I thought about a formula for this and i came up with the following:

DKP = (Itemlevel-50) x Slotmod/2

Slotmods:
Head: 1
Neck: 0,5
Shoulder: 0,75
Back: 0,5
Chest: 1
Wrist: 0,5
Hands: 0,75
Waist: 0,75
Legs: 1
Feet: 0,75
Finger: 0,5
Trinket: 0,66
Shield: 0,5
Offhand: 0,5
1H weap: 0,5
2H weap: 1
Rang/Relic: 0,5

Slotmods orginate from the Itemlvl => stats formula (excluding relic/ranged). And the Slotmod/2 is because the points are more in line to our previous points, which we thought out ourselves. I was lazy to not upgrade the above table I know ;)

We got one problem with this though:

There could be bullshit upgrades (for example: Hunters upgrading the AQ Set and banking it just to have it) where other classes dont have another viable option for that slot (there aint any really good hybrid druid gear besides the AQ set).

Initally we allowed to pay full price for priority.
But the problem was that some classes never paied full price and are now way ahead of everybody else.

/Bump, because I would really like to hear what you guys think. It happened to us and I would like to know what the proper handling of this situation is.

Yeah we had this problem too; placid priests & druids (who already had lots of points anyway) would just amicably rotate on loot, whereas emo mages were fucking each other over at every opportunity and losing loads in the process. We had to scrap it in the end.

I'm just kind of tossing around ideas here...

Say the cap on MC is 1500 DKP. Player A hit that while you guys were still raiding MC, meaning that he had to loot MC loot to gear himself out... Player B, however, hits the 1500 DKP limit when already in BWL--meaning that he has access to BWL epics, in a way, earlier than Player A.

At the same time, given that player A was there to learn MC, does it not stand to reason that he should benefit more from it than someone who raided it only intermittently and possibly when it was already practically on farm status?

Are these at least somewhat mitigating factors?

I didn't want to derail another thread, so I am posting this in here.

Just out of curiousity, how do you value Armaments? Are they a fixed value regardless of which item you are wanting? The Pugio would be like a 250 point item in my system, while the shield is probably more like 200. Would you give a warrior with more current point priority on the armament for the shield while a rogue wanted the dagger despite the point difference they are paying? Or are the Armaments a set value regardless of which reward you are taking? We have had bad luck with Elementium Reinforced Bulwark drops, so I can see several warriors wanting the Armament for a shield.

Absolutely, and this is exactly what I had given Player B as a response. Sadly, he sees the additional earnings of Player A, the four additional epics, and sees red; he feels he should be given a fair enough chance to come to MC and earn that extra DKP for looting purposes. This issue is exacerbated by the fact that we cap DKP on MC, but have a special "additional" cap for Ragnaros kills, and he feels unfairly treated because he is now forced to continue to run MC simply for his Tier 2 pants, missing out on all the earnings of the previous bosses.

Ultimately, my goal with DoD is to set the same kind of expectations up front with loot that Gurg has with EJ; you aren't guaranteed any loot. You are here to knock out bosses, and if you walk away with an epic, gravy. As is always the case, however, many players' priorities inevitably shift to loot as the reason they show up in the first place.

In this scenario, Player B feels that his cap *should* be the total DKP earned from running MC alone, as the cap itself is set to MC (Total Earned DKP - non MC DKP = True MC earnings < MC cap). However, from my perspective, the DKP cannot be seperated like this, as the earnings he built up in MC he is turning around and spending in BWL. Thus, there *is* no MC DKP and non MC DKP; it's one giant pool. He just happens to be running multiple endgame raid instances. If we were running AQ40, the points would apply to his Tier 2.5 set as well.

So...who is high. Player B, or the rook guild leader (moi)?

Yes, this is an interesting issue, and one about I recently received a couple of PMs. Initially, we had considered doing the caps on a per-instance basis, but that would be a simple administrative nightmare. Keeping track of how many of each player's points came from MC at any given time would require incredible additional recordkeeping for what I consider marginal benefits.

