I was wondering if someone could provide me with a few answers to some questions that I and some officers of my guild are contemplating. First off these questions deal with the zero-sum dkp system.

I was wondering if anyone has used separate dkp tables for MC, BWL, and AQ successfully. I also want to know if this is an advisable option. I don’t want to do this if this system caused problems not relating to guild drama.

The reason I have proposed this to my guild is that we didn’t use an ideal zero-sum system. Our guild had a sudden influx of members during our clearing of ZG. This influx enabled us to progress into MC so therefore we felt that we should give our longtime loyal members a set bonus dkp equal to their raid attendance % divided by 6. I felt that by setting up the separate table we might be able to use a true zero-sum system.

Well we have progressed quickly through MC with minimal hiccups though I feel that a few should be mentioned in case some fellow guilds have encountered and dealt with these issues successfully. One issue is the sharding of items that are upgrades over current equipment. Our guild is composed of a lot of matured dedicated people but there is a majority that focus on certain items that they want rather than take an upgrade when it is available they prefer to save their dkp for ideal pieces. We award no dkp for shards and have used officer’s discretion in one situation in order to counter this problem; I was wondering if there were any other methods that could be employed without breaking our dkp system.

One final issue that I feel is pressing is the fact that we are attempting BWL this week and we only have 2-3 members that have seen extensive action in there and none past Chromaggus. So that being said we are preparing for a lot of though times. Our guild isn’t used to wiping on bosses consistently taking all pride and ego out of our situation but we cleared from Luci to Sulfuron with only 5 wipes in our first week in MC and we downed Rag in our first night of attempts on him. So our guilds mentality leans towards BWL is going be cake despite what me and my fellow officers might say. Now I don’t want to crush any optomizum but just portray the instance in a more relalistic light.

I’ve heard that Vael is the biggest #$%-block of all time and has been mentioned as a guild breaker to me. Now like I said we have a lot of mature members and I wouldn’t mind seeing a few of the greedy immature members leave, but I don’t want my guild to split due to wiping consistently on BWL and not getting dkp for the bosses unless items drop. So do you guys think that zero-sum is the ideal system for us or are there any modifications that we could use to counter this. I feel that it is our responsibility to decide what our guild can handle I was just looking for some of the older more experienced guys to give us some tips.

P.S. Sorry for the novel. And again thanks for any input provided and be sure that it will be evaluated, analyzed and all in all put to good use.

the best solution to sharding items is an upgrade policy that allows people get 'refunded' for previous purchases when they get better items. we had trouble getting people to loot tier 1 back when both tier 1 and tier 2 dropped in MC, and decided on an upgrade policy for set items very similar to the one EJ uses. i personally think a universal upgrade system for all items (or at least all armor) has merit, but that sort of system can greatly favor long-term members, since they never really 'spend' their points, and newer players will be sinking full price on items. then again, since it's rare that you'll actually recruit new members who aren't well geared already, you can have the price of any item be the price between it and the gear the member has already - say Wrath chest costs 50, and Dreadnaught chest costs 100 - the member who had Wrath would pay 50, whether they got the wrath chest in the guild or not.

Elendril, I understand how this system would work with armor. There are certain people (feral druids, Ret. Pallies, DPS Warriors) who would loot multiple armor pieces for a given slot, but I can still see the system working.

My question would be, how does this system work with weapons? It would seem to me that once a person bought the most expensive 1h weapon, any other 1h they buy would be free. Thus, they have no mathematical incentive (I know I'm ignoring the "what's best for the guild" incentives) not to collect all the weapons they wanted. So let's say a rogue buys the most expensive 1h weapon currently in the game which just happens to be a sword (for sake of arguement). There is nothing in the system to keep them from looting all of the daggers, maces, and other swords free of charge. Is there a way in the system itself to curtail this?

In our system, you can't get an item that's a sidegrade/downgrade if it would be an upgrade for someone else that's present. And if it's not an upgrade for anyone, then sure, people who want it for free can /random on it or whatever, but that doesn't particularly matter. Can you give a specific example of what you see the problem being?

