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

That just becomes a question of how you define your equipment slots for upgrade purposes.

Take the rogue example. Rogues use two weapons. In our system, they have two separate weapon slots. A rogue comes into MC with a Shanker and a Bonescraper or something.

Perdition's Blade drops -- rogue buys it for 225 JP
Core Hound Tooth drops -- now, the rogue has his second weapon slot open, so this isn't a downgrade/sidegrade, and the rogue buys it for 150 JP

Now he has 225 JP + 150 JP = 375 invested in his weapons.

If a Gutgore were to drop (150), and for some bizarre reason the rogue wanted it, he couldn't get it unless absolutely no one else in the raid needed it, since it'd be free for him.

He proceeds to BWL, and cries because Blizzard hates dagger rogues (haha).

Ok, then in AQ40, he finally gets his hands on a Pugio (250 JP). This is an upgrade, and for JP purposes, replaces his CHT (the worse of his two weapons), so he spends 100 JP to upgrade.

Now we kill C'Thun, and Death's Sting drops. We price that at 300 JP, and he spends 75 to upgrade from the Perdition's to the Death's Sting.

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."

And yes, regarding the separate-DKP-per-instance issue, I've never seen the merits of such a thing. If someone ran MC every week for six months to gear up himself and the rest of the guild, and someone else joins as a recruit once MC is already well into farm status and scoops up full tier 1 in a couple of weeks because it's all defaulted to him, why should the latter enter BWL on the same level as the former?

DKP is about incentivizing raid-efficient behavior as much as it is about distributing loot, and the incentives per-instance DKP systems create are pretty awful.

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?