In our system, the MC cap is 1500 points. I got to 1500 points solely from raiding MC and Ragnaros. A newer player probably goes to MC for 2-3 weeks, gets a half-dozen epics defaulted to him, and then starts raiding BWL alongside MC the rest of the way to 1500. He hits 1500, and maybe 1000 of those points came from MC and 500 came from BWL, whereas I earned all 1500 from MC. Is he getting screwed? No, I don't think so. The crucial facts are: 1) he got from 0 to 1500 faster than his predecessors by virtue of having two raid zones to choose from; and 2) the gap between him and his predecessors was narrowing throughout. Let's say A joined and had 0 points, while B had been in the system for a while and had 1500, just at the MC cap. Let's say they both did the same raids during the next months. A earns 1000 from MC and 500 from BWL and is now at 1500. B earns 500 from BWL and that's it, and is now at 2000. The gap between A and B has just narrowed from 1500 at the outset, to just 500 now. If A and B continue to attend all the same raids together, the gap will stay at 500, until B hits the BWL cap too, at which time it will narrow further, and so forth. A will never surpass B if they both raid equally, but that's intended. B's past efforts should still count for something.

A couple of pages back there was an interesting idea about how to handle caster 1h combos vs. 2h weapons, in terms of making things roughly equal. Currently in our system looting a 1h & offhand is quite a bit more expensive than a staff, usually for minimal (if any) benefit, and it’s something I’d like to change going into a new system in the expansion, (especially as offhands become more and more expensive and so the difference in cost between 2h staves and 1h combos increases even more).

We price melee 1h & 2h weapons pretty much the same given equal quality (eg. Crul’shorukh is 600, Ashkandi is 625), and caster weapons – while being a fair bit cheaper than melee equivalents – are currently no different (Lok’amir 500, SotSF 525). For warriors and shamans It makes sense for a 1h & shield combo to be more (or different, anyway) than a single 2h weapon, given that they’re used for very different things, but that obviously isn’t the case for pure casters.

Ideally you’d want a 1h and offhand (which normally have better ‘green text’ compared to staves but inferior stats) to be pretty much the same price as the equivalent 2h, but is drastically lowering the cost of caster 1h weapons and offhands to compensate the answer? That may just lead to ever increasing points gaps between warriors/shamans and, say, priests, which is particularly troublesome given that shamans and priests are likely to be after the same 1h weapons. You’d need to find a system whereby shields and offhands had vague parity for cross-class purposes, but because an offhand doesn’t have the necessity of a shield, you’d also need to ensure casters didn’t gain too big a foothold over their peers by skipping the offhand and looting 2h weapons instead. I guess you could just make all shields and offhands super cheap, but that seems like a clumsy solution to me.

Anyone got any bright ideas?

Any special rules for handling armor tokens in Naxx? Specifically, are you going to use any sort of class rotation or simply let JP decide who gets it?

We implemented an upgrade path system very similar to yours on Monday and have already hit a snag with the Shamans.

Assuming the Shaman path as follows:

1) Healing Weapon
2) DPS Weapon
3) Shield

We see three types of Shamans in our raids: Resto, Enhance + Resto, and Elemental + Resto. An elemental Shaman takes Lok'Amir for two utilities: Spell Damage, and Healing. Resto Shaman, obviously uses it for Healing.

So: One weapon. One DKP price. Two uses.

Now for sake of argument, Nef dies, Edge of Chaos drops, and no Warriors or what have you desire it. The enhancement Shaman that rolled on it would not be able to upgrade from any dmg/healing weapon, as it is purely a damage weapon. He would have to spend full price on some other weapon that was a healing item, and upgrade from there, thus sending his DKP into the toilet.

An enhancement Shaman who pays out for Aurastone Hammer, and then later, pays out full for Claw of the Black Drake is thus penalized for his build.

My initial gut reaction to this is: Sorry, Enhancement Shaman. You lose. Spec' accordingly for PvE and know your role, that way, you don't have to waste more DKP on items that are pure DPS anyway (Hybrid Class? Hybrid Weapon!)

...but because I promised my troops I would at least *ask*...what do you think the consensus would be here? Special exclusions for enchancement build-Shamans? Or remind them what they are there in Blackwing Lair to do (ie Not DPS).

