I think most of us have been here.

Night of farming mad loot: 60 people online
Night of working on new boss: 35 people online.

Doesn't matter which days, doesn't matter what time. Someone's granny is gonna die when you're working on Thaddius, or Loatheb, or 4H.

So the issue is, what sort of incentives do you use to bring more people to wipe nights? IRPP? Cookies?

We use a pure zero-sum system with no additions or modifications. An idea we have had, is to make people's ability to earn RPP dependent on their Wipe Night attendance.

We track people's attendance to wipe nights, multiple times during the raids. Each of these logs makes up their attendance. We have separate attendance tracking for raids where loot is distributed, and raids where we are working on a new boss.

If a person's attendance to wipe nights is below a certain threshold, they cannot earn points.

What this basically does is it flips people's typical mentality RPP-wise on its head. Instead of the farm nights where you kill 19 bosses being the most valuable and desirable nights, the wipe nights are now in that top spot. If you miss the wipe nights, it doesn't matter how many bosses you kill on that farm run, cos you ain't getting any points. At the same time, the guys that are turning up to every wipe night are earning RPP as normal, but they are earning more pts for every person that is not turning up(since loot value is being divided by less people). So they get rewarded for their efforts, which drive the guild forward.

This just a tentative idea, but I really like the mentality it aspires to. Rewarding those that put in the genuine effort of pushing towards the guild's goals, while denying freeloaders the ability to just stroll in pick up an upgrade when they feel like it after subbing on raids for a month.

I'm curious to hear what the rest of you have tried in terms of incentives, and the levels of success you've had. Please feel free to comment on the idea above as well, I'd be glad for outside perspectives perhaps illuminating issues that I've not thought of.

We use a DKP system, but not zero sum, which allows for some flexability with bonus's and such. We reward double the standard hourly DKP rate for long wiping sessions and a lump sum of DKP for each first boss kill.

Worked well for us so far, we often get more people online for progress nights now than on farm nights.

My guild doesn't use zero sum, so our solution is jsut offering a ridiculous amount of DKP for new content nights. You can usually earn more in one night of wiping on new content with no bosses killed than you would showing up to a farm night.

I like your suggestion a lot, but you need to be careful with how you punish people. It seems like it would be a nightmare to keep track of, but if you're willing to do the work it seems like it would work well. The only problem I can see with it is that it puts off your freeloaders too much. That may seem like a good thing, but speaking from personal experience its not something you want to do. In all the different guilds I've been in, theres been a group of people that have roughly 90% attendance on farm content, and 60% or lower attendance on new content. They weren't necessarily bad players, a lot of them were very good raiders, they just don't make as much effort to show up to the new stuff as they do the old stuff. I know "ideally" these aren't the kinds of people you want in your guild, but realistically they're going to show up in almost any guild you're in. And unless you're one of the top guilds around, you can't really afford to get rid of them because replacing them will be difficult. In my former guild, we had a pretty large group of people that fit into this category, and had the same problem you described -- 60 online for farm, 35 online for new stuff. We tried and suggested different ways to punish people that don't show up to the new stuff, and got a result that was opposite of what we wanted. This group of people that don't make as much of an effort to show up on new content didn't like the changes, and stopped showing up alltogether. The result was that we then started to have attendance issues even on farm nights, and the attendance issues got even worse on new content nights.

Any time you're having attendance issues, just make sure that the changes you make aren't going to put people off, and make them want to show up even less.

We use hourly DKP for non-farm content and fixed dkp values for completely farm content. Fixed-price buys. It encourages people to come to progression content without stretching stuff out needlessly on farm content. Not that people are generally that eager to wipe unnecessarily or to spend extra hours in MC anyway.

Same thing for us, we always have 50+ signed up for wipe nights.

You basically created a very common problem with your zero sum dkp system and now you need yet another rule enforced to go around this problem.

we had this issue in AQ, and progressed very slowly, for naxx we decided to reward 90% of the DKP for attempts, because lets face it, the only hard work is getting a boss on farm really, so farming a boss earns you 1dkp, learning a boss earns you a shitload more (sometimes 20x more if it takes ages). If you don't pot up fully when a potted attempt is called, you won't earn DKP.

it seems like a good system to me, but sadly it cannot turn casuals into hardcore raiders and i can't report accurate results as guild burnout has slowed us down a lot, those of us who have been raiding since the start of MC are just sick and tired of the same shit and a LOT have taken a break (including myself). Also since we are a 1/2 hardcore 1/2 casuals guild making progress in naxx is not so easy.

