A DKP System 4 years in the making
PGN has been through a lot in the 4 years it's been together. Leadership changes, DKP changes, website, server, style; everything you can think of. One thing has remained constant; the way we approach loot distribution. The idea of a player getting an item he did not earn or work for over someone who did is completely unacceptable. I've seen every type of guild work in some sort of loot bias or bullshit from the best to the worst. We've had a lot of problems over the years, but loot has never been one of them. We've never reached a perfect medium between the backup and hardcore, but after 4 years I think it's safe to say we have.
When this DKP system was developing I was looking for a way to work in loot council's methodology while being able to give the raiders a physical entity to associate themselves with. This is loot councils major flaw and hinders recruitment quite a bit; which is perfectly understandable given how Blizzard has turned the population into players with purple fever.
The key elements of this system are as follows:
PGN DKP Bullet points
- Rewards the most consistent raiders as much as a loot council system would while also giving the more casual or less hardcore players a very solid chance at loot.
- Restricts loot bombs where a player can drop DKP on 3-4 items in a week which is notorious of a zero-sum or bidding dkp system.
- Allows players that are not in the raid to accumulate DKP to spend when they are in the raid.
- Item prices are perfectly scaled so that a DKP reset is not required to maintain a stable instance transition when new content is released.
- Weekly DKP updates instead of daily to decrease loot bombs and increase attendance on progression days.
The way the system works is as follows. As a new recruit your DKP will start at zero. Regardless of whether or not you get invites to raids you will gain the exact same amount of DKP as those inside of the raid. Once you finally do grab your invite, you will be able to spend it freely with minor restrictions. The restrictions are tied to the item reserves and raider establishments which I will explain further down.
Since this system is based off a zero-sum system, the DKP awarded is based off of the items that drop off bosses. There is a fairly complex algorithm to grab and scale the items as the ilevel of the items increase or decrease. This means that from instance to instance DKP spent and gained is going to be scaled exponentially. Each item is given a specific slot value because that is what Blizzard does when they distribute stats. A 2-hander's ilevel is going to be valued higher than a chest, thus receiving more stats per ilevel point. I have worked with an addon that will calculate the item price and value of every item in-game for you. It's in the "Related Links" side bar.
Item DKP Level Algorithm: 1.612397e-29 * (itemlevel ^ (13.36237))Example Items
- [Drape of Icy Intent] = 730.41 (Ulduar-Hard)
- [Cape of the Unworthy Wizard] = 345.94 (Ulduar-Normal/KT)
- [Cloak of the Shadowed Sun] = 156.75 (Naxxramas-Normal)
Item Values
- Head = 1
- Neck = .85
- Shoulder = .75
- Back = .75
- Chest = 1
- Wrist = .50
- Hand = .70
- Waist = .60
- Legs = 1
- Feet = .70
- Rings = .85
- Trinkets = 1.5
- 2 hand = 2
- Caster MH = 1.5
- C. off/sh = .50
- Phys W/Sh = 1
- Ranged = .50
The Weekly Update Theology
DKP is updated weekly for multiple reasons. Most crucially, to keep those who hoard DKP at bay giving newer players a chance at loot. It also allows the most hardcore players to miss the very rare raid without suffering a major DKP hit. As an example scenario assume you have 100% raid attendance and a major RL event comes up that you cannot avoid. You miss a raid where the guild kills 8+ bosses that all dropped very high ilevel items such as 2-handed weapons. In a standard zero-sum system all that DKP would be spread out to the players in the raid and distributed that night, thus putting the value on that day way over others. This is especially crucial when you compare progression days to farm days.
In a standard zero-sum or bidding system a Tuesday, which is the global farm day, would be infinitely more devastating to miss as compared to a progression day. My goal with this system was to devalue farm days as much as possible consequently increasing the value of progression days. So in a normal zero sum system the raid might gain 100DKP for each player in one day. Whereas in our system that 2500DKP (100*25 raiders) is added to the weekly pool and distributed at the end of the week. So missing that farm day isn't as big of a deal and promotes raiders to schedule those unavoidable days around progression not farm days because regardless of the day they have to miss their DKP at the end of the week will be near the same.
To further encourage members to pick a progression day over a farm day, all farmed DKP is rated at the end DKP/h for that week. Whereas progression DKP is the DKP/h for that week with another 25% added on. So instead of 40 DKP/h, a progression hour would be worth 50.
Every night I update the system with spent DKP. This means that for that entire week, anyone who bought an item is down that much DKP and can't recooperate until the next Tuesday when the DKP is added back in. This creates a failsafe against loot bombing, which is when a player buys a bunch of items in a single run only to be put right back to where they were in the list (abliet a little lower). I want guys to take items that are true upgrades for themselves and not waste DKP on side grades other players could be using as full upgrades.
