Monday, October 12, 2009

DKP: Under Bidding

In our bid system for loot we have a rule where the high bidder is charged the least amount it would take to win the item. So if you over bid the 2nd person by a landslide, you are only charged 1 point more than the 2nd highest bid.

When I picked up my Trophy of the Crusades I had a good deal of data to work with. This drops 5 times a raid and its easy to get a feel for the trend of an item when it drops that often and so many people need it. In a bid system, the cost reflects supply and demand. The same people that need the first 2-3 trophies will need the last 4-5 of the night. Except for the people that won already. Many people will not bid on the 1st to see what it goes for.

Here is how the night played out that I picked up 2 in the same run.

I bid 50 on the first drop and it was won for 51 points. This tells everyone that someone bid 50 for it. That first person could have dropped over 9 thousand on it and still would have got it for 51 points. I think about things like this. When the 2nd one dropped, I know someone else knew someone bid 50 for it. People hate to see things go cheap to someone else. They can either bid to win it and give the other person a chance to get it much cheaper later. Leaving them with points they can spend over you on something else.

Or they can under bid you to make you spend the most possible. If someone were to bid 49, then that other person would have to spend the full 50 points to get it. He would get no discount like he would if it was uncontested. Can anyone guess what I bid the 2nd time? Knowing that someone was likely to bid 49 to hold that bid of 50 up, I bid 48 instead.

That item was won for 49 points. They easily could have bid 51 or 50, I have no way to know that. But if he was trying to play a game with my points I was able to dodge it. On the 3rd and 4th drop, I bid 47 points and won it for 41.

By watching and playing with the bids on the first 2 drops, I was able to save 16 or more points. I never bid more than I am willing to spend on an item. So its not the same as bidding 1 under someone else on an item that I don't want. If we catch people doing that we will take action. But dipping my bid a little bit to make someone else pay for it first is fair game. I will get it or someone else will get it. How soon and for how much is still up to me.

6 comments:

  1. You don't find it disappointing that you have to worry about your fellow raiders "trying to play a game" with your dkp?

    We switched to a trial loot council system recently because DKP is such a flawed system in so many ways. Obviously loot council can be flawed too, but I've come around to believing that it is the system that most benefits the raid as a whole.

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  2. The only thing a loot system does is give some order to who gets what loot. DKP, EPGP, and bid systems all do that. It makes the raiders feel better that the RNG is not favoring one person over another.

    We chose a bid system because it gave the raider the feeling of control over how his dkp was spent. Statisitcaly over time, it would have made no difference what point system we would have used. As it is, for high end items the person with the most points wins it.

    The true value I see in a point system is that if the rules are solid, it midigates all loot drama.

    That is why I avoid loot council. I find it benifits our raid to avoid loot council as it risks drama. No mater how fair or honest the council is, someone at some point will think they deserved an item over the person that got it.

    I said our raid for a reason. If its working for you, go with it.

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  3. Yeah, I agree it can work (dkp). We felt that it unfairly hurt dual or tri-specs, especially when we often call on those people to actually fill their "offspec" roles. There were some other issues that prompted us to try something other than DKP on a trial basis as well, but it's not worth going into deep detail with you. I agree with you that the best loot system for your raid is the one that works for your raid.

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  4. Its cool. I like to talk loot systems. We are on our 3rd revision of our system in 3 years.

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  5. I like to look at loot systems too.

    I prefer a bid DKP system over other systems. Pity the guild that I'm in doesn't use it.

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  6. i'm in a loot council guild now, which i would be 110% against in the past (unless i was on the council!). i kid, but i had a couple bad loot council experiences in BC.

    now, i'm finally in a good guild. it's well run, mature, i have to assume mainly adults (atleast the officers are), and to break it down as simple as possible, it's fair. to the point of items being ticketed off officers when it was pointed out that one got a weapon upgrade and boots in the same run. [ticketed before the patch that allowed the trading of BoP items within a raid to other elgible toons]. anyways, this guild's loot council wasn't the point of my comment, just that my current guild's loot council works because they're fair.

    main comment:
    my favorite DKP method i've ever been a part of was a modified zero sum DKP system. when a new raid dungeon is released, everyone goes to 500 dkp. when an item drops, whoever wins it, what they spent is divided amongst the other 24 participants evenly. all very fair.

    but the best part, it was like yours in that you had to spend second highest bid +1, the best part was it was a three round bidding process. so each round you could see where your competitors were bidding and where it might get to. two simple rules to avoid late bombs: you can't bid in round 3 if you didn't bid in round 2, you can't bid in 2 if you didn't in 1. and you can't go up in a round by more than double.

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