TreeKP – The massive explanation

Posted by thideras | Filed under General Information

Downfalls of our current system
We currently use a full Loot Council to distribute loot, as many of you know. There are a few downfalls to this sort of system. The main is the time it takes to decide on who loot goes to. I’m not referring to the items that are rolled on by one to three people, but instead the items that rolled on by seven or more (trinkets, shields, tier pieces…). Currently, we can eliminate a few of those people by finding out who got loot last, but that still leaves us with six people that have the same old gear quality (item level) and approximately the same raid performance. How are we supposed to decide who gets the item? We try to factor in when their last loot as and how often they receive items, but that can still give way to the notion of favoritism. I can assure you that we don’t favor anyone, never have and never will; even if it appears that way. We need a “backbone” to back up our Loot Council as the entire guild likes this system; we need a system to break the ties and give us a clear one or two people that should get it. When loot is being discussed, we also attempt to find out how much of an upgrade an item is and use that as an additional factor to decide. The only issue is that it forces the council to try and talk to everyone when loot goes out or to know each class, each specialization and then determine how much of an upgrade it is. It is not feasible for us to know everything about every class for each person. This makes the system susceptible to making the best decisions.

Other systems
There are other loot distribution systems available, but they all have their downfalls. Straight DKP seems to be popular, but a lot of people in the guild are against the idea; I don’t blame them. People tend to “hoard” points in hopes of getting that one really good item, passing smaller upgrades in the mean time. This causes their performance to fall behind and actually hurt the guild. It could also mean, in extreme cases, that items that they would normally use are passed as “offset” or even disenchanted! There are additional measure that can mitigate that problem, such as class leads or officers forcing people to take upgrades. This could cause some drama issues as well. New members are also put at the bottom of the pile, so it can take a long time to start getting loot. Add that they are probably less geared than other members and this creates a problem.

Another extremely popular system is EPGP; Effort Points, Gear Points. It is similar to DKP, but it has a decay system to prevent hoarding of points (the more you get, the more you lose) and allows new members to get gear quicker. It also allows us to factor in non-raid contributions, such as depositing items to the guild bank or helping fellow members. This should, in theory, provide a better raiding environment and improve inter-guild relations. The only problem with EPGP is who the items actually go to. What if the item is best in slot for one person, but they have lower EPGP? If they don’t get it (assuming their performance is good, etc), it will actually be hurting the guild overall.

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TreeKP

The goals of TreeKP

  1. Keep the loot council
  2. Reduce the façade of “favoritism”
  3. Speed up loot distribution in raids
  4. Eliminate point hoarding
  5. Be as fair and open as possible

I would like to plant the seed of this idea into your mind so that it may sprout and eventually branch out, possibly even pollinating other minds. Ok, enough with the tree jokes. As stated earlier, this is a system that will attempt to minimize the problems with other loot distribution methods. To do this, we need to combine different systems and add a few new ones to cover the gaps. The base of TreeKP will be a point system loosely based on EPGP and DKP, but modified heavily to fit our needs. Since we still want to keep Loot Council as the main deciding factor, the point system will be a secondary deciding factor; something to help when we need a tie breaker. The point awarding system will be similar to DKP, but modified to whatever suits the guild best.

How to get points

  1. Be on and ready to raid before the raid starts
  2. Be on and ready to raid during boss kills
  3. Effort to improve your job

How to lose points

  1. Buy loot
  2. Weekly “decay” of points (50%)
  3. Officer removal (whatever reason)
  4. Miss raiding days (no post, no show)

With this point system, it allows us to give value to actions that help the guild and “punish” those who harm the guild. The system will be public (if the guild wants it, I’d rather leave it hidden), but it will be transparent to the end raider. It helps us determine how often someone gets loot, but is not the final deciding factor. Coupled with the decay factor, it should eliminate hoarding of points. The only problem with this system is the up keep time, but I’m planning at keeping it fairly simple and quick to calculate. Points can be lost or gained which allows us add and remove points as we see fit. Being on and ready to raid before raid time; being on and available to raid during boss kills; improving your skill or raid survivability; etc. We can also give extra points to individual raiders on their first kill and any attempts at the fight in case we are beating our faces on a boss for the night. To add more depth to the system, we want to emphasize that this week’s raid time and gear is worth more than the weeks before it. There will be a decay of fifty percent.

