From Apotheosis

Contents 1 Raid Participation Points (RPP) Introduction 2 RPP - The Naked Essentials 3 Spending Points 3.1 Eligibility 3.2 Bidding Process 3.3 Minimum Bids 3.3.1 Pricing 3.3.1.1 Quality Modifiers 3.3.1.2 Slot Modifiers 3.3.2 Quest Items 3.3.3 Crafting Resources and Items 3.3.4 PvP Gear 3.3.5 Discounted Items 3.3.6 Legendary Items 3.3.7 Crafted Items 4 Earning Points 4.1 Points From Purchases 4.2 Bonus Points 5 Point Pools 6 Multi-Raid Example 7 FAQ

Raid Participation Points (RPP) Introduction

RPP is a participation-weighted round-robin loot distribution system for large organized raids.

It is a system designed to fairly reward players for the time and effort they put into raiding while at the same time not excluding those that are more casual participants. The basic premise is that points are used to keep track of a position in line that determines who has priority to receive the next item that drops. When someone receives an item they spend points and move to the back of the line and will then accumulate points such that they will return to the front of the line after everyone else who has participated equally has also received an item. Equal participation translates to equal reward.

Each player will start with zero points for the first raid attended. Points spent will be subtracted from the player's balance at the time of purchase and points earned will be added to the balance after the raid is complete. The player's point balance may be positive or negative and will be tracked as a decimal value. The player with the highest point total has priority for the next item that drops.

RPP - The Naked Essentials

If you're not interested in the inner mechanics of the point system, then here are the absolute basics to keep in mind when raiding. You can reference the more in-depth explanations in their respective sections if you would like more information, but these are the bare essentials everyone should understand.

1. Points are earned when an item drops or when bonus points are awarded by the raid leader to the raid.
2. You can view your point total at the Apotheosis Raid Site.
3. Every item has a minimum bid. The bid-taker will link the item and the minimum bid when bidding starts.
4. When an item drops that you want: You will send a message to the bid-taker with your bid for that item based on the following:
   • If you have fewer points than the minimum bid, you can still bid the minimum.
   • If you have more points than the minimum bid, you can bid anywhere from the minimum bid to your total number of points.
   • The winner is chosen from the first of 3 conditions:
     1. Highest Bidder
     2. /random roll-off if there are multiple identical bids between the players who can cover the points.
     3. Player with the most points if all bids are a minimum bids. (Priority goes to the Guild Member with the most points.)
5. The end cost of an item ends up being the second highest bid + 1, regardless of what the winning bid was. The only exception being when all bids are minimum-bids, in which case the cost is the minimum bid.
6. There's no limit to the number of items won in a raid. The point system controls item distribution so there's no need for an artificial limit.

Spending Points

Points are spent by purchasing items using a silent one-time bid system. Points may only be spent in whole numbers. The amount of the winning bid will be subtracted from the player's total points at the time of purchase. Each item has a set minimum bid and the only maximum is the number of points available to the player.

Note: A winning bid is considered final and its value will not be changed by any adjustments or changes made to the RPP system unless deemed necessary by the RPP Administrator. If the RPP Administrator feels a proposed adjustment to the RPP system would require retroactive changes, then the RPP Administrator should use the discussion regarding the proposed adjustment to explain the details and impact behind the proposal so that the guild may consider and vote accordingly.

Eligibility

Anyone may bid on an item regardless of current point total. If a player does not have enough points to meet the minimum bid, he or she may still bid the minimum resulting in a negative point total if that is the winning bid. The number of items which can be won by a player is limited only by the available points relative to other players.

Bidding Process

The bidding system is silent, meaning that each player wishing to bid sends his or her bid to the designated Bid Master via whisper, in order to prevent unneccesary bid increases. Bids may be made for any amount from the minimum bid to the player's total points in increments of one point. Bids may never exceed the player's current point total except in the case of a minimum bid. Each player may only bid once and this bid is a proxy bid, meaning that the Bid Master will raise the player's bid from the minimum up to this maximum only as much as is necessary to win. After all bids have been received the item is awarded to the highest bidder for the proxy amount required to win, which is generally 1 point over the second-highest bid except in the case of ties. If there are multiple players tied for the highest bid above the minimum, or at the minimum with enough points to cover the minimum bid, each will roll /random 100 and the item is awarded to the highest roll for the full amount of the bid. However, in the case of ties at minimum bid where not all players have enough points to cover the minimum bid preference is given to the player that would have the least negative points after winning. Someone with points equal to or greater than the minimum would not have a negative total and has priority over anyone with fewer points than the minimum.

Multiple Bid Masters will be employed to ensure that the Bid Master is not involved in bidding on an item. All winning bids will be published after the raid.

