Graham

Please use this thread for all questions relating to the EJ JP loot system as described here: http://forums.elitistjerks.com/index.php?showtopic=5386

The former discussion thread is here: http://forums.elitistjerks.com/index.php?showtopic=781

 

Raylen

Sticking this so people don't ask.

 

◊ Drauk

Why you have decided to place a cap for DKP earned ? Its a very big move away from "pure" zero-sum.

What about AQ40 quest items from bosses, have you decided about them ?

Fun is for casuals

 

Windigo

I'm no authority on the subject, but this part is one of the best rules for people in my situation. I started at launch, stopped playing in February, right as we were starting to tackle Molten Core, and came back in September with a fresh account.

When they were first learning MC and put it on farm status, think of all the pieces of loot that were going for full price, because every person had slots to fill with epic pieces. Because so much was being looted for full price, each member was gaining earned JP (DKP) at a reasonable pace. Fast forward to today. We now have dozens and dozens of players who only go to MC because they like going or perhaps they're shooting for one elusive piece (ToEP, Choker, QSR, whatever it may be). A lot of stuff is getting DE'd, going for free downgrade to people who have the T2 piece but want T1 completion, or going for minor points because it's an upgrade or alt. Spread that small amount of JP over a 40 man group, and anyone who's a new raider (loot sponge) won't be seeing positive numbers forever.

This problem just compounds with the overall raiding system, because those people who have all their MC stuff are the ones who were learning BWL when it came out - where the loot was all new and better and stuff was going for full/upgrade value. Fast forward a few months again, and that MC loot sponge who is 4 digits in the hole from not gaining JP to compensate for the full T1 and extras he/she looted is now in BWL, where the people who first put it on farm status were gaining respectable amounts of JP per run and we're back to the "people like going because they enjoy the encounters, or only need one elusive piece" scenario. The sponge is back to earning small amounts of JP, while the raiders who have been in from the beginning monopolized all the runs where a good amount of loot went for points. Without a cap in place for instances, I could go to BWL and never EVER have a chance to be in first place for a piece of Nemesis. Instead, I've been climbing back out of the deep deep loot sponge hole I first dug in MC, and I feel like I have a better chance of looting pieces in other ways than "well, you're the only one in the entire raid that doesn't have it."

I hope this made some sense, and put a "real world application" spin on it.

 

◊ Drauk

Thanks for big and detailed reply. My former guild, where i used to run DKP, was pretty much using EJ system, with variations of prices.

There was a lot of concerns regarding an upgrade rule, both about pscyhological effect of reduced DKP from BWL, due to a lot of upgrades, and "new recruit problem". Psychology aside, i confronted them with hard numbers.

Warrior A - a guild MT, raiding since the day one (5th september '05) have earned 1710 DKP over 4 months
Warrior B - a newcomer, raiding since 22th november '05. Over his first month he earned 389 DKP

1710/4=427 or 9% difference with 389. Within statistical margin of error. Now about loot - in his first month Warrior A have recived 2 epics, while Warrior B has received 4 epics in his month, including OEB (our first OEB came after 2 months of raiding)

So, he is earning DKP with same speed as old hats was in "old times", and gaining loot faster than them was. Where is the problem exactly ?

I can understand caps in non-zero sum systems, where points in != points out. But in zero sums, everythings evens out eventually, isnt it ?

Fun is for casuals

 

◊ Kaubel

Caps apply to the spirit of zero-sum way more than infinite earnings do by avoiding the whole "rich get richer and the poor get poorer" scenario. There's just no compelling reason to give points to someone for running a zone when there's practically a 0% chance they're going to loot any items from it.

 

◊ Drauk

I like "the spirit of zero-sum" :)

I see your point, its quite reasonable.

How did you come with the exact numbers ? And when do you plan to set cap for running AQ40 ?

Fun is for casuals

 

Raylen

Pretty much what Kaubel said. Most of us would rather not get JP from MC than run it nowadays anyway so it's win/win.

 

Windigo

I'm sure I've been beaten on this several times over by now:

I'll throw my example back out in a method to show you exactly where Kaubel is coming from in the "rich get richer" scheme of things, but on a smaller scale.

