[Satrina]

I've always failed to see why people see "inflation" as a flaw of a point system. All a point system is, like any other loot distribution method, is a means to give some method to the order that loot is awarded. Nothing more. Having lots of points is just an indicator that you're in line for loot when it drops. As a new member of a guild, sure it can be disheartening to see someone with a hundred or a thousand more points than you. They only need one of the drop, too. You'll get yours in the order that your loot distribution method prescribes.

Which brings you to hoarding, a common argument. The solution is simple - if people are hoarding points, you aren't awarding enough of them. The number of points you award is just as arbitrary as how many points an item costs. The absolute number of points for anything is as meaningless as it is arbitrary. Work in one point increments for all it matters, you'll still have the same relative order that loot is awarded in.

The only possible flaw currently in using points is tailored items. All it means is that your tailors who patiently waited for everyone else to get geared as well as they are will get first crack at actual upgrades. Is that so bad? Nope.

[Anansi™]

It would really depend on what content you are doing. If the majority of the guild is seeing inflated DKP then I would imagine people are needing less or are stacking DKP for that one item to just blow out bidding, but I would imagine it would more likely be the first issue. Farming same content long enough and you will eventually see inflated DKP or if you are just unlucky with drops.

[Lilie]

I'm still pretty new to understanding loot systems and am currently trying to find on that fits a new start-up guild. I would love to learn more about the silent bid system and how it is implemented, technically. How many points do you award for the various raid events (i.e. on-time, 1st hour, 2nd hour, farming requests, bosses downed)? What is a good guide to setting the minimum bids you speak of for loot in the various raid zones? I'm sure it varies depending on how your system is running, but if you guys know of a good starting place that would be excellent.

One question I did have was whether this system still incorporates the zero-sum idea of splitting the "value" of dropped items into DKP spread across the raid members who did not receive that item. I'm a little confused as to how this works. Also, what would be the guildlines on bidding for an item if you did not have enough DKP? I've read of systems that allow you to dip into negative points but when do you make that call that that particular allowance is inappropriate?

Cider- If I understand your system correctly, there is no loot priority considered for tanks or healers or members vs. guests?

[Lavache]

Source: Lilie I'm still pretty new to understanding loot systems and am currently trying to find on that fits a new start-up guild. I would love to learn more about the silent bid system and how it is implemented, technically. How many points do you award for the various raid events (i.e. on-time, 1st hour, 2nd hour, farming requests, bosses downed)? What is a good guide to setting the minimum bids you speak of for loot in the various raid zones? I'm sure it varies depending on how your system is running, but if you guys know of a good starting place that would be excellent. One question I did have was whether this system still incorporates the zero-sum idea of splitting the "value" of dropped items into DKP spread across the raid members who did not receive that item. I'm a little confused as to how this works. Also, what would be the guildlines on bidding for an item if you did not have enough DKP? I've read of systems that allow you to dip into negative points but when do you make that call that that particular allowance is inappropriate?

we are using a slightly modified version of cider's DKP and have been for a few months now. i really havent noticed any issues with it and frankly really like how its worked out. big items generally go for 75-150 DKP which balances out people that may not have seen a drop in a few weeks. generally i dont let people go negative unless they are the only person bidding on the item - and then i would rather someone get an upgrade than add another shard to the bank.

DKP for turning in bank items: Maximum of 10 dkp / week for turn ins primal fire / water / life (hydross gear) elementium / felsteel (have loads of fel iron already) 1 dkp per primal potions / potion mats / flasks needed for raiding (mana, health, agility, ironskin etc) 1 dkp per stack we currently are in need of more fire than anything else. i currently have enough motes to make 1 full set of each resist set. Raiding: 5 dkp for being on time at the zone 1 dkp per farm boss 10 dkp per new boss (1st kill) 5 dkp new boss (kills 2-4) 1 dkp per 30 minutes (progression content) 1 dkp per 60 minutes (farm content) 5 dkp for staying the duration of the raid Karazhan receives no DKP bonuses or rewards. Equal values for being on wait list (WL) & outside the zone & ready to go Bidding: Karazhan (tier 4 tokens) - 10 dkp minimum bid Gruul / Magtheridon - 10 dkp minimum bid SSC / The Eye - 20 dkp minimum bid Hyjal / Black Temple - TBD 1) Single bid, silent bid. Minimum bid depending on zone. Bid what you are willing to pay for the drop

