Guide to Selecting a Loot System

 Summary 

A famous series of steps that you can take to help select and/or develop a loot system for your guild

How to select a Loot system
There is no best DKP system. There is only the fit between the DKP system and the goals of the guild in passing out loot. Different guilds have different goals, and even among raiding guilds, there are differing goals around raiding and progression. Having different goals quite often means having different priorities for how a DKP system allocates loot. And that means that different guilds will find that their needs are met with different loot systems. Here's a quick and dirty method to get started thinking about loot systems for your guild:


 * 1) Make a list of all the things that you want your loot system to accomplish.
 * 2) Make a list of all the things that you do NOT want your loot system to do.
 * 3) Prune these lists. That is, choose the three most important wants and the three most important do not wants.
 * 4) Go to the sticky in this forum on guild loot systems, or to other resources on loot systems, and rate every system based on your three wants and three do not wants.
 * 5) Based on these ratings, it may be clear which system will best meet your needs. If not, take the top contenders and rate them using your entire lists from steps 1 and 2.
 * 6) Pick the system that does the most of what you want and the least of what you do not want.

To get you thinking about the kinds of things that loot systems can do, here are some questions to think about:

 * Do you want your loot system to do anything other than allocate loot? What other things? How much are you willing to alter the system to achieve these other things?
 * How much of a memory do you want your system to have? In other words, how strongly do you want to prioritize raiders who have raided a lot over raiders who have not raided a lot?
 * Do you want new raiders to be able to get non-default loot the first few times they raid?
 * Do you want to be able to bring PUGs or non-raiding members of your guild along, and have them have access to loot?
 * Do you want items to have the same costs over time, or do you prefer that the first drop of an item cost the most, and that the cost declines as the item becomes more common?
 * How much control do you want to give raiders over what loot they receive?
 * How do you want to handle off spec loot?
 * How long do you want any advantage a raider may have earned by raiding a lot to last? (Is it okay if I'm still using points I earned in MC when we hit Ulduar?)
 * Do you want your system to track loot priority, or do you want a system that gives members currency and lets them spend it?
 * Do you want to encourage the taking of lots of small upgrades or do you want people to be waiting for a specific major upgrade? Or do you want to let raiders choose which strategy to use?
 * How much administrative work are you willing to do? Do you want a system that has a working addon to manage the details? Which systems does your website easily support, anyway?

Contributors

 * Developed by Rhaina
 * Posted by Riprapp of Aggramar, who usually posts this in response to people asking about selecting a loot system.

Original Post: Guild Relations Forum