DKP system revisited

Hey all!

Now that we are making efforts to start regular raids and find a working loot distribution system I have made a little research on the DKP system and collected a few links to share them. All in all I can say that we have to use the DKP system very carefully. Why? Read this blog: Tobold's MMORPG Blog . I know that this is an old blog post but that's what exactly happened with me some time ago... but nevermind that, I don't want to talk about 2 years old things.
To keep everyone happy and the raids going with max capacity there are a few DKP variations as you can read on this page. I'm sure we can find a system that works for us and won't cause any problems.

I also took some effort to find an addon/mod/program/whatever which supports DKP systems and DKP point distributin and point/raid progress tracking. My first choice was eqDKP and I learned that we need a webhosting service with MySQL and php support. There are free services for this but they are a) not ad-free sites or b) don't provide full support and access for these services.
Then I searched for guild hosting sites/services. These services provide full support of DKP/forum/news/domain name/whatever but each service costs money. DKPSystem.com provides these services and more. To be honest I like the idea of this kind of guild hosting so I continued. What if there are services like this for free?

At last I've found some sites that may provide solution: FreeDKP.org and gsDKP. These sites provide free hosting for our DKP site and do all the hard work for us so we need only raid.

But then why use an external program/website? As a googled around a few interesting link popped up for me: addons that do the whole DKP distribution in game and stores the DKP values in the guild notes tab for each toon. That's it, what we use to announce our talent spec and professions for the majority of guild can also be used to store DKP standings/points. Or, we don't want to show them, use the officer notes instead. One such addon is QuickDKP which is a very fine work in my opininon. There is also the EPGP addon which does exactly the same but the DKP award/distribution system is a little bit different than the original idea was (DKP is splitted in EP (effort point: participate in the raid, kill the boss, spend hours in raid) and GP (gear point; earned when you recieve loot, pick up items from the guildbank etc)). More info on this: EPGP in details.

To be honest I like the last 2 solutions the best. Why? Because I'm lazy and those can handle everything in game and only a few ppl have to install the addons (namely the Guild Master and some of the officers).

What do you think about it?

Ok, so I downloaded and installed the Quick DKP addon and read the user manual. Basicly it is an addon that creates a database on the user's PC during a raid and later it uploads the data to the officer notes of each participiants. It also has some nice and easy to use features for DKP awarding such as Iron Man, in-raid time and Zero-Sum.

After I have read it all I came up the following ideas for DKP distribution:

Maximum DPK pool: 500 (you can get a maximum of 500 DKP, tho this limit can be changed later on)
Minimum DKP pool: -10 (setting this to negative enable new raiders with no DKP at all to bid on items. As the maximum pool, this can be changed too)
Being on time: 2 DKPs (you used the GroupCalendar to sign up for a raid and you arrived on time for the event)
DKP/hour: 2 DKPs (awarded for each hour spent in raid)
Bosskill: 10 DKPs
Iron Man award: 5 DKPs (you were with the raid in 80% of the whole raid time (eg if a raid lasts 100 minutes and you were in the raid for 80 minutes, you will get the Iron Man award))
Being standby: 2 DKPs/hour (it is possible that you can't get into a raid, so you will be assigned as a standby. As a standby you are online during the raid ready to assisst if someone is disconnected or has to leave the raid.)
Successful raid: 10 DKP (we reached our goal)

Item distribution with DKP:
Bid on item: if an item drops you really-really want you can bid on it with your DKPs. The maximum amount of DKP used for this equals your current DKP +10.
Zero Sum bidding: After you won an item and its price has been subtracted from your DKP pool, points you spent will be distributed among the other raiders. This option is used to prevent someone who has 100 DKP get all the loot if he raids with people who has significantly less DKP.

I will change the Options.ini to represent the ideas above and will post a download link for it so the officers who would like to be raid leaders in the future be able to get it.

Please, download and install the addon only if you are an officer or guild leader (that's you Frozen ). In my opinion it's enough that only 3 people install the addon.
Download link.

If you disagree with these or have other ideas or whatever please tell us! If you remain silent we cannot change anything to make things better for you or everyone else so please post here if you agree or not.

Let's see what this all means.

A, B and C are attending in a raid. A and B signed up for the raid via GroupCalendar while C didn't. A and C are on time for the event but B is late therefore only A is eligible for the "being on time" award.

A: 2 DKP; B: 0 DKP; C: 0 DKP

30 minutes passes and the Huntsman is down. Everyone recives 10 DKP for killing a boss.

A: 12 DKP; B: 10 DKP; C: 10 DKP

The Huntsman drops a super 133t armor. Both A and B want it. A can bid 22 DKP and B can bid only 20 DKP maximum (and this way they can reach the minimum DKP pool limit of -10). A bids 8 point while B bids 10. B wins the item and 10 DKP is substracted from him and redistributed for the other people in raid, so A and C gets 5 DKP both.

A: 17 DKP; B: 0 DKP; C: 15 DKP

Another 90 mins passes. Being in raid for 2 hours everyone gets 4 DKP (2/hour).

A: 21 DKP; B: 4 DKP; C: 19 DKP

And now Moroes is down. 10 DKP for everyone.

A: 31 DKP; B: 14 DKP; C: 29 DKP (It may seem that B can't do too much but don't forget he has already won a loot.)

After Moroes died he dropped a nice dagger. Only C needs it and with a bid of 4 points, he wins.

A: 33 DKP; B: 16 DKP; C: 25 DKP

Unfortunatly A has to leave the party, it's time to go to bed for him.

Another 2 hours pass. B and C gets 4 DKP each.

