Most DKP systems run into the problem of DKP inflation which invariably ruins the system over the long term. I have devised a system that utilizes inflation in the same way that real world economics utilizes it. This concept can be applied to a zero sum system as well as a direct point system, but I'll outline my idea for an overall inlfation-based system.

The basic premise of the system is to inflate the values of all DKP Awards as well as all DKP Expenditures across the board. It would follow a week-to-week (or month-to-month depending on how it is customized) inflation where the prior value is multiplied by the inflation constant.

Example where the coefficient is 1.200 (ie the values go up 20% each week). The value of C'thun on Week1 might be 5.00 dkp and his drop might cost 50 dkp. The following week he is worth 6 dkp and the same drop costs 60 dkp. The third week he is worth 7.20 DKP and the same item costs 72 DKP.

This solution resolves many problems associated with inflation by accounting for inflation directly in the system itself. No more need to worry about new members being 1000 DKP behind because they are getting the highest DKP awards to-date. You can quickly see how it is nearly impossible to bank huge DKP sums and have a perpetual lead despite bad attendence when DKP you earned in the past isnt worth as much.

As a comparison to real-world economics, imagine a man who has $100 dollars in 1900 compared to a man with $100 dollars in 2006. The amount of money is the same, but the relative purchasing power of the money is an amazingly stark contrast, and the earned income of a person in the two time periods is similarly slanted. This concept uses inflation to resolve the same issues that inflation resolves real-world economic issues, where you cannot bank money(dkp) and expect it to be as valuable in the future. The DKP you have is at it's most valuable in the present. This will encourage people to want to loot, will solve inflation problems, will eliminate MIA problems where people come back after a hiatus and still have large sums of banked DKP, and will lead to higher attendence because people won't want to miss the DKP - since it's the most they have ever gotten for the same bosses.

Note: This concept is customizable in multiple ways and across multiple systems: The coefficient value, the time period, the original base item and boss values, etc.

Loerna - Windrunner Priest (Forlorn Legacy)

Interesting -- need to think about how that'll work in practice before commenting.

On a separate note, I saved you the trouble of updating your profile, so now you don't have to write the pertinent information below your posts. (Hey, guys -- go to Profile --> World of Warcraft and update your info. It's there for a reason. Posting without any visible info is like posting on a level 1 alt on the WoW forums.)

Isn't this essentially just a flat-tax system in reverse?

i.e. what is the effective difference between this, and applying a weekly/monthly/raidly 10% tax to currently held DKP?

This is a really good idea.

Would something like this be an absolute bitch to manage or would it be doable to adapt an EQDKP style management systems for it?

I have nothing insightful to add, but very interesting idea.

How to address the issue of people hoarding DKP since UBRS (basically) for T3 stuff, when MC has been on farm for over a half of a year. >_>

This is probably the most intriguing idea I've seen for RPP systems so far.

I suppose you could achieve the same result by deflating everyone's current point total every week instead of inflating the price of the drops and therefore the value of each boss. Might be a trifle easier to implement from a practical standpoint.
One thing to consider though - with zero-sum systems, on average half your 'currency' is negative. Inflation would have the property that it would be advantageous to spend down to highly negative and then go AWOL for a couple of weeks/months so that your debt gets removed naturally. This is typically solved in real-world economies by liberal use of compound interest...



off-topic:
Gurg: on your comments about profile/info - is there a way to include a couple of ctprofile links on the left panel? That would probably eliminate much of the remaining desire to sign posts...

The difference being that nobody is treated differently. I have 100 DKP and lose 10 to 10% tax. Someone with 10 DKP only loses 1 DKP. I lose 9x as much simply because I have accumulated more. With the inflation method I keep my 100, they keep their 10, and we both spend 5 additional DKP for the next drops we acquire. The inherent punishment to all players in the system should be uniform. It's more like comparing a compound Sales-Tax/Wage Increase to a flat-tax.

Shouldn't be a hard fix and it's a good idea -- I'll talk to Boethius about it. Anyway, back to DKP discussion.

This sounds like a good idea, at least to on a mature DKP system.

Although it would have to get the buyin of the users; I am not sure how it be accepted, but I do like this train of thought.

I don't think this idea could be called inflation based. This system could easily be used in a zero sum system. The costs of items go up as time goes on. This would certainly penalize people that hoarded.

Right now we significantly increase the cost of items for each tier. So AQ gear might cost 60-90 rpp while nax gear will cost 200-300 rpp. This stops people from trying to hoard points in AQ when Naxx is about to be released, but does allow people that have everything they could possibly want to be rewarded an item or two for continuing to raid.

Interesting idea, none the less. I was toying around with the idea of a percentage based tax and then evenly redistributing the taxed points based on participation percentage. This woudl encourage people to spend their points instead of hoarding them.

Is this how actual economies function - with a constant rate of inflation? It seems like it might make more sense to tie it to the amount of points currently in the system, the rate of income, or possibly just the time since the system began. Disclaimer: I have no relevant economics knowledge, I'm not trying to correct you. Just curious.

This is my main concern with a system such as this.

What takes more effort and manhours from the entire raid, the first C'thun kill or the 35th.

I think however the base idea is a very good one, and has alot of potential. I agree though, it would be a bitch to manage without coding EQDKP for it or rewriting a new solution from the ground up.

How will you measure the current inflation rate?

Flat tax total DKP rather than individual and apply a uniform adjustment to everyone in the system.