A 5-man raid, players A-E are learning zone 1, and all 5 eventually have the pieces they need from the zone. A-E are all sitting at close to even current DKP. In fact, we'll say they're all exactly even, but with all the pieces they need from zone 1.

Zone 2 comes around, and it's harder. A-E start learning zone 2, and they're getting upgrade loot, while staying close to even DKP, because each person is looting upgrades.

Now player F joins the raiding ranks of the guild. He's not equipped to do zone 2, so he needs to prepare himself from the gear in zone 1. Player's A-D all take player F through zone 1 for weeks and weeks to get him prepared, and players A-E continue their progress and loot gathering in zone 2. Well, the "well" has dried up in zone 1, so the only positive points player F is getting is from the loot he's collecting, while players A-D are all gaining in points. Player F is finally ready for zone 2, but he's now hundreds of points in the hole, because there wasn't as much being looted for points, but it was still being spread over the whole team. Player F finds the same situation in zone 2, with players A-D only looting a piece here and there, while he's soaking up all the upgrade loot he can, upping the earned points of players A-D even more.

"But Windigo, of course they should be ahead, they've been to more raids and done more for the guild!"

Fine. Player A takes a few month vacation in Hawaii. Players B-F are now running zone 2 each week. Player F reaches the same number of boss kills as player A, but because B-E already had their gear before before F got into the zone, player F isn't getting any earned points besides his own looting, which is being spread across 5 people. Player B decides he wants to leave the game to pursue a career in underwater basket weaving. Player A comes back. Zone 3 comes out, and now it's players A and C-F that are running the zone. Player A gets to loot several items before player F, even though they have the same number of boss kills, simply because player A was around when more people needed gear.

Now, with our system, player F joins the guild, and players A-D are at the zone 1 cap. They run zone 1 with player F until he has everything he needs. Because the DKP was only split to one player (the one looting), at the end of the day you have players A-F all with complete zone 1 gear, with no worries of player F falling into a hole from which he can't climb out.

It's a system that puts a lot more weight on a player's gear effectivness within the raiding system, while still giving an edge to those who have raided longer or more often.


EDIT:
My guess would be it's a close average to what each player will spend in points in a particular zone. In theory, walking away with a full T1 set and an epic weapon/rings/necklace will put me about 1500 points in the hole. This way I don't draw more points from the zone than I can get out of it. Kinda keeping it a zero-sum zone :)

 

◊ Drauk

Windigo - thank you very much. This is probably best explanation of the "rich getting richer" problem and need for cap.

Now, as they say "lets get back to drawing board". When i started to play WoW as my first MMORPG i have done extensive study of DKP systems in the existance. There are basically 3 options

a) Auction
b) Fixed-price inflation system
c) Zero-sum

Im still strongly oppose auction, since its disadvantages are numerous and obvios. However i've been lucky enough to get into guild where auction does wonders, but it is still very unstable system.

Fixed-price inflation system is the one where "rich getting richer" problem is obvios, and even caps and other restrictions can't solve it entirely.

So, we are left with zero-sum. I've became a supporter of zero-sum after reading a Conquest board, where it was explained in great detail. I liked it simplicity and mathematical beauty.
Then i found EJ board and learned about upgrade rule. "Its ingenios" i thought. But the system became more complicated. And now caps - more complexity.
So, it gives opponents of zero-sum a good point to complain about it "the system is not good enough, if you need to add more and more rules to it. Its just crutches for fundamentally flawed system". Now, i dont really think that zero-sum is fundamentally flawed, but maybe there is another way, to make it clean and simple ?

Fun is for casuals

 

◊ Kaubel

But it's not making zero-sum more complicated. It's simply retooled to reflect the nature of upgrading.

Going from a green or blue to a purple is huge. And that's basically what happens in MC. But going from MC purple to BWL purple in most cases isn't very big. So to combat this, the JP system was designed to take away a proportional amount of points when taking a marginal loot upgrade. It's also there to prevent people from "cutting in line" so to speak. People will still pay full for things in BWL, but it'll be those who don't already have a good (epic) piece in that slot. (Or in some cases, someone who really, really wants it and has the points to spend.) In other words, we didn't feel it was fair for someone to pay points for an epic in MC and turn right around and pay full AGAIN for something in BWL, when the next guy could very easily skip looting in MC and go right to BWL and end up with more points despite having the exact same loot as the first guy.