Problem with wipe nights beeing rewarded very high is that people start to not care anymore... so what if they wipe... they earn tooooo much dkp.

There should be a balance tho ..

We did that once in our MC start. Wipe nights had lots of dkp and farm boss none... So ppl just prolonged raids and played poorley so thye get more dkp for the farm run.

We use zero sum, and record attendance on 4 separate attendance nights, two of which are dedicated to progression. You get attendance points according to if you're in Kargath/CH/Light's Hope at 5:00, and points again if you're there at the end of the night. People who sit out get points as well, you just need to be able to check in when called for (in a separate vent or chat channel).

In other words, you don't have priority on items until you hit 50%+ attendance, which you can only obtain by going to the 4 mandatory raid nights (which are, in most cases, wipe nights)

Using attendance on wipe nights to shape your invites on farm nights is effective. Raid slot pressure is one of the most motivating methods to keep people raiding on a regular basis. With 60 people on for farm nights, that appears to be a viable option for you.

That's a very simple yet intriguing approach. What pitfalls or exceptions have you encountered with this approach? Also, what web-based DKP package do you use to manage this system?

Few ways in a 0-sum world to incent wipe nights, you just have to look at the mentality of your guild and determine which is going to work best for you.....

1. Add in a X% weekly decay and use that for first kill boss bonuses/wipes on new content. You'll want to balance the decay % so people earn an equal amount of DKP on a typical farm night as they do on a wipe night. Depending on how fast you're moving through content you'll need to adjust the decay % from week to week, it takes some management but its a lot easier than figuring out who does and doesn't count in the X/N DKP handout on an item.

2. Don't let them know where you're headed, just schedule a '40 man raid' and then based on the group that is there pick and instance and go at it. All of a sudden you'll have massive attendence on the weeknight raids because people fear if they aren't there and attendence is low you'll be clearing whatever instance you have on farm for lots of DKP/loot. Its not too hard/time consuming to start off in a major city where people are by their bank so they can get the right gear/consumables for whichever instance you head to.

3. 3 wipes and you're out -- let people know you aren't going to pound your head all night on something. While this may seem very effective as it has produced results in the past often the quality of the attempts continues to degrade as the night goes along. This may be more true in the fixed DKP distribution world where wiping is almost encouraged. In this setup, you start off each night with new content, put in 3 solid attempts and then go hit up farm stuff for the next few hours. Sorry no showing up to the raids late, the farm stuff can be done in most cases with < 40 so if you weren't there for the wipes you don't get to raid that night. You can do this regardless of the progression point your guild is at, this game isn't straight up linear and too many guild leaders look at it that way.

4. Depending on your desire for churn/standing on your shard you can require attendence, if people aren't there for X% of the raids as Gyshall said they either don't get to bid (they get put in a Reserve/Slacker rank until their attendence % is back up again) or don't earn points (as the OP suggested).

we fund repair bills with the guild bank. that's about it, though; it's usually a lot easier for us to get good groups to learn new fights than it is to get good groups to clear AQ with

Im a firm beliver in Officer loot or loot councils. It means that you cant pick and choose which raids to come to that will win you the most points or loots, its pretty easy to see when somebody isnt pulling their weight. It gives each raid an equal value, and in most cases officers will favour those that come to the progress nights, but without haveing to unbalance a dkp system.

This is very true. We will never change from a zero-sum system (or at least someone will have to kill me), so it's down to us to figure out the best solution. But metering out the punishment so to speak is one of the tricky things to balance.

A variation on the above would be to 'filter' the points earned by people's attendance percentages. Essentially, the points people earn are modified by their attendance, so that the guys that attend farm and wipe nights get more points from loot than the guys that only attend farm nights.

In essence it aims to do the same thing, but with a lot less severity. The issue then, is would it be effective in getting people to attend more wipe nights? The flipside being that if you go with the extreme version, as described in my OP, you risk completely pissing off your freeloaders to the point where they don't even come to farm nights at all. While the idealist in me would love to tell them where to go, the realist grittingly accepts that this is often not possible.

Generally, when we have 60 people on for boss farming, the people who were busting their chops to learn the boss get top priority. People who avoided the place until the boss was on farm get told to take a hike.

That's going to have interesting implications come TBC.

