The DKP update we have been working on for over a month is now live! =) This update is almost a full rewrite of our DKP section and contains a ton of enhancements, polish and new features.
Characters -> RaidersAs mentioned in our preview of this update, DKP is no longer associated with characters but will be associated with raiders. To support this, there is a new Raiders admin page to manage your raiders.
The Raiders admin page allows you to create and edit your raiders. You can delete raiders but only if they have no DKP data associated with them. You can also flag raiders as active or inactive; inactive raiders will not show up on your standings or attendance pages or blocks.
Raider PoolsYou can now create Raider Pools. A Raider Pool is a collection of raiders that consider their DKP to be one source.
An example use of a Raider Pool is, if Joe's Main is the tank Beefskewer, but he switches to his alt healer Zagdush to help out the raid, any DKP he earns with Zagdush he wants to count towards his main Beefskewer. A Raider Pool can then be made for these two raiders, and their DKP can be viewed together in the raids section.
Raider Pools should only be used if you need them, as it will complicate your DKP section more; and in most cases in the above example you could just manually add the DKP from Zagdush to Beef. But if you are using an automated DKP method such as CTRaidTracker, the pools can help then, since the addon will pick up both characters and include them in the XML; but if they are pooled then you do not need to worry about editing it later.
Raid PoolsRaid Pools are another new feature with this update. A Raid Pool allows you to pool raids together so you can treat their DKP separate from other DKP.
An example use of a Raid Pool is if you raid multiple dungeons, and one dungeon is easy and has lower level loot, and another dungeon is harder and has higher level loot; you may not want your raiders to be able to earn DKP in the easy dungeon, and then spend that DKP in the harder dungeon. So you can create a separate Raid Pool for the harder dungeon, and track it so only DKP earned from that dungeon may be spent there.
Raid Pools existed previously as "Raid Sets", but they were more obscure and harder to use on the site; they have been given more UI attention and should make it easier to view DKP in different Raid Pools throughout the DKP section now. If you were using Raid Sets before they have been converted to Raid Pools for you.
*note: It is not in as part of this update, but limiting the amount of Raid Pools you can have is something we may do in the future; for example limits such as 5 pools for standard, 10 pools for pro and 20 pools for premium. The reason for this is that each raid pool causes a great deal of extra calculations for the raids section.Enhanced Standings PageThe DKP standings page has been updated to include Raid Pools and Raider Pools, and has received some polish, highlighting the column you are currently sorting by.
New Attendance PageThis update also includes our new Attendance page, which shows the attendance for all of your raiders in one page, It includes counts of the amount of raids the raider has been on versus the total raids, along with a percentage representation; and the attendance can be filtered to be shown only for a specific raid pool.
*note: one feature we wanted to include with this update was the option to filter attendance by time; this unfortunately was taking too much time to complete so we have delayed it to a future update. For now if you want to see recent attendance the best option would be to group raids into a raid pool and view the attendance for that raid pool
Greatly Improved Raid Edit PageThe Edit page for a raid has seem many improvements. Previously, an edit option was not available for much of the data entered into a raid; if you made a mistake entering a raid item you had to delete it and then re-add it. No longer, everything is now editable =) You can edit raid events, raid items, raid adjustments and raid hours.
A more compact UI is now in place for the Edit Raid page, making it easier to work with raids that have a lot of data. Some of the information has been tucked away in the edit popup to make the page cleaner and easier to work with.
The edit popup has been made consistent and works nearly the same for editing raid events, raid items, raid hours and raid adjustments, which should make the raids page easier to learn and faster to work with.
More Informative Raids Show PageThe details page for a raid now contains more information; adjustments for the raid are now shown on the page and comments are allowed.
Raid Items Have Their Own PageRaid Items now have their own details page, which includes an embedded tooltip, a history of the past drops of the item and comments for the item.
*note: currently the embedded tooltips are only available for WoW, but we have some exciting plans for this for other games we will be announcing soon =)
Raider Details Page EnhancedThe raider details page now contains more information, showing points and attendance for each raid pool as well as their global totals. It also shows the raiders entire raids and items history you can paginate through.
