I think that's a bit too aggressive, a more subtle approach should be used to control the problem. I couldn't imagine how people would be satisfied with an approach like that, people would feel forced to spend their DKP as fast as possible and not knowing when a cut was going to come.

God I'd hate that system :O

You cut everyone's points in half or just those who are hoarding? If it's the former, that's just stupid and serves absolutely no purpose whatsoever.

Point Whore 1: "I'm ahead in points and I'm saving for a new weapon!"
Raid Leader: "Ok, FINE. I'M CUTTING ALL POINT TOTALS IN HALF!"
Guild: "......."
Point Whore 1: "I'm still ahead in points and I'm still saving for a new weapon!"

A DKP maximum would be more sensible, any DKP earned more than X would simply be wiped. That should get hoarders to spend their DKP as they approach the DKP maximum.

Edit: And if someone is stupid enough to just stay at the DKP maximum while passing items, chances are you would be better off kicking him from the guild and recruiting someone who understands the word "progress".

It does serve a purpose as all other variables (DKP/Boss, minimum DKP/items) remain constant, so poeple not hoarding will be able to catch up on those guys - the problem isn't that they are saving up for a special weapon - if they do they might as well have it - the problem ist that those poeple don't improve their char.
But: we only had to do this once, since then poeple just stopped being "point whores", might be psychological though...

Either you're not seeing the point or you're not explaining your system effectively. Either way, I'm really disinterested and have no idea why I'm commenting on another guilds methods of handling loot.

I believe the point is that if all points are halved, all leads are halved, despite not affecting relative standings. Meanwhile points continue to come in at the same rate.

Nothing is perfect, it's just a matter of picking your advantages and disadvantages. And if you aren't getting drops, you either have it all or you're passing on items when you shouldn't be. I should think that most people get a chance to loot something every now and again.

My guild currently uses an open bidding system and given some of the problems that have emerged (very large descrepancies in item pricing, conflicts between raiders), we've been looking at alternatives. Our current system is structured to award time spent during our scheduled raids, not based on boss kills or item distribution.

Zero-sum DKP is on the table as an option (using NDKP to determine the "value" of an item), but given we've had difficulty in getting attendance to "learning encountes" in the past (even when people did earn points), virtual points are being considered as well. I'm not particularly thrilled with this option (which looks like it will be implemented), but at least it seems better than open bidding/conflict.

Why not just a flat % cost for items, and throw zero-sum out the window? I haven't worked thru details, but consider the following:
- Raiders earn points for attendance/time.
- An item is obtained at a % cost of current total DKP.
- The % changes based on the value of the upgrade.

Example: A character upgrading from a blue to a T2 item is charged a 15% DKP rate, while the character upgrading his T1 to T2 is only charged 5%. The % is just off the top of my head, not alot of thought there, but the value can be tweaked. Raiders with almost no DKP could have some set min value they'd be charged based off the rate they earn points via attendance.

The biggest arguement against non-zero-sum DKP system is the inflationary nature of these systems. I agree that "the rich get richer" in many such scenarios, but if upgrades were based on a % system, then the differences in points would even out over time, as the long time raiders would maintain a priority for a period of time, but eventually fall in line with newer people eventually due to paying more for upgrades. This also helps to prevent people from mass hording of points, as the longer one does not spend their points, the more the items cost in the future.

Thoughts?

This is why I still think awarding points for time spent or attempts made on new content is a good thing. You could offset the the difference between player A and player B by removing the bonus points once the instance is on farm status(or for that second month).

Rough Example:

First month during wipage and learning: 40 epic drops
2nd month of farm status: 100 epic drops

Now what ratio would you think fair for that scenario? How much more credit should Player A have gotten over player B? I guess that's up to each guild on how much they want to reward the new content phases. I would think come month 3 when Player A returns that, he and Player B both having 1 month total raid time out of the 2 month period, would have say..... 20% more dkp earned?

After that just figuring out the math and ratios of how many hours of time wiping and learning encounters is worth for how much bonus dkp you award. Then after that you can apply periodic inflation multipliers to bring everyone's point totals down a bit and re-align the system, but the people would got those bonus points will still have benefitted more dkpwise.