Now I'm just making these weapons up, so if details are slightly off about what is actually best, I appologise in advance. Also the only reason I'm using rogues is because they are usually the ones that will use a multitude of weapons, and I'm ignorning the off-hand for the moment. Assume all weapons are main-hand only. It's not an anti-rogue bias. :)

Let's say the top melee person DKP-wise is a long-time rogue (rogue1) member who could buy anything in the game (armor, weapons, whatever) and still be well ahead of the next rogue (rogue2) in DKP. Now let's say rogue1 has a weapon that is effectively 45dps and rogue2 also has the same 45dps weapon. Uber weapons of pure ownage drops which is 99dps. Obviously rogue1 buys it as an upgrade. At this point, he still has more DKP than rogue2 (again, sake of arguement). Three mobs later, Uber weapon of not so much ownage drops which is 60dps. If I understand the basic system properly, because rogue1 still has more DKP, he could "buy" the 2nd weapon but not actually pay anything for it because he already has a more expensive item in that slot.

Did that make any sense at all?

as gurg said, it's a matter of relative pricing. if you have ashkandi and someone else has OEB, you're not going to get dark edge over him. you COULD separate weapons from the upgrade system since they're the most highly desired and rarest items, so you rarely have issues with people being unwilling to take them, but that causes weird consistancy issues in the long term.

you can also use a delayed-reimbursement upgrade system, to ensure that people don't just get ahead on points somehow and loot a bunch of items before anyone else can get anything. or people can just be reasonable :-P

Well you got around to answering my question, but you put in alot of things I said we were over-looking. You forgot your "call of the question" time in law school. /poke :P

So in your system they couldn't, but in the basic system they might be able to.

I am not a fan of upgrade systems. It's always seemed redundant to me- you're spending less on items, but your accumulation of dkp slows down considerably. Like two different paths that both end up at the same place.

When tier 1 and 2 dropped in MC, I can see the logic behind upgrading. Why take tier 1 items when bosses are just as likely to drop tier 2? But now that instances are pretty clearly broken up by tier, I think just pricing items correctly is all the incentive people need to take them, marginal upgrade or not.

Thank You for the tip on sharding. I believe we could use an uprade system for armor since the armor is an easier and far smoother transition then weapons and armor. Now I am not sure if this is compatible with zero-sum, if it is could you explain how it is employed in more detail.

On another note I was hoping that you would look back to my original post and make any comments on using a seperate dkp table for MC, BWL, AQ in case the upgrade policy is not a popular option for my guild. Because I believe that if you start with a fresh slate on a new instance such as MC to BWL the upgrade policy would be unessacary due to the fact that what you looted in MC would not hinder nor benefit you for BWL it would just give you a wider range of items to choose from since not everything will be as big as an upgrade as another.

Again thank you for the input and I will look forward to any further information you provide.

separate dkp by instance is doomed to fail, imo. you're going to have a hard time getting people who are fully MC geared to go back there if they have no incentive, and while at that point you can probably clear it with less, you're in big trouble if you get a bunch of priest/warrior loot early and none of your healers and tanks want to go back because they want 0 items and earn 0 usable DKP.

Then you have some misaligned incentives and you reward people for skipping tiers. If Player A goes t1-->t3 and Player B goes t1-->t2-->t3 in a given slot, both players end up with equal power, yet player B has paid a lot more to get to the same place.

In our system, an upgrade system was initially introduced to soften the blow of forcing items on people rather than DE'ing them. I think DE'ing even the tiniest of upgrades is wasteful, and if a loot system encourages or allows it, then that loot system is hurting the guild. With an upgrade system, you can say, "Hey, I know you really would prefer the Perdition's Blade, but take that Gutgore for now -- it's an upgrade from your crappy blue -- and view it as a down-payment on a later item in that slot."

Does that happen a lot in EJ? I mean, obviously not tier 1 -> tier 3 yet, but maybe tier 1 -> AQ40? I know in my guild there's a fairly linear progression through instances at this point. You do your time, so to speak, in MC, and once you have a fair bit of gear and experience you get to hop into BWL.

But I guess my issue is that total lifetime spent is pretty irrelevant. It's an e-peen yardstick, and a decent way of quickly cataloging your top raiders, and maybe even for assigning certain drops (like Onyxia backpacks or whatever.) But as far as regulating the distribution of loot, who cares?

Like, ok, we've got player one. He went tier 1 -> tier 2, and now he's in Naxx. His total lifetime earned is like 2500. 1k on his tier 1, and 1.5k on his tier 2. So he walks into Naxx with about zero, and everyone else he's competing with is in the same boat.

But here comes player two. Fresh out of MC, and for whatever reason, he's being moved past BWL and straight into Naxx. Who knows why, it doesn't matter. He's got 1000 earned, and spent it all on his tier 1 gear. So just like player one, he walking into Naxx and competing on a basically even scale with everyone else.

