DKP Policy Suggestions

Inori · Post by **Inori** » December 29th, 2008, 1:12 am

Since we are getting a fresh start in WotLK, now is the time to make adjustments to our DKP system (if any are needed at all). Please post your suggestions in this thread. If you are happy with the existing system, feel free to post that too. Thanks. -HP

Ofie · Post by **Ofie** » December 29th, 2008, 1:24 am

I'm kinda with Wadup and Koko. Tonight seemed to work fine. So much loot drops every time you go, that everyone would be super negative by the time anything got done, which could be detrimental if we moved into something where loot doesn't drop like that. Unless we started a golf-scoring system or something.

draven · Post by **draven** » December 29th, 2008, 1:37 am

i vote straight zero sum with no bonuses or minimum per boss. item values based on ilevel, perhaps adjusted by type.

Inori · Post by **Inori** » December 29th, 2008, 10:52 am

Ofie wrote I'm kinda with Wadup and Koko. Tonight seemed to work fine. So much loot drops every time you go, that everyone would be super negative by the time anything got done, which could be detrimental if we moved into something where loot doesn't drop like that. Unless we started a golf-scoring system or something.

Since Blizzard has nerfed the difficulty, I do see the merit in this. The question I'd like to pose is, when we were wiping in SSC/TK/Hyjal/BT, would people have been comfortable with open rolling on all loot? Note that: 1) Naxxramas last night is a bad example for raiding morale since everyone was in a good mood and had the feeling that "this is easy, we can do this every week". Would people be okay having wiped on an encounter on multiple nights and having the loot won by the new recruit who showed up on the last night? How about if it happened across multiple bosses (i.e., you always roll poorly)? Note that our zero-sum system does allow new recruits to get loot on the first night since they start off at zero and statistically, half the guild will be negative and half the guild will be positive, so they're comfortably in the middle, but the consistent raider who 'always rolls poorly' will be in the positive DKP range and has higher priority to loot.
2) Does having the 10 man option mitigate the above sentiment? Are people content being half a tier behind? Note that there are some premium trinkets and weapons in the 25-man dungeons that I think will be hotly contested (remember the DST?).
3) Will people stop showing up to raids or prepare/perform poorly if they never win any rolls?
4) Will people stop showing up to raids for bosses that don't drop anything they want (e.g., they win every roll)? It is untrue that everyone will be super negative by the time anything got done -- it is a zero sum system. The only way you end up super negative is if you acquire a disproportionate amount of loot. I propose that for Naxxramas, we maintain a zero-sum DKP system on the side, but not use it for actual loot assignment. This would allow us to see if open rolling achieves 'successful' loot distribution in terms of raid progression, morale, and perceived fairness. This will also allow us to have the infrastructure in place if Blizzard decides to kick the difficulty up a notch in Ulduar. -HP

WarmApplePie · Post by **WarmApplePie** » December 29th, 2008, 1:14 pm

Heroic raids (25mans) should use DKP. We need to set the foundation now, so that when they patch in more content we can transition to it smoothly. I think it would be too difficult to assign DKP to only certain items, like t7.5 tokens and the trinkets so we might as well do the whole place. One thing we do not want is a high raiding member turn over rate, with people coming and going in the guild. That can be detrimental to progression. DKP is a way to curb that.

Why are we trying to change the way we did it before? DKP worked well for us before, and we should stick to it. If you had a problem with the way it was done before then let's work out those kinks. One area that bothered me before was when someone was forced to take a slight upgrade or side grade for full DKP. It was even worse when they were the only option for the loot. So we were forcing someone to take an item that nobody wanted, and then charging them full DKP for it.

"How to Divide the Loot" is a topic that needs a lot of discussion. What I wrote here is only the tip of my iceberg. If I could organize my thoughts well enough I could go on for pages. I think DKP is needed in 25mans and is the best way for this guild to divvy loot. We're a very clique-ish guild. Loot council would not work here.

mahonri · Post by **mahonri** » December 29th, 2008, 5:16 pm

We have to have a DKP system for 25 man content and here is why: We have tried it and it doesn't work. And, that was back when I think the guild had a much more "at home family" feel then it does now. You will end up with pissed off people due to someone getting more then them. Sounds childish but when there is 3-4 hunters, 2-3 mages and warlocks, its gonna happen. 10 mans can get away with it because your form a bond with everyone in the raid so it doesn't become such a problem. In the 25 man there might be a few people you don't know as well, and that person will be talkin crap to me about you after the raid. It doesn't take much to start a revolt lol. People want things to be fair for their time and effort spent. A DKP system based on attendance is the only fair way to go. There are probably 100 pages of post about this debate in the officers forum. We looked at it from every angle, we researched with other big guilds on our server and off, and this is the only way. My .02 even though I really don't care. Kill bosses, eat cookies.