the above is taken directly from our guild site and i believe outlines everything pretty well. generally if something is going for the minimum value its because there is only one person bidding or someone with little to no dkp. as far as im concerned if you are in the raid and have earned the DKP its yours to spend - recruit, raid member or officer. there have been rare occasions when we have had to bring people in due to shortages and we generally are upfront with them and say - we use dkp, anything that is not picked up with DKP will go to an open roll for guests, if they dont want it then its sharded. frequently these people are in guilds that arent as far along and they are happy to see new content and new ways of doing things.

[Lilie]

Thanks Lavache. Since we would be new to initiating a DKP system, how would you suggest kicking it off? Would those initial drops just be minimum bids? I'm curious how to actually get this thing going.

[Centx]

We started everyone off at the highest minimum bid, that way everyone would have enough points to take any 1 item that dropped without going into the negatives.

[nethervoid]

Inflation is only a problem if the item prices are a set amount. If it's a bid system, it doesn't matter because as the relative DKP/player goes up, so do bid amounts. What does suck in a non-bid, non-zero system, if you have too much inflation you get a handful of people getting every drop whenever they want. That's not a big deal if they are your core membership, but what can happen is you get new people who are the new core as older people start to show up less often (burnout - boredom), but since the older group have a big pile of DKP, they can still show up half as much as new people, and get the drops for long periods of time.

I've had this happen. I was in a guild and had 100% attendance for three months, but still was last on the list for drops, even though others had about 50-66% attendance during that time. I seriously got zero loot for three months. No upgrades. And we were almost done with the content at that point, about ready to move on, which means I was two zones of gear behind on progression nights.

This is because there was WAY too much DKP being passed out on every raid, raids which had little loot drop, and even on raids where all loot was rotting. So the core had a mound of DKP saved when we hit areas that were dropping upgrades (upgrades over what you could buy on the auction house), and so nobody who came into the guild even three months or even more back could get anything for a couple to three months after we hit content dropping stuff people actually wanted. Shortly after that the guild disbanded. Yay. All that time raiding, and I was no better off, gear-wise.

You must balance how much DKP your giving and the cost your charging per item. If you give out 150 DKP per raid, let's say, and 6 items are dropping per boss, each worth 150 ea, yeah you've got a problem. Hell if that was the case for me as a core raider, I would loot stuff just to shard it and keep the shard. I could almost get a piece every other raid just to DE, and still stay on top of the pile. If it was a bid system, there's no way I could do that because prices would fluctuate based on the availability of DKP, just like a normal monetary system. In the fixed price system, if I've got like 8000 DKP saved up from other raids, it's going to take a new member like 6 months to catch up to me.

So you either use zero sum, OR you use a bid system. To me those are the two easiest and fairest ways (I prefer the bid system). Anything else just seems like it would leave room for problems. The key to DKP is you can only fix ONE side of the DKP equation. If you fix loot costs, you then give out DKP based on the DKP spent that evening, which becomes a variable (zero-sum), or you can just fix raid 'payments' and leave value of loot variable (bid system). As soon as you fix both loot cost and raid payments, you're screwed.

*edit - I mean 6 items per raid. You're giving out 4x the DKP your members are spending.

[Otopa]

Other method of curbing hoarding/inflation is to split DKP. One DKP pool for T4 zone, another DKP pool for T5 zone, T6, mebbe DKP pool for ZA, etc etc etc. Splitting is actually a hidden DKP "reset" - once you progress into new area, everyone starts with zero points.

[lorelye]

my 2 cents...

Karazan: If you are a Karazan guild, you need a loot system for it. If you are a 25man raid guild, you do not need loot systems for 10-mans anymore and can treat these just like any other instance.

