TLP Guild loot rules

Discussion in 'Time Locked Progression Servers' started by FinalTidus23, Jun 9, 2021.

  1. FinalTidus23 Lorekeeper

    So I think many people have heard stories about guild leaders, and some others close to them, disband or merge with another guild and end up keeping the krono or the conversation stops.

    Maybe some people heard of officers with access to the guild banks looting it and leaving. Either way I think it's safe to say that the innate position one should take when it comes to loot rules and guild banks is 100% transparency.

    That being said, how is one supposed to trust a guild whos loot ruleset is the blind bidding. I can understand the advantages and disadvantages when we talk about them, but what I'm concentrating on is how do we know homeboy that is taking the bids isn't whispering to his buddy what the highest bid is, bidding that 1 or w/e higher, then of course just paying what the 2nd person bid to begin with.

    Is am I right that this seems a little cheesy when it comes to transparency or? How does everyone else feel about confirming the legitimacy of such a system?
  2. Gnomie Denser than most

    I've been in a blind build system before (Imperceptible on Coirnav) and it worked well. You're right, there is a lot of trust involved, but they ran it fairly. A lot of us were friends and pretty open about what we bid afterwards to each other.

    I'm honestly more of a fan of the transparent open bid system, but every bid system has it's flaws. With the Blind bid system, you bid what you'd pay for it and then may pay a lot less than you expected, but never more. So even having someone bid 1 over what YOU would pay for it shouldn't really matter, because you bid the max you would be willing to pay.

    Open DKP bidding is more transparent, but takes a lot longer, and you always have the random dude that will bid you up the minimum on GOING TWICE! like 5 or 6 times just to wreck your DKP because he knows it's a big upgrade for you; which drags one item out for 10 minutes. Had to pass on several huge upgrades because I could tell one or two people were just trying to bid me out of my DKP on items they didn't really want, and I just passed to stick it to them and make them waste DKP on a marginal upgrade.

    The biggest issue like that we ran into with blind bids was someone always bidding 68 to make the winning bid cost 69. Then people started bidding 67 and put a stop to that. Flaws in the systems tend to work themselves out with each group.
    FinalTidus23 likes this.
  3. Hypatia New Member

    Never ever join a blind bidding or loot council guild.
    Karreck and Gheed like this.
  4. Zanarnar Augur

    That is actually the negative of a closed bid system. Trust. You have to trust that the people running it are being honest and fair. I've actually thought a lot about various options in taking bids.. for my purposes closed bids on all drops at once won out due to sheer speed. You could take all the bids and award everything in 2 min or so. (as it was a bot i built taking the bids and sorting out who won.)

    (This was Sad Dragons on Phinny. I always felt like I did a good job with it being fair, but I'd be curious if any ex members felt differently. I'm always open to suggestions to improve transparency and fairness in the system.)

    I do agree it can be an issue, but then again every loot system out there has downsides. Blind bids are nice because they tend to speed the process up, and keep prices lower/more even. (you have less of the "driving the price up to be a jerk" open bidding has). I also feel like if I didn't trust the guilds officers, there would probably be bigger issues then just the loot system and I'd be looking for a new home asap :)

    (as an aside, even though I built the system, I only took bids if it was necessary. During raids I was just another raider like everyone else, and never felt I was being cheated out of drops)
  5. Mrjon3s Augur

    If an item drops bid the amount your willing to pay. Its really not hard. if you lose the item because someone else was willing to pay more you can just get it at a later date for cheaper.
    HoodenShuklak likes this.
  6. Gheed Is not reading your response

    Closed/blind bids are a joke. If you think officers aren't whispering pals about how much they need to bid you are a fool. There is no way to confirm any legitimacy.

    Open bids all the way.

    Wow great insight. Is that how bidding works?
  7. Machen New Member


    There are blind bid systems where there isn't much advantage to "whispering pals." We charge the winner the 2nd place bid + 1 dkp. There would still be a slight advantage if you knew what others bid, but only very slight.

    If you can't trust your officers to run a loot system with integrity, whatever that system is, you have bigger problems than what loot system you are using.
    Genoane, PathToEternity, Ruhi and 5 others like this.
  8. Gheed Is not reading your response

    Every guild i've had is open bids all the way. Why would I need to convince people to trust the officers when it could be open bids and everything would be transparent?

    But yeah, every everquest guild officer has always had the utmost integrity /s
    Duder likes this.
  9. a_librarian Augur

    open bidding is such a hilarious waste of everyone's time. After being in a properly run closed bid system you realize how utterly stupid the alternative is
  10. Karreck Somebody

    Open Bids all the way. It's transparent and honest. Even if guild leaders/officers are the pinnacles of fairness and integrity, the lack of transparency creates enough doubt that one guy pissed he lost a bid to an officer can drive a wedge through the guild with accusations.
    Save yourself the drama and go open bid.
    Duder likes this.
  11. Kahna Augur

    My guild on Aradune set up a "bot toon" and a discord program to run the blind bids. You sent bids with a specific syntax to the bot toon and it ran the bids and when the bidding closed it announced in discord who won and what everyone else bid on the item. It was 100% automated. Sure, the one guy who's alt was the bot you sent the tell too could have been whispering what people were bidding to someone else, but meh, it wouldn't really have benefitted anyone, you couldn't change your bid once you submitted it. We charged folks the second highest bid +1.
    HoodenShuklak likes this.
  12. oldkracow 9999 Is the Krono Account Limit

    Never trust broke EQ players period.
    HoodenShuklak likes this.
  13. Xeris Augur

    I've been part of a super successful loot council guild and I'm currently running blind bids in my guild on Agnarr.

