Combating the Pitfalls

So yesterday I talked about the DKP pitfalls. How do you attempt to avoid those pitfalls? Some of the solutions are simple and some just don't have viable solutions for.

Inflation:

This problem has many solutions and sometimes the best solution is to use a bunch of them in tandem.

Point rot/taxes - What you do here is say, ok over a certain amount of time everyone's DKP will rot at such and such percentage(usually 2% per week is the average). This poses a problem to members that have a lot of DKP simply because things do not drop for them.

Point Cap - This works sort of like a rot system except it only matters for people at the very top of the DKP charts. Setting a cap makes it so that the top DKP people will spend their points more often so that they wont waste them. This can work against the system however as people with better gear will bid on slight upgrades over people with larger upgrades.

Zero-sum - In this system a portion of the price of the item upon a winning bid is given back to the raid members. For example, if an item goes for 25 DKP and there are 25 members then each member gains 1 DKP for that item. Traditionally this is a system that goes i tandem with a fixed pricing system. Zero-sum was first introduced to specifically combat inflation, but in practice all it does is mask it(at least when used with a fixed price system).

Constrained bid system - This is when a person must spend a specific percentage of their DKP when they want an item. This system makes it so that a DKP only serves to provide a loot order and the DKP doesn't act as a currency.

Collusion:

Fixed price systems - This can be done either by affixing a specific price to an item or via a constrained system(see above). Keep in mind though that by doing this you re-introduced the human element when deciding the price of the items.

Point rot/taxes - Yes, this works for collusion too. By having the DKP decrease over time people are more willing to spend their earned DKP rather than have it waste away. The item may not drop sooner rather than later so making a deal with another member could prevent you from getting the item altogether down the road.

Upbidding:

Silent auction - The most popular choice to fight against this problem is to make all bids silent. There are two ways to do this. You can get a program that announces the bid prices of items but does not include the name of the person bidding or you can do a pure silent bid system where all bids go through one person. The later of course can pose a problem as it puts the human element back into the DKP system, which is the point of going with a DKP system in the first place.

Hidden DKP totals - This much more successful way of solving this problem. If you hide the DKP totals from everyone but the individual (ie- Raider A can only see raider A's DKP totals) then others do not know how much DKP they need to spend to not get caught wasting DKP due to upbidding. Upbidding still can happen if people choose to share their totals but at that point it is the responsibility of the user to protect their own DKP.

So now we can create our DKP system, knowing all the variable and how to combat against certain pitfalls we may want to avoid.

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