The following is a repost from my guild forums discussing possible DKP systems to be used within the upcoming content. If anybody has interest in actually reading through it all I would really like your opinion on the DKP systems mentioned herein as well as other possibilities you may know of and trust.
First and foremost - no loot system is perfect and the overall goal is to be something acceptable by those using.
Loot systems are frequently subject of heated debate and I have pieced together my readings below to discuss two main options and variation.
Why use a Loot System at all? While we could always /roll for items, I do not think this is worthy of scrutiny for its obvious faults. Loot Council fails as even the fairest of leaders would find conflict of interest in gearing up newbies and veterans. Frequently, an item is a minor upgrade to some veteran, and a major upgrade for a fairly new raid member. In this situation, it's basically impossible to objectively decide who should get it, because new members are more likely to leave than veterans. Other factors are that the veteran may have been hunting the item for a long time, and that the new player may not make the best possible use of it (due to lack of skill).
Formal loot systems can help to solve this problem. Their basic function is to provide a memory for past achievements and rewards gained. The core idea is always to give some compensation for raid members who didn't get a certain item by increasing their chance to receive future loot. The grand goal is to provide an automatism which leads to "fair" loot distribution over a long time span.
There are two major variations:
Standard DKP is the version most are familiar with. Points are awarded by attendance and kills.
Sum-Zero DKP is a version where DKP is awarded by other players spending. I had wanted to look into this as a potential for our guild and here are my findings.
All members in a sum-zero DKP start with a score of 0. When an item is given to a raid member, they have to pay for it in DKP (going negative if necessary). These DKP spent are immediately distributed among all the raid members. Thus the amount of DKP, i.e. the sum of all members in the system, is always zero. The idea here is that inflation is impossible, since no points enter the system from the outside.
In its pure form, sum-zero has the disadvantage that learning new content is not rewarded. There can be no bonuses for anything - punctuality, killing bosses etc. One method to remedy the problem that no bonuses are possible is to introduce the bank as a member in the system. If the bank takes part in every raid (as 11., 21., 26. or 41. member), a pool of DKP will be available which can be handed out as rewards. This same pool can also be used to "buy" all BOE loot from the raid. If the income of the bank is too low, it's possible to give the bank more than one share.
The purpose of a sum-zero dkp system is to make it so new members have a better chance at being rewarded for their efforts. The problem is that the system doesn't actually do its job properly. The deeper problem with Inflation is that it's impossible for new raid members to ever compete for a top-of-the-line drop. In standard dkp the effect is is very obvious, if an average run yields 40 DKP, and the top 10 members each have 1000 DKP or more, it's a rather simple matter for a newbie to figure out when he will get his first high end item (maybe after 1 year).
In sum-zero systems, the very same deeper problem exists too. The fact that no points enter the system from the outside doesn't prevent veterans from building a large point lead over new members. The system maintains its advertised properties as long as the group is homogeneous. If the whole raid starts out with similar levels of equipment, and everybody does the same number of runs, players will stay close together. But if there are differences (and there always are), if for example some run members have filled some equipment slots with PvP items or drops from heroics, these members will earn more DKP than they spend. If newbies with sub-par equipment enter the system, they will feed DKP to the well-equipped raid members.
In summary, the obvious brick wall which every new member can clearly see in the standard systems is replaced by a glass wall, which in the long term has the very same effect, but more subtle and not so obvious.
The largest concern is that new players enter the system at 0 points, right in the middle of the veteran players, and thus can take drops away from veterans, is usually a non-issue. After a few runs, newbies will regularly find themselves at the very end of the ladder, because they will get quite a lot of drops which the veteran run members just don't need any more.
Final Thoughts
In my mind, sum-zero fails to address the issue of veteran inflation and controlling dkp hording was what I set out to do.
The solution I think is best is to continue with out currents system of standard dkp awarding and open bidding over loot. A control to be set in place for inflation is decay. At the end of every week, all raid members dkp will decay by 3%. A member with 100 dkp on Monday will have 97 dkp on Tuesday A member with 400 dkp on Monday will have 388 dkp on Tuesday. This system would encourage the use of dkp and assist in shortening the gap of dkp between a veteran and a new member.
TLDR: Sum-Zero fails to control inflation and is overly cumbersome to mess with. Standard DKP with open bidding and a decay of 3% would be better at addressing inflation while promoting the use of dkp.
25 man vs 10 man
I feel that dkp should only be used in the 25 mans. 10 mans limit member participation and the loot is generally such that only 2 or 3 raid members might be interested. 10 mans will follow the same rule as 25 mans. You cannot roll outside of your armor class unless it is unwanted. Limit 1 item per member unless the item will rot. A main spec can get 2 if the item will just go to an offspec.
For 25 mans - Bidding outside your armor category will be capped at 50 dkp. Offspec may only bid against offspec. If you are specced outside your main by request of the raid leader, you may bid a max of 50 dkp against others of your current spec. 5 is the default cost though items defaulted to new members will have a fixed price on them.
(ex. I am prot but spec holy for a raid, healing mace drops, I could bid 50 dkp max for it)