Points

  1. 1 point for a boss kill
  2. 1.5 points for a boss kill on hard mode
  3. 1 point for being ready to raid before 7pm
  4. Cap of 25 points

If you are on and ready to raid, but are not in for a boss kill, you get the base points. If you are being sat for performance issues or raid awareness, you may be notified that you will not receive points for that kill. Everyone knows that banging your head on a boss for the night can be frustrating and unrewarding. The raid is still “progressing”, even if the boss doesn’t die. With that in mind, we will be giving points for attempts on a boss that we have not killed (hard modes, etc) to keep everyone motivated. This value will change depending on how we good we are doing that night, so there is no set value per attempt. The points will NOT be awarded if we have killed the boss at any previous time. One point will be awarded to any raid member that is ready to raid and at the entrance before the raid begins. This does not mean “I’m logging in” or “I’m on the way to the instance”. If you are unprepared, (meaning you had to go back to a city to get mats or ask someone else for items) you will not receive that one point as you were not “ready to raid”.

There are two portions to gear cost, the base cost of the slot and two multipliers. I’ll use an example that was given to me. Why should a healing plate chest item cost as much as a cloth chest item? With our raid setup, there will likely only be one person rolling on the plate and they are “forced” to take it. With the cloth piece though, you may have upwards of 4-5 people rolling on it since anyone can wear it. There are only two ways to fix this issue. First, set individual gear prices based on who wants it and how much it is needed; this method consumes a substantial amount of time to whoever the task is dumped on. Lastly, we could implement a multiplier system. The more people roll on an item, the higher the “cost” goes. Why do this though? This prevents point hoarding slightly, but it lets us know who gets the big upgrades. This means, if someone were to get Death’s Choice first, they may be skipped for loot a few times to balance it out; considering Death’s Choice is a substantial upgrade for most melee classes. Gear cost is a flat 10 points. If it is a non-armor piece of gear (shield, trinkets, necklace, etc…), it is worth 25% more (12.5 points if no one rolls other than you). The second multiplier is used to increase the cost depending on how many actually roll on the item. For every person that rolls beyond the first one, the gear cost increases by 5%. For example, if one person rolls, the increase is 0%. If three people roll, the increase is 10%.

Multiplier calculations

  1. Special gear = [Gear Cost] * 1.25
  2. Rolling multiplier (Armor based) = [Gear Cost] * (1 + (0.05 * [Number of players rolling]))
  3. Rolling multiplier (Non-armor based) = [Gear Cost] * 1.25 * (1 + (0.05 * [Number of players rolling]))

We also need to have a point cap and a normalization. As you can see (from my spreadsheet at the bottom of this post), there are a few people that didn’t get any gear in the past two weeks. If we don’t set a cap, you are going to have a lot of players with a LOT of points and more “priority”. We want to discourage point hoarding, so setting this limit low will prevent that. Another issue is if someone gets a lot of gear quickly. They get smashed to the bottom of the list and it would take them a long time to recover. We need a way to “normalize” these values each week to keep it competitive. For example:

Without normalizing/with cap:
Thideras: 25 points
Sckep: -20 points
Viralblack: 0 points
Elyndria: 15 points
Sentergies: -15 points

Nothing has dropped for me, so I’m at the cap. Sckep has got a TON of gear this week and you can see he is at the bottom of the list by far. The rest are spread out across the board. At the end of the week, we want to “normalize” this a little bit to prevent such a large gap. We can do this by halving the numbers above and below zero.

With normalizing/with cap:
Thideras: 12.5 points
Sckep: -10 points
Viralblck: 0 points
Elyndria: 7.5 points
Sentergies: -7.5 points

This makes last week’s gear half the cost (and each week before that half of half, etc) along with last week’s kills half the value. This should, hopefully, push people to roll on gear this week rather than saving up points. It emphasizes the cost/value of this week’s performance and gear.