DKP is calculated by the total raid hours of the guild divided by the total DKP earned for the week . From there, that value is multiplied by the amount of hours you raided that week. I'll use our latest Ulduar raid as a way of explaining way DKP/h is distributed. We only raided new content, so there was no farm DKP given, only progression.
Total DKP from item drops off bosses: 10250 (Total of all the items dropped for the week)
Total Progression Hours: 13 (How many hours the guild raided)
Total Progression Man Hours: 296 (Total hours of each member added)
Total Farmed Hours: 0
Total Farmed Man Hours: 0
Farmed DKP/h: 0
Progression DKP/h (+20%): 42 (10250 / 296)
Farmed DKP/h: 0 ( 0 / 0 )
540 Progression DKP awarded for raiding 13 hours (42 * 13)
499 Progression DKP awarded for 12 hours (42 * 12)
...
125 Progression DKP awarded for 3 hours (42 * 3 )
So as you can see, DKP is much more fairly distributed because it's distributed through hours raided instead of bosses killed. You can always track the way I update DKP by looking at the Excel document I use to calculate and distrubute DKP between everyone. It's located in the "Related Links" side bar.
Item Reserves
This is a system I've recently implemented. The goal behind it is to decrease DKP hoarding as much as possible and encourage spending. DKP hoarding is one of the bigger reasons a DKP system loses it's fidelity when put up against a loot council. A loot council will give loot to the player who is going to make the most use out of it, regardless of previous items they've received. A DKP system obviously is not like this so to keep in tune with the loot council theory on a DKP system I've implemented an item reserve system.
It works by allowing someone with high raid attendance, DKP and skill to reserve an item off a boss that has not dropped yet. So a raider can spend 150% of the normal DKP amount and have that item reserved for them the moment it drops. The reserve DKP is deducted at the time of the reserve, setting them back appropriately. A reserve is not permanent and can be revoked at any time.
If the reservee misses a noticeable more amount of raids the reserve will be stripped and only the DKP of the item will be given back, not the reserve cost of the bonus 50%. This keeps the raider active, if not more so, while the reserve is in effect.
If the reservee begins to play noticeably worse than normal the reserve will be stripped.
Those are the only two major factors when it comes to maintaining a reserve. The only limit to how many items you can reserve your DKP staying positive. Our system can go negative as it often does, but in order to place a reserve you must have a positive DKP number after the reserve is set. Going negative afterwards is perfectly acceptable.
The reservee may also opt to drop the reserve. This will give them back the item prices DKP, but not the bonus 50% for the reserve. This is to keep the number of reserves low and value high.
Off-spec Loot
Loot that is not needed by mains goes through a quick process. Everyone who wouldn't use the item as thier main spec rolls. Once everyone has rolled the Officers and I check the players who rolled, possibly choosing to assign the off-spec item based on how often they use thier secondary spec. For example, a tanking ring drops that no main spec needs goes to rolls. A Feral Druid who is specced Feral DPS and Feral Tank rolls against a combination of Paladins, Warriors and Death Knights who rarely tank. The priority on this roll would go to the Feral because he tanks more than the others.
Off spec items are free and add nothing to the DKP pool for the week. This means that if an entire boss's loot table is handed off to off-specs or disenchanted, the raid would have earned zero DKP for that boss. No DKP spent, no DKP is added to the weekly pool.
Raid Establishment
The idea behind raid establishment is simple. If a new recruit joins the guild and performs under-par but not terrible to the point where they are not invited often, they will have to establish themselves as a raider before being able to loot end-game items. So in a sense, final boss or hard mode loot. This isn't something to be overly concerned with because if you raid and play well enough this isn't a factor. But if you barely raid and end up accumulating a large DKP pool, you could potentially be denied an item that would provide the raid more benefit.
DKP Deductions
These are given purely on a as needed basis. 95% of deductions will simply deduct an hour's worth of DKP that week, the other 5% docking 2 hours. DKP docks can be from anything you can think of. Not showing up for raids on time constantly, coming unprepared, being obnoxious, being terrible, wiping the raid, etc. They aren't given out often, but when they are its stupidly obvious why.
Conclusion
Overall, this system I am happy with. This guild has tried every system from bidding to zero sum and all different methods in between. This one seems to nail every major advantage loot council has, while providing the benefit of being a transparent system that anyone can understand and read. It's improved our number of recruits and has completely shut down any chance at loot drama.
If you have any additional questions about this system, let me know and I'll update this post.
- Prestigal