I like the idea that players would consider new content and the wiping time as the time to work and "earn your pay" and the time when an instance first goes on farm status as the "time to cash in," spend your points, and upgrade yourself for the next instance to come.

Why not a % cost for items? You've just broken the "items cost the same no matter who gets them when" aspect of things, which is generally a positive. It also opens the door to some interesting collusion tactics if you don't seperate cross-class and in-class DKP: imagine a class decides that whoever is *lowest* in current DKP will be awarded a class drop, in order to minimize how much DKP is spent on set items, and passes down to the lowest DKP need (or lowest DKP needing in the collusion, if you want to cut out new raiders). It's a bad idea to ever make it possible to spend less on an item by tactical bidding.

Your idea of having avatars in a guild that the players use seems quite appealing, for a PvE standpoint. The amount of time spent gearing up those characters (rep, keys, gear) would be highly efficient if people were willing. I'm sure if someone spent the time/money building up a true PvE end-game raiding guild with 40 or so characters, there would be people that would fill those character's shoes; If a person's goal were first and formost to defeat content as soon as it came out, that type of guild would fit them quite nicely I must say. I sure as hell had fun with the premade characters on the test realm, for example. To a lesser extent though, I'm sure guilds have people that play other player's characters when they need a certain class. I guess you just have to find the right group of people that you can trust, and although it's not as extreme as your idea it could come quite close to it.

If you're concerned about inflation but don't want to use something like zero-sum (I personally don't care for giving out points strictly based on loot drops), you can do something like our system -- constrain bids. You're allowed to make a small bid (10 points, roughly two raids worth of points), or half of your current point total. It's naturally anti-inflationary because the more points someone has, the more they pay for items.

Hardly a big deal, but you don't have european servers on the list. (Also comedy first post since I finally decided to stop lurking. Remember me from lineage?)

i'm currently trying to wrk out a dkp system for my guild on Ravenholdt, and having been under most systems going have decided to try out a zero-sum system of sorts. But when i mentioned ideas of dkp caps for certain instances, i was gently reminded that stopping people from earning dkp in MC will not make them want to run MC. That and the idea that zero sum has no 'incentives'. So i'm currently trying to work out the maths for a 'ghost' 41st raid member.

Let's say for example that as raid leader you want to give everyoe in the raid a 5 dkp bonus for all 40 being on time for a raid. Easy to do in a bidding system although it does cause inflation, harder in zero-sum (at least by my understanding of the two systems :(). This would immediately put the system at -200 rather than 0.

However, what if you count the on time bonus as a drop? Two ways of fitting this in are to either charge the latercomers the DKP as if they had bought the item split between all the latecomers, or to use a ghost member to 'absorb' the negative dkp.

So, all 40 raiders are on time, and recieve 5 dkp each as a bonus.

41*5 = 205.

40 raiders recieve 5 DKP bonus each.

Ghost is -200 (-205 for the 'item', +5 for being there)


To do this incentive where say 30 are ready when i execute /raready, and 10 are afk walking their dog/cooking pizza/in the sauna (the sauna one actually happened once before a Vael pull...), bonus again being 5 DKP

40*5 = 200

200/10 = 20

30 people recieve +5DKP
10 people go -15 DKp (-20 dkp for 'item' being split between 10 people, +5 for earning the item whilst being in the raid)

Sum stays at 0.


This acts as an incentive because, in my system, where like EJ i am thinking of using Dungeon DKP barriers, the ontime/ready bonuses could always be earned no matter the cap, and it stops people from going afk as the times for these bonuses could be random, at the discretion of the raidleader.


the inflation suggested here is an interesting one but i don't know how it acts as an incetive if like EJ/TRC you cap how much DKP can be earned from certain dungeons.


edit: J2*C....Ye Olde Goone Squade....

You play on Venture Co. EU, RP-PvP like my good self *smiles*

Having ghost members doesn't make it not inflative, unless you do something like distribute the ghost's dkp to the guild periodically.

Last MC I was on we had a lot of people who gained zero JP from the clear, and had no gear they needed either. Maybe people should focus less on increasing their epenis and more on having fun?

