DownloadThe EPGP loot system
Introduction
EPGP stands for Effort Points/Gear Points. Effort Points (EP) quantify the effort each member put towards the, hopefully common, guild goals. Gear Points (GP) quantify what loot each member got back in return. Loot priority (PR) is computed as the quotient of the two:
PR = EP/GP
The person with the higher PR gets the first say on loot. As a result, the more effort you put the more gear you receive. As a matter of fact, the gear you receive is proportional to the effort you put. EPGP is based on this simple principle, but there are some complexities that need to be dealt with which will be covered below.
Decay
In order to award recent effort more than past effort, which in effect avoids PR hoarding for veterans and enables new coming and dedicated members of a guild to be awarded properly, EPGP supports a decay mechanism. Decay simply removes a chunk of EP and GP from the totals, effectively leaving PR unchanged. For example with a decay of 10% applied each week, for each 7 days that pass your effort's rewards get diminished by 10%. The effort you put 10 weeks ago will only be worth 34.8% of what it did when you received it ( (1-0.1) 10 ).
Priming the system
A loot system should behave reasonably not only in its steady state but also when new members join a guild and the guild's efforts. For this reason some extra parameters need to be setup.
Base GP
Base GP adds a certain GP to each member of a guild. This means the final GP of each member is: GP = BaseGP + RealGP. All PR computations happen on GP not BaseGP or RealGP. Decay also applies to GP as a whole but it only diminishes RealGP. As such GP can never be lower than BaseGP. For example, say we have BaseGP = 100 and RealGP = 10. Applying a 10% decay will result in RealGP = 0 for a total of 100 GP.
Base GP prevents new recruits or long time inactive members from trumping your dedicated members just because their GP is 0 and thus their PR infinite.
Min EP
Min EP puts a limit, which members should exceed in order to have any loot priority. This is more or less an attendance check and a road block for new members to reach a point after which they can need on loot. Anyone below MinEP has in effect lower PR then everyone above MinEP even if their effective PR is higher. For example MinEP = 10000 and member A has 20000 EP and 4000 GP for 5 PR and member B has 1000 EP and 100 GP for 10 PR. In this case member A has higher priority for loot since he/she is above the MinEP threshold even though his/her PR is lower than member B.
EPGP also adds a tooltip line to items displaying the GP value of the item. The GP value is computed using the item level and the equipping slot of each item as follows:
GP = item value2 x 0.04 x slot value
Item value is computed using the method on the right:
Item quality Item value
Uncommon (ilvl - 4) / 2
Rare (ilvl - 1.84) / 1.6
Epic (ilvl - 1.3) / 1.3
Slot mod is given by the following table:
Equipping Slot Slot value
Head, Chest, Legs, 2H Weapon 1
Shoulder, Hands, Waist, Feet 0.777
Trinket 0.7
Wrist, Neck, Back, Finger, Off-hand, Shield 0.55
1H Weapon, Ranged Weapon, Wand 0.42
Problems and solutionsEP hoarding
This problem is non-existent in EPGP because of the use of the EP and GP decay. Only temporal EP and GP are accounted. So the latest you "use" your PR lead the least amount of benefit you get out of it. And the earliest you take an item, the faster its value will decay.
New members vs veterans
Because of the decay, new members become equal under the system much faster. EPs decay over time so with a 10% decay in about 15 raids a veteran has about the same EP as a new member (if they both attended the same raids). The only barrier to entry for new members is reaching Min EPs in order to be eligible for loot.
Members that are geared up vs members that are not
Members that are geared up already will end up with the highest PR possible and will have first priority over a new (and possibly rare) drop. This will satisfy these members. Members that are not geared up already will end up getting loot in most raids which will keep their priority low. So they will still gear up but they will not threaten members that wait for a special piece to drop in order to get their satisfaction as well.
Complexity
Unlike Zero Sum with taxation, which is very similar, there is no need to rebalance when members join/leave guild, and no changes in tax/decay because of more tries on new content. The reduced complexity of the system allows more people to understand it, which keeps the queries to the guild master low and member satisfaction up.
Hard to assign item values and boss kill/tries values
Because effort points are decoupled from effort points it is easier to assign "good" values for each category. Guild Masters/Officers can focus on balancing different boss kill/tries, materials farming rewards separately from item values. If you notice in the above example nothing would change if each raid was awarding 987 EP and each piece was worth 123 points. Balancing rewards and items is extremely hard; balancing them in isolation is quite simpler.
Randomness on boss value in zero sum
Zero Sum's major flaw is that for the same encounter, you might end up getting more or less points, depending on the loot (which is random). This introduces a major cause of unfairness to the system, since the same boss, which requires the same effort, is worth more in some runs and less in others. In EPGP each boss awards the same EP every time, adding to the fairness of the system.
Home 
