Basically self-explanatory. Lots of people have proposed pricing schemes that look like ilvl*slotmod*subjective. Except that by "ilvl," you don't really mean "ilvl," since it scales wrong; you're starting at 70 or so. What constant do you subtract from ilvl to give the most appropriate scaling? Has anyone discussed this so far?

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Also what's the latest wisdom on cross-class balance? Obviously, you want to try to balance things out so that the total amount spent by a class on their whole gear set, at a given tier, is equal. A simple "pay the difference" upgrade scheme means that correct pricing makes the class balance work out automatically. Problems usually run into:
1) Almost any way you do it, Warriors have more item slots than other people.
2) You want caster weapons to be a proportionally smaller amount of their total budget. A Mage's staff contributes a lot to his power, but it's simply a smaller piece of the pie for him than weapons are to Warriors or Rogues. Lowering the multiplier on caster weapon slots messes up cross-class balance though. Do you make caster armor worth more so the sum is the same? Do you just not bother making this distinction in the first place?
3) What about classes with clear multiple roles requiring different gear (like Druids)? I got into this in my last RP system thread:
http://forums.elitistjerks.com/viewtopic.php?id=6962
If you ignore the distinction and just let Feral gear and healing gear overlap for the same upgrade paths, why not solve Warrior weapons the same way (stop differentiating between tanking and DPS slots)? You're already abandoning the notion that your system will fully account for different roles.

I've thought about this a bit... not very detailed mind you, but was thinking something along the lines of:

5*(ilvl - 60) * slot mod* quality mod

Basically, with slot mod and quality mod defaulted to 1, you end up with tier one valued at 30, t2 at 80, etc. A jump of 10 ilvl's would be equivalent to 50 points.

Like I said, it was just an initial thought I had... no detailed analysis behind it, just sort of felt about right.

The Basin on thichondrius uses a system like that. It looked pretty solid when I first read it, but they seem to have changed a couple of things since then, and I don't have the time atm to read it all over again. Heres the wiki about it if you're interested.

They do not have special dkp numbers for hybrid classes though (they do have a weird thing about hunter weapons...),

Nurfed DKP already solved the problem by basing your initial scaling off the best non-points item available for that slot. Believe they refered to them as shadow items. So at the start of MC with ZG/AQ20 not in the game your shadow item for the main hand slot on a rogue is Barman Shanker or Dal'rends.

That system doesn't take into account the fact that each Ilvl is worth somewhat less than the last because of the exponential increase in stat cost as you raise each individual stat.

Sooner or later, Rogue loot's going to have spirit on it again, Hunter loot's going to have strength on it, etc.

Ilvl doesn't accurately predict "quality".

Which is why I'm planning on adding a subjective element, which will still be up for discussion in the guild as we see new items. So, instead:

5*(ilvl-60)*SlotMod*QualityMod*EfficiencyMod, where EfficiencyMod is a subjective measure of how well the item spends its budget, and might range from, say, 0.5 to 1.5, representing a spectrum ranging from, say, Black Brood Pauldrons to Doomhide Gauntlets.

that looks very similar to the formula i've been suggesting for my guild - though how are your qualitymod and efficencymod different? my formula was (ilevelvariable)(slotmod)(quality/demand mod). with the final variable accounting for the subjective measure of judgement

or do you mean quality like epic vs legendary?

In theory, yeah -- we'll see what they do with item quality in the expansion. That'd pretty much be a constant most of the time.

What about sockets and jewelcraft?

edit: I suppose a socket is just an attribute like any other, with a value that costs part of the traditional item budget. The complication of course is that the value of a socket increases as better gems are added to the game. While an ILvl 70 bp with 2 sockets may be inferior to an ILvl 75 bp at expansion release, with the discovery or addition of higher-quality gems the lvl 70 may actually have higher potential maximum stats.

Sorry for my brief OP, it's early.

This slot mod and quality mod, are they exisiting things, or something you're planning on writing yourself?

Also, you don't think that an automated pricing system based on stats would be a little more elegant? My inherent laziness commands me to come up with a pricing system that doesn't require eyeballing each new piece of loot to determine price.

No, they're the values from this thread: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...p=1#post143561

If you want something solely based on stats, Nurfed already does that. But the idea behind proposed formula is to give each item a base price reflecting the size of its stat budget, which is a specific and verifiable quantity, and then modifying that slightly based on how well that budget was spent.

The slot mods I'm still writing myself. I'm not sure they should be exactly equal to the known slot mods for stat distribution.

I think most people making a system like this are using it to find a range for each item. There's still some subjectivity in the pricing, but the idea is that it's grounded in something a bit more firm now.

Why wouldn't you use the known slot mods?

Obviously you would want to change the mods for weapons since they're more than just stats, but otherwise it seems fairly accurate as a guideline.

Oh, and also, another feature of our system I forgot, was probably going to have an additional modifier for class, such that all caster armor costs maybe 10% more than melee armor, but melee weapons cost significantly more than caster weapons. The aim is to keep a full suit of gear roughly the same cost across classes, while recognizing the relative value of certain slots to certain classes.

by 'melee armor' do you mean just warrior/rogue, or would you have classes that share the same token item for tier 3 paying different prices for it? (shaman/druid/hunter, for instance)

I think I would, though hunters are an interesting case. Unless mechanics change, hunter weapons are more like caster weapons than warrior/rogue weapons.

A problem we've had is that we started out by making all sets cost the same, and then we priced nonset loot relative to the benchmarks provided by set pieces. The problem is that warriors and rogues get a LOT more out of their weapons. An Ashkandi should absolutely be worth as much as two pieces of epic armor, because it easily gives a warrior that much extra damage potential. But is a Staff of Shadow Flame better than two pieces of epic caster armor? Surprisingly, no, it isn't. So we ended up pricing our melee weapons higher than caster weapons, because it seemed unfair to overcharge casters for their weapons arbitrarily. Then you add the fact that melee also need a second weapon, and a shield in the case of warriors, and suddenly you have a huge disparity between casters and melee. In my view, the solution to that is to spread the cost difference across the entire suit of armor.

Casters get more from their armor than melee. Something like the Eyestalk Waist Cord gives a mage more DPS than a warrior could possibly hope to get from a belt, for example. So that's what I'm at least pondering right now.