If no bids are received for an item and will be disenchanted and the resulting Enchanting Materials will be donated to the Raid Bank for use in enchantments. Items which cannot be disenchanted will be left to rot or looted and destroyed as necessary.

Example:

A Tier One Set Shoulders Item drops (30 points minimum bid).

Player A bids 35 points. Player B bids 30 points. Player C bids 60 points.

Player C wins the item and pays 1 point more than Player A's bid, 36 points.

Minimum Bids

There are set minimum bids for different classes of items listed below.

The minimum bid prevents collusion among bidders trying to save points for more contested items. For example, if all members of a class agreed that they would only ever bid 5 points for their class set items then they would each ultimately receive them at an artificially low cost and have more points to outbid other classes on desirable cross-class items. To prevent this unfair advantage a player will always pay at least the minimum bid for an item, though some items may be eligible for a discounted minimum bid if no bids are received.

Pricing

The minimum price of an item is determined by: RPP = ( QualityModifier * SlotModifier * iLevel^2 ) / 200.

Quality Modifiers

• Uncommon - 1.21
• Rare - 1.42
• Epic - 1.64
• Legendary - 1.86

Slot Modifiers

Slot	SlotMod
Head, Chest, Legs, 2H weapon	1.00
Shoulder, Hands, Waist, Feet	0.777
Trinket	0.70
Wrist, Neck, Back, Finger, Off-hand/Shield	0.55
1H weapon	0.42
Ranged/Wand/Libram/Totem/Idol	0.30

For examples, visit RPP iLevel Examples, For a complete table RPP iLevel Table

Quest Items

Quest items will be priced based on the point value of the reward. This applies to both Tier "tokens" such as the [Pauldrons of the Fallen Hero] and other turn-ins such as [Magtheridon's Head].

Crafting Resources and Items

In general, all crafting resources will be collected by the Raid Bank and made available to guild members by the bank council according to policy. Formulas, Patterns, Plans and Schematics will be offered first to everyone with the required skill to learn them immediately.

• Rare Formula/Pattern/Plan/Schematic: 5 points
• Epic Formula/Pattern/Plan/Schematic: 20 points

• Elementium Ore: 0 points (*1)
• Sulfuron Ingot: 0 points (*2)
• Nether Vortex: 5 points (*3)
• Epic Gems: 0 points (*4)

1: All Elementium Ore will be collected by the Raid Bank to be used in the crafting of Thunderfury and the completion of the Blessed Qiraji item quests. Ore will be distributed in priority order of the purchase of the corresponding quest items (completed Bindings of the Windseeker, Imperial Qiraji Armaments, Imperial Qiraji Regalia).

2: All Sulfuron Ingots will be collected by the Raid Bank to be used in the crafting of Sulfuras. Ingots will be distributed in priority order of the purchase of the corresponding quest item (Eye of Sulfuras).

3: Due to the BoP nature of the Nether Vortex, players may purchase a Nether Vortex and assign it to a chosen crafter for the crafting of a specific item.

4: All epic quality gems that drop in raid instances will be collected by the Guild Bank. Only socketable items that drop in the same or higher level raid instances are eligible for socketing with these gems. The order in which these items are awarded dictates the order in which gem requests will be filled. Gem requests should be placed in the 'Bank Requests' forum and are filled by the Bank Council. The color of the gem requested is irrelevant, meaning that you can fill a yellow socket with a red or purple gem. Only the quantity of sockets dictates how many gems will be distributed. Only raw gems will be distributed. In the case of regemming, requests will be added to the end of the queue.

PvP Gear

As PvP gear cannot be disenchanted, nor sold, items that drop in the following instances, with an iLevel emphasis on Resilience, will be considered a non-RPP item. Any members of the raid wishing to acquire the item will perform a /roll instead of bidding with RPP. Additional instances can be added to this list by performing a simple 14 day vote, and obtaining the proper support.

1. Vault of Archavon (Regular and Heroic)

Discounted Items

Some items may only be minor upgrades, or be used in limited circumstances by someone and thus not merit the full cost of the minimum bid for that player. To allow these items to be put to use any item which is not a quest item and is not class-specific will be eligible for a discounted minimum. Players who wish to bid on these items at a discounted rate can bid from the discounted rate up to and including their point total. Discounted price bids will, always be considered losing bids if someone bids at the regular minimum bid. Relics (ex: Librams, Sigils, Totems and Idols) will also be offered at a discounted minimum. Class tokens will be offered at a discounted minimum only to those players who have previously purchased the exact token through RPP.

The discounted minimum bid for these items will be 50% of the original minimum bid.

