I'll be putting up a poll this week on the BTC Guild website to see what the users want:
A) Payout Change
1) Proportional
2) SMPPS
3) PPLNS
4) Straight PPS [will require a much larger fee due to risk]
I say use the KISS method (Keep It Simple Stupid). Straight Proportional w/2% fee and PPS.
These other payment methods seem to try to reduce flexibility of the miner and are hard to verify. But of course I haven't seen a good explanation of them either.
Sam
They make the pool less attractive to pool hoppers and trust me people are hopping the living shit out of BTC-Guild. You short blocks get split many way and your long blocks get split few ways. If you tallied your total shares contributed and total earnings you will find you made significantly less than "expected value".