DKP, Systems and Deviations

R

Rouailtagh

Guest
I've been around here long enough to know there's more than a few people in here who are progression raiders or very close to it. That said, each progression guild has their own system of awarding loot. Though the term is DKP I'm not entirely sure most of them are in fact deviations of the original EQ-DKP since most people in WoW believe it's unfair. But I digress...

I'm looking for the people (if there are any here) who have had or presently have the unfortunate task of recording and tracking your respective guild's DKP system or equivalent. Specifically I'd like to hear what goes into your system and why it's the way it is. I know some people use set prices for loot and others will use an auction bidding system. And even then there's many ways to which raiders earn DKP and even so far as to make up what looks to be a complex earning to spending ratio. And given all these little mechanications I'd like to see the whys behind it all. I'd like to know what variables are involved in determining how loot is awarded and how raiders go about earning it. And even then how would the future be planned. I'd like to think at least 1 or 2 of the new dungeons are open in beta, and I'm sure betatesters have an early opportunity to see what will be available come TBC release and could factor that into changes to the system.

So to those who either have made the system or are intrinsically involved in it... What makes the system work for you and what do you have to factor in when changing it?
 
Rouailtagh said:
I've been around here long enough to know there's more than a few people in here who are progression raiders or very close to it. That said, each progression guild has their own system of awarding loot. Though the term is DKP I'm not entirely sure most of them are in fact deviations of the original EQ-DKP since most people in WoW believe it's unfair. But I digress...

I'm looking for the people (if there are any here) who have had or presently have the unfortunate task of recording and tracking your respective guild's DKP system or equivalent. Specifically I'd like to hear what goes into your system and why it's the way it is. I know some people use set prices for loot and others will use an auction bidding system. And even then there's many ways to which raiders earn DKP and even so far as to make up what looks to be a complex earning to spending ratio. And given all these little mechanications I'd like to see the whys behind it all. I'd like to know what variables are involved in determining how loot is awarded and how raiders go about earning it. And even then how would the future be planned. I'd like to think at least 1 or 2 of the new dungeons are open in beta, and I'm sure betatesters have an early opportunity to see what will be available come TBC release and could factor that into changes to the system.

So to those who either have made the system or are intrinsically involved in it... What makes the system work for you and what do you have to factor in when changing it?
Click to expand...

CLIFFS: What dkp system do you use and why?
 
Weve been using the same system(RPP) for almost 8 years now since the advent of Conquest back in EQ, and the web interface programming is equally old, you would be appalled if you ever had to use it.

You can see the general output reference here: http://www.conquest-guild.com/rpp/rpp.asp

Raid Participation Points(RPP)

Its a fixed cost system where the prices are set by various methods, mostly based on quality of an item vs other items for the same slot, with a little bit of weighting on boss strength/difficulty. To define the fields listed:

3wap means 3 week average participation, meaning what percentage of raids that person has attended in the past 3 weeks.

RaidRPP indicates how many points has been earned over the lifetime of that raider for the current game.

ItemRPP is the number of RPP spent towards items. RawRPP is RaidRPP minus ItemRPP.

IRPP is Imaginary RPP, earned by doing things as a team that would otherwise result in nothing to be looted(progression, attending money raids to build the guild bank, etc etc), things you aren't able to earn points from since no gear dropped.

Lotto RPP is a direct indicator of your spending power (RawRPP+IRPP).

Practical example: Item drops, interested people chime in with their interest in that particular item, top LottoRPP wins the item.


It would be difficult to answer more on this topic without some specific question about the system.
 
Zay's system seems overly-complicated, but then I'm sure that over-complication is more of a placating effect on the overall guild. Most people have seen/heard about larger guild simply imploding for one reason or another and there's a good chance it's loot-related or leadership-related. There's just way too many variables involved in trying to make everyone happy, and that's ultimately what's done. Trying to make it fair for everyone so everyone (in theory) is happy.

I can see how IRPP can be used to motivate people to participate in gathering supplies for raids, herbs for potions, DI ore for FR gear, farming all core of elements, skeletal fragments, etc. for Naxx gear, etc. but why would you need RaidRPP? If they earn and spend it why would you need a total tally of how much someone has earned in a lifetime? How does 3wap bear into the equation when loot drops? Is that simply there to assure people who raid more often get a better shot at stuff versus those who show up a once a week?
 
Some variation of Null > All Others.

Least drama, most fairness, easy to maintain.

Bidding is fucking retarded, and I would never join another guild that uses it.
 
