theres 2 ways to approach this
Work = time spent
or
Work = % the raid got upgraded by

Boss kill systems simply reward for the time spent (or the amount of bosses killed)
Simply put, if you do your job and the boss goes down, you get your points regardless of the impact on your group

Zero sum reward people for progression
cool we killed this boss, did someone get an upgrade? yes, ok, good work guys, heres some points
what? noone gets better from killing this boss? then you dont get points either, i'm not paying you for something that doesnt benefit our raid

So why is a boss kill system wrong?
Its a linear point gain while your raid progression is not linear, at a certain point it curves out

zero sum follows that curve so the points you gain keep reflecting how much it benefits the raid group

personally i feel much better getting 2 points for rag if that means someone got his T2 pants than i'd feel if everything got disenchanted and we got another bunch of nexus shards


yes this inherently means that some people, in the very short term could get lucky and be in a raid that drops 'phat lewtz' and thus gain more points, but thats cool since that means our raid group got upgraded alot, which means we can move on to harder bosses and from a progression point of view thats great
boss kill systems put the emphasis on the player 'hey i want my 2 points for killing this boss!!!', zero-sum put its on the raid 'great job guys, heres 2 points for making us better'

One of the traditional criticism of Zero Sum DKP is that it does not reward 'wipes', but rather farm status. This incentivizes waiting until content is learned, and then showing up for farm status content. While there are other administrative solutions to that (i.e. raid slot awarding), it would be nice to have it all in one quantitative system, i.e. DKP.

Incentivizing Learning
The traditional solution has been learning points, where each wipe gives 1 point. You might cap it at 5 points a night. Two problems, A) they inflate the zero sum system. B) They are a perverse incentive to not succeed. I.e. its more effecient to show up, get your wipes in, or keep wiping. A night of 12 wipes could be more rewarding than a boss kill.

Incentivize First Kills
I think what you really want to reward is the goal everybody wants, the first boss kill. The first kill is far more valuable to a guild than the 2nd or 3rd kill. Make the first kill award double or triple points. Players still pay the normal cost, but you create an "Inflation" character in your EqDKP system who buys the rest. This is to keep the system at a net zero sum. However, those points are really just a subtle form of inflation, which needs to be removed.

Removing Inflation
After the first kill, you start taxing the rewards earned until the sytem returns to a zero sum. Drops on 2nd and subsequent kills would still cost players the same amount, but you tax what players earn. Something like 25-50% of the earning would go to pay down the inflation.

Example
Normal Instructor Raviunous Kill - 100 DKP
First Kill - 200 DKP awarded to players (5 pt each), -100 DKP to "Inflation" account
2nd-5th Kills - 75 DKP awarded to players (1.8 pt each), +25 DKP to "Inflation"

You could play with detail here (i.e. 200/300% for first kill, -25-50% off subsequent), but the general principle is the same.

What do you guys think? Good idea?

i'd make sure i'm there for the first kill and miss at least the next 2 :p

Technically, there is an incentive for that, but I think the desire to spend your DKP on the drops from the boss would outweight that. With a 25% tax, i don't think the DKP penalty would be large enough to notice.

Until a few weeks ago, I had 3/8 Transcendence, with 4 8/8 Trans people in the guild. If I hadn't spent signficant dkp on non-healing items, I would have been able to have looted the first drop of every healing item we've seen in AQ40. To the best of my knowledge, we've never disenchanted a priest set drop, and I had a very good reason for passing: I don't consider the trans pieces an upgrade over the non-trans items I use (I'm now at 7/8 and still using the same 3 for fights where 5/8 isn't useful).

Prior to the changes, a mage joining a guild starting on BWL could easily justify passing on T1, as most of the pieces weren't upgrades.

For the NR situation, I was mostly talking about what happened before AQ came out. When it was first mentioned that NR would be useful in AQ, there are some who immediatly started farming NR. A lot more waited until the guild decided to start farming NR, and those are the ones that often got the epic NR pieces.

Picking up non-set pieces that are just as good as transcendence is obviously a GOOD reason to pass on your T2, why would anyone be mad about that? Passing on clear upgrades to get priority on certain items however is frowned upon and thats what i mentioned in my post

not much you can do about that, i mean yes, its cool those people immediately went and farmed NR but you can't blame the others for waiting for the guild. It would be a different story if everyone in the guild was putting in some effort and you had a few slackers. You can punish those, but its really hard to reward early birds.
One thing, those that got green dragon NR gear paid DKP right? so i guess in one way the maraudon crew might have gotten inferior gear but at least they got it for free :p

That really does not make sense though. If you miss the next 2 you are probably missing the bosses before that. Since those bosses are very close to your most recent new boss kill, those items are still going for significant points. So lets say you gain 4 from the first kill. You miss the next day they attempt that boss and miss at least 4 from the drop from the boss and the drop from the previous boss before that.