At that point, I'd say DKP is doing exactly what it's supposed to- regulating the distribution of loot. Evening it out. But let's use an upgrade system on the above example. Full tier 3 costs 2k. Player one, having already spent 1500, need only spend 500 to complete his set. Player two needs to drop 1000. Assuming player one and player two attend most of the same raids, player one is always going to get first dibs on cross class loot, simply because the upgrade system is inflating the dkp he earns (he spends less, everyone else makes less, player two spends more, everyone else gets more.)

In my opinion, one thing that makes or breaks a ZS DKP system is the pricing of items. Bad pricing can create weird incentives or discourage upgrades. For example, in the absence of policies like Instance DKP Caps and Resist Gear Cap Bonuses, if you price resist gear to high, you discourage people from taking resist gear because they want 'Cool Sword of Destruction'. People have an incentive not to take them, since it puts them at a competive disadvantage with others, especially for cross class items.

It's easy for class officers to misprice an item for an new instance as well. They are only human after all, and if you underprice something, its painful to go back and raise the prices on items retroactively. In a situation where Upgrade Pricing is not used, powerful non-set items tend to be underpriced to encourage people to take them.

Question about DPS warriors vs Tanks
One question I'm curious about is how you handle your DPS warriors vs. your tanks. In absence of a Forced Loot policy, the incentive is there for DPS warriors to only want to buy non-set DPS plate items (which may be under priced vs. might/wrath) and don't want to buy tanking items. Tanks end up buying tanking gear, resist gear and potentially DPS gear. DPS warriors buy DPS gear and have tons of points leftover for cross class items.

If an Upgrade Pricing is used, do warriors that have tanking gear get (Belt of Might) get free (sidegrade) pricing for DPS plate (Onslaught Girdle) and vice versa?

Most DPS plate is priced slightly higher (or at best equal to) their tanking counterparts. The DPS warriors grab that stuff first, and complete their tanking sets later on -- and generally have no problem grabbing tanking upgrades along the way.

The examples used so far are comparing a new recruit in blues to someone in the guild is well-geared. I'm interested in hearing opinions about the following example:

My old guild broke up while working on Firemaw and myself and a few others joined another guild the week they killed Vaelastrasz for the first time. Gear-wise, I was at the same level (or better in some cases) than the priests in the new guild. The priests in my guild, myself included, have an incredibly high attendance, so the point difference between all of us has stayed basically constant since when I first joined (Transcendence drops were rare for them so I started off about 400-500 points behind the other four priests with set pieces priced at ~150 points each).

Now, I've put basically the same effort as any other priest in the guild into both BWL (minus the first couple weeks) and AQ, yet because of points earned in MC and Onyxia, I was consistently about 3rd to 4th on the list for any drop. As a new recruit, is that fair? Sure it is. Those guys got the guild to that point, and even though I put in my blood, sweat and tears banging my head against the same content with a different guild (as opposed to getting a free ride with the new one) this isn't really transferable.

However, is it fair to always be 3-4 drops behind the other priests just because I wasn't there for MC or Onyxia? I personally lean towards no myself as the more time that passes, the more trivial those two instances and the effort put forth therein becomes.

Because of the relatively large influx of well-geared recruits to my new guild, the officers ended up deciding that each instance should have its own point system (we started with AQ and will do so again with Naxx) to reward people with the items they helped earn in the first place.

Now with an upgrade system, I can see why having separate point systems would be unnecessary, but how would that situation be handled under EJ's point rules?

We don't differentiate between DPS and tanking plate for slots. For example, Drake Talon Pauldrons and Pauldrons of Wrath are the same price in our system. If you get one, the other is free. (Similarly, you can upgrade from Might to Drake Talon.) But the flip-side of that is that if you get one, you move to the end of the line for the other automatically. Warriors will naturally tend to choose between the two paths, and then eventually get the other pieces once other warriors have them. It actually works out nicely that way. You're better off having a couple of warriors with full Wrath and a couple with Drake Talon, Chromatic Boots, Onslaught Girdle, Endless Rage, etc., rather than having all your warriors with a bit of wrath and a bit of DPS gear.