Zav said:
Weve been using the same system(RPP) for almost 8 years now since the advent of Conquest back in EQ, and the web interface programming is equally old, you would be appalled if you ever had to use it.

You can see the general output reference here: http://www.conquest-guild.com/rpp/rpp.asp

Raid Participation Points(RPP)

Its a fixed cost system where the prices are set by various methods, mostly based on quality of an item vs other items for the same slot, with a little bit of weighting on boss strength/difficulty. To define the fields listed:

3wap means 3 week average participation, meaning what percentage of raids that person has attended in the past 3 weeks.

RaidRPP indicates how many points has been earned over the lifetime of that raider for the current game.

ItemRPP is the number of RPP spent towards items. RawRPP is RaidRPP minus ItemRPP.

IRPP is Imaginary RPP, earned by doing things as a team that would otherwise result in nothing to be looted(progression, attending money raids to build the guild bank, etc etc), things you aren't able to earn points from since no gear dropped.

Lotto RPP is a direct indicator of your spending power (RawRPP+IRPP).

Practical example: Item drops, interested people chime in with their interest in that particular item, top LottoRPP wins the item.


It would be difficult to answer more on this topic without some specific question about the system.
Click to expand...


How does your system prevent point hording?
 
I really like zerosum, but it isn't going to work for everyone. I had setup the original dkp system my guild had used. Previous guild had been based on bidding, but it was just bad news. Basic zerosum. Initially, dkp values were just chosen, but we switched to using ndkp values after awhile. That worked for a little bit, but some of the items didn't translate well to AQ. After some time we ended up using ndkp as a base and adjusted values that we thought were disproportionate. That was actually big obstacale number one. Trying to make it fair for everyone, because let's face it, over time, priests, warriors, paladins, shamans, and druids are going to be picking up more gear if they use their classes outside of an instance. The rest of the DPS classes can really get by with their class limited sets and only a handful of non-set items. So finding a balance so raid limited set classes could pickup other items that were non-set without terribly limiting them in competition for set items, but keep the non-set items at an appropriate price. That was what I mostly dealt with when I was in charge of the system.

I ended up getting overruled on some decisions which I had to go along with. They added class priority on items, which just created more headaches. Pretty sure it only happened because key members of the officers wanted ashkandi or wanted it for their friends. After that they started adding really odd bonus dkp. The raid leaders started adding enormous amounts of 'dkp' to the system which made these points worth 10x more than the dkp earned. It ended up being that if you showed up the first 2-3 weeks in AQ when the majority of the first kills happened, you pretty much could get any item you wanted regardless of attendance after that point.

Anyway, alot of other crap happened to the system that trashed it, but really a good dkp system is dependant on the people in the guild. A dkp system is a terrible way to try to get people to show up to raids if you're having attendance issues and a terrible way to encourage people to pick up gear for the good of the guild. Trying to do these things using a dkp system is a terrible idea. If people aren't taking upgrades, force loot for the good of the guild and charge them, if people aren't showing up for progress because they aren't getting dkp, boot and recruit.
 
I've been a part of guilds that have used several different dkp systems at this point and I have to say my favorite so far is the one I'm using right now.

Bosses are worth set amounts of points, When an item drop highest bid wins. You can call class pref by bidding over 100.

It means that since I'm a bit behind in loot I can pick up all the things everyone has for very cheap. There hasn't been anything about the system to bug me yet. And I don't go into raids knowing I can't get anything.

Otherwise I like the zero-sum system where items have assigned amounts and the value for a boss kill is the total value of the drops/the number of people in the raid. Person on the top of the list of pref classes gets the option to take it or pass it down the list.
 
Loot Council. It's not necessarily perfect and leaves room for abuse, but when the right people are making the calls it really cannot be beat.

We get 1pt for each boss killed, if attendance looks weak they normally toss in another point for showing up on time and later raids or learning new bosses are generally multiple points for the stress and time involved. The points really mean little to nothing and aren't used to purchase, but are merely a way for our officers to guage our attendance and commitment - which helps sway loot calls in our favor during close calls. I guess recently received loot (and quality of said loot) also might factor in occasionally, but this way resist loot and off-spec loot don't count against our chances of getting progressional loot. To be more specific, I have 3-4 or more +dmg pieces that won't affect my chances at getting healing and regen trinkets, set pieces, weapons, etc and others have frost and nature resist gear that is looked at the same way.

For example, my DKP
 
Smaqaho said:
Loot Council. It's not necessarily perfect and leaves room for abuse, but when the right people are making the calls it really cannot be beat.
Click to expand...
In theory, this is the best system, but in practice, I think this works for *maybe* 1% of guilds. It requires leaders with excellent overall game and spec knowledge, complete honesty, and a guild with implicit trust in them. That's just too many things to expect at once for almost all guilds.
 
