status that were members to non-member. The officers remained untouched.

I was thinking of doing a guild roster import each Sunday to get all the newest members once a week.... and remove all members that have left the guild as well.

Is that recommended?

Thanks,

Toddler

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Oh sure! It was built to be a "maintainer", rather than just an "initializer." I strongly advise, if any members have earned DKP or whatnot, to mark members who've quit as "Retired/Quit" rather than deleting them. That's enough to take them off the roster and DKP standings without destroying the item and raid history.

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It's all in the reflexes.