The best method is to generate a culture where the loot is very much secondary, because then you don't have to use the loot as an incentive and your loot system can just be there to speed up the distribution process. Don't get excited about random item of extreme-badassness, unless it's the first time you've killed the boss and the only reason you're excited there is the boss is down. "Way to go team, now boulder won't miss and we won't wipe as much (MT picked up widow's remorse on first faerlina kill, upgrading from something awful) Get really excited about ANY progress on a boss. "That was amazing kiting, we'll push the DPS this next set of attempts to kill him while you all keep us safe, really well done Lorekk/Zyix/Kivor/Bayman". When the boss dies, be very upbeat. "Gluth dead, well done all. Grats on finding a way to kill yourself after the boss died Setyn, hey Turret says he farmed 200 fadeleaf while we were in here so shadow pots on him, awesome all around. Line up for a quick picture, bonus points if we make straight lines. We still have some time left, so if you want any of the drops, stay put, everyone else lets move up and see Thadius." *Random vent sounds of happy people at seeing thad, and minimal raid chat about loot, complaints about having to stand at the body instead of seeing thad right away*

It's taken a very long time to build our culture into a boss-focused one, but it's been a massive improvement in raid attendance. We basicly do farm content when we can't do new stuff due to raid balance issues (Only 2 hunters on because one had to post colors one is sick and the other two are still on vacation? We'll fake it on huhu, not learn gluth, go). If you make the fun be in the excitement of actually doing the fights, and not in the strutting around IF in new stuff, it's good times.


If I was going to put in an incentive system, I'd consider the Immortality IRPP - predefined incentive values (like pricing items) for categorical raids. (This raid went late by request to get more attempts, requested late raids are worth x. This raid was a pure wipefest, pure wipefests for progress are worth y. This raid was scheduled at an odd time because of hardware concerns, odd time raids are worth z. etc.) It's easy to implement, and quickly understandable. It doesn't have much potential for abuse, and it doesn't add a huge layer of complexity to the system. (IRPP adjustments are made at the end of the week to rebalance the system to a zero-sum, basicly totall up all the bonuses, then subtract that many points from the entire system). The other system that is workable is putting in a fixed cost for missing a raid, and then distributing those points to either the guild at large, all the active members, or to the raid - depending on what you want to encourage.

In all of these discussions, there is no cookie cutter solution. What's right for one guild may piss everyone in the other guild off - don't do that =P Also, when making changes - be clear about why you're making them. "We're changing the dkp system to make it more beneficial to come to the naxx learning raids, because if you have limitted time, we really need you there, and we appreciate your prioritizing it. The change isn't an attempt to make you show up to every raid, just making the more attractive raids line up with where the guild needs the strongest turnout. We know everyone wants to kill Saphiron, this should make it so you don't feel like you have to come to this week's MC run to stay competitive if you made it to saph." - Something like that that casts the change in a positive light is good times.

The last thing you want to do if you're using your dkp system to incentivize attendance is blame your dkp system for bad attendance. You don't want people thinking they only raid for dkp. You want them thinking they raid because it's fun, productive, and dragons have got to die. It is a moral imperative. So keep all the changes on the "This change is mostly so you don't have to make a hard decision if you have to miss a night" side, and less on the "We know you only wants the phat loots you selfish monkey slave, come wipe with us you unbecoming haggerbatter."

Of course, that's my opinion, you don't have to take my word for it. =p

By far the best incentive DKP system I saw (which I saw here) which was still compatible with zero-sum was the following:

"Participants get x points (per hour, per try or a value close to the expected loot value, up to you) with the limitation that these points will be removed from the system after y days/weeks (lets say one month for example). So they are not points which will allow you to get more/better items than players not attending (at least not in the long run) but will reward the players by being able to increase their chances to pick up the new loot first (when the encounter finally is beaten) or get a higher priority (by having somewhat inflated points for the given timeframe) on drops of already beaten encounters (which in theory will also help to beat the progression encounter). Taking points out of the system retroactively (at least on raid level and not on player level) is quite simple (set the incentive raid point value to zero retroactively) so the administration overhead should not be too extreme."

Long-term it provides no advantage to people learning (no overall inflation, no DKP gap, etc.); short term, it provides them with the ability to exercise some priority on farm-content items over people who aren't coming to learning attempts (incentive).

Credit for that is due to RiB from Azshara.

We use iDKP, incentive based dkp. Instead of being zero sum, iDKP rewards participants for every wipe, every attempt. At the end of the week, the adjustment comes in. The adjustment removes the amount of incentive dkp handed out, from everyone in the system. Lets say we have 110 people in the dkp system, 40 of which are online in the raid, 15 standby. We wipe all night on learning accounts, getting 0.2 points per attempt. We take 20 attempts. Everyone in the raid, and in standby get 4 points total that night, or 220 points total. At the end of the week, the 220 points are taken from everyone, equally, or 2 points per person. The people who were on standby/participated net a total of 2 points, the people who were not online lose 2 points. This encourages people to be online, doesnt overly inflate the gains, and can keep the system o sum. Note I used numbers that made for easy math, the iDKP numbers are flexible.

