I am currently on Yelinak and my guild is contemplating a move to Teek. How do Mischief guilds handle the distribution of raid loot. Specifically, the risk that members are bidding on small gear upgrades so they can then sell an item they recently won on a raid in EC Tunnel / Bazaar. I am confident that the crew of folks we have on Yelinak now would not do that but we will be adding to our ranks once we settle into Teek. I am sure there are a lot of other issues to sort out regarding loot - especially now that personas are in the game. We'd like to get some policies drafted ahead of time. So what lessons do you free-trade vets have to share?
My former guild had a "dont sell items in era" policy, although it was more of a...loose guideline, nobody would police if you sold a lower tier item when you upgraded a week or two later (and I'm sure those that did just kept it silent, I know I did!), but trying to buy items just for selling wasnt tolerated. Rarely was there any need to punish for it, but there was people being upset and quitting when told off... I think my current guild booted at least one member for such an issue back ages ago. No offenses that I know of for the year I've been with them. Other guilds have more of a "your dkp, your item" rules. We don't allow you to buy items for your personas, obviously (we dont really have anyone that needs to use alternate personas to toggle raid needs, but that might be more common for a server that has them from day one), and raid boxes gets second priority bids on items that otherwise arent bid on. For the most part, especially if you do good on splitting raids, you'll have so much loot to go that minor upgrade stuff being sold will be a complete non-issue.
This was never a problem. The items that are worth money are going to go for alot more DKP than standard items. A person would need to invest all their DKP into a current BIS item, then wait for a better item to drop in order to sell the other one.. while still having the previous item maintain its value. Its just not something that happened, and if it did, it was so seldomly that i never noticed. Also, you get MORE loot on mischief, so even if someone was specifically doing this, it wouldnt hurt the overall guild too much. And you can just remove them. I would be hesitant to make rules about replacing items, since when every item is tradeable, eventually youre going to replace some good things. Just make a rule about not being able to sell an item until you upgrade it and things will be fine.
Ours, and many guilds, was just can't sell items until you get an upgrade or risk G-kick if observed that you don't have it equipped and someone was selling/sold that item in bazaar/tunnel. Loot was so plentiful only a handful of items were pushing double digit kronos. Just accept that eventually someone will stash all their dkp, blow it all on that high ticket item and run off. It's happened on regular servers with BoC's and early CoF's and it will happen on free trade. Pretty easy practice and only recall it being an issue like one time. Not really sure it's too actively policed but if you like your guild seems like a bold move for a couple krono or less. Also free trade encourages people to take smaller upgrades instead of sitting there being bad waiting on a great bis type item, because they can turn around and sell it after getting the major upgrade. So you want your members gobbling up the lesser upgrades using them for a few weeks and then selling them or saving it for personas/boxes. This only makes your players stronger. On no trade servers those nominal upgrades just rot because people aren't going to waste DKP on a no trade item that is destroyed in a week which means the guild as a whole suffers from more under geared players. Just treat personas like you would any alt character. Almost nothing rots on free trade. It's gotta be a special level of bad to have no value to level 1 personas. After main/box bidding - if it's "rot" it opens to alts. This helps combat DKP hoarding/inflation as well. If it really gets to alt status and someone sells it most guilds are just happy to get rid of the gear.
This may be controversial, but this was my experience, so take it with a grain of salt: GDKP. People bid with plat/krono, and when items were won, the money was either immediately distributed to the raid or, if kronos had to be liquidated, sent out the next day. [Krono values were fixed to the market rate as of the time the raid started.] I was richer on Mischief than I've ever been on any server other than test, and I had essentially whatever gear I wanted. There were some definite downsides, but we found that they were mostly outweighed by the benefits. Sure, the guild couldn't use DKP to incentivize people to raid, but this is EQ: people want to raid. That's some people's favorite content, and even the ones who are just showing up because they feel obligated know there's going to be a payout every time something good drops, and in my experience that's incentive enough. I was also concerned about the risk that people would just buy a bunch of krono or bring over krono from whatever server/money laundering scheme they had played before, and in practice that absolutely happened, but it didn't matter because those guys were competing against each other, so it meant no one person could undercut the market without immediately being bid up, and the rich guys' wealth was effectively getting redistributed if they overbid the market. It was absolutely the best raid loot experience I've had since I've been playing EQ, by a mile. Was it perfect? No. It certainly could be exploited with things like imperfect market information or a small guild without enough deep pockets to ensure things are priced to the market. But overall, it's the most fun, fair system of raid loot management I can imagine: the loot belongs to the raid as a whole. If you want something out of the loot pool, you have to buy everyone else out with money. I can't imagine any better system on a free trade, random loot server, so that's the setup I'll be looking for on Teek.
For my guild for FT servers we do loot as Mains(No personas) > boxes(boxes bid on loot mains didnt want after raid) and items bought in raid must be used on the character you bought it for. Rot loot is typically who cares what it goes to you can use it for personas, your box, alts and whatever growth on the side of your head, or you can just sell it Now if you upgrade to a higher tier item mid expac its also a well do w/e you want with it my guild also has a "dkp sellback" that we get 50% of the dkp spent back if we give the item back for rebidding in guild though most of the time its a lower tier item that no one cares so hasnt seen use since PoP
The Risk you are referring to is unavoidable and will happen fairly regularly. However assuming you have a standard guild setup (i.e. even spread and not a boxer guild) if a warrior buys a scepter of destruction followed by a baton of flame followed by a blade of carnage , they will be down dkp in comparison to the other warriors typically there is no way for you to say you cant sell that baton of flame or scepter of destruction but you can say where is you boc etc without creating a myriad of overly complicated rules.
