FAQ
What is Suicide Kings?
- A loot system "template" designed for World of Warcraft - easily customizable for your guild's requirements
- A WoW UI addon that runs the system - allows for the easy administration of the looting system within the guild without the need for spreadsheets and a Master's Degree in Business Administration
- A general philosophy for loot distribution for the raiding aspects of WoW (and other MMO's).
Why Suicide Kings?
The Suicide Kings system was designed to fill an empty niche in the loot system environment. Most loot systems around right now are designed around an adversarial environment. These systems are best used in guilds where no one is really friends with each other, all the players are there for one reason, to get more loot and upgrades. A Suicide Kings based looting system is typically designed to counteract the every man for himself environment common in high-end raiding guilds.
These loot systems are also typically a large chore to administer. Most people feel that these systems are due to the legacy of Everquest, where only the hardest-core of players ever got into raiding. In WoW however, it is common to see guilds with more friendly and casual environments in the raiding game. It is these friendly, casual groups and guilds that the Suicide Kings system was designed for.
In addition, Suicide Kings is fully transparent. There is no hidden bidding or any sort of competition. You can know for 100% certain when you are next in line for a piece of loot and can plan accordingly. Suicide Kings has the inherent ability to encourage cooperation among guild members ... passing on stuff one guild mate may need more than you in order to hold out for something you need more, in turn encouraging open discussion among guild members about loot and about who needs what.
Finally, a Suicide Kings based looting system makes it possible for more casual gamers to compete with hardcore gamers for loot. People that play more will still get more loot, however, with a traditional inflationary system it might be literally impossible for someone who plays significantly less than average to get a piece of loot EVER. Many loot systems are designed around closing this problem with traditional DKP (zero sum, relational DKP, etc.), Suicide Kings does it with the least complexity in both administration as well as usability.
How does it work?
The idea behind a Suicide Kings based looting system is very simple:
- You run one or more ordered lists of players
- You get to develop the rules that say which list is used for which loots/sets of circumstances
- When a piece of loot drops, bidding is then asked for.
- Once bidding is complete the highest person on the appropriate list that bid on the item gets it.
- That person (the King) then Commits Suicide (hence the name) and is sent to the bottom of the list, relative to players currently present on the raid.
That last part is what confuses the most people when they first start using a Suicide Kings based system.
- Players not on the raid are frozen in their same position relative to the top of the list when a suicide occurs. Everyone else moves "around" them.
- If the bottom player on the list is not present, then the suiciding player won't go all the way to the bottom.
- Likewise if the top player is not present, he/she stays at the top.
This is the incentive to show up for your runs that a Suicide Kings based looting system carries; if you show up, you move up. This method does not overly penalize those that cannot raid all the time as their position stays the same until they are able to attend.
Does everyone in the raid need to run the addon?
No.
At minimum, only one person needs to run the addon... the person running loot distribution. It is recommended that a few different players run the addon so that if someone crashes, or their hard drive blows up, or someone is simply not there for a few nights, you have redundancy. The addon will automatically sync the lists between players running the addon. Further suggestions for protecting your list data can be found in the article Good Syncing Practices.
How does the addon's "sync" feature work?
The primary goal of the syncing of lists was twofold:
- Syncing should be "pull only". Meaning that no sync should ever force itself upon a user. Instead, your lists will only sync when you request them to do so.
- Live syncing should be invisible to the SKG Admin. If your lists are up to date, and changes are made (suicides, users added/removed, etc) ... those changes will simply happen in the background without you having to take any action.
If I have more than one raid or instance going on simultaneously, can I run all of those on a single list and sync between them?
Yes.
There is no reason that two raids can't use the same list at the same time. The key to understanding that is to realize that the two raids have 'no overlap'. Changes that affect one raid cannot possibly influence the other. There is also no reason to sync those changes by hand. They will simply happen in both raids without impacting the other.
It takes a long time to give everyone a chance to pass the loot down to the person below him/her, especially if the loot goes to the bottom of the list. Is there any way to speed this up?
The mod includes an automated bidding system that is meant to deal with this inefficiency.
Please see the topics under the heading Bidding for details on how to use the automated bidding system.
Any advice on which lists to use for what loots?
There are nearly infinite ways to configure your lists to suit needs. Here are several suggestions:
- One list for everyone, usually called "Raid" or "Main Raiders" or similar
- One list for mains, one for alts, one for offspec
- One primary list, and then separate lists for tier items (T4, T5, T6, etc)
I would like to display the SK lists on my guild web site. Is there an easy way to do that?
Yes, there are separate projects out there that do this. In particular, there is one called SKG Web, created and maintained by Jabouty.
How can SK be used to reward and/or penalize people for attendance, tardiness/punctuality, good/bad performance in raids, etc.?
The short answer is, "It can't."
If you are looking for a loot system that allows you to use loot to reward or penalize players in the guild, then the first thing you should do is look for another loot system. Inflationary DKP is the one that is best-designed to allow loot rewards or penalties to be given by guild leaders.
The Suicide Kings system was designed to be a system that distributes loot in a fair proportion based on attendance at the time the loot drops, and nothing else. If you choose to design your loot system using the Suicide Kings template, that means you are going to have to find some other way to get players to perform well and show up when loot isn't dropping.
The one feature of SKG currently implemented that does allow you to reward for attendance is the "Reserve" system. Even though a player is not participating in the current raid, if they are present at raid time and stay on to fill in spots if someone DCs, you can set them "Reserved". This means they will move through the lists as if they were present in the raid when a loot event occurs, even though they may not bid or receive items.
What if everyone in the list passes on an item?
How your guild handles this scenario is entirely up to you.
Some guilds allow rolling on the item, though we have found that is open to exploitation due to players holding their position on an upgrade until it goes to rolls and then rolling on the item hoping to get the item without having to suicide their position on the list. Other guilds automatically DE the item and the resulting shards are either given to the guild bank or rolled on.
One thing to note while designing your Suicide Kings based looting system is that the more active the list (ie, players getting loot) the more often people are moving to the top and are able to get the loot that they are looking for. Therefore it behooves the guild as a whole to have their system designed to encourage bidding on loot to keep the list moving.
How can a Suicide Kings based loot system be exploited?
There are 2 known ways that a Suicide Kings based looting system can be "exploited":
- Abusing the fact that Suicide Kings allows new players to gear up very quickly, then leaving the guild. Possible solution to this possible exploit:
- Don't recruit players that will do that, and live with it if you make a mistake once in a while
- Establish loot classes, meaning classes of people that can always win an item over others even if they are lower on the list.
- Letting items that you can use rot or get DE'd, just to wait for a time when you can take them from lower in the list and sacrifice less position. This is also known as camping.
- Any spend all system has this problem
- Many people would even disagree that this is an exploit. In practice, however, it makes the people below the person that is passing feel like he is unfairly "blocking" them from getting loot, since he is only passing on stuff people below him have already. By holding out for stuff they don't already have he is effectively denying them their turn.
However you design your system, keep in mind that it truly is your system. Whether you choose to use the Suicide Kings as a base, or some other form of loot distribution, ultimately it is your call on how it works. What may work for one guild, may not work for another. Whatever loot system you pick, you must maintain the authority to override it if it does not work the way you want. You should drive your loot system, not the other way round.