When comparing loot systems, pay special attention to how easy it is for established players who raid often to gain a massive point lead over new members or those who can’t raid as often.  While attendance needs to factor into buying power, certain systems are more susceptible than others.

There are two different problems, depending on whether your loot system has fixed prices or not: inflation and list camping.

Inflation affects systems where the cost of an item is driven by player bidding.  For whatever reason, one or several players have very large point balances.  The going rate for drops rises because the person with a high balance can easily beat anyone who is new.  People with low balances don’t even have the chance to compete – they could bid their entire balance of points and still have that only equal 1/10th or 1/5th of the balance of an established raider.

List Camping tends to affect systems where item prices are fixed.  For the same reasons, someone ends up with a large point balance, so that they have first pick of anything that drops.  When they want an item, they get it at the fixed price, but it doesn’t make much of an impact on their balance.  They essentially stay at the top of the list forever, and when new tiers of content are released, they get geared up first because they keep getting first pick.

That your members will take advantage of these situations isn’t a given.  I’ve been in some guilds where people with high balances sometimes feel guilty for always getting first pick, and deferred to lower-geared players to benefit the raid.  But this relies on magnanimous behaviour, which also isn’t a given.  If the person decides to, they can grab a ton of gear, and it’s not unheard of for people in this situation to do just that in the days and weeks leading up to a /gquit.

Before I talk about ways to address this, let’s look at a few of the common loot systems and the extent to which they are susceptible to these problems.

DKP with Fixed Costs

DKP with fixed costs is susceptible to list camping once you have all the gear you need from the current content.  If the loot system continues without a reset through multiple content patches, the lead someone has can become insurmountable.

DKP with Open Bidding

DKP with open bidding is susceptible to inflation, as a well-geared member can gain points while never bidding on gear.  If members collude to keep prices low (say an under the table deal to allow one person to pick up an item at the minimum bid price), then it can be susceptible to list camping as well.  While this system allows for the greatest level of flexibility for members, it is also the easiest to corrupt.

Zero-Sum DKP

Zero-sum DKP is not susceptible to inflation (as the number of total points in the system remains constant), but it can be susceptible to list camping.  Just how susceptible depends on whether you combine zero-sum with open bids or fixed costs.  While this may make zero-sum DKP sound attractive, the major failing of this system is the inability to provide rewards for anything other than loot dropping.  Without a way to incentivize progression content, zero-sum can be very demoralizing after a night of wipes.  It is better suited to farm content, but I’ve seen many guilds choose to go directly from their primary loot system to open /roll rather than maintain a parallel zero-sum system for lower-level content.

EP/GP

EP/GP is protected against both list camping and inflation, as the points you receive for raiding (EP) are not directly used for purchasing gear (only to rank people in priority order).  In addition, weekly decay of both EP and GP means that the larger the gap between high and low ranked members, the more that is lost during decay.   This discourages list camping – with a 10% decay, it takes just seven weeks to remove half of your EP and GP.  As any regular reader will know, I’m a big fan of this system because it doesn’t share the downsides of the other loot systems (though it does have it’s own cons, including the inability to spend what you feel an item is worth to you regardless of your priority).

Ni Karma

Ni Karma is a “boosted roll” system, in which your points can be used to supplement your roll if you so choose.  There are no item prices, so inflation is not a problem, but you can end up with people at the top of the list after a long period of taking no loot.  Due to the way in which the points are used (a winning boosted roll halves your balance), you can only effectively camp the list for one item.  Unfortunately, this can lead to people not taking minor upgrades because they are focused on winning the one item they really want and want to save their points.

Suicide Kings

Suicide Kings is not subject to inflation, as nobody has a balance, just a relative position on a list.  When you take loot, you drop to the bottom of the list of people who are in the raid (not the absolute bottom of the list).  Like Ni Karma, this can result in list camping for one particularly desired item, as once loot is taken you aren’t likely to get another piece right away.  I don’t see this system being used very much, as it has the same “lack of progression incentives” as zero-sum DKP (and can in fact be called a “zero-sum spend-all” system).

Suicide Kings doesn’t tend to be as popular as it was when first introduced, as the “cost” of an item (such as it is in this system) varies based upon who attends a given raid.  While this is also true of open-bid DKP, Suicide Kings doesn’t give members the level of power they have in open-bid DKP, which makes this downside more glaring.

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Tags: bid, dkp, epgp, expansion, loot, loot system, ni karma, patch, reset, standings, suicide kings