Loot Council: Hurts recruiting. Veteran WoW players have all sat through an unfair "loot council" and are not going to join your guild if you use it. Maybe you're a very fair guy, but they have no way to know that prior to having spent months with you. It will kill your progression because you eliminated half of the better recruits you might have gotten.

DKP: Is for hardcore guilds only. The reason is that it is a subtraction based system & heavily weighted towards high attendance. The new guy will not win any "contested" items for a very long time, and almost every item will go to the guys with 100% attendance. It should only be used in guilds with required attendance. Otherwise you're going to have high turnover among the part-timers, who will quickly discover they cannot win anything.

EPGP: For use by hybrid guilds in 25man content. This is a division-based system, which allows new members & part-time raiders to establish some priority, based on the hours they've spent. A raider who raids twice as often, will win exactly twice as often (unlike DKP where he will always win). If a new guy comes to all the raids for a week or two, or a veteran comes to half the raids every week, they can win, based exactly on the number of hours they've spent. To avoid mathematical issues, it must be set up right, see my post: Which numbers to use, anaylsis - epgp-discuss | Google Groups

Roll based systems: I don't like it, because too much is based on luck, rather than commitment. What if your best healer happens to be an unlucky roller? I had to leave a guild over this once. I lost 8 epics to the same guy, then got harassed because his DPS was higher. Yeah fun.

I don't know about zero sum, but it strikes me as a method of trying to turn DKP into a system that is workable in a hybrid guild, and rather not likely to work. Could be wrong <shrug>.

It is definitely worth spending some hours to run mathematical simulations of how your loot system is actually going to work out. Make sure your loot system matches the type of guild you have.

Quote Ciderhelm: "Loot distribution is not about fairness; it is about incentive."
My thought is that, for many players, fairness is the incentive. Same thing. If they know the system is fair, they'll show up. If it's not, they won't.



Oh PS - Otopa, if you split based on t5 vs t6 content, then you will kill the guy who sat through all your t5 content even though he didn't need a thing from there. Your best geared players, who spent too much time running the others through the content, will lose all their points? Ouch.

[minrog]

I don't think I could go back to a DKP or Officer (loot council) decided system. Using loot as an "incentive" or having it be some deal where the same 5 guys get all the loot because they obviously deserve it more than the other 20 doesn't fly.

Zero sum DKP is terrible for a lot of reasons. My biggest gripe is the 80 item lead these guys build up, they drop down to casual and have the ability to keep gear priority until the next XPAC comes out. Terrible. Not to mention if something is a sidegrade or a .02% upgrade nobody is willing to bid on it and you're losing maximum raid effectiveness.

We switched to a modified system sort of like the Ni Karma/Suicide Kings method and it's been wonderful. Our loot takes about 20 seconds per item to distribute and you get about a 3 item memory on your bids so some loser who took the guild through kara doesn't get all your BT drops 8 months later. :P

[Evelaula]

Interesting discussion, reminds me of why me and most the officers/good members left the 'hardcore' raiding style of our previous guild.

DKP was an endless argument. Especcially with new instances and people switching mains. Do you allow dkp transferes? Do new instances run off the same dkp system? Should expemplary attendance in the last teir allow extra rewards in the next teir?

People would flat out not bid on upgrades because they wanted the big sword of the big dagger. We'd end up de'ing good quality gear and the raid inevitably suffers, as gear upgrades arent taken.

Progression slows people get emo over loot. Bitching and moaning, officer forums spent more time debating 'fairer' loot systems than concentrating on getting the guild to progress. And as the raid leader it was just a hassle, i wanted to raid content not deal with why X thought Y getting Z was unfair.

The guild we made, only runs kara and za as a choice, and everything is jsut over vent 'Oi XXXX you want that shield?' etc. So easy and drama free.

I guess then the end comment is that the loot system used, and how smoothly it runs, are totally dependant on the guild culture and the people who make up the guild.