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Since there is an issue on how loot is distributed in any points system, we need to add another factor; something to tell us how much of an upgrade an item really is. This “upgrade number” allows raiders to assign values to upgrades to show how much better the item is compared to what they are wearing. For the number system to work, we have to work on the same “scale”; everyone must provide upgrade lists and keep them updated! If you do not have a gear list available when the TreeKP system is active, you will NOT receive any loot or points. That also goes for not keeping your lists up to date. The system works on a one to five scale.

Rating system

  1. The item is a minimal upgrade; for example, trading mana per five for spirit.
  2. The item is a marginal upgrade, usually “13 item levels” (or less) of an upgrade.
  3. The item is a decent upgrade, usually “13 to 26 item levels” of an upgrade.
  4. The item is a substantial upgrade, usually “26 or more item levels” of an upgrade.
  5. The item is absolute best in slot, there is no better item anywhere.

The reasons a raider got an item will also be completely public, which will be attached to my normal combat logs post that I make after each raid. This prevents the issue of an officer or raid member not knowing why someone got an item and prevents manipulation/drama like in our previous guild.

Council checklist and thought process

  1. Loot drops, list loot
  2. Wait for rolls (30 seconds)
  3. Calculate cost of the item based on item type and multipliers
  4. Check point system to see rankings
  5. Check the rating system to see how much of an upgrade it is
  6. Take all variables into account (raid performance, point/rating system, etc) to decide loot
  7. Give loot to that person
  8. Take note of the logic used to arrive at that conclusion
  9. Kill more stuff

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FAQ
So, Thideras, what do I have to do?

  1. Create a gear list in your respective forum
  2. Keep this gear list updated
  3. Show up for raid
  4. Don’t be a kitten
  5. Kill stuff

Why are we not staying with our normal loot council?
You didn’t read my entire post, do it again.

I read the post again, but why do we need this complicated confangled system? (I picture Rolibar asking this to amuse myself)
The main problem with the loot council is we aren’t always completely aware when loot goes out. This means that we may accidentally be unfair when distributing loot. This system ensures that we are more aware and should, in theory, decrease “unfairness”.

Why not DKP/EPGP?
The systems, left stock, can be extremely unfair. Raiders can hoard loot (even if they don’t mean to) and can cause upgrades to go to the wrong person. These systems do not work with a loot council, so I was forced to create one from scratch.

Why a multiplier system instead of a pre-determined cost?
There are a few reasons why I decided to go with this type of system. It eliminates the time lost in determining the cost of an item, which needs to be done before raid. That person would have to have intimate knowledge on all the classes and specializations in the raid to create a list of gear that everyone agrees with. See how that is a bit silly? The other option would have been to use existing DKP/EPGP addons, but I would really rather stay away from those systems and stick with something more concrete. Finally, we/they might make a mistake and set the price far too high or low, which would really mess with numbers. This gives a “live” modification to the loot and specifically tailors it to how many actually need the item.

Can the point system go negative?
Yes, the point system only creates a “priority” list for us. In the beginning, we will have people go below zero, which is completely acceptable. If the council decides that there are too many people below zero, we can decide to normalize the list. This would bring the lowest person to zero and give everyone else the same amount of points. It doesn’t change the order at all, but just makes it easier for everyone. For example, if Thideras is at -10 points, Sckep is at 3 points, Viralblack is at 25 points and the council decides to normalize the list, Thideras would have 0 points, Sckep would have 13 points and Viralblack would still have 25 points.

This all very confusing and complicated still, can you explain it simply?

  1. 1 point per normal boss; 1.5 per hard mode boss
  2. 1 point for being on and ready to raid before pull time
  3. You get points even if you are sitting
  4. Cap of 25 points
  5. Cost is 10 points per gear; 1.25 multi for non-armor items; 5% more cost per extra person rolling
  6. You can gain/lose/miss out on points for any reason

How do you know the numbers are good/right for the point system?
I’ve written a massive spreadsheet covering the last two week’s loot. You can find that here and you are free to play with the variables. Scroll down until you see a list of players on the far left. You can change the “Variables” section to change ALL the values. This allows you to change the weights on the fly to see how they would change the system.

Why, when searching Google for “treekp”, does a black dating site come up?
I have absolutely no idea, but I can assure you that is not me.

Permalink | April 17th, 2010

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