Renown decay questions

[Trerro]

1. Will decay just empty our renown bar, or will the guild in fact level down?

2. If it does level us down, will stuff we've previously unlocked be lost, or will we keep what we had at our leveling peak?

I'm one of the leaders of a fun, loosely run guild that plays several games at a time. We're quite active, but we're not super competitive, and pretty much none of us stick to a single game. I'm trying to figure out if this type of group is welcome here, or if decay is meant to weed us out. Thanks in advance for any replies.

[HungarianRhapsody]

1) it will actually level you down.

2) you don't lose anything that you had previously gotten, but you can't place identical new stuff once that "previously gotten" stuff expires. You will never lose your airship.

[Rawel_San]

Renown decay will actually level you down. At the lower levels renown decay is quite low and
if the guild is small that help as well.

You will lose the ability to purchase items if you get leveled down. Amenities on the ship will stay until they
expire though and you can never lose the ship itself. Guild decay also doesn't start until level 25.

Hope that helps,
Rawel

[pseudomasochist]

In addition to the posts above, once a guild reaches 25, it will not decay below that level.

There are more details on guild renown here: http://ddowiki.com/page/Guild_Renown

[eris2323]

I'm one of the leaders of a fun, loosely run guild that plays several games at a time. We're quite active, but we're not super competitive, and pretty much none of us stick to a single game. I'm trying to figure out if this type of group is welcome here, or if decay is meant to weed us out. Thanks in advance for any replies.

The guild system in DDO is set up to discourage your type of guild - as long as you are happy with never levelling past a certain level (dependant on players and amount of play) you'll be fine - but the system is set up to discourage and penalize casual players.

Sorry about that.

[HungarianRhapsody]

The guild system in DDO is set up to discourage your type of guild - as long as you are happy with never levelling past a certain level (dependant on players and amount of play) you'll be fine - but the system is set up to discourage and penalize casual players.

Sorry about that.

And since that "certain level" is pretty darn high, that's not actually a problem.

[eris2323]

If you say so...

I don't agree.

Sounds like they're a VERY casual guild. I expect they won't be pleased with the results of renown decay.

It all depends on your numbers and how often you play. If they don't play often because they are all playing other games, they're not going to get very high at all.

Your silver lining is yes, once you hit 25, at least you can keep that level forever... out of 100 levels... and never get the good buffs.

Sounds like, from the questions, they're already fighting decay.

Sounds motivating, doesn't it?

To answer the question again. Yes. Renown decay is meant to weed out your type of guild, and discourage you so you'll go play other games.

[Rawel_San]

Depends on how casual they play. I know a couple extremely casual guilds that have hit and kept lvl 58-60. While
that's not super high it's high enough for most if not all the goodies you might want for your ship.

[eris2323]

And those poor souls will never get to use large guild slots.

Every person who doesn't play daily, someone has to make up the debt.

Fun! Fun! Fun!

[Trerro]

Ok, now that I have the full details, looking beyond level 62:
-We'd need 85 for the final airship, but only once... so we'll need a big push against the decay wall, but it's not something we have to keep doing.

-The xp shrine is a whole 5%, and that only on deathless runs. Meh.

-The altar of epic rituals basically amounts to saving a 3 minute walk, and a rather infrequent one at that. Meh.

-The altar of devastation is the iffy one since it involves an extra raid run on a 3 day instance cooldown if I understand correctly... but then I've looked up the item requirements on that gear, and it sounds like anyone seeking that gear is going to be in there a gazillion times anyway, so +1 run shouldn't be a big issue. If it is, we'll have to go 70, but that's still 1/3 of the decay vs 85.

Looking at the decay rules and our current rate of leveling, the decay rate at 62 sounds annoying, but not ridiculous. 65 would give us a buffer of months, so that's probably the "where to park" level.

I really think they should split renown into xp (permanent, used for unlocks) and renown (decays, used for leaderboards), but I think we can live with the system as is. Thanks everyone.

Edit: Bah, forgot about the large augments at 70. That may make this harder, but hopefully still managable.

[pseudomasochist]

To answer the question again. Yes. Renown decay is meant to weed out your type of guild, and discourage you so you'll go play other games.
Uh, yeah, because Turbine wants everyone to leave for other games...

To the OP, the two primary factors in DDO's guild renown/level system are guild size and member activity. You know your guild better than the rest of us here and the DDO wiki page I linked above should have enough raw data needed to make an informed decision.

Lastly, and this is purely opinion, guild levels and the perks they provide are relatively minor in the big picture of DDO. If your guild will enjoy the game, it probably would regardless of what guild level it reaches and if it doesn't, my guess is it won't be because of the renown system.

Good luck with your decision.

[themoonbreaker]

Renown decay in a very small guild isn't too bad- getting to and maintaining level 60ish isn't impossible over time even if you don't play daily.