PessimiStick said:
In theory, this is the best system, but in practice, I think this works for *maybe* 1% of guilds. It requires leaders with excellent overall game and spec knowledge, complete honesty, and a guild with implicit trust in them. That's just too many things to expect at once for almost all guilds.
Click to expand...
Considering the issues many guilds are having with turnover be it for progression reasons or simply people ebaying or whatnot it's worked great for us.

Our class leads and all officers have somewhat of a say in loot calls (I'm not 100% sure how everything is done, I simply heal and don't make the calls) and the officer taking tells for drops is determined by what item(s) have dropped. If it's a caster item our mage officer/cl takes tells, if it's a healing item either our priest or shaman cl/officers take tells, and if it's melee or a highly sought after item (DFT, KOTS, Rejuv Gem, naxx weapons, etc) Natural handles tells himself. I've raided with the same guild for nearly 2 years under 2 guild names and aside from petty arguments between people (joking more often than not) we've had no drama.
 
Last edited:
Smaqaho said:
Considering the issues many guilds are having with turnover be it for progression reasons or simply people ebaying or whatnot it's worked great for us. Our class leads and all officers have somewhat of a say in loot calls (I'm not 100% sure how everything is done, I simply heal and don't make the calls) and the officer taking tells for drops is determined by what item(s) have dropped. If it's a caster item our mage officer/cl takes tells, if it's a healing item either our priest or shaman cl/officers take tells, and if it's melee or a highly sought after item (DFT, KOTS, Rejuv Gem, naxx weapons, etc) Natural handles tells himself. I've raided with the same guild for nearly 2 years under 2 guild names and aside from petty arguments between people (joking more often than not) we've had no drama.
Click to expand...
That's the 1%. =p

I agree with you, and I wish I had a guild that could use that system without drama.
 
Zero-sum with incentive points is probably the best system, from my experiences.

My current guild does a mix of zero-sum with idkp, but we also do some loot council along with dkp for shit like weapons and tanking gear. I'm not going to give a terrible rogue an awesome dagger over a good rogue, unless the good rogue has a substantial negative dkp. Some people disagree, but by and large my guild isn't really greedy and sees what I'm doing is for the betterment of the guild. Besides, they're going to get it eventually anyways.

I would never ever be in a bidding system.
 
PessimiStick said:
It doesn't?

A better question, is why do you think that is important?
Click to expand...

I think set point systems are stupid.

It allows single people to get huge amounts of DKP, and basically rule the system. DKP numbers get inflated to huge amounts where that tier 3 piece doesn't even make a mark in the total.

In our bidding system, you spend what you think the item is worth. If somebody has 500 DKP and another has 50, if the person with 500 doesn't want to spend 50 he doesn't get it.

Rewarding attendance is one thing, but it can definitely get out of hand.

And there is no thing as a perfect loot system :) No matter what, you either have biased people handing out loot, or terrible players earning the same as the good ones just because they show up.
 
Problem with zero sum DKP is that each item has to be assigned an arbitrary point number. A bidding system allows the economy to determine the value of an item.
 
I wish I was still in a loot-council guild :(

That guild transferred away to join with some old friends etc. etc., but loot council worked fantastically well while they were on my server.

Now I'm in a guild with a straight non-bid DKP system. All items have a set price in DKP. The raid gets DKP as items are picked up by people/bosses killed/first kill bonus, etc. You can also get DKP by donating to our guild's war effort for pots, etc.

When something drops, it's linked in our guild's loot channel and people declare need. The downside to this system however, is the non-bid mechanic. Whoever has the highest DKP (not tier based w/ rolls) gets it. I'm relatively new to the guild and they've been around since the server went up on release day. This means most vet members have thousands upon thousands of DKP, and I have 200. I'm a war, and have to wait behind nearly all our warriors, rogues, and pallies if I want anything. Kind of daunting for new"er" members.
 
FalseMyrmidon said:
Problem with zero sum DKP is that each item has to be assigned an arbitrary point number. A bidding system allows the economy to determine the value of an item.
Click to expand...

Bidding introduces *way* too many other problems though.

The "value" of an item can vary by 200-300% from week to week. Obviously, it's the same item, the price should be in the same range. Bidding is not a good representation of the item's true worth.

Any system where you can "out-play" (in regards to the system, not WoW itself) other people and get a disproportionate share of loot is flawed, IMO.

I would never willingly join another guild with a bidding system.
 
Back
Top