We do 1H weapon, 2H weapon, and shield, no distinction made between melee and healer 1H and 2Hers.

This is a silly attitude (emphasis in bold). Almost every single one of our shamen have points in Enhancement, whether it be for healing or head-cracking purposes. (We have one exception, an elemental/resto shaman - though his JP is on the verge of being corrected since he's about to hit the Nefarian points cap without a 2-hander.) More to the point, we generally let people spec whatever way they want, with the exception of DPS-wannabe kitties.

The only reason you would do this is if you don't trust your shamen to not be stupid.

That having been said, we wouldn't let shamen even take [Crul'shurokh] anyway until all the warriors had equal or superior quality weapons to the drop. Then it would go to shamen, then at offclass price to hunters.

I tried the link a few pages back for an excel file for this DKP system to half-way automate things for a zero-sum system and it wouldn't load up for me. I was wondering if someone could link me to this or if EJ has made any progress with their automated system as Kaubel - I believe -mentioned a few pages back

Ok, so my guild (clearing MC/BWL, Working on Huhu, spent a night on Anub) recently disbanded and about 2/3 reformed under a new name with me as leader. As we are just starting out, this would be a great time to start using an intelligent system like this. My only concern is how difficult it would be to manage. From what it seems, there are raids where some people are present but do not earn DKP, would this give those who were present and DO earn DKP more since there were less people eligible to divide the total spent DKP by? Or is the system not based on a zero sum?

I guess my only concern as a new GM is how hard this system would be to manage. It truly does sound like the best possible idea, but seems it would be hell to do DKP without an EQDKP type easy mode punch in the numbers and who got the loot and you're done.

Any suggestions?

from what's been posted: if only 35 people would get dkp, then the amount paid is item.dkpValue/35

Thanks for the reply. This might be easier to set up than I had originally thought :)

Hi

How do you realize penalty or bonus points in your system?
In our raid you will get some bonus points for donating various ressources needed for the raid i.e. Gromsblood or Elemental Fire and stuff.
On the other hand you will get a penalty of let's say 20 points if you are late or -50 if you are not comming at all.

Penalty points won't be the problem. The raid could get the penalty points/ 40 back. But what about someone gettig bonus points?
Or let's say the whole raid gets some extra points for a first kill.

Yup. It's been said numerous times. In the long run, it's better to use raid slots as incentive.

Out of curiosity: Did you use some sort of formula to develop the values for the loot that you use, or did you assign some random ones back in MC and sort of go from there? (No, I'm not asking for the formula itself if you did use one, I'd rather develop my own. ^_^)

No, we cribbed from values from Conquest's public RPP page at the time, since it was pretty much the only such points page around in Feb. 2005 (well, aside from Afterlife's), and since I got the idea to propose zero-sum as our loot system from reading up on Conquest's system. We tweaked some values, but kind of went from there. A lot of our early loot was priced really stupidly and ended up skewing later pricing, but we've gotten a lot smarter about pricing things along the way and, for most items we see nowadays, there's just a common-sense point value for the item and little real debate over it. ("Hmm, this ring is a bit better than Ring X and Ring Y, and they're both 150, so... 175? Ok.")

Hmm, that's a pity, since we used your guys' values for loot for MC so it may be somewhat difficult to develop a formula that holds for both the MC loot values and yet flows gracefully and logically into loot values for BWL, since there's no real underlying formula to derive it from.

I guess this is what I majored in math for. :P

honestly if you did a formula stuff would get screwed up anyways. Just cause things have equal ilvls does not mean they have good point allocation. should brutality blade and gutgore have equal values? by ilvl they should(I know one is ilvl69 and the other is ilvl 71) but brutality blade is superior due to it having lasting value. Some stuff just needs a human mind to differentiate between the 2 items. Look at crap like thunderstrike or how about draconic avenger vs draconic maul.

I suppose it's the difference between pure math and applied math. Maybe the ideal thing here is to develop a formula and then adjust it as needed, so that there's a solid basis behind the loot values, but a human approach is present as well.