The level 55 ship is my favorite anyway.

[Vanshilar]

1. Will decay just empty our renown bar, or will the guild in fact level down?

2. If it does level us down, will stuff we've previously unlocked be lost, or will we keep what we had at our leveling peak?

I'm one of the leaders of a fun, loosely run guild that plays several games at a time. We're quite active, but we're not super competitive, and pretty much none of us stick to a single game. I'm trying to figure out if this type of group is welcome here, or if decay is meant to weed us out. Thanks in advance for any replies.

1. It will continue to decrease, so yes, the guild will in fact level down.
2. You will never lose your ship. Your ship amenities will stay there though until they expire, at which point if the guild level isn't high enough, you won't be able to purchase them again.

The guild renown system is such that at the low-mid levels, renown decay is so small that you won't notice it. It's also when you get most of the important ship buffs (such as a ship, the navigator, +damage, etc.). As you get to the mid-high levels, however, the ship buffs are far and few in between, and don't provide much more benefit compared with what you already have, and are more about minor conveniences or perks (such as being able to teleport to the high-level Amrath area rather than having to run there) than anything else. At the same time, the renown decay requirements more or less exponentially increase.

So it provides for a sort of hybrid system: guilds in theory should be able to get to the mid-levels relatively quickly and enjoy the more important ship buffs, while the tail end of the system (at the highest levels) are more for those guilds that are very active, and "much more about bragging rights than anything you might get from being of a guild level that high" (direct quote from head of Turbine) -- sort of like people comparing how many TRs their characters have or how much plat they've accumulated.

Unfortunately the decay is so low at the beginning that some of the guilds will simply blow through the earlier levels and wonder why they seem to get stuck all of a sudden once they reach the mid levels. And as with human nature, people see others with a Ferrari and want one but don't want to work for the money to get one, or see others getting straight A's and want them but are only willing to work for a B- rather than figure out how to improve their grades, leading to much of what you'll see on these forums.

At some point your guild will stabilize where the renown gain more or less matches the renown decay, and that's pretty much the equilibrium level for your guild. At that point you can consider where you want to go from there. That level represents where your guild naturally sits in terms of its regular level of activity. If you want to increase from there, then you'll have to consider increasing the guild's activity such as having more guild runs and such, but then you'll also have to consider whether or not the rewards are worth the effort. For every 10 additional levels you'll have to *roughly* double your level of activity, and the rewards are minor and far in between. So it becomes a matter of where you want your guild to be.

Generally I consider level 62 or 63 to be the last of the "important" levels, since at that point you already have all the +2 stat shrines and all the 30 resist shrines. The stuff beyond that is mostly fluff. A 5% XP shrine (at level 93) for being over 7 times more active than what you need for a 3% XP shrine (at level 63) is rather silly as a reward when it'll increase your leveling rate by only something like 1% overall when you consider leveling bonuses like conquest, persistence, first-time, etc. But how high you want to get depends on where you see the guild going and -- more importantly -- whether or not the members have the activity level to commit to it. Good luck.

[eris2323]

While it may be my personal opinion that it seems like Turbine wants casual players to leave the guild system alone, what is apparent and agreed upon is that unless every one of your characters plays every day, and unless you really work at keeping your levels, that yes, there will come a time when you will never ever ever advance in levels again.

This is what discourages many people.

Everyone 'considers' a certain level to be 'acceptable' - but what it really means is that your casual-ish guild will hit a point where you will never, ever gain levels again.

At that point, the people in your guild that DO care about the higher level buffs and stuff, usually will LEAVE the stagnant guild, causing more renown loss, and a decay for 2 weeks even though they're not in the guild, letting the rest of you carry that decay, or die trying.

If staying at say, level 62 or whatever your golden level is for years is considered fun for you, with no chance of advancement, ever... well that's great!

If every one of your players is casual, and you all play different games, and you don't care about renown at all, this might not happen - but I believe it's human nature to want to be part of something that is growing, as opposed to something that is stale, dead, and will never get anywhere.

Many people are not enjoying the system, and are asking the devs for changes - the devs seem to totally ignore us.

And it DOES seem like they really do want casual and social players to go elsewhere. I'm not the only one who has noticed this.

[DrunkenBuddha]

For some context, my guild only really has 2 or 3 active players. I define "active" as someone on once a day for at least 2 hours. We have 2 others that are on sporadically and 1 more who is on maybe 2-3 times a week. All of that is fine with all involved. Despite this, we still manage to pull in more renown than we decay. This is most likely because 2 of us are on TR trains and pull pretty much exclusively renown for end rewards. Our other toons are running through their epic destinies and typically selling/deconstructing loot.