Besides, by the time people get capped in MC, and by the time you have attendance problems for the zone, most of your guild will have gotten what they wanted anyways, I'd imagine.

Exactly. Plus, your guild members should be willing to help their friends who have helped them gear up, or just help them without any incentive at all. Of course, only to a certain extent. It is MC after all. ;)

Wouldn't this particular collusion tactic be a bad idea? Especially if you are the guy with the highest amount of DKP?

For example, say 3 members of a class are present and the very first piece of T3 loot drops for them.
A has 100 points
B has 80 points
C has 50 points.

Say said upgrade costs 10% (makes math easier). So C could get it for 5 points.

Next raid, say the same upgrade drops, and each of them has earned 20 DKP in the space in between.
A has 120 points
B has 100 points.
C has 65 points.

And the collusion allows B to take it for 10 points.

Now repeat for the next time the item drops...
A has 140 points.
B has 110.
C has 85.

Now A picks it up for 14 points.

What if they had gone in DKP order and how would that have compared?
A could have gotten it for 10, but instead spent 14. So he spent the most AND got the item last.

B remains unchanged, he's in the middle either direction it goes.

C paid 5 for his piece, got it first, but really should have been charged 9 points, so he saved points.

The general idea here is that if you are on top of the DKP charts and opt not to take an item, it will likely you cost you more DKP to acquire it in the future. If anything, a % based system can discourage people to horde points, as the value of those points will allow one to get priority on an item, but have to pay more DKP for everything until falling back in line with other raiders' DKP.

It's an extension of in-class collusion strategies from bidded systems - the goal is to spend as little as possible, always - price is largely determined by number of people who want the item. So, in-class items will nearly always cost less than cross-class items. If you minimize your spending on in-class items, you then have more points to spend on cross-class items.

Essentially, you feed your classmates items that the colluders are the only option to receive in order that when the colluding group runs up against non-colluders, they have more points to compete with.

<compleletly off topic>
/wave (who the hell are you?)

(and hi Urumi, send Smarf a /slap from me. No particular reason, just want to pick on him from as many angles as possible :P )
</completely off topic>

Err, more on-topic, we've been fairly happy with a fairly standard zero-sum dkp system (originally fairly closely modelled on the EJ system, although it's diverged off in different directions after practical experience since i first wrote it up - the biggest of which being the splitting of it into multiple systems for mc and bwl, and a planned one for aq40). As far as incentives go, we use invite pressure, since we have a relatively large roster, although we recently have introduced late penalties, just because we have some utter slackers in the guild who have repeatedly made our start times creep backwards.

We do the opposite of this - latecomers/no-shows are charged 15dkp each, which is split between all the people who did show up on time, and the reserves to stepped in to fill the empty slots.

My guild has been using a bidding system, so issues of collusion are certainly present. Actually, we have issues of some people bidding against certain people, but not others, which has been causing quite a bit of tension (run certain people up via bids, won't bid against others, same item). The system definitely inflates, but at the same time certain people get gouged on items while others get them for dirt cheap.

I'm not entirely convinced that such a collusion would be a "good move" given that if someone doesn't spend their points on an item early, it will cost them more points later. In other words, sure, one can "save up points" for whatever item one wants, but at a certain point, all that saving is just going to cost that player more points per item, when he could have acquired said items earlier and cheaper.

I've definitely seen collusion in a bidding system, that is pretty easy to recognize, but doing it effectively in a % system would seem to much harder to figure out, the benefits are less clear here than with bidding.

It's the same problem as in suicide kings, actually; "rare" items or in-demand items become more expensive as time goes on (either in a bidded/value sense, or in the sense of positional requirement for SK) while "common" or less demanded items become cheaper and cheaper. Since it's a variable-price system with positional priority, it's got a lot in common with SK.

Essentially, you drive down the price on intraclass items in order to preserve your priority on interclass items. Yes, you will pay more for interclass items - but you would have paid more for them anyway. As time goes on, they get more expensive, so your goal is to get them as early as possible, then bottomfeed the intraclass items that get cheaper as time goes on. The collusion tactic I described supports that.