Tsuni · Post by **Tsuni** » December 29th, 2008, 5:24 pm

The big argument against using it in Naxx is the amount of loot that drops in a farmed Naxx. 50+ epics is going to make the dkp charts fluctuate radically. In the past, thanks to badge/pvp/crafted gear from the beginning we had a lot of people passing on stuff or taking things for off-spec. Looking back on our dkp item history, we'd have like 12 people getting gear on a really good night while many nights there more like 5-6 people getting loot while a lot of stuff got sharded. It made it easy to get a feel for your position in 'queue'. Compare that to last night where we had 15 people get upgrades with only 5 bosses killed. It shouldn't be too much harder for us to get 3.5-4 wings on farm pretty quickly. At that point we're going to have potentially 52 upgrades weekly before even touching saph and kael'thuzad. It's going to create a whirlwind of movement on dkp positioning. Which means dkp is going to have to be updated on the spot after every boss. Me and Inori could be potentially switching spots for priest gear multiple times in the same night. This wasn't as much of an issue in BC. The reason i'm hearing from the 'just roll on it' camp is at this point dkp will create a lot of slowdown at every boss and potientially a lot of drama as people get confused with all the posistion jumps each cleared boss/wing. Naxx25man epics outside of maybe Sap and KT will probably not seem that big a deal after a month or two of being on farm.

Having said that, one nice thing about dkp as a clothy is people might think harder about what they roll on. Thanks to Blizz's wisdom in making everything spellpower, competition for caster/healer items will be heated. I know I'll never roll on a hit item as a healer if a dps caster needs it, but whats to stop a caster rolling on a spirit heavy item cuase 'hey its better than that blue i got in heroic.' If we do stay on rolls, that's something that might need to be reinforced. Rolls for things itemized for your main spec. Then again the amount of epics dropping each week would probably mostly negate that anyway.

Personally, either way we go, I do think we'll need it for Ulduar. Naxx has a lot of pushover bosses thanks to it being entry level raiding and copying the boss format of the lvl 60 one. I'm going to assume they'll go back to having under 10 bosses that all need a night or two of learning. Having dkp for that format worked well for us in BC and should mostly be fine for Ulduar.

I'm not a big fan of loot council either. I personally haven't heard anyone argue for using that in Naxx. To reinforce, the people who I've talked to that don't want DKP think loot roll is fine just cause Naxx is a shower of epics.

Tsuni · Post by **Tsuni** » December 29th, 2008, 5:30 pm

mahonri wroteWe have to have a DKP system for 25 man content and here is why: We have tried it and it doesn't work. And, that was back when I think the guild had a much more "at home family" fell then it does now. You will end up with pissed off people due to someone getting more then them. Sounds childish but when there is 3-4 hunters, 2-3 mages and warlocks, its gonna happen. 10 mans can get away with it because your form a bond with everyone in the raid so it doesn't become such a problem. In the 25 man there might be a few people you don't know as well, and that person will be talkin crap to me about you after the raid. It doesn't take much to start a revolt lol. People want things to be fair for their time and effort spent. A DKP system based on attendance is the only fair way to go. There are probably 100 pages of post about this debate in the officers forum. We looked at it from every angle, we researched with other big guilds on our server and off, and this is the only way. My .02 even though I really don't care. Kill bosses, eat cookies.

I remember when we tried rolling in SSC. The one problem with this comparision is, It took us 3-4 weeks to kill lurker doing it one night a week, and we got 4 itesm to show for it. (One i believe was DE'ed) Compare that to yesterday, where our first time in we got 5 bosses down and 4 items on each boss. I don't know if there was a single night of raiding in BC where we had 20 upgrades all go out to diffferent people.

Ofie · Post by **Ofie** » December 29th, 2008, 5:31 pm

^This.

Wadup · Post by **Wadup** » December 29th, 2008, 5:36 pm

I dont know about the next raid content, but I have seen all the 25 man content there is in the game, and once we get it done we will be getting 70 epix a week. Thats close to 3 epix per person a week. Right now i feel we do not need DKP as far as determining who gets what item. I do feel we need some system though and I know Ofie was joking about his "Gold Scoring" distribution, but that is actually how the guild i was with originally did it. Someone got an item and so they got 1 point etc, so items were evenly distributed. Within 3 weeks everyone had all 25 man epix and offspec epix. I feel that Ulduar will need a dkp system in place since Blizzard isnt goign to put 15 bosses inside it, however for now, and with this tier of content, I feel just keeping track of what items people have gotten is the best way to distribute. No one can argue that even loot distribution in this sense is bad. Go go Golf Distribution!

