So I stopped playing Everquest probably 3? 4 years ago. At one point Rest in Peace was talking about implementing a DKP decay (or tax) to everyone of 1 to 5% to combat inflation. I was adamantly against this, probably pretty vocally.

I just wanted to say sorry :( Today I'm one of 7 guildleaders in my WoW guild and am fighting the other 6 to implement a decay for probably all of the reasons Malse originally outlined. I'm tempted to give you access to our private forums so you can tell me if I'm understanding it correctly, lol.

Irony ...

The Circle of life as it were eh Kel?

I've been anti DKP my entire gaming career, still not sure it's a good system to provide for the needs of a high end raiding guild. However I totally understand the need for dekay.

Fandros

just use a zero balance dkp system, there is no such thing as inflation then.

perhaps use Nurfed DKP system.

DKP > All other systems, less drama, more fair.

If you want to run your math by me for verification, go ahead, but it's all pretty simple algebra

Little perspective does go a long way, doesn't it? :>


There are lots of ways to achieve a long-term stable attendance economy, no way is bar-none better than all the others. You can construct a "simple" DKP system .. but it will require a huge amount of backend maintenance on award values. It mostly comes down to who has what amount time to run it. In RiP we placed most of the overhead at drop time with open bids for a variety of reasons, and except for a few outliers that has remained equitable since about 2001.

My own personal preference is for officer awards, but that seems to rarely scale past oh, 40 people (total size, not individual event turn out).

My own personal preference is for officer awards, but that seems to rarely scale past oh, 40 people (total size, not individual event turn out).


We are still able to handle distribution via the officer-awarded system, and all that is required is keeping magelos up to date and sending the officer a tell with a link of what you want to upgrade. Granted, this probably added a bit of stress to some officers during our goat farming time in Qvic, but when the good of the guild is put first and foremost there is not going to be grumbling; everyone knows that they will get their's, if not this time then in a future hunt. We make sure to keep hitting targets as long as people need the upgrades, so that all are helping to equip each other. Much more cohesion at the end of the day.

We've already got the system in place, but as we constantly lower the value for the bosses (5 to 4 to 3 to 2 to 1) the newer members are earning DKP at a rate of like 100 DKP / month where original members earned at 400 DKP / month. Its totally skewed against new members, dispite them already starting out at 0. I figured a decay would be one way to help correct that - but selling it isn't easy.

If you reduced point awards by 80% in such a short period of time, you really should have done a normalization immediately. That's not inflation at all. The same sort of arguments apply but the purpose of an anti-inflationary policy is to prevent gradual (or not so gradual) devaluation of point/dkp awards due to an overall greater point pool. You didn't grow the point pool, you effectively clamped its size by all but shutting off the intake and in the process grandfathered in a bunch of rich people by artificially increasing scarcity.

Now, over time, a very long time if new item awards are scaled off the current point influx, you will eventually reach a more equitable situation, but depending on the overall size of your point economy that could take years.

You probably will have to implement some sort of progressive point decay at nastily high values in order to fix that faster. One thing you could do is establish a minimum point value before reduction -- I hate even suggesting that because unlike the anti-inflationary normalization I spent man-months of time trying to make people understand, it IS a tax designed to provide social welfare. Hopefully that "tax incentive" will create a use-it-or-lose-it mentality amongst your older members and encourage them to rapidly blow all the points they can. It'll suck for a month or two but then be over and done with.

Well it was over 6 months, wasn't *too* fast. Problem was, we beat MC and can't beat shit in BWL, so MC has been on farm status for a while and no new bosses beaten in over a month.
We've got quite a few pretty adamant against a max 5% decay on all points earned over 100, even leaving the bottom 100 as a buffer in case "the item I wanted doesn't drop" and so forth.

Officer awards is the best way to go if people trust you. But generally people always look out for themselves and so forth. In my future Combine server guild, we're gonna use a loot council because no one cares about the loot - we've all had our full PoTime+ gear at one point, we're just doing it for the journey this time around.

Methinks that's naive of you Kelraz. If you think that folks won't care about loot just because "seen that done that" attitude will prevail methinks you'll be sorely disabused of said notion.

Loot council is a great idea if folks are trustworthy and clique free imho.

Be prepared for said individual(s) to bitch no matter the system you use tho bud.

Fandros

Be prepared for said individual(s) to bitch no matter the system you use tho bud.

ain't that the truth :p :p

It all depends on what type of guild you have. Early Jokers, (up until Luclin, I'd say) had no problem handing out loot via officers. But when we grew, and especially progressing in PoP, raid points was a must.

Close-knit family guilds tend not to care how the loot is done, as I've said. But then, that is a rare thing.

Otherwise, raid points are probably the fairest. Like Democracy, it's the worst system besides all the others (Churchill).