As far as the cap is concerned with making things complicated, I don't see that either. No one ever said that a zero-sum system was strictly "gained = spent" and that's it. It's only the foundation. Once you have that idea to build on, there's tons of variations to go with. Ours is just one of those.

 

• Wodin

I don't know. Maybe it's just my mathematical bent, but any number of rules codifying how effort is rewarded are more clean than the subjective "we wanted person X to have it" that officer-assigned loot uses.

Any sufficiently simple system gains cruft upon contact with the real world simply because people find ways to exploit the system. Upgrade pricing gives players with access to multiple tiers of loot incentive to actually pick up the lower tier. Caps limit the ability of players to milk an otherwise dead zone for profit. Resist gear being an investment instead of throwing points down the rabbit hole encourages people to pick up situational gear that might temporarily cost them priority on a mainline item but rewards them in the long run.

 

Graham

It's worth pointing out that the cap system is more an artifact of EJ's size than something that zero-sum necessarily needs. At this point we have something like 120-140 main characters who have MC loot. In a 50 person guild, you'd raid MC till you were done with MC and then move on. In EJ we want to encourage people with no almost intrest in going to MC to go and help speed along the clears by allowing them to fill in item slots, but at the same time the system needs to prevent someone with no real need for MC from running it for an extra six months in order to build up a massive amount points to use elsewhere.

Perhaps the following will help explain the caps:
By the time you hit the cap for a zone or boss you really need NOTHING in your classes primary loot sets. I'm at something like 1800 earned and all I need from MC (or BWL really) is one ring, my Tier2 legs (fuck you Rag), and a ToEP (fuck you Mages).

 

◊ Drauk

I think that cap is still reasonable enough even for more typical "resident uber-guild".
Every guild has a non-zero turnover of people, so there is always a need to properly gear newcomers. And with Bliz track record for itemization there always will be items w/out equivalent or upgrade in next tier of raiding. Examples are numerous - ToeP, Perdition, HDI ring, Azuresong to some extent (its upgrade has a whooping 3% drop rate), etc.

Fun is for casuals

 

◊ Praetorian

As the main proponent of the caps, let my add my two cents.

Basically, DKP serves two purposes:
1) Loot rotation
2) Incentives

As to #1, part of the problem arose due to our size. If we were a static 40-man raiding group with hardly any turnover, then there wouldn't be any problem. MC would become less and less lucrative over time as more and more of the loot got disenchanted, whereas BWL would see hardly any disenchanting and thus be worth more DKP. Well, the problem with us is that we have a large spectrum of raiding activity and raid progression. So MC runs were still very beneficial to those people and they took lots of gear at full-price from the zone. We weren't really disenchanting much, for a long time. Now, with the way our pricing works, a typical MC piece of loot might be 100 JP, but a BWL piece more like 150. That makes sense, of course, since blue-->MC is a much bigger jump than MC-->BWL, gearwise. But it also meant that everything in MC went for 100 JP, and most things in BWL went for 25-50 as upgrades. That made BWL clears worth more than MC clears, and skewed the loot rotation. People who needed zero items from MC were forced to keep running it if they wanted to stay competitive. BWL was worth 20 points or so -- in a vacuum, that'd mean that everyone got one 50pt upgrade every 2.5 weeks, which is about right considering the ratio of drops to 40+ raiders. But with large amounts of MC JP continuing to flow into the system, it was problematic.

Also, because of how the caps work, they let late joiners catch up. They'll never fully catch up or pass more active raiders, but they can narrow the gap. A warlock who came back from being away for a long time a couple of months ago has gotten damn near a full Felheart set in just a few weeks in MC, since he has no competition of course. So he's spent ~1000 JP -- he's spent in a few weeks what it took us many months to spend. But because of the caps, a typical MC group has only 15 people in it these days who have <1500 JP earned. That means the JP earned is split 15 ways instead of 40. When Magmadar dropped leggings for me, I got 2.5 JP for it (100/40). When he drops leggings today, the current crop of noobs get 6.67 (100/15).