Wadup · Post by **Wadup** » December 29th, 2008, 5:37 pm

Wadup wrote "Gold Scoring"

Meant tyo read "Golf Scoring"

WarmApplePie · Post by **WarmApplePie** » December 29th, 2008, 5:49 pm

I've been to Naxx 10 man 4 weeks now. Naxx 25man once. 10man OS twice. 25man OS once. 25man Wintergrasp twice. 10man wintergrasp 4 times. I've gotten 3 items on all of those, 2 of which were given to me because i'm the only one that could use it (one of those was not an upgrade and will be sharded and sent to gbank). I've lost probably 15-20 rolls in raids.. I've been to 170 badges worth of heroics, yet I've gotten only 1 puRplez. If it isn't from rep, badges, or crafted I probably dont got it. Blizz sh*ts on my rolling, DKP is more fair.

I'm sure I'm not the only one this happens to.

And regarding what Tsuni said about the slowdown at bosses, roger that. Slowdown = badnews. So we'd have to have someone besides the master looter be running the spreadsheet and just stay alt tabbed and make the changes while someone else monitors the rolls and distributes the loot. Or something like that. And who is going to do that now that Akuma is gone?

Ofie · Post by **Ofie** » December 29th, 2008, 6:01 pm

Wadup wrote I do feel we need some system though and I know Ofie was joking about his "Gold Scoring" distribution, but that is actually how the guild i was with originally did it. Someone got an item and so they got 1 point etc, so items were evenly distributed. Within 3 weeks everyone had all 25 man epix and offspec epix.

I was only half joking, mostly because I know there's several people who would not go for it. And Libi, the whole point of this is that there are so many epics in such a short time that every person will have stuff within a few runs, so you won't be going to runs for half a year with nothing. Lots and lots of epics.

Kokorobaasan · Post by **Kokorobaasan** » December 29th, 2008, 6:21 pm

I'm with Wadup/Tsuni/Ofie. With so many epics dropping, we don't need dkp. In a few weeks, everyone's going to have half their gear be Naxx epics anyways. Imo, I think if we just have each person only get one item per Naxx clear, until everyone's gotten one, then the loot would be distributed evenly. After everyone's gotten an item, then it starts over and you can start rolling again. Rinse, repeat. Even if we had dkp, a person would probably only get one item anyways until everyone got a piece. Dkp would just be way too slow and confusing with so many bosses being downed and so many items being distributed. But also as Tsuni said, some caster items are healer items but dps will roll anyways since it's techinically an upgrade for them. There should be some loot restriction in place for caster gear, and before rolls start it should be stated if the item is for healers, dps, or both (just looking at the stats should make that obvious).

Ofie · Post by **Ofie** » December 29th, 2008, 6:31 pm

Yeah, it shouldn't necesarrily be loot council, but it should be common-sense based. I have a decent amount of faith in most in the guild to do the right thing in regards to passing to the appropriate person in the right situations.

Svene · Post by **Svene** » December 29th, 2008, 6:48 pm

Ok, so i know i havent been back in the guild for that long, but i have been in a few others who used all different kinds of loot distribution systems and so heres my input. I believe DKP tends to be the fairest way to do loot and the reason for that is COMPLETELY based on problems people previously stated. People come in as regular (core) raiders who get low rolls and so someone who comes very rarely gets a higher roll, thus winning the loot. After having this happen multiple times the more veteran raiders stop showing up because all the time and effort they are putting into the progression is going unadhered and they are left unrewarded while the person or people who come once or twice per month are getting the upgrades based on chance. Yes, rolling can seem fair in some instance, such as running a pug where everyone is equal in their contribution. For example, i was in the guild Covent of Destruction for a while. I was the Main pally tank in the guild at the time so i had my choice at most loots during that time. We had a new pally tank come into the guild since i had just recently started going back to school and was at times unable to attend and we couldnt have raiding stop because of my IRL. He and i pretty much evened out in terms of DKP and i was getting some, he was getting some. He took a break for a while from the game and when he came back after several weeks of not raiding, he won a few pieces of loot on a roll chance we had set up since the expansion was coming out soon anyway and i lost loot to him although i was helping firmly push progression into BT and helped us finish it, all of which this person was not present for. Is it fair that he won a large upgrade (piece of tier) over me when he decided to take a break? Thus why DKP was invented in the first place. this system rewards merit, attendance and contribution for a guild setting where progression is needed and eminent. Sorry, theres my 2 cents. enjoy reading it!