-eve

[Sangi]

We are a casual raiding guild with about 3 nights a week and 10 hours over those nights. We have been using a Nikarma system with a few tweaks to it and it has been wonderful. For those that dont know NiKarma is a roll plus bonus system. When you win an item when using your bonus you lose half your karma. It tends to be a hybrid of DKP and SuicideKings. It also trends similarly to zero sum DKP systems.

We decided that we wanted a few things out of our loot system. First and foremost was that it was fair and deemed to be fair by every one that uses it. The other is that it rewards attendance but doesn't lock new people out from receiving items. The items had to goto the proper specs/roles. And finally we wanted to encourage people to take items and not horde their karma.

To determine who can get what loot we use the Khaliban's loot list at wow-loot. Its not perfect but its out there for every one to see before the raids. And it mechanizes the decisions on who can roll on what items (go go podcasts). With the Ace2 mod that adds the lists to the tool tips its amazingly easy to do these lookups.

The NiKarma mod tracks almost all of the nitty gritty details, except for the few changes we made to the system. We cap points at 200. The cap is easy to reach. At 10 points per boss and 5 for showing up and finsihing the raid 3-4 runs of SSC will get you there. Tier pieces always use your bonus and you lose half your karma. We use a new DB for every raid instance. This is to prevent people from coming to our farms and getting a lot of karma and not coming to the progression nights. It rewards the people who work the content.

It seems to be working well. Every one that has joined says that its fair and that they like it. And I haven't heard any complaints yet.

[Creampuf]

I was a guild officer in another game, in a fairly hard core raiding guild. The problem we ran into was that we allowed for casual gamers as members as well. We thought DKP would be a great way to "progress."

What we ended up doing was almost losing the guild, as the hard-core, 7-night a week gamers quickly left the rest of the guild behind in terms of gear. So we had two tiers of members, those ready to move on to higher and higher content, and those who were barely adequately geared for the content we were trying to leave.

Except we still needed those people to do the higher end raids. The upper-echelon could get so far ahead of the rest of the guild before, because of the sheer need for numbers, the casual gamers were "holding them back."

The more casual people (who also tended to be the most mature and stable members as they tended to be adults with real lives) realized that they were getting shafted as their contributions were not as valued as the hard-core players, and decided to start leaving.

The officers quickly tried to fix things by adding multipliers for people who declared up front a maximum raid attendance for a week . . . giving a bonus to people who played as much as their lives would allow, even if that was less than full-time. But it didn't work.

The guild fractured, with many of the lower geared people leaving for more causal raiding guilds with "fairer" systems of loot, and many of the higher geared people leaving for guilds set for higher content.

The lesson I took away from this was simple: progression isn't progression if it doesn't involve the whole guild (or at least all those members who raid during whatever their play-window is) moving forward together. DKP doesn't meet that goal simply because it prefers the 7-day a week, "what do you mean an MMO isn't a real life?" gamer over everyone else.

Guilds who want mature, balanced members who can only raid one or two nights a week need to think long and hard about what un-intended consequences their proposed system can bring to over-all guild balance and membership. Casual gamers, for example, rarely have a problem with being less-well geared than the hard-core guy. But they do have a problem with not being able to have an even chance at an upgrade on the raids they can attend.

[Krashtork]

I am suprised that no one has really jumped into talking about Suicide Kings.

I have recently left a guild that swore by SK. For those that don't know SK is basically a list based loot system. Basically, you write up catagories of loot, (I.E. Priest warrior druid T4, rogue shaman pally T4, Mallet of Tides, ect) and then have one main SK list for items that could go to a multitude of classes (I.E. Caster necklace that could go to warlocks, shadowpriests, mages, boomkins, and shamans). After the catagories are established you /roll for each person who fits into said catagory. In the last guild we had a priest warrior druid T4 token catagory for example. The GM /rolled for us and assigned our position on the list. I was rolled in as #2 spot. When the t4 shoulders dropped, the person above me had the option of passing, which left him on top of the list, or taking the item by "suiciding" and being put on the bottom of the list. Lets say he passed. In that case i would have the same options he had. Lets say i took it, well i drop down to the bottom of the list, and #3 becomes #2 and so on. #1 remains at the top.