Legendary Items

• [Warglaive of Azzinoth] -- When a Warglaive drops it will be awarded to the person in the raid who needs it to complete their Warglaive set at the same price that they paid for their first Warglaive. If there are multiple people in the raid who need the new Warglaive to complete their set, it will be awarded to the person who acquired their initial Warglaive first. If a Warglaive drops and no one in the raid can complete a set with it, it will go to open auction as a full Warglaive set (both main hand and off hand) with a modified minimum bid of double the normal minimum bid (190 RPP instead of 95 RPP). The winner of the auction will pay half of the winning bid for the first Warglaive in their set, and the remaining half once they acquire the second Warglaive to complete the set.

• [Fragment of Val'anyr] -- When a Fragment drops that isn't promised to a player, an auction will be held. The winner of this auction will be then promised the next fragment drops until they are able to get the quest item for the mace. They will be charged 1/30th of the winning price for each fragment they pick up. If there are multiple people in the raid who need the new fragment to complete their Mace, it will be awarded to the person who acquired their initial Splinter first. The minimum bid for a fragment will be 12.5 points making the min total item cost 375.

Crafted Items

Crafted items purchased from the Raid Bank have a fixed cost determined by the cost of the resources required for the item. An Onyxia Scale Cloak, for example, has a cost of 15 points for the one required Scale of Onyxia, whereas a Lava Belt has a cost of 25 points for the five required Lava Cores which cost 5 points each. Please see the RPP Crafted Items page for details.

Earning Points

Points are earned primarily from the purchase of items by another raid member, preventing the inflation of point value over time. Bonus points may also be awarded under special circumstances, such as learning attempts on a new boss where no items drop. All points earned from a raid are added to the player's point total after the raid is complete and may not be spent during the raid.

Points From Purchases

When an item is purchased, the purchaser pays the bid cost and all other members of the raid will receive (purchase amount / number of other raid members) points.

Example:

A Tier One Set Feet Item drops (30 points minimum bid) in a full 40-person raid.

Player A bids 40 points. Player B bids 30 points. Player C bids 38 points.

Player A wins the item and pays 39 points. All other raid members will each receive one point (39 points spent / 39 remaining members).

Bonus Points

When bonus points are awarded a corresponding number of points must ultimately be subtracted from the system to prevent point inflation. Bonus points will be tracked by subtracting them from a temporary point sink, which will periodically be balanced and brought back to zero by subtracting an equal number of points from everyone in the system. This will also provide a slow decay of points over time for inactive players and allows greater flexibility in awarding bonus points without unfairly penalizing raid members who do not qualify.

Example:

For a failed Onyxia attempt, the 40 members present are awarded one bonus point each.

The point sink now has -40 points. When the point sink is balanced and brought back to zero, 40 points will be added to it and subtracted from all players. If there are 80 total participants in the system, each will have 0.5 points subtracted.

Point Pools

For each expansion a new point pool will be generated, which will contain all RPP transactions for all instances introduced in that expansion. Content introduced between expansions is considered part of the most recently released expansion (ex: Sunwell is part of the TBC expansion). An RPP transaction is any change in points for a player, be it from a point balance, winning an item, or being present when an item is awarded, or any other point change not listed here. RPP transactions will be included in the point pools based on the instance the item or bonus was awarded. A players point total will be considered using only those transactions that were generated for the pool of the instance currently being raided.

A single point pool is used for the original game and "The Burning Crusade" (TBC) expansion, for historical reasons. All instances that originated with TBC or the original game will be included in this point pool.

The RPP standings pages will be duplicated such that a user can see either the old points or by default the new points.

Multi-Raid Example

For a brief example of how RPP works for a simplified 10-person raid, please look at the RPP Example page.

FAQ

1. Why zero sum?
   • The main idea behind zero sum is to balance the rewards for the casual player and the "professional" player, so that someone that just joined the system is inserted into the middle of the list of people that are up for receiving items, and not at the front, back or some random location in that list.
2. Why bidding?
   • Not all items are created equally for all characters. We wanted a way for people to be able to express preference for one item over another.
3. This seems really complicated - what do I have to do?
   • It has been our goal for this system that it be easy to use for the casual player. We expect that someone that isn't interested in doing a lot of item research, should just show up, and indicate when something drops that they would like that item. The way to indicate that the item is desirable is to tell the Bid Master (the person receiving the bids) that they want the item at minimum bid price. We expect that most items will go for minimum bid, and that it will be the rare item that doesn't go for minimum bid. You shouldn't have to keep track of your points, our computers will do all that hard work for us. All you should have to do is show up and let us know which items you want when they drop.
4. How do I annotate the CT_Raid tracker data
   • See RPP Data Format for more information.