Abandon DKP?
 

I flirted with the idea to rewrite the DKP system and I decided to post it here. I'll try to cover all the angles.

My EQ guild back in 2000 used the system where leadership decided what we got. They basically knew what everyone had and assigned it out as fair as they could, we did not have access to a custom website with a database. Other day I had a eureka moment where I thought maybe I could come up with a system like that using today's modern tools.

Why rewrite? Because DKP pits player against player, it creates jobs where one must work in order to compete. You want to win, you poop sock on a bot for tags. Well it works everyone is happy. An exact reflection of real life. DKP is money.

Not everyone can afford the time to play, they are not rewarded as often as others for their efforts. They can build up DKP though and win if they are persistent but they will always be competing with those who can play more. One could argue that west coast players will always have less DKP than those on the east.

Enough on the problems of DKP.

Track raid attendance, same as DKP, show up get a point.

Each player picks their Main, alts and whatnot would would work the same but mains would always get priority.

Something drops, people show interest some how, they check a box on the web site or type in chat NEED IT, same as bidding.

Decision time, who wins? The system keeps track of the item name and the winner. You can't win the same item twice. They have to be able to equip the item.

The one with the most attendance points wins. But they can never win it again on that main. Next time that item drops it goes to the next in line. You show up at crunch time you get to win. We stand in lines, we wait to win.

That's it? LOL, it's the same as DKP but they don't lose points, it's even worse! They get to keep their silo! But people are not pitted against each other, they aren't assigning a value to the item. Yes that same top person would keep winning the all items but only once. They could keep showing interest for every item in the game and win it and throw it away! Yes, but only once.

I tried to think of all the possibilities I could and it seemed like this idea would be the quickest and the simplest. Will it ensure that loot would get fairly distributed amongst the players better than DKP? Does everyone get a trak tooth without having to feel like they are competing against each other? Bidding is healthy competition, no need to be nice about it, real life is the same. Different points of view.

Does it always boil down to people being honest with each other in their needs, what they have now and what they could use to improve themselves, if someone decides to abuse the system like stealing candy from a baby they always win by default. DKP keeps them in check because they lose what they spend. The stitch is how quickly can they get it back. The idea lets them just win the damn thing without having to mess around. Obviously they played more than anyone else, they deserve it.

Would the overall distribution end up being fair? Would the guild get filled out more strong and even? Would the change be worth it if it was better?

They play, they get loot, but they don't have to manage their money.

Compare it to simple grouping in EQ. Need before greed, "oh that's way better than what you have, you should get that item" Or just random it, take too much time to discuss which is better over the other. Figured it out day one. Today, DKP?

Had the idea where your attendance gets trimmed. It could be the sum of all attendance from now to 6 months ago. As each day ticks by the old attendance exactly 6 months ago would be removed. Perhaps every draft period?

I did look into a way where guild members could quickly vote on who gets an item based on what item each interested person has, but it would take time, probably way more time that bidding. The system would have to have a list of each item a person has for that slot so players could compare to decide their vote.

Leaders could quickly reward it by looking at which each person has instead of members voting? Way too much time, no quickly here, gotta keep moving to the next target.

I could not see an easy way to automate a system where each item is "ranked" for comparison. There are way to many items to do it. Impossible to rank two items, one might want it for STR another for the MR it has. They'd have to click which stat they were getting it for, way to complicated.

/rand would be an option when more than one person shows interest, not even track attendance at all. It is groupings defacto standard. Perhaps /rand should be awarded as the fastest quickest way to divvy up loot. But it's not as fair, those dice can be so cruel...

AI or simple programming could not be used to make a fair system based on comparison. It's too complicated to try to assign value between all items to compare them as a set, as a whole.

In a voting type of system our brains can quickly compare what would truly be an upgrade for a person but a person might want an item for a specific reason and not everyone could agree if it were an upgrade or not. We're good at quickly deciding stuff, but not that quick. Biased voting would be a problem too.

In conclusion I'll wager a guess that most folks will agree it's probably better to stick with DKP. As far as fair distribution? I don't know. What would be better? I see that runaway winning scenario just because you have more attendance could be awful, even if it is only once.

Had fun in this experiment, kind of sad that nothing really panned out. I think it's a good exercise in understanding how difficult it will be to use AI to replace systems like this, that rabbit hole is deep and there are crazy people down there.

The way we hold these drops in such high esteem is a testament to the greatness of the game. Ok, back to yellow text.

Never losing attendance points and constantly being at the top would not be great, regardless of item loot limitations.

DKP works because it forces that person back down the ladder.

<The Drift> proved it can be done - however it's messy.

Their rule was you can only be eligible on 1 character, who you have to have approved as your "main" If the item was usable by your main, you went into a random roll for gear drop. If you won, you were locked out of loot for the remainder of raid day.

In order to qualify as a main, you had to have raid attendance and also wait for a probationary period after declaring a main.

If no mains wanted gear, then the roll would default to designated alts. Each player could have 1 designated alt to roll for in the event no mains wanted it.

It was a good system. It spread gear out evenly among the guild. No DKP whales, no scumming the /random system by winning multiple rolls on the same raid.

Come back, <The Drift>!

Monthly or quarterly DKP adjustments to make it so newcomers aren't faced with an impossible slog to ever be top, are actually a real thing.

Jesus fucking Christ ChatGPT is making people fucking crazy.

Can someone please tell the OP how DKP adjustments work? I'm too busy telling a machine how to bullet point my daydreams.

You'd saturate core mains with loot relatively quickly and the guild would only exist to farm for new members.

Pick your poison:

1) Same 20 DKP whales keep logging in to get their remaining BiS items and outbid, for their alts, all new players, out of boredom.

2) People who have not much more to gain, and don't want to swap mains move on to other games, or stop playing and you get fresh faces filling in roles every so often.

Fresh faces are no substitute for slaying the dragon.

DKP whales don't matter if you structure the loot rules in certain ways. DKP isn't the issue, it's guilds that don't require things like full DKP bids for certain items, main character tagging (and changing mains wipes out your DKP) and requiring items to only be rolled on by mains, etc.

Honestly, there's no way to please half of the raiders, let alone everybody. I've heard every argument in the book against all of the above (even though I agree) and it always boils down to leadership thinking "Well if we piss off our sweatiest raiders we won't have a raid force - so open DKP bids on everything"

Which I can't say is wrong. But, you definitely do alienate casual players trying to gear their only level 60 - that will never be able to compete with people who have 50% raid attendance and are on their 12th level 60 alt.

But oh boy, the joy of the meltdowns in discord when sweaty, loser MFers start whining about

"I earned that DKP by scumming the guilds DKP award policy and i want to spend it! This game means so much to me and my characters gear reflects my own personal self esteem. If the casuals want gear they should quit their jobs and be as sweaty as i am"