All DKP blocks UpdatedOur DKP blocks you can add to your site for the home and side columns have been updated to take advantage of the new Raid Pools feature. When you add the blocks to your site, you can pick what raid pool they will show content from, so for example, the Most Current block you can pick to have it show the points from only a certain pool; or show only the latest raids or items from a certain pool.
Default Raids link renamed to DKPWe initially choose to call the DKP section Raids, and made a default link in the Navigation you can enable called Raids that points to /raids. This has caused some confusion for users not knowing it is the DKP section, and as we are looking to support future systems like Loot Council or generic Raid tracking without DKP, we have decided to rename this to DKP,
The default link is now called DKP and points to /dkp, which is the DKP Standings tab. If you prefer the old method, you can create a new Menu Item in the Navigation tab of your site admin, call it Raids and set its url to /raids, and then disable the DKP link, and it will function exactly as before.
Improvements to XML UploadOur XML upload (originally mentioned here - http://www.mmoguildsites.com/blog/47) feature now supports Raid Adjustments. The format for adding adjustments with the XML upload is:
<adjustments>
<key1>
<reason>Late</reason>
<amount>-5</amount>
<attendees>
<key1>
<name>Beefskewer</name>
</key1>
<key2>
<name>Rhazul</name>
</key2>
</attendees>
</key1>
<key2>
<reason>Early</reason>
<amount>3</amount>
<attendees>
<key1>
<name>Ruol</name>
</key1>
<key2>
<name>Malkor</name>
</key2>
</attendees>
</key2>
</adjustments>
Update: Albert suggested in the comments below the XML upload feature create raiders if they do not exist on your site yet using info from the XML; this was an excellent suggestion and is now live on the site =)
Support for DKP Addons IntactThe addons our users have helped create or make work with MMO Guildsites will still continue to work amidst all the changes to the DKP section; these include
Phaye's Complete Addon,
DKPmon and
CTRaidTracker.
*Special Note on Deleted Chars With DKPWith the old DKP system, DKP was associated with characters, and it was possible to delete characters. If you did this it left the DKP associated with a ghost reference in most cases, showing the text of the deleted chars name and their DKP for that raid, but you couldn't click on it and they wouldn't show up in the standings.
With our new system, DKP is associated with raiders, and raiders with DKP can never be deleted to avoid these situations; and we have reinstated deleted chars who had DKP as raiders on your site. Because of this you may notice some old raiders show up in your standings; to hide them go to the Raiders tab and then click the green icon next to their name to switch them to inactive.
Let us know what you thinkThis update drastically changes several parts of the DKP section, and we'd love to hear what you think so we can keep enhancing the site and making it even better; post in the comments here or send us an email at staff@mmoguildsites.com
1) When clicking on "New Raider", along with the way it is handled now, can we make it so that there is a drop down to select from existing characters that aren't part of the raid list yet? This will make it so that when a new member applies to the site and gets approved, I can go to new raider and select his new char and click save without typing anything or looking up anything.
2) More cosmetic change proposal for raid items: wowwiki shows item tooltips side by side -- would be neat to have this feature on the raid page instead of showing it in list/table format. it would get crowded, so only epics and blues would get shown in this way. the others will be below it, in the original list format.
Also my "Most Current DKP" and "Most Active Raiders" widget on wowprima.com is broke.
This feature update is a nice welcomed change -- it feels much better to use etc. Just the first one is the killer feature here. The second one is more visual and lower priority of course.
Fantastic work!
Any AoC specific features would be great as well! Keep up the good work!
Aside from that, the "Items" tab is very misleading (yes, we understand that EQ guilds don't yet have item info, and we don't mind, because we don't use that) because it doesn't particularise the items as they were on the raid page itself, so for us, it's sort of a waste, and is more in the way than it is anything else.
We've also noticed that Johnny Public can still access the Raids/DKP tab, without being logged into the site, and can see, without authorisation, what we are raiding, what the dropped loot was, and what was spent on it -- this is not information we feel should be public.