Currently we are lvl 68 and increasing with a modified guild size of either 8 or 9 (depending on who logs on). We have all the amenities we really actually need, and we anticipate getting to lvl 70 in a bit. While I wouldn't mind the lvl 85 ship (the lvl 80 ship is an abomination), it isn't really necessary. Although we wouldn't mind more in the guild to fuel guild only raids, we also don't really care too much at the present time.

My advice is to just play the game with your friends and don't worry too much about guild decay.

[Zlingerdark]

While it may be my personal opinion that it seems like Turbine wants casual players to leave the guild system alone, what is apparent and agreed upon is that unless every one of your characters plays every day, and unless you really work at keeping your levels, that yes, there will come a time when you will never ever ever advance in levels again.

This is what discourages many people.

Everyone 'considers' a certain level to be 'acceptable' - but what it really means is that your casual-ish guild will hit a point where you will never, ever gain levels again.

At that point, the people in your guild that DO care about the higher level buffs and stuff, usually will LEAVE the stagnant guild, causing more renown loss, and a decay for 2 weeks even though they're not in the guild, letting the rest of you carry that decay, or die trying.

If staying at say, level 62 or whatever your golden level is for years is considered fun for you, with no chance of advancement, ever... well that's great!

If every one of your players is casual, and you all play different games, and you don't care about renown at all, this might not happen - but I believe it's human nature to want to be part of something that is growing, as opposed to something that is stale, dead, and will never get anywhere.

Many people are not enjoying the system, and are asking the devs for changes - the devs seem to totally ignore us.

And it DOES seem like they really do want casual and social players to go elsewhere. I'm not the only one who has noticed this.

Ok. I totally agree here that the renown decay is basically anti-social and goes counter to what a guild is SUPPOSE to be about. It promotes small cliche groups who will shun all casual players or at the very least NON-DAILY hard-core players.

Renown decay as it stands is stupid (sorry Turbine it IS in its current form) and needs to be serious reconsidered and more importantly implemented it a less rigid fashion.

1. DO AWAY WITH DAILY RENOWN DECAY. This is a must if you actually want guilds to thrive, big or small, hard-core or casual. In place of DAILY renown decay, because let's face it Turbine will definitely insist that SOME decay must occur. I agree, however in its current implementation it is atrocious.

2. GO TO A WEEKLY, OR MONTHLY RENOWN DECAY. I'd prefer a monthly renown decay vs a weekly one. Though I think either would go a LONG way in making the guild progression less taxing on casual players, and any guild size.

3. LET US NOT FORGET WHY WE HAVE RENOWN DECAY IN THE FIRST PLACE. The main reason for decay is to not have eventually every guild reaching max and staying there. That's not good either. However, if the point was to have only the most active guilds stay at or near the top, then quit yanking away renown from guilds that are still active! It should not matter whether the guild is casual, hard-core, small, medium or large. What SHOULD matter is how active the member base is.

Naturally, a more casual guild with few active members, or a large guild with a small hard-core active members with a large casual group would be treading on iffy ground, but still should not suffer drastic renown decay because of it. A criteria needs to be made to determine that if a certain percentage of members (by account, not characters) are active on a weekly (or monthly) basis then the guild OUGHT to suffer significantly LESS renown decay for being an ACTIVE guild. It should not matter what guild level you are to determine the severity of the decay.

As soon as a guild is considered INACTIVE, by weekly (or monthly) determination of activity it begins to suffer a more severe renown decay. Until the guild becomes more active, this decay will rapidly reduce a guild down in levels.

4. REWARD GUILDS WITH HIGHLY ACTIVE PLAYER BASE. A third criteria, besides ACTIVE or INACTIVE should also lessen the severity of renown decay. Let's call it HIGHLY ACTIVE. These guilds will have a large majority of their members (by account not characters) that are at a minimum WEEKLY players, or even DAILY players.

I think the severity of renown decay ought to be along the lines of:

A. Inactive guilds after a week of less than 25% active members suffer the full 100% rate of decay, whatever that may be for that guild's level. In others words, normal rate of decay for inactivity.

B. Active guilds after a week of at least 25%-50% active members suffer 50% rate of decay of whatever it may be normal for inactive guilds.

C. Highly active guilds after a week of 50%+ active member base suffer only 25% rate of decay of whatever the going decay rate would be for such a guild at their current level.

It still doesn't reward highly casual guilds over that of hard-core guilds as they are naturally going to acquire far less renown than what a highly active one will be able to muster, but it gives a casual guild who at least have a somewhat active player base that plays weekly from suffering the FULL decay effects and make it seem a never ending battle of maintaining their current level.

Let's face it, a good majority of players have a life outside this game and most cannot always play daily, or "get their daily quota of renown" to pull their own weight. However a much larger majority of players would have a better time of making a weekly gaming session, or maybe 2-3 times a week, but certainly not a daily event.