Our guild gives no incentive for wipe nights at present, as our collective incentive is progress.

I prefer things this way as I am not at all fond of the idea of rewarding people for wiping. Players that avoid learning new encounters in favor of farm status excursions probably are not Reborn material and we do ourselves a huge favor in recognizing that as early as possible.

I'm vastly more entertaining on Ventrilo on wipe nights. So far, it seems to be working out well.

C'thun with 6 melee on the eye made baby raptor jesus cry. I want a map maker that will give excellent relitive distances so I can plot out positionings that don't make us spend weeks dicking around with bad strats.

Regardless, yes even a boss focused culture can break down eventually... one of the hardest things is keeping that momentum going so that people are excited about the next boss and not dreading it. The only great way to do that is to feed new bosses at a relitivly fast pace and keep people on the perpetual high of killing shit.

We've paid repair bills on our longest learning night in the past, although with MC now off the schedule (and the costs on mats and gear out of there plummeting across server), AQ20 not happening regularily (books sell like hotcakes but only if we can get them- and people are too tired after raiding 6 days to get in 1 or 2 runs), and not being willing to sell BWL slots it can be difficult for the bank to sustain the costs- we were looking at 8-900g a week in costs after flasks/repairs and 1-500g inbound (on a good week) we finally had to stop before we drained everything while trying to keep the alchemy up. Luckily we're on a roll in Naxx and it looks like we'll keep up the pace to 4hm so incentives seem to be taking care of themselves.

Tangible benefits talk though. Gold is always a great motivator if you've got enough handy. Pots work sometimes but usually it takes too many to sweeten the deal. Since we're keeping our zero sum system pretty pure (can't afford to do anything else eqdkp is a nightmare to manipulate) thinking outside the box usually comes first =)

Feel good stuff can help too, but it's limited to how much your guild trusts you to be straight with them. If they think it's false praise, they're not going to give a shit about whatever you say. Last night we offed our 8th boss in Naxx. That's nothing to write home about, but we reminded folks that 8 is pretty much a full instance worth of bosses and we're past the halfway point now. Swapping back and forth between harder bosses and easier bosses- especially relevant in Naxx. It was pretty amazing to see the morale boost in guild after spending 6 weeks on C'Thun to get Ouro in 2 nights. We can do that a lot more easily in Naxx- Faerlina was fairly simple after Noth- Maex was fairly difficult after Faerlina but WOOHOO one wing down (the little victories count. Hype 'em) Patchwerk was tough (especially because we only had 16 healers -total- in guild and 2 out of town the week we started him) but Grob was easy. Gluth was moderatly difficult, back to Heigan this week which we expect to be fairly simple. Then to Thaddius etcetcetc. Find your victories where you can.

=/

Did you, as an earlier poster explained how to do, make the raid this way as a change or was it part of your culture from the beginning? I'm starting a new guild, and pretty much the main reasons for doing so was a) the smaller numbers required in tBC and b) I didn't want to be the rotten apple in the old guild bitching about progression rates.

I really want to see everything rather than get the loots from them, and I want my raid to have that same attitude. The other part of that is that zero-sum is the way to go, and I feel very strongly that any kind of bonus points (for wipe nights, farming mats, etc.) skew the system too much. I'm researching the IRPP and some of the other systems with points for wipe nights, but I'd rather get those people who want to push it for the sake of being in at the kill rather than grabbing the goodies when we have the encounter on farm.

You don't have to start this way, but it's a long hard road to build it in to the culture and the longer you're chilling out any other way- the harder the conversion is. We started off a lot more casual than we are now, and we still have to squash more casual tendancies from cropping up unexpectedly even from members recruited after we phased out the 3 days/3hours a day raiding we had in MC. (It's been over a year now that we've been at 5+ raid days a week and months since we aded the 6th day that people still can't seem to think of as a "normal" raid day). Bad habits have a tendancy to settle in the roots of the guild and not let go. The old members who were taught bad habits by REALLY old members (now long since gone) teach them to the new members, who become the old members remembering something and teaching it to the new members.... and on and on.

By the same token, you've got to break some eggs to make an omlet and you should expect to make a lot of compromises in the name of getting started- even knowing that you're going to have to go back out later on and weed out the bad apples.

We wouldn't be a guild at all if we hadn't made a lot of compromises at the beginning. Now that we're at the top we can afford to be a little more picky =P