I'm quite interested in reflecting on this 'play-labor' question in WoW, concerning not the expenditure of DKP but the initial production, as an extension of an individual's contribution to the guild.

How are one's man-hours in front of the screen systematically valued? Does 'effort' == 'man-hours', end of discussion? If so, would this suggest adopting a punch-card system where players are paid a DKP wage in accordance to the number of man-hours logged for guild activities? Possibly pay higher wages for more important activities (first kills, learning encounters, spontaneous early-morning ORBs, etc). Or is the more prevalent commission-based system more productive? How about a blend of the two, for example paying a time-based wage offset by bonuses for overall group performance (to encourage rather than discourage speedy raids)?

There are also some interesting questions regarding how loot becomes individualized and 'awarded' within the high-end raiding guilds in the first place, and whether the idea of a point-based system awarding individual avatars directly associated with individual players (the basic concept of personal virtual property) can be questioned in itself, or perhaps why it can't.

(edit) Hmm, that's a little too abstract, let me explain what I have in mind here. When I was initially introduced to WoW by my Everquest-veteran friend, and he described the way his tight-knit, high-end guild functioned to me, I asked seriously, "wouldn't it be much more productive for the committed (socially and financially) guild members to designate a core set of 'communal' avatars?" Use them as a fixed set of tools designated to serving the guild, destroy the one-to-one connection between avatar and player and be able to cycle through them more fluidly, eliminating these problems of property, and the immense amount of redundancy (leveling up alts, re-gearing recruits during turnover, etc)? Obviously as I learned after playing, there are tons of practical obstructions to this idea (Blizzard's TOS, the fact that most players find immense pleasure in the personal property tied to their own avatar, etc), but it's still a thought to keep in mind. If not for WoW, then perhaps in general, as possibilities for alternative MMORPG designs.

I agree that it seems in theory no different than zero sum, but the flaw I always didn't like about zero sum was that it never awarded people for time spent. I know the argument can be made and has been by Gurg before that in a good raid setting you don't have to have incentives like that, counting on your raid group to be there solely for the enjoyment of beating new content, however I don't think very many guilds have this luxury.

So if you are including some point awards for accomplishments, or time spent, you get inflation ofcourse, if you don't modify the points ever, and in this I always thought the number one problem was new members, who are deep in the hole, which you could either fix by constantly re-doing the numbers point totals of members with a set ratio for each change, or you could just place new members at the net average when they joined, even if that number was well above the original average of zero.

Wouldn't it be quite demotivating to go into old instances and have to blow increasing proportions of DKP on outdated gear that represents an upgrade? i.e. your DPS warrior picking up Wrath that would otherwise be disenchanted, your feral druid picking up SR, and so on. I like the idea of a flat DKP tax though - what would a good way of determining a fair amount for this?

One question that occurred to me:

This "inflation" would apply equally to all zones, right? So items from MC would cost much more, months later, than they did when first discovered, and the zone would yield more points as a result? Part of the problem with devaluing past contributions is that in raiding, the initial phases are at least as valuable, if not much moreso, than the farming that comes afterwards.

Player A raids BWL heavily for a month, during which time the guild learns the zone and puts it on farm, and then has to go away for a month on travel.
Player B doesn't show up for the first month but then once the zone is on farm he's there at every single kill for the second month.

Player A comes back from vacation and is pretty far behind Player B, because either inflation has rendered his points less valuable, or they've been flat-taxed away in his absence.

Both raided for the same period of time, calendarwise, and A did so under harsher circumstances than B and helped the guild learn the fights, yet B comes away with a large advantage. Does that make sense?

I'm shooting from the hip here when I say this, but what about reversing this idea? Here's what I'm talking about, but once again I'm thinking this up as I type.

Jan. 1st - Huhuran Killed - All items have their value and cost doubled.
Jan. 14th - Two weeks after, still fine tuning - The 2x adjustment that was applied for the first kills is changed to 1.5x
Jan. 30th - Farm Status - Items return to their normal price.

You pay a premium to get an item first, but if you put in the work and don't get loot from those kills, you've still been rewarded for your repair bills. There's no inflation because the items cost more to take as well.

It's still sketchy, and would be an administration headache, but what do you think of the idea itself?

We use an open DKP bidding system with minimum prices on items. They're reasonably cheap so people can pick up items that they want without hurting their DKP by that much, so we have generally avoided sharding stuff people found useful.

Generally as we have progressed further through instances and as more have been released, the DKP awarded goes up. This isn't controlled in some systematic way, more based on feel. However it has the effect that it's a better idea to spend your DKP now than later, because later they will be worth less.

I think we went from around ~80 DKP / Week of raiding to being at ~800 DKP / Week of raiding now, this over 8 months or so. The effect is clearly visible in our DKP system, people that have been with the guild the longest still have quite a few more DKP earned than the younger members but as time progresses the earned DKP gap closes and due to the flexible nature of item pricing newer members get to buy items fairly quick.

I'm unaware of how inflation ruins a DKP system though, don't shoot me :)

Random, mental turd:

Perhaps give Player A the option of paying for phantom items at current prices?

My guild uses a traditional (read: non zero-sum) DKP system and ran into the problems all these systems have: Some poeple start hoarding DKP, thereby stoping to improve their character in hope for that one uber-item they want. We solved that in an easy way: We just cut all DKP by half whenever we feel it is necessary. Problem solved and this is much easier to implement.

edit: stupid german makes stupid speling errors...