I.E: Before the SK

1 - some guy
2 - me
3 - some other guy
4 - random chick who gets hit on a lot

I.E: After the SK
1 - some guy
2 - some other guy
3 - random chick who gets hit on a lot
4 - me

Of all the loot systems i've seen, I have found this to be the most fair. But it offers lousy incentive to raid if you're at the bottom of the list. After all, in the past example, random chick moved up in the SK list and wasn't even neccisarily in attendance. People would abuse this and not raid until they moved up high enough on the list.

Plus this system really gives and takes. It's fun being on top, but it sucks getting screwed out of loot without any option to take it.

We limited the ability for new people to get loot over new people by only putting comitted raiders on the SK list. Unfortunantly our GM's definition of "comitted raider" lacked.

The other major downside to Sk is that it does not reward people for work outside of raids. It also doesn't reward them for raiding if we don't kill anything.

I think SK is a great loot system for a casual guild, but for hardcore guilds it does not promote progression.

[Wulfhere]

That's not quite how SK works. If "random chick who gets hit on a lot" (RC) was not in attendance to that particular raid, the SK list should have looked like:

1.some guy
2.some other guy
3.me
4.RC

Let's say she was in attendance so that the list looked like this after you took loot

1.some guy
2.some other guy
3.RC
4.me

Now let's say next raid, RC does not attend but the other 3 do. Loot drops that "some guy" takes. SK list now looks like:

1.some other guy
2.me
3.RC
4.some guy

If you are not in attendance, you do not move up the list in SK. People can fall below you if there is someone below you who IS in the raid.

[Krashtork]

Wow...my GM was doing it wrong that whole time... /sigh

I thought there was something inherently wrong with the way she did SK.

Now that i think about it Wulfhere is correct.

[Corise]

In the course of reading this thread one thing that I noticed is that no one defined what fairness is. The Merriam-Webster dictionary has as a definition the following : 6 a: marked by impartiality and honesty : free from self-interest, prejudice, or favoritism <a very fair person to do business with>b (1) : conforming with the established rules.


I think the meaning to this when applied to is impartiality and also that a strong measure of consistency be in place. Sure, the original post mentioned that DKP is about incentive and not about fairness, but I strongly disagree. I feel that incentive can not exist unless fairness is in play. Would I raid regardless of my incentive if I knew people would unfairly receive items? No. A loot system must first be fair, and then provide incentive.


Consistency is key to fairness, and therefore must be key to incentive. Let me give a real example of where a lack of consistency will break down incentive. You down the Council in BT and they drop the plate DPS helm and Leggings of the Forgotten Protector (Warrior, Hunter, Shaman). There is only one DPS warrior in the raid and he has the highest DKP. However, if you place the Helm for bid first it will drop the warriors DKP below a hunter and that hunter will win the pants. But if you place the pants up for bid first, the DPS warrior will win them and the helm will go to the warrior as well by default.

So what do you do? Do what you have always done. For me I use a top down method. Whatever item is at the top of the loot box when I open it is the first to be up for bid. In the case of the Council I always open the bidding on each mob in the same order. Mage, Priest, Rogue and the the Paladin.

Now, I am not saying this is how all guilds should do loot. What I am saying is that whatever way you choose you will find that if you are consistent in the way you handle loot distribution every time then you will surely have less problems.


An argument can easily be made that consistency can be unfair. If you are consistent at giving all the items to yourself, then that would be unfair right? No, it would not. Fairness is an abstract idea that has a different meaning for different people. You can see this quite easily through the discussions on this very board, especially between the concepts of loot council vs DKP. If everyone in your guild believes that giving yourself all the items first is fair, then it is fair and also consistent.


So to conclude, I disagree with the idea that loot systems should not focus on fairness and instead should be about incentive, it must be both. Fairness is about impartial consistency and must be decided upon by the group that uses it. If many people see your system as fair they will join you on your endeavors, if they don't then you can have all the Hogger loot to yourself.