    My guild ran loot council very fairly. At the end of Agnarr's run I became an officer and they shared with me how they tracked all loot council decisions. They had a spreadsheet to track who won what items and it was pretty clear that every main raider with a high RA had gotten about an equal amount of loot during the expansion period. People on the forums are so cynical. Its absolutely possible to have a good loot council system.

    Also: blind bidding is just incredibly more efficient than open bids. We have multiple officers taking bids at the same time, and we have it so the winner gets it for +5 (we bid in increments of 5) from the 2nd place bid. There's really no incentive to cheat anyone. Also, if you bid what you're willing to pay for an item...

    I just don't understand why you'd even want to be in a guild where you suspected your officers would do a thing like that. When I was in a loot council guild, I never once thought the officers were corrupt.
  14. Nickatropolis Augur

    What is this guild you speak of and are there any on Mischief that raid west coast nights?
  15. Kumiko_Lockjaw Elder

    You pictured the problem and also the solution to it.
    Fastest learning is thru pain :)
  16. yerm Augur

    The item went to a player who got only a marginal upgrade rather than the guy who really wanted it. It also probably took several minutes of back and forth to resolve. That's not really a solution. The goal of the loot system should be to have loot go to good places; prisoner dilemmas do not accomplish this.

    In blind bid the tell handler can snitch and get others to do stuff like underbid you so you paid more. True. Generally solved with using a program/bot to handle it. In open bid you still get stuff like collusion and intimidation. Don't outbid drizzigornolas on that bow or else. I won't bid up your sword if you back off my ranged click. Etc.
    jeskola likes this.
  17. Kumiko_Lockjaw Elder

    I have worked with both systems over the last 20 years. Open and closed bidding.
    Some years ago i experienced having highest RA and buying every item first for tripple the price it goes after some weeks. That feels good to have something first, but it is also frustrating, seeing your item go for half your price next turn and for 1/3 to nothing soon after that.

    But you learn, esp. from faults.
    If someone bid me up, i offer, what is reasonable to me, so i do not have bad feelings, whatever happens. Someone driving me up for no reason? I try to stick it to him, doesnt matter if open or closed bidding.
    And do it over and over. Other players/competitors learn too. So they start being happy, if you do pay at least some dkp and not only 1 and let you have the item.
    Or else they create a dkp monster, always hanging above their heads like Sword of Damokles.

    This only works on Mischief, if your guild takes dkp thru expansions. It will not really work, if there is a reset each xpac.

    And there is another new compenent in it.
    This time, your boss item can be sold after you got an upgrade.
    So i could be, that dkp prices are not falling as fast as it would be, if you had to vendor it after upgrade.
  18. Kumiko_Lockjaw Elder

    I also do not like loot council guilds.
    But with that i mean guilds, where some officers distribute items to themselves first or to friends.

    What i do like, is common sense.
    Im happy to have a guild leader / officer, who does not let me bid on a BoC and let it go to Warriors first.
    Im happy to let Rangers get the first big bows.
    And as a Rogue... i do not like to see Rangers bid on Tunare Dagger or Vulak Dagger, because there are other weapons for them with better ratio.
    So im happy, if the guild prevents this.
    Hypatia likes this.
  19. Bullsnooze Augur

    Loot Council
    - This isn't bad if your system isn't corrupt, but this system can easily encourage corruption.

    Open DKP
    - The downfall of this is the ability to openly bid people up which can cause frustrations. In an environment where people save a lot of DKP for 1 big item, this can hurt your overall raid with gear checks. I think it's best to avoid this system altogether.

    Closed DKP (OpenDKP)
    - A closed DKP system where you have someone taking bids is exploitable - so we'll focus on a DKP system (OpenDKP) that can moderate the bidding fairly. In my opinion, this is the best system because you submit a bid and if you're the high bidder you win. There's still the possibility of being bid up, but its a gamble for both parties.

    For example, a few weeks ago I noticed a trend on elemental silk patterns where folks not needing the upgrade would still put bids on items. They weren't large bids, but they clearly didn't want folks winning items for very little spent. And, of course one player got burned, because he tried to bid up the item and was also the high bidder when the auction closed.
  20. Mrjon3s Augur

    My guild uses a discord bot and the officers post the item on a 2 or 3 min timer and you send the bot a tell with your bid character name and status (main or box) if you tie with someone you random and if no one else bids on the item you pay 1.