The next update to the site will be to the Raids section. It is a large update, basically rewriting most of the Raids section along with all of our calculation scripts, so we would love to receive any feedback from you guys first to see if you have any suggestions or concerns.
Raid PoolsOur old "Raid Sets" feature is being changed to "Raid Pools" and being enhanced.
How Raid Pools will work is, if you run multiple dungeons and want to keep the DKP separate from them (so that members cannot earn DKP in one dungeon, and then spend it in another), you can assign raids to different Raid Pools. A Raid Pool will then be filterable throughout the Raids section so you can only view content from that Raid Pool.
Attendance, DKP points, raids and items can then be filtered so you only view the content from a specific Raid Pool; if you are a large guild or raiding multiple dungeons and wish to keep track of DKP separately, this will make it much easier.
Our Raid Set feature currently does this also, but is quite limited, especially in the UI, so it is not as useful as the Raid Pools will be.Raiders Separated from CharactersCurrently, the DKP system depends on Characters tied to Members on the site. This has posed quite a few problems:
Members needing to add chars to their account to receive DKP
Members deleting chars from their account and having the DKP lost
Members adding chars that are not raiders, which then takes up space in the DKP section
Guilds attempting to run raids with players from other guilds, who then have no characters
To solve this, we will be separating the Raiders from the Characters. In the Raids section, there will be an "Edit Raiders" section, where you can add/edit/delete raiders. You will also be able to flag raiders as inactive and specify if a raider belongs to another guild then your own.
This will mean it will be entirely up to the Admins to populate the raiders, but should be a much more manageable solution.
When we do this update, we will run a script which loops through every character on your site, and creates a raider for you named after the character that has all their dkp. (ie no dkp will be lost or anything from this update)
Character PoolsSimilar to Raid Pools, a Character Pool will allow you to pool together the DKP you earn from several characters and treat it as one.
The purpose of this is, if you have go on a raid with your main character, but then have to sub in with your alt to fill a healing role or so, and you want the dkp earned on your alt to count as your main character, you can then create a Character Pool and put all your characters in it; then DKP earned from any of them works towards the same pool.
After discussing the first three options, here is a concept screenshot of the new Standings page, which includes Character Pools and members from other guilds.
If you have no character pools, and no members from other guilds, then the Standings page would look very similar to how it does now.
AttendanceThe Raids section will be getting an attendance page, very similar to the standings page, that will show the attendance of all members. Like the standings page, you will be able to filter the Attendance by Raid Pool (so you can see who is attending what dungeons), and you will be able to filter it for specific periods of time (so you can see only the attendance for the past month or two if you want).
Raid Details PageViewing a Raid will receive many UI enhancements to show more information and be better organized. We will also be allowing you to add a "Notes" section for the raid to include any information about it, and we will be enabling Comments on a raid, so you can have discussions specific to it.
Raid AdjustmentsCurrently how a Raid Adjustment works is you select a Member, enter a reason "was late", and then an amount -5 dkp. This way is difficult to enter many raid adjustments, especially if you are handing out the same one to multiple members.
Raid Adjustments will be changing so instead you pick a name for the adjustment, "was late", and an amount, -5 dkp, and then you can mass add/remove members to it, similar to how you can mass add/remove members to raid hours, raid events and raid items. This should make it easier to work with adjustments that are assigned to many raiders.
Raid Items Get Their Own PageRaid Items will be getting their own details page. The details page will embed the popup tooltip of the item, showing game-specific information about it if it is available. It will also have a history for the item, showing what raids it has dropped in and who has bought it. Comments will also be enabled on this page.
Feedback RequestSome of these are pretty big changes to how the Raids section currently works, so if you have any feedback or suggestions we would love to hear them. You can post a comment here or send an email to staff@mmoguildsites.com
Hmm I am not sure what you mean by the raid scheduler? Do you mean adding raids to the events calendar?
