Introduction
Before I’m going to explain my idea for Gold Bid Raids - i wanna make it very clear that I’m totally against this form of loot distribution and supported the GDKP Ban in SoD. Despite this I still wanna take the time and discuss alternatives with a more regulated and observed form of this loot distribution.
Problems of Gold Bid Raids and Banning them
When I initially talked about why GDKP should be banned, I missed pointing out what problems are persisting besides the obvious ones. It isn’t often times the common knowledge what the actual problems are in Gold Bid Raids and why they are so problematic.
The most commonly known one is the effect of gold from gold sellers on the overall economy of the game but this is just the tip of the iceberg.
I have observed a lot of GDKP Communities and how they operate over the last year to get a better understanding how the overall landscaped looked. Therefore I’m very informed on the overall matter. Please keep in mind the following issues don’t 1 to 1 fit every Community and there might exist some exception to this.
One of the most problematic aspects that I would say create an avenue for abuse is the existence of the middle man aka. as the Lootmaster or Organizer. Giving one person so much power in an economy driven lootsystem creates temptation to exploit it. Therefore we could see certain communities selling slots in a GDKP Raid over Patreon or Discord Ranks for Real Money aka. RMT.
Others would just take a big organizer cut and invited in whales once relevant loot bosses came around to fish for gold buyers which would gave them a big financial boost.
Some of those communities did go even further and worked together with gold selling websites which activiely promoted certain GDKP Groups that were run by the Gold Selling Websites to actively increase the overall winnings for the website - those have been reported.
I could go more into detail here but I will keep myself a bit short on this matter as it isn’t the main focus of this topic. As it can be seen having a middle man is problematic and should not exist if we ever discuss bringing back Gold Bid Raids to SoD or introduce regulation to other Versions of Classic in general.
One more thing I would like to mention is the situation on Taiwanese Servers which lifted the SoD GDKP Ban due to ppl abusing a Weakaura to report players who actively were against GDKP. It created an enviroment where the support couldn’t be handled anymore due to players abusing the report system.
As I heard about this issue I set down myself and worked on the idea I’m going to present now - it should satisfy both ends of the spectrum.
The “Official” Gold Bid Raid System - GDKP 2.0
For Gold Bids to work as loot system we should look at all the flawed aspects of the old GDKP system.
Those are:
- The Middle Man
- The Distribution
- Gold as a Ressource
- Impact on the Economy
The Middle Man
Organizing a Raid might take some time and loot distribution also. What we really need is to cut the middle man out of the formula and rework on how Gold Bid Raids operate. Currently, a Raid who runs a GDKP is dependent on an addon and middle man handling the bids. Therefore, the middle man is an integral part of the system. If we could cut this adminstation process we could prevent the issues I described in the chapter before as he would no longer hold such a power. This means the Organizer would no longer get benefits from holding a raid (he would be handled like everyone else) and abuse would be drasticlly limited.The Distribution
Some of you who read this might be familiar with how Lost Ark handles Gold Bids in their game. In certain scenarios, players can join a live auction for an item that just dropped. It operates functionally like Need and Greed in WoW with an active timer, but players can just enter a value they would like to bid. Adding Gold Bid as a real loot distribution and function would make it easier for the players to hold raids with this system, but it still will need limitations.Gold as a Ressource
Gold holds much power in game environments with very few gold sinks, therefore having an “unlimited” source in form of Gold Bid Raids creates an unnatural spike in the games inflation. So the individual acuqistion should hold some limits in terms of gold per time spent.Impact on the Economy
We already have a blueprint how it looks like when GDKP runs wild on the economy of a server and version of the game. A quick example of this inflation I would like to give is the price of frostwyrm elixiers. It started out on my realm during naxx with a price of 11 gold per unit and then reached its highin the end of WOTLK with a price tag of nearly 120 gold per unit. This is not a natrual situation that is solo reached by fewer players might playing WOTLK now and the introduction of the token - it was already the case before its introduction.It created an economy in which players where forced into WoW Tokens to even start out to buy consumeables for raiding. Therefore the new system needs to be regulated to preserve the economy on a stable level which ultimately means lower payouts.
Gold Bid 2.0
So now as we settled down the aspects we should observe in our new environment, let’s get into detail.
- First and foremost, the new system is a new loot rule which is enforced by the game - self-hosted versions with add-ons still become prohibited to prevent abuse.
- Once an item drops, players can enter a value they would like to bid on an item - the rest of the players receive their share imminently as a gold share (like normal gold drops in a raid) once the bids ended.
- To ensure a stable economy the payout is limited per item - bids may exceed the payout value to provide a gold sink. (More on that in the next chapter).
- The Maximum Payout Value scales by player number and item.
- Raid Leaders don’t have an impact on the system - once the raid killed a boss the players can no longer be removed by the raid leader to prevent abuse (f.e. inviting players with bigger pockets or classes that are morelikely to spent gold on certain bosses) you may replace them if they leave themselve with a new player.
This is the brief idea of the new system - I will provide additional details on the payout aspect and a quick example below.
Gold Bids with maximum payout values - To keep the economy stable
It is important to prevent abusive behavior in our new system therefore gold buying shouldn’t provide an impact on other players experience and shouldn’t damage the overall environment of game. While players might still lose to gold buyers in bets (which is btw. almost impossible to solve (just ban them isn’t a solution)) on an item they will not feel it in other aspects of the game.
This is why every raidtier and item has a max payout value attatched to them it shouldn’t be a solo gold income source with uncontrolled impact on the game.
Example of the System in Practice
First Raidtier / 20 Man Raid / 2 Item Drops → Items =maximum payout value of 20 gold shared between 19 players
- Players A bids 20 Gold on one item and wins item number 1 for 20 gold - his 20 gold get now shared between all other 19 players for roughly 1.05 Gold per player.
- Player B bids 120 Gold on one item and wins item number 2 for 120 gold - still only 20 gold get now shared between all other 19 players for roughly 1.05 Gold per player.
Keep in mind in a 10 boss raid this is around up to 20 gold if every boss drops two items that get sold for maximum payout.
In the second Raidtier this could be f.e. 20 Man Raid / 2 Items → maximum payout value of 30 gold shared between 19 players.
Why restricting the outcome ?
As you notice, this is a lot less beneficial than the old GDKP in terms of gold acquisition. The old system didn’t respect economic rules to stabilize and control the economy. WoW does a very poor job here, so do other Blizzard IP’s. Every Add-on we received bigger quest rewards in terms of gold to met the rising inflation instead of combating it. Having a self created economy needs attention to it and control just like in real life to prevent inflation to take over the economic environment.
I hope I could give a blueprint that is maybe considered if they ever think about re-adding Gold Bids into the Game.
Yumuros-Thrall