The problem is that incentivizing can go too far if you don't price things between the instances properly. We had tier 2 priced double tier 1, which was too little. We had so many old timers in almost full tier 2 still showing up for MC because we had to if we wanted to keep up with DKP and get the last couple pieces of tier 2 or Ashkandi. Our MC (and especially Onyxia, my god) DKP was way, way too high. We had people setting up groups to do 20-man Onxyia, which gave about as much DKP than an entire BWL clear.

As far as MC goes, linked DKP caused problems because people would show up as late as possible (one minute before MC raid time, usually) so that they'd be on the wait list, still get DKP, but not make it in the raid or have to actually do MC. They knew they weren't needed, but they still wanted DKP. It was a contest to NOT get in MC. This was compounded with the fact that we allowed alts to earn DKP for their mains. So the MC raid was half alts and it took 6 hours to clear the damn place. It was awful.

The alts were a major problem, but aside from that, I just don't think you should give incentives to go to a place that's one tier further below the one you already have on farm. It's not like you need people in full tier 2 to help out in clearing MC. New people can just skip MC, why keep running it. If you have a linked system, you have to know when to cut DKP from old instances entirely, or just set instance caps, because forcing people to go to places that are on WAY farm is just not fun at all.

We used an upgrade based, zero-sum system with one point total for all instances for some time. We somewhat recently moved to an instance separated system (which is naturally non-upgrade, with the exception of tier 2 hats and pants which drop from bosses in our 'MC' pool).

This was a better decision for us than it would be for most raiding guilds because of the way we're structured. We're a large, friendly (tragically non-elite) guild with a ton of people who raid 'infrequently' by most raiding guilds' standards, so we have a huge turnover in raiders from week to week - it may be counter-intuitive, but recent attendance will actually make you lower priority except when we're just about on the brink of downing the next significant boss or moving a 2-night clear down to one. Point being, there is always another group of newer raiders to pull through MC - the fruits of which would be about 5x the DKP as a BWL partial clear through the drakes, which was about where we were at the time, with every set item being bought at lower prices. In order to be competitive for the latest loot, raiders were essentially required to run MC every week even though they needed no items - which is a 'feature' if you're hurting for experienced/geared ringers to pull you through, but with the numbers we have it was not only unnecessary, it was harmful in that we were potentially waitlisting people who needed that gear for progression. Additionally, since our raid groups are by design much more inclusive, if a small upgrade is a lower priority than a large one, then consistent raiders will find themselves stuck in all tier 1 while letting newer raiders take the tier 2, essentially breaking the DKP system as it's intended.

I was among those who felt that this was an issue that could be solved by more intelligently picking raid groups each week and reevaluated upgrade prices, but in the end just splitting the pools stopped incentivizing gaming the system. As a result we only do one MC run a week now instead of two, but it saved our core raiding community some burnout and refocused them on new content.

What you described is why we implemented caps on earning points from zones. When we capped MC last August, there were maybe 15 people over the cap. Now, there are probably 90.

That stops people from feeling obligated to keep running MC in order to keep up in BWL, but only once they've really put in their time. Under our system, buying a full kit of MC gear -- every item you might want -- probably costs around 1250 or 1300 points total. The MC cap is 1500. By the time people hit that cap, they've run MC a lot, and helped gear a ton of people up. Our runs these days usually consist of 15 or so nubs who still need the loot on their mains and get points, a bunch of vets looking to compete for DPS and enjoy a relaxing speed-clear, and people scooping up rots for their alts.

People mention selecting the correct time to make MC a non-dkp instance, I think we're fast approching this time.

The post above about a "contest to NOT get into MC" is starting to emerge for us but there's a few problems I personally can see with suddenly pulling the DKP out from MC and allowing future runs to be casual/non-dkp.

People may ask "<player a> won <item> this week, I won it last week, how come he gets it for free?" and rightfully so. Cutting the DKP from MC will allow people that gain MC gear in future to be ahead of others in DKP as they spend nothing. I know the theory with zero-sum is that everyone will balance out as zero over each encounter but for us MC loot is awarded to one or two newer people that require the items. These people will jump ahead of others in their class as the new member that collected his set last MC will be in a DKP hole compared to the new member that collects his set next week.



The question: How do you go about removing the DKP from a single raid instance without causing overly much trouble within your system?

If they dident pay dkp for their tier 1 set, they'll pay that much more for their tier 2 set. Problem solved.

True but we don't have a full discount system, we use a half discount. Ie. If you upgrade from T1 to T2 you will gain a rebate of half the DKP cost of the T1 piece.