Tsuni · Post by **Tsuni** » December 29th, 2008, 7:02 pm

WarmApplePie wroteAnd regarding what Tsuni said about the slowdown at bosses, roger that. Slowdown = badnews. So we'd have to have someone besides the master looter be running the spreadsheet and just stay alt tabbed and make the changes while someone else monitors the rolls and distributes the loot. Or something like that. And who is going to do that now that Akuma is gone?

This is what it really comes down to if we do DKP for Naxx. Theres going to be a lot of movement and posistion change and one of the officers is going to have to be constantly updating the dkp site so everyone can see whats going on. The guild as a whole will need to be understanding about how chaotic the dkp positions will be. I made a lot of the same arguments for DKP when the guild was talking about what to do after rolling didn't seem like it'd work out in SSC. I'm just trying to think about what issues we'll see when there's that much craziness going on to the charts, that aspect seems to be getting ignored. For example: people start realizing there gear is only a 15 ilvl upgrade from there naxx/badge gear. Things start getting DE'ed or going for off-spec while people save up for the leet items found in Malygos. (This already was happening at times in BC) OR people start feeling forced to take things that arent much better when they would rather have dkp for specific items/tier pieces. If it's true and Naxx25 epics start seeming not that epic we might see what happened when DKP was briefly introduced to Gruul's Lair. Noone wanted to take anything. (DST aside)

That actually brings about another thing i was wondering. We didn't seperate our DKP at all for any of the raiding instances in BC. Would Sarth/Naxx25/Malygos all be the same DKP too? And in the long term, would we reset for Ulduar? (Had to do this for BWL in my old guild becasue it was so much harder than MC people were going to MC to pop-up there dkp then disappearing from BWL untill things were killed)

I'm not entierly against keeping DKP in Naxx. My two biggest concerns are:

Will it be more of a hinderance than a benefit?
Will it lead to sharding 'lesser' upgrades cause people fear missing out on the goodies?

Ofie · Post by **Ofie** » December 29th, 2008, 7:05 pm

This is why DKP worked adequately for stuff like BT, SSC, and TK. But for Naxx25, it'd just be meh.

Kokorobaasan · Post by **Kokorobaasan** » December 29th, 2008, 7:17 pm

Svene wrote Ok, so i know i havent been back in the guild for that long, but i have been in a few others who used all different kinds of loot distribution systems and so heres my input. I believe DKP tends to be the fairest way to do loot and the reason for that is COMPLETELY based on problems people previously stated. People come in as regular (core) raiders who get low rolls and so someone who comes very rarely gets a higher roll, thus winning the loot. After having this happen multiple times the more veteran raiders stop showing up because all the time and effort they are putting into the progression is going unadhered and they are left unrewarded while the person or people who come once or twice per month are getting the upgrades based on chance. Yes, rolling can seem fair in some instance, such as running a pug where everyone is equal in their contribution.

That would be a concern, if there weren't 50+ epics dropping in Naxx. It'll be really hard for someone to not get something if we restrict it to one item per Naxx clear, until everyone gets something. And it's not like we're spending nights to down one boss; we killed five bosses last night our first time in there. These are easy epics to come across, and just because it's 25-man doesn't mean we -have- to have dkp for it. I would consider it to be on the same level as Karazhan, and nobody used dkp for that. After a few weeks of clearning Naxx we're probably going to start DEing things, so why go about the hassle of dkp when it won't even make that much of a difference?

Svene · Post by **Svene** » December 29th, 2008, 8:07 pm

Well, I can see the issue when it comes to Naxx. Stacking DKP for things in Naxx would be alittle hectic if not completely insane considering the amount of loot going out and i didnt mean to seem as if i were ignoring that subject matter. Possibly use something along the lines of naxx25 on its own reduced DKP system in which items are not purchased with DKP but 1 item per person per run until everyone gets something UNTIL the instance is cleared. Otherwise it would be "Farmed" for DKP and as mentioned above, people could potentially duck out for harder instances to come banking on saved DKP. At least this way people who are coming can get a small amount of DKP and stil have the chance at the rewards, but the chaotic DKP isnt abused on items. Some things would still more than likley get DE'd for better upgrades considering the 1-loot-per-person rule, but at the same time these items, although some minor/major upgrades, will be soon to us as Kara gear for those who were in Hyjal. I dont think they shuld just be tossed out to anyone who might want them, but lets not put TOO much emphasis on items in Naxx.