(A: 33 DKP) B: 20 DKP; C: 29 DKP

After a few unsuccessful attempt on the next boss, the raid leader decides to call it a day. Since both B and C were with raid for more than 80% of the raid lasted they are awarded with the Iron Man bonus of 5 DKP.
So the final DKP standing for A, B and C:

A: 33 DKP; B 25 DKP; C: 33 DKP and both B and C recieved loot.

hmmm...i will get round to doing this m8 no problemo

ooo sounds fun good work m8

mm, good reading there dawnhailer well done for looking all that up for the guild

only problem i see is , say we dont get a full guild grp and get someone to come help us , does this mean they can not need for anything ?
this will be the first guild i have used this system as the others have just had a master looter , then they give out the trash and people need the main drops if they do need it ( the master looter can then decide( with others) if someone is needing when they are just going to sell , or dis it etc then the others would just roll for it as normal
the way my last guild did it was , say i wanted something that droped for say healing but i was in as a dps and a holy priest also wanted it , the master looter would decide who got it(most of the time it would be the priest that gets it as they were in there as a healer at that time )

but saying it , this may be a good way to go about the problems of people needing everything that drops

Ok I see the problem here but no need to panic . The addon is able to handle players outside the guild, can give them DKP and store they data locally on the raid leader's PC. Good thing that this way the pug ppl has the same chances, downside is that only the first raid leader can see their accumulated DKPs and if they go raiding with others form the guild they has to start collecting DKP from zero.

What's more the addon can also handle alts in the guild. It can be decided that either the alts has the same rights as the main characters (so they has their own DKP pool) or the main toon and every alt for the given player has only one DKP pool. Neat, huh?

wow...getting complicated now...i want to use a DKP system..in the future, and dawns idea is tops, but i think for our first raids we should adopt, billys idea of using master looter to decide who needs what, to strengthen the guild/ once we're comfortable in there, then we can start using DKP etc?
what say you?

I agree with you frozen.

I don't know how the guild of my friend is doing that stuff, but on the day i got a sudden invite for kara, they used the master loot, which worked really good, and i think that was the only reason i got my staff (rolled a 4 on my need roll). And I think master looter works good for 10 men raids, but for larger raids or raids where people do change often i would say a dkp system is better.
but seriously i have no experience with anything concerning raids.

Hmmm... I see your point. Sure that a DKP system can be very complicated or very simple. It depends on the guild and the individuals. And yes there are weak points in every DKP system. But. The main reason for using a DKP-like thing is to encourage people to get involved in raids (the more you raid the more likely you have better loot).

As a very lazy person I just love the simple old fashioned need-greed lootsystem, really. Master looter is a way to assure that there will be no ninja looting and accidental misclicking on the loot window's need-greed-pass buttons, which is also great.

But there is no stress to start using DKP asap. What I posted here is just an idea and I encourage everyone to share his/her opinions about it so we can work out a system that benefits everyone. We can experience with Master Looter (which the basic looting system for DKP) to get the hang of it, can try out how the addon works without taking it seriously and so on. Imo a few weeks will pass till we have a working system and I just try to find solutions to test them. So I'm with Frozen .

And btw I thank for your posts (really!!) as they help to find points that needs simplification or more explanation.

Well mates, yesterday's Kara run was a success imo. Why? Here are my reasons:
1. We killed the Huntsman for the first try... AGAIN! This means that the Huntsman is on farm status!
2. We figured out how to defeat Moroes and we put him down to 15%. Next the bastard will die!
3. We tested the QDKP addon and it works!

To be honest the test wasn't a really in-depth test but I was able to try out the basic options and to take a look at the more advanced features.
What was tested:
- awarding DKP to the whole group
- subtracting DKP from a group member
- Zero-Sum
- Iron Man
- Raid Timer for time bonus DKP
- data upload to Officer Notes
- notifying raid members of DKP standing
- slash commands/on-demand commands

What was not tested:
- automatic DKP award for boss kill
- bid detect and automated DKP charging

Also we used Master Loot and it worked very nice too.
Stay tuned, I'll upload some screens about the addon with some explanation what you can see on the pictures. (Hope I can do it tonight, if not then sometime tomorrow.)

Heya everyone! Now I can upload the images I made about the QDKP addon and comment them a bit. So here we go:

1: This is the main window of the addon. Here you can open the raid log and the raid rooster, notify raid members of their current DKP status, award the whole raid with DKP, start the Iron Man timer and start a new raid sesion. The Send changes button uploads the DKP data to everyone's Officer's Note. Backup and Restore is used if you want to continue a raid session or got disconnected.


2: This is the raid rooster. Here you can find the data about the raiders DKP standing as well as the hours spent on raiding. If you click on a name a new window will appear to modify that person's DKP. The Externals buttons are used to add non-guild people to the rooster if you want to award them with DKP, Standby is used for players on standy so they can get DKP even tho they are not with the raid, Alts button is used to manage alts.


3. This is the window for personal DKP awards be it a positive (say you has a repair bot with you so the raid can go on without any break) or a negative (you bought an item with DKP) amount. ZeroSum means if you buy an item with DKP that amount will be awarded to the raid group evenly. The Show log button shows the log of the given player.


4. The player/raid log. You can see the DKP awards and items a person looted.


5. The Officer's Note after the raid data has been updated. Net means the current amount of DKP, Tot means the total DKP awarded for the given person, Hrs means the total amount of hours spent in raid.


Before you ask: everyone has an Officer's Note. The guild leader (that's you Frozen ) can set who can see them. If you can't see your Officer's Note but you're dying to know your DKP standing you can get an up to date info by typing the following:
/w Dawnhailer ?dkp

It seems that the addon doesn't creat a backup file automatically so we have to do it manually after every DKP award/bossfight/loot. This doesn't mean that the DKP is lost, only the raid log will be lost on a DC/game crash and after relog we have to start a new raid event logging if we didn't created a backup file...