If so, those two are purposefully kept separate, but you can add "Participation" events to the events calendar which will allow your members to sign-up to them, and you can then provide an easy way to view the next Participation event by adding the "Next Raid" block to your site =)
If you meant something else please let me know =)
One thing, though: I was talking with 2 of our guildies who are responsible for the DKP and they are complaining about the size of the window where you click on the participants of the raid to add them. Even if the option to set people to inactive etc. makes the problem smaller, the window still is really small and they have to scroll a LOT. If the size of this window would be larger or adding participants to a raid would be different (with less scrolling) - e.g. an overlay like when posting a comment with a loong list of people -> less scrolling - I think my lovely DKP-Ladies would be REALLY satisfied with this update :)
Will all of this have to be done manually (other then the initial switch)? We will be using xml to populate our raids, and would like raiders to automatically be "picked up" by the system if they aren't already created. Along those lines when someone creates a new character will it automatically be added to the raiders list? If the character comes from the same account it would be nice if there was an option where they could be automatically "pooled" as well.
"This will mean it will be entirely up to the Admins to populate the raiders, but should be a much more manageable solution."
Guess I just answered my own question. =P As I postured above some more automation would be nice, but I'll pull though.
-Attendance-
In that screenshot it looks like everyone has 100% attendance, but their bars don't seem to be full. Is this just a consequence of prototyping it or is there some possibility of going over 100%? Or something...
I would also like to see a set time period where the system would automatically move someone to "inactive".
-New Features-
While we're on the subject... I would very much like to see a feature allowing DKP decay. Every DKP is reduced by . The option to have items link to wowhead instead of the armory would be neat too...
Thanks for mentioning that, I will ensure the Character list is made larger so it is easier to manage for guilds with many raiders =)
The raiders will have to be manually created by an admin, but auto-creating a raider through the xml if they do not exist is an interesting idea and something we may be able to support; I will take a look at this when we are re-writing the xml parser as part of this update =)
The attendance screenshot is just a mock-up in photoshop, as a concept so we can show you how it will likely look =)
For automatically moving someone to active, I am not sure about, some guilds may not like this feature, and what period of time until they should go inactive may vary per guild..
DKP decay... hmm that would be tricky and make our calculation scripts even more complex hehe =) I made a note in our issue tracker for this but that will likely not be able to be included with this update at least.
let me start to thanks you for all the support so far that we have receive. We love your service and I can't wait for the new changes.
We use a CT_Raid tracker as an addon. You can see the instruction I put on this page: http://www.dignitasguild.com/pages/ct_raidtracker.
After every raid, Raid Leaders send me the info and I have to put that information on the raid page.
Several of the problems I'm having are been resolve already with the new additions like having participants from other guilds or members in our guild that haven't create yet their characters on the website.
We use the system to track members participation, progress and loot but we don't use DKP points for participation or to spend on a lot. It will be great to have an option to disable that.
I know there are several guild that use DKP for tracking info but not to use the DKP system itself.
Also when editing the data it will be nice to be able to just check several check boxes to remove some data instead of clicking the x button and waiting for a refresh.
I know only admins can edit the information. Will there be a way where I can give permision to raid leaders to add the data them self without giving them admin permision to see the officer forums?
And the option to allow comments on the items and raids is a great addition also, thank you so much again.
While we're on the subject... I would very much like to see a feature allowing DKP decay. Every 'time period' 'everyone's/inactive's' DKP is reduced by 'set amount/percentage'.
"For automatically moving someone to active, I am not sure about, some guilds may not like this feature, and what period of time until they should go inactive may vary per guild.."
Check box + pop-up menu? =D The auto-inactive isn't a huge issue by any means. Auto-raider creation and DKP decay would be higher on list. Baring an easy solution for DKP delay, would it be possible to "cap" DKP at a user definable amount?
Thanks for all the work, the character pools will be a huge plus.
CT_Raidtracker is ok, but has not been updated in some time and the damn badges is a nightmare as everytime someone loots a badge you need to fill in the DKP cost
We have a future update planned just for tooltips, where we will be adding item tooltips for more games, and with that update will be allowing you to choose a source for WoW tooltips =)
I can't remember how off the top of my head, but you can set it to ignore specific items. "/rt help" will probably get you there.
- Now that Raiders and Characters are separate (which with Char pooling solves my biggest concern with the current system) what will happen when you click on a Characters profile page? Will the DKP stats be removed from this section?
- For the those of us using the site for games other then WoW will their be the ability to manually post a picture?
- I know that while the Raid information is definitely interesting, most of my guild members will be more interested in the "standings" page so they can see their DKP and that of those they may be bidding against. Would it be possible to either make that the default tab for the Raid page or have it as option?
With the Raiders and Characters separate, viewing an individual raiders DKP stats would be done in the Raids section.