[Doc309]

fair would be everyone gets one. scarcity in the economic sense, makes this impossible. in economics the persons that's willing to pay more wins...

so what is fair...
i'll give a Kara level example. substitute whatever tier your working on

you're recruiting trying to step up to the next tier. you've been working here for weeks, wipe after wipe...

T4 helm drops who gets it? the tank that's been working for months with the guild, or the 3 week recruit?

both you hope will be there in GL/ML.
it's a bigger upgrade for the recruit.
the old tank has been working on this "forever"
you need both tanks geared.

really there is no fair...

we use ep/gp. for us it's the right balance of encouraging attendence of old and new players...

[giwsgib]

Source: Lavache there is a post in the guild relations forum on the WoW boards that covered a lot of that. we instated a modified version of the system Cider posted and it was very well received and so far has worked pretty well.

Can anyone direct me to this?

[Centx]

Source: Corise In the course of reading this thread one thing that I noticed is that no one defined what fairness is. The Merriam-Webster dictionary has as a definition the following : 6 a: marked by impartiality and honesty : free from self-interest, prejudice, or favoritism <a very fair person to do business with>b (1) : conforming with the established rules. I think the meaning to this when applied to is impartiality and also that a strong measure of consistency be in place. Sure, the original post mentioned that DKP is about incentive and not about fairness, but I strongly disagree. I feel that incentive can not exist unless fairness is in play. Would I raid regardless of my incentive if I knew people would unfairly receive items? No. A loot system must first be fair, and then provide incentive. Consistency is key to fairness, and therefore must be key to incentive. Let me give a real example of where a lack of consistency will break down incentive. You down the Council in BT and they drop the plate DPS helm and Leggings of the Forgotten Protector (Warrior, Hunter, Shaman). There is only one DPS warrior in the raid and he has the highest DKP. However, if you place the Helm for bid first it will drop the warriors DKP below a hunter and that hunter will win the pants. But if you place the pants up for bid first, the DPS warrior will win them and the helm will go to the warrior as well by default. So what do you do? Do what you have always done. For me I use a top down method. Whatever item is at the top of the loot box when I open it is the first to be up for bid. In the case of the Council I always open the bidding on each mob in the same order. Mage, Priest, Rogue and the the Paladin. Now, I am not saying this is how all guilds should do loot. What I am saying is that whatever way you choose you will find that if you are consistent in the way you handle loot distribution every time then you will surely have less problems. An argument can easily be made that consistency can be unfair. If you are consistent at giving all the items to yourself, then that would be unfair right? No, it would not. Fairness is an abstract idea that has a different meaning for different people. You can see this quite easily through the discussions on this very board, especially between the concepts of loot council vs DKP. If everyone in your guild believes that giving yourself all the items first is fair, then it is fair and also consistent. So to conclude, I disagree with the idea that loot systems should not focus on fairness and instead should be about incentive, it must be both. Fairness is about impartial consistency and must be decided upon by the group that uses it. If many people see your system as fair they will join you on your endeavors, if they don't then you can have all the Hogger loot to yourself.

I could agree with most of this, but fundamentally I feel that you are in conflict with yourself. You can't be fair and consistent, but consistency can be fair.

Look at it like this, you are a doctor and must decide on 1 person out of 5 to receive a heart transplant, each has some sort of touching story involved with their lives. How would you pick?

There is no fair here, who is to say who deserves something more than another, its all relative based on perception. But if you have set forth standards, and remain consistent in your standards there is no question of fairness, the decision has already been made for you.

It absolves you from responsibility over the decision, you didn't decide the rules did.

In the situation you outlined, the "fair" thing to do would be to give each one item, everyone gets something ya? But that would have been inconsistent and against the standards set forth, hence the standards/consistency being unfair.

The crux of this would be that being consistent can seem unfair at tims, but in the end maintaining that consistency is the only true way to be fair, the only true way to acheive the impartiality neccessary in dealing with loot systems for guilds.

The second you start catering loot, raid and/or guild management about fairness is the second you set your guild on a downward path to faiure. You need to set rules and standards in everything you do as a guild/raid and follow them regardless of how unfair it seems.