As to #2, the caps are higher than they would be if they were solely designed to reflect necessity. Ragnaros doesn't drop 500 JP worth of stuff for anyone, so why is the Rag cap 2000 while the MC cap is 1500? Well, incentives. Rag is still worth a fair bit of JP because he drops good loot. It gets the well-geared MC vets to come out for Rag and help gear up the noobs, and it yields smooth and speedy clears, and gives us the manpower to always two-group it when we need to. People will come out of altruism, sure, but no one will set time aside every weekend to raid MC, week after week, if no DKP is earned for it. So we also tend to set the caps such that they continue to incentivize at the proper levels. A few dozen are now over the Rag cap, but that's fine -- we no longer need two MC clears a week by any stretch of the imagination. We currently only have a dozen or so who are capped on BWL, and one person capped on Nef (guess who??), so those zones will remain active for some time to come.

 

◊ Drauk

Pardon me, but isn't it vice versa ?

Fun is for casuals

 

◊ Praetorian

Yes, typo.

 

◊ Kaubel

That friggin' AQ gate better open soon. :angry:

 

diospadre

We're not in the business of selling our system or trying to get every other guild out there using it. Our members understand it and it has helped us succeed greatly in raiding. We post threads like this because a lot of people come and ask us about it. If people want to use it, great. If people think it's too complicated and want to give hunters Ashkandi, great.

 

deric

Hi!

I have a question regarding your upgrade system:

I very much agree with the principle behind it, ie. 2 people who spent the same amount of dkp/JP should end up with roughly the same quality of gear, whether they got there by picking up Tier 1 followed by Tier 2, or Tier 2 directly.

My question is, how would you handle raiders who obtain Tier 1 outside of the points system (presumably from a previous guild)

Should they be allowed to "upgrade" to Tier 2 by paying the difference, or would they have to pay full price to maintain the same JP/quality ratio for purposes of the points system

 

norg

It's not something that's going to directly affect EJ, I'd imagine, so I'll stick my oar in.

I would say it depends on how many people you're talking about. If it's one or two who have defected from old raid guilds then make them pay full whack, seeing as the main point is 'same gear = same amount spent".

But if you're in a new guild formed primarily from disbanded old raid guilds or whatever, it might be worth just going for upgrade discounts all the way irrespective of how the item was acquired. No point making people pay through the nose for Tier 2 if most of your guild has loads of Tier 1 already anyway.

 

◊ Kaubel

I do know that we typically don't apply upgrade costs towards any item sub-tiers that are gained outside the JP system; specifically epics gained through random drops, BGs, or 20-man instances. It's been a long time though since we took in someone from another guild, so my memory is fuzzy about those cases.

 

jubelio

letting outside raiders upgrade is basically giving them points they didnt earn in our system.

i hope we arent doing that.

 

Chupa

Yeah, as far as I know the last time that happened for us was with just MC so it wasn't really an issue :)

Well, Fork, if we made them fullprice everything, they would develop a point deficit that would take aeons to overcome. If that person is paying 150-200 jp for everything that most other people are paying 25-50 for, it would be pretty ridiculous.

The other consideration is that we would have to revise our loot rules as the new person would have priority on everything due to having to fullprice it.

At this point it seems like most people that get loot that isn't just a hand-m-e-down are in the 200+ jp category. If a new raider started at 0 and then had to pay upgrade, then it wouldn't exactly be a huge advantage for them.

Or you could do like we did for beef and start him with a set amount of earned JP and then charge for every item that person has.

 

◊ Praetorian

We haven't really had that happen for a long, long time, and they received no special treatment whatsoever. They had their epics, but they still had to pay full to get their tier 2 helm even though they already had one from Garr, or whatever.

Since we don't recruit I don't see it arising in the future, but way, way down the line, should it come up, yes, I'm sure we'd make some special accommodation. The point of zero-sum is to allow a newcomer to take his place in the middle of the loot rotation. If someone comes into the guild with full BWL/AQ40 gear, just like the rest of us have, and we're paying 25-50 for upgrades in Naxxramas, but he's paying 350 "full price" then he'll get one piece of loot, and basically never get anything else that isn't defaulted. That's hardly desireable. But, really, like I said, I haven't had to worry about how our system would treat latecomers with extensive epic gear because there have never been any and none seem likely to be forthcoming.