We are considering allowing you to relate a Raider to a Character, and if you do that it would then enable the DKP tab in their character profile, which would pull in the raiders data; but there is a few issues with this so it is not definite.
When you say manually post a picture, you mean for the Raid Item Details part? Where it shows the WoW item tooltip?
If so, we have had in our issue tracker a while now plans to enable item tooltips for games other than WoW, and once this update goes live it will be a high priority to enable the Raid Details to look nice for most games then; so an automated way to do this should be coming shortly after to the site =)
The tab order is actually an issue we were debating last night =) But even if we do not put the Standings as the first tab, you can link to it that way from your site. If you use the main menu to reach the Raids section, just add a new Menu Item in the Navigation tab, and for the name put "Raids" and for the url put "/raids/standings"; you can then enable that link you created and disable our default one, then anyone clicking your Raids menu item would be sent to the standings tab. =)
- As for viewing individual information from the Raid section I don't think that would cause any heartache. I was just curious as to how the change was going to effect the other page.
- As for posting a picture, yes that's what I meant. We haven't really found a good database to tie into so our DKP tracker currently just takes a screen shot and puts in the writeup post. If we manually add that to the item it would be helpful, but it's definitely on the nice to have side of life.
- Thanks for the heads up on the linking to Standings! That's perfect.
Will this update also include a fix for the import of DKP award values from the DKPMon_XML export feature in-game? Also, will be DKPMon_XML mod be modified to populate this data in the XML code it produces for export?
Thanks, as always!
Mino
Yes with this update we will be adding some import support for Adjustments to the XML parsing (which the addon can then be modified to support the Awards with).
This is Hidesalot of the ßedlam guild. Can you send me an email using the email address I signed up with that we normally correspond with and let me know a tentative date that this mod will go live. We are just starting a new dungeon and i'd like to be able to utilize the new separate tracking feature soon.
Thanks,
-Hides
What would be awesome, and what I think Makayez is driving at, is if you had an option to choose "Loot Council" when you create a new raid. By choosing that, it would filter out all that other useless information that Loot Council guild's do not use (DKP values/spent/recieved/adjusted/etc) and the Raid Section would only display the "Attendance" portion, like you have posted above. All the other relavent information would be displayed - loot recieved, raids attended out of raids run, the char the member ran with, etc. That way, all we would have to do is plug in the members in the raid, and the loot they received, instead of relying on add-ons that are not designed to handle Loot Council-type guilds and provide information that is useless to us that we have to filter out anyways, thus rendering the add-on virtually an un-needed time sink.
Or, perhaps instead of having a drop-down box for DKP System, have a "checkbox" type thing in the Admin settings so you can set your guild's loot system to make it more streamlined for each individual guild. That way, you don't have to choose each time you create a new raid. This way too, by checking the appropriate box, it will set the information each guild wants to see, instead of having to wade through information that is not relavent. Not sure if that is a viable option though. /crosses fingers
I have more ideas on this but I don't want to write a book. If you want to e-mail me, you can. :)
We have had a few guilds mention this to us, that they wish to use the Raids section just to track raids, items and attendance but without the DKP points.
This is a feature we are planning to add, as several guilds have mentioned they would like to see it, however it is a little complicated; it puts the choice of us duplicating much of the functionality of the raids into another section with the points stripped away, or trying to work it into our existing raids section.. both options have a few issues.. but once we figure out the best way to approach this feature we will be working towards getting it live =)
Severed Pinkies and myself have discussed adding a forum a few times to this site, but we have felt that it would mostly go unused.
We like to use the blog for posting new features and getting feedback, and we use the private messaging system on your site to notify you of new blog posts; so we would not use the forum for this purpose, which would leave the forum mostly for the users or for help.
For help, we are very responsive to email and answer every email we receive, so if you ever have any questions fire away to staff@mmoguildsites.com =)
We are also planning to add a detailed help section to this site, covering different sections of the site and having images, walk-throughs and faqs as part of it.
Once we have the help section added that would mostly leave the forum's only purpose for users to discuss, but since really only site owners visit this site, as we allow members to join and do all actions on your guild site without ever visiting www.mmoguildsites.com, the user base for this would likely be fairly small.
We are not opposed to adding a forum to this site, but we don't want to add one and have it sit empty with no purpose.. =)