Raid Attendance Tracker abbreviated RAT is the first and only fully automatic attendance system that provides a dynamic scoring algorithm that values the amount of raids attended as well as their consistency measured in %. The focus of RAT is to be a self maintained system with a fair and diverse ranking system. Notice: RAT is utilizing the public and officer note as a database to provide 24/7 availability and reliability more information under the storage section.
Features
- Only 1 player in the raid needs to have RAT activated to function
- The addon only works for players who have the “Is Officer?” permission in Blizzards Guild Control UI to prevent data manipulation by raiders.
- Automatic awarding of attendance points to attendees and absent points to absentees
- Automatic recognition of raid days and raid times
- Automatic adding and removing of raiders to the attendance database
- Automatic and always updated syncing between RAT users databases
- Automatic recognition of players who are absent
- Automatic detection of winter and summertime.
- Automatic detection of the highest ranking guild member in the group to give out points for that specific raid to prevent spam from all RAT users in the guild.
- Automatic summary after each raid providing personal information to each player about their change in ranks/attendance and absence points
- Automatic logging of each and every point ever given out
- Players can link their alts to their main to share attendance
- Logs can be found here: World of Warcraft\_retail_\WTF\Account\ACCOUNTNAME\SavedVariables\RaidAttendanceTracker.lua
- Anti-cheat system against manipulating the public note data
- Rank players from 1 of the following algorithms
- RATs own scoring algorithm - based of points and %(recommended)
- Based of attendance points
- Based of % attendance
- Skip raids
- Players can bench themselves by simply whispering any RAT-user !rat bench and it will automatically sync with all other RAT-users
- Command Center to manually modify any players attendance data
- Supports split raiding by giving players the option to link their alt to their main with just 1 simple whisper.
- UI window showing the ranks of all players in the raid roster
- All modification of data is declared in the guild chat in a compact message, next award is also always broadcasted with the time remaining.
Custom Settings
- You decide how often points are given out i.e once an hour, minute or raid
- You decide if points should be given out on raid start or not
- You decide if players that have not answered/put tentative on the calendar invite has their attendance point from raid start automatically revoked
- You decide which scoring algorithm you want to use
How does the scoring algorithm work?
The algorithm is working with dynamic weights that adjusts with each players age in the guild. There are 2 weights that are being used as variables in a complex mathematical algorithm, those are the players attendance points and their %. The weights shift depending on how many attendance points a player has. If someone has a lot of attendance points the amount of attendance points while still matter will lose weight and their % will gain weight. If someone is new which is concluded from their amount of attendance points their points will have more weight than their percent as it is extremely likely they will have 100% for quite some time, giving advantage to those who have a lot of points. However if the players with a lot of points starts dropping off in percent for whatever reason and the new player keeps their attendance at a 100% for a long time they will be able to overtake but at that point they are no longer “new” anymore. To give an example I will dump some RAW and accurate data from our guild with player names retracted ranging from September 4th 2018 to January 17th 2019.
https://wow.curseforge.com/paste/86b66b70
Commands
Here is a list of commands that players can send to officers with RAT
(ONLY IN WHISPERS NOT THROUGH BATTLE.NET):
!rat help - informs the player of the commands they can use as well as what the public note means.
!rat bench - Puts the player on the bench
!rat alt Main - binds the active user to specified main.
Here is a list of useful slash commands(all commands starts with /rat):
alt Main Alt - binds Alt to Main
bench Player - puts the Player on the bench
skip - skips to the next raid (be careful, can't be undone)
undo - reverts the latest award made by you manually or automatically
ranks - opens a window to look at all mains and their rank
award Amount(number) - awards everyone in the raid the specified amount
award Player Amount(number) - awards the specified player the specified amount
absent Player Amount(number) - gives the specified player the specified amount of absent points
bench Player - puts the specified player on the bench
strike Player Amount(number) - gives the specified player the specified amount of strikes
Data explanation and storage
The data is presented as R:(number) AP:(number) (number)% M:(number) S:(number)/3
The R stands for rank and is the result of the algorithm you picked, each player gets ranked from 1 to N where N is the number of players in your raid roster. Players can share rank if the data is identical.
The AP stands for attendance points which are given out as frequent as you set it up to be, recommended is every hour and at raid start.
The % stands for the percent of attended raids possible for each individual so when a new player joins their percent starts at 100% and if they miss a raid their percent will go down.
The M stands for missed (points) each time a player is not attending they get 1 point added to their missed column rather than their attendance point one.
The S stands for strikes and is something you can give out to any player at any time, it does not affect their attendance in anyway but is just there to punish a player for example for not stating their absence ahead of raid or whatever you want it to be.
The main data is stored in the officer notes and any player that should be allowed to give out points i.e officers needs to have the permission to edit officer notes for the addon to work. Since only players with the “Is Officer?” permission in the Blizzard Guild Control UI can see the officer notes the data is mirrored to the public note so each player can see their current standings. Everytime RAT is modifying the notes it automatically syncs all other RAT users databases to contain the latest data. All data is also stored locally on each users PC in the World of Warcraft/_retail_/WTF/Account/AccountName/SavedVariables/RaidAttendanceTracker and can be used in case of some kind of emergency as that file only gets updated when you quit the game. Whenever you login your data is also synced with the global database which is the officer note.
Applications?
There are a lot of applications for RAT and each guild can take it how far they want. If you are simply looking for an efficient and self maintained system you can just use it to track attendance and see that everyone is in compliance with your guild standards. For more involvement it can be used as the order players are receiving cosmetic rewards for example end-of-raid mounts. I do not promote addons having full power of loot decisions however if the upgrade of an item is equal to all parties involved and the loot council are out of objective metrics and factors; RAT can be used as a tie-breaker by checking the ranks when using the RAT-algorithm you can see who is more likely to show up to the raid.