First time in any MMO is confusing, to say the least. Nobody uses normal English in chats, it’s all about unfamiliar words and myriads of abbreviations in a seemingly foreign language. NPC, GM, LFG, OOM, AOE, DD, CC, RB, CYA — most of these acronyms become familiar and commonplace in a week or two. However, some are worth closer attention like DKP. (It’s not Deutsche Kommunistische Partei, btw).
What is DKP
Imagine you’re a high-level mage and you really need some new equip to cast even more fearsome summons and destructive incantations. You have just completed a raid which made you break a sweat several times and you never died only because your healer has finally stopped being that stupid all thumbs and no fingers guy. However forty players participated and only three powerful items dropped — it would be pretty hard to distribute reward evenly. That’s where DKP comes into play.
DKP stands for “dragon kill points”. It was first used in Everquest in 1999 and named after two dragon bosses — Lady Vox and Lord Nagafen (thanks, Wiki). Clan leaders introduced this loot distribution system in order to solve the aforementioned uneven loot distribution problem. All raid members got points for participating and then players with most points got the loot. It worked much better than the random roll system which was in use prior to DKP. However, there still were problems with this earliest version of the DKP system and the major one was inflation. That made the system evolve and spawn several versions in order to work better.
How many DKP systems are there
There are too many to count but luckily for us, they all boil down to several archetypes.
Zero-sum DKP. Each item is assigned a certain value in DKP, e.g. this sword is worth 100 points. Each participant of a raid who wants the sword gets a chance to obtain it starting with the player with most total points. When a person makes his choice he gets the sword and loses 100 points and the same 100 points are distributed evenly among other raid participants. So if there were 50 people in a raid they will get 2 points each. The system also allows you to have negative points which mean novices have more chances to get better items which fixes a common flaw in the plain DKP system.
Spend-all DKP. The name is pretty self-explanatory: each item you want you should pay with all your DKP. This means that people will stop being greedy and taking all items they can get their hands on but rather get the ones they need the most. The downside is that there are many unwanted items left. There is a version of this system called Spend-enough DKP which grants the chance to purchase the item to the person with the highest total points. The catch is he needs to spend the amount the next-highest bidder has plus one point thus spending most but not all points.
Probabilistic DKP. All the players’ DKP are summed up and then it’s time for a random roll. So if the total is 1000 DKP and you have 120 then you have a 12% chance to get an item. Then the item value is deducted from the winner’s points and the procedure repeats. This version is also more friendly to novices because they have a chance to get great items from the very start.
Effective DKP. This version distributes the reward based on how many raids you attended during the past two months. So if a novice attended all the raids last month he has more chances to get items than a veteran who only attended a couple. You still have to pay for the item from DKP earned previously however as the activity only influences the chance but the system stimulates the old-timers to participate more actively. That’s the issue with some of the other versions where you can hoard an enormous number of points and get items without even having to fight.
Auction DKP. Quite an elegant solution to the issues presented by a DKP system: players get points as usual but every item is auctioned for. Previously players had to either send their bids to their clan chat or to their leader in private messages. Nowadays there are web-based solutions to make auctions more convenient for the participants. Auction DKP is rather efficient and solves many problems presented by other systems.
How you can use a DKP system to build a clan
Here are some ideas on how you can include DKP in your clan management routine.
Copy the approach of subscription-based services. Make players pay a fixed sum of gold or other resources in exchange for DKP. Then use the resources for the whole clan sake, crafting and raiding. This will make even not willing to raid clan members useful for the whole clan.
Fines for inactivity. Deduct a progressively increasing number of DKP out of player’s account for each week of not contributing to the clan enough. Players who touch zero can be kicked out of the clan altogether.
Rewards for great performances. Do you have some mightiest warriors on the server? Please don’t hesitate to reward them accordingly by allocating some extra DKP. Granting bonuses for performance rather than attendance is a much more effective strategy for the clan wellbeing.
DKP system is fairer than loot council one, where some clan members decide who will get which items. Councils can be corrupt and unfair basing their decisions on personal preferences rather than players’ raid performance. Applying a thought-out DKP system can solve an end-level rare drop distribution problem, punish negligent players and reward diligent ones.