Members are unhappy with the fact that they can no longer click their names and get their DKP information as they could before, though they do understand that this might be temporary.
Overall, our members are NOT happy, and neither are our admin officers, since it now takes longer to enter a raid (though of course as you point out, some scripts are still running, so that may change.)
Honestly, there was nothing wrong with your original DKP system; it might have been slow from time to time when there was site traffic, but that was nothing major. As it is, more and more members are checking in as very dissatisfied, and in fact, member opinion is running very high toward cancelling our subscription and moving to another, simpler site that doesn't continually "update" things that work fine, and change things that weren't broken. I'd hate to leave since some features are really good, but since an earned-DKP guild runs on its DKP, members get a little freaky when things aren't right, and admin staff gets very upset when entering data for a GAME becomes a full time job.
-The raider pools feature is awesome
-Editable raids will be very handy
-The improved Attendance page will greatly reduce how long it takes to see who has done what
-Detailed raid pages with comments. We'll finally have a place for people to mention if their dkp value is wrong rather then yelling at me in-game =P
Could be better:
-As mentioned above, and in my previous comments, a way of having the xml import feature automatically add new raiders when detected would be nice.
-Deleting raiders no matter how much DKP they have would be welcome. Even "removing" them first like is done with guild members would be nice. However I can't say I feel as strongly about this as some others...
The two "coming soon" features (attendance filterable by time, and item tooltip improvements) would be very neat, and I look forward to them. Generally we're only going to be interested in someone's attendance from the last month, and would rather have our tooltips link to wowhead then to the armory.
I also want a pony:
An addon like ct_raidtracker that was custom made for this site and would allow tracking of waitlisted people, allow bidding on items, allow adjustments to be made in-game (as your xml now supports), and then uploading would be...... neat.
Overall I like it the changes a lot. Any word on what's coming next? :)
Having the raiders automatically created from the XML is an excellent suggestion =) I have updated this today, and this is now live =)
So if you use the XML feature and it contains raiders not on your site it will auto create them for you and try to populate their name, race and class from info in the XML =)
Thank you for mentioning the issue with the side blocks, they have been corrected now =)
For a more stylish embedded tooltip for raid items, we have a big update dedicated just to item tooltips that will be shortly after the Progressions update (next) =)
We have moved viewing all DKP into the DKP section with this update, but what we are planning to do also is:
When you view a character, it will attempt to find a raider with the same name, if it does it will show the raiders DKP on the characters page; as an alternative way to view DKP that is similar to what existed before
When you view a member, it will attempt to look up all chars DKP using the above method, and provide a summary of the members DKP for all their characters.
Cheers,
The Raiders tab, along with the Templates and Raid Pools tabs, are only visible to your raid admins; they are not show for your regular members.
The raiders tab is meant as a full list of raiders who have ever earned dkp for your site; you can set raiders who should not be shown in the dkp/attendance page and blocks by setting them inactive.
You can delete raiders, but only if they have no DKP data; this is because, especially with zerosum systems, deleting a raider and removing their dkp will effect others (which was the main reason for changing dkp from characters to raiders). If you really want to delete a raider that has dkp data, you can click on the raider and it will show their entire raids history, you can go through and delete all their dkp which will then let you delete the raider =)
I am not sure exactly what you meant with your comments on the Items, what would you like to see changed here? =) We are planning to enable tooltips for games other then wow, and it is 2nd in our update queue now so should be coming fairly soon to the site =)
As I mentioned in my previous comment, we will be re-enabling viewing of dkp by clicking on your own profiles and characters soon =)
We do appreciate feedback and criticism, it helps us to improve the site and make it better; this was a pretty drastic update, containing a lot of updates to the DKP section that not everyone may prefer, if that is the case with you and your members let us know what changes you would like to see so we can work towards making the DKP section even better =)
The XML import now automatically adds new raiders =)
Deleting raiders is problematic because deleting a raider needs to delete their DKP, which can effect other members and change their DKP, especially for guilds using zerosum. The raiders tab is meant to manage this and only visible to your admins, so your regular members should only see raiders you flag as active; in the future, enhancing the raiders tab to perhaps separate inactive raiders to the bottom to make it easier to ignore deleted raiders is something we can maybe do =)
For what is coming next, the next update we have planned is:
Progressions - which will let you create progressions. These are being designed to be generic and usable for anything, such as tracking raid progression, professions or working towards a goal.
