I would like to check my understanding of DKP pricing models with the experience of people who have designed DKP systems for their guilds.

Here they are:

If DKP inflation is characterized by a devaluation of DKP (i.e., the cost of a given item costs increasingly more as time goes on), are not fixed-price models [always] inflationary?

By contrast, in a pure bidding system (i.e., variable spending), the DKP price of an item is determined by the highest bid for that item in that raid. Obviously, the DKP price for the same item will vary from raid to raid. Is not such a system immune to inflationary pressure (ignoring Boss DKP for the moment)?

Cheers,

They tend to be. It takes a decent amount of work from the leaders to watch the averages and adjust the prices of the items, and the values of the bosses, accordingly. You want to accomplish an effective "Zero-average" there. Fixed price systems are typically chosen because they are easy for data entry.



Not quite. If you're doing Variable spending - fixed earning, then you do face potential inflation when people earn for kills without spending. But, that can be off-set as long as your guild's philosophy of competition is relatively strong (it's relatively common for a class to collude over the items).

Ultimately, in that situation, what will help prevent inflation are the highly sought-after items, where everyone is bidding against eachother.

The only DKP system that's purely preventative of inflation is the dynamic earning model (such that the amount earned is ALWAYS the amount Spent Divided by the number of members in the raid). This Guarantees that all the points that enter the system leave at the same time.

Like zero-sum, A popular model. Its biggest flaw is older member can get too deep in the hole (negative dkp) to get out, and new members get priority. That is usually remedied by separate systems for instances (or groups of instances)

variable spending is often susceptible to coercion and manipulation, in my experience.