The progressions can have two types of steps, one to state only if it is done or not (so you can add a step with a boss name and check off if it is done or not), and another requiring an amount (so you can make a step called "Metal", and say you need 500 and specify how much you have).
With the first type of step you can create a dungeon progression, by creating steps for each boss kill and whether it is complete. With the second type of step, you could track something such as working towards a keep in AoC, tracking how much materials you need, or for certain tradeskills.
The progressions will then produce little bar graphs to show how complete it is, and can be embedded as side blocks on your site.
After the Progressions update will likely be our tooltips update =)
Cheers,
By default the Standings page is sorted by "Current", which is who currently has the most points. And with the Attendance page, it is sorted by "Total %", which is who currently has the best attendance.
If you have a table highlight set in your theme it should highlight the column in the table that is being sorted by =)
Our next 3 planned updates are Progressions, Tooltips, and then Permissions; shortly after that we will want to do another update to the DKP section, which will look into supporting multiple systems (we had several different ones requested, loot council being one that was requested by several members) and polishing up the dkp section based on the feedback we receive between now and then =)
Ah sorry, I meant to type Loot Ladder, we received requests for both Loot Ladder and Loot Council; they are both in our issue tracker along with Suicide Kings and a few other systems we are all planning to look into supporting.
Loot Ladder (awarding items based on your position in the ladder) and Loot Council (basically dkp without the points) are both two we hope to add, and will be looking to add them as entirely new sections separate from DKP (such as at /loot_ladder and /loot_council), as they are each quite different and then we can enhance them based on feedback from those using those systems =)
Just like a few people mentioned above, we also would like to be able to delete members from our DKP-System permanently and not having to go through the trouble of deleting him/her from 100 Raids (which btw would be a REAL pain in the ass atm as ANY change I make to a Raid is taking ages). I do understand the zero-sum problem, but you should be able to easily add a "delete member" button with a warning-pop-up especially for zero-sum-users.
Though to us, it was more important to have the "inactive" possibility, as our inactives, who might come back one day and/or whose DKP we had to keep, were taking up too much space within the entering-DKP-section.
Another thing is that even with re-logging, cookie-deleting etc. the calculation seems to be totally off.
We added our Raids into T5, T5/T6 and T6 Raid Pools for statistic purposes (e.g. Attendance).
Now the attendance and DKP shown on the raiders page are completely messed up. An example would be: http://milkless.mmoguildsites.net/raiders/3080
The sum in attendance still is right but the calculation within the raidpool just does not count some raids in. This is my main problem as a guild leader, as I do keep a close look at stuff like Attendance and was REALLY happy with this added feature in the first place.
You already said that you would be adding a DKP-section to the character again, which would be a main issue for our members atm. They look up their DKP by clicking on their name in the top left. This DKP-Tab is something they got used to and feel like is a have-to-have.
Also, I am not sure, what exactly you are planning for the tooltip-update etc, but the items-section still is something that might be improved a lot:
Atm, it only shows the "lootlist". I want statistics. Which item dropped most? Which item cost most? Which class got the most items? Which class the least? Or just even a list of all items that ever dropped - but not in a lootlog-way - more in a sortable option like all items alphabetically etc.
Right now, the items-tab seems to be pretty useless.
This is everything that popped up in my mind after using the new DKP-sections for a few days. But I did also read the comments here and I would like to add something regarding to what other guilds' concerns were:
A lot of guilds are REALLY happy about this update as a lot of every-day work was made a LOT easier. The time I need in future to prepare for our officers-meeting is drastically decreased into a few minutes only. That makes it less like a job and more of a hobby and well, a lot more fun. A lot of guilds need to filter informations like Attendance, inactive Raiders and stuff like that. So all of us just have to be greatful that our most time consuming works within organising a raiding guild have been made a lot easier.
I do understand though, if a guild was very happy with the old system, that the new and additional content has made it more complicated. On the other hand: keep in mind that the human being is habit-oriented species. A lot of people are unhappy with new stuff as it is unknown. As you get used to it, it does not seem as complicated anymore.
But do not think that I do not take your concerns about complicating the system seriously. Problem for the developers here is that a LOT of guilds simply NEED improved features within DKP System etc. … you can never satisfy them all, right? ;)
In my opinion, it should not be hard for a guild that was satisfied with the old options, to just ignore the new tabs. On the other hand, it brought me to the idea, if it might be useful to these kind of guilds and might even be a good choice regarding DKP-Performance (which is an issue right now), to have the option to turn some specific calculations off.
Example: Admin Site -> DKP -> Raid Pools on/off; Raider Pools on/off
It is just an idea - I have no idea if it is possible or even makes sense. I was just a little surprised that there seem to be guilds that are not as happy about this update as we are and wanted to try to help to get this update work for all of us.
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
Thanks for your comments and feedback on the update =)
For the calculation scripts, there was a few issues that were causing the points to show incorrectly in some cases; these should be fixed now and displaying correctly; I checked your site and these look correct now, but if you notice any errors please let me know.
We are planning a small update likely for late next week that will include readding dkp to the char and member profile pages, along with a few other polish issues for the dkp
For the idea of providing a dropdown to select which dkp system you are using, I think what we will try is to look up your last raid, and then use whatever dkp system it is as the default for when you create a new raid; so if your last raid is zerosum, it will always be defaulted to zerosum unless you create a normal raid =)
I would suggest ...if possible ... that with in a template or raid set ... that all of the used or already added names from one event be *pre-click* or already or otherwise saved on the right side for all events and ready to be un-added or added to on all others. That way we are not click every name on every event ... we can scan through and add or subtract as needed and then click update. If that makes sense? I am not sure if it would be possible ... but that would put this site back the user friendly category for our guild.
The other thing that I found .. the one I can not live with nor can I find a way to work around is ... we can not seem to add new raiders manually. I have tried everything I can think of this side of Friday and nothing is working. This means they are not showing up in the raiders list, because they have no points and I can not give them points because they are not showing up on the list the click them. Am I missing something? I have even attempted to add a new character of my own to play with this and still can not figure it out. PLEASE HELP!! lol I have a couple new members who are patiently awaiting points. They do have accounts and I checked to make sure everything else was correct .. but I am either missing something or some coding was left out.
I really do miss the *old* version of not having to click every name for every event. Like I said .. that was the thing that made this site so friendly for so many different DKP type guilds .. it WAS easily adaptable.
Thanks for you time.
Shadewhisper :)
Shade :)
We are planning to add a "Mass Add" feature to the Edit page on the DKP section, so you can select a collection of events or items and a collection of raiders, and they will be added to all the events/items =)
We will likely add it with a few additional small polish items next week.
Whilst I understand that you are planning on implementing a way to track other systems, particularly the long awaited Loot Council system, would it be possible to have a generic Raid section to keep track of attendance and loot that isn't tied to a particular loot system? This would mean that those of us still waiting for our loot system to be implemented have a means of recording our raids that isn't going to confuse all of the guild by being labelled "DKP" and full of DKP references.
I'm happy to wait for other loot systems to be implemented, and whilst a little impatient, I am aware that a touch of realism is required about your time frame :)
However, a generic system that everyone could have used whilst awaiting the implementation of their chosen loot system would have been much preferred to one that excludes all but one loot system.
Unfortunately adding a generic raid section without the DKP points would be about the same amount of work as supporting a new loot system; but we are planning to return to updates to the DKP section fairly soon, and Loot Council is definitely top of our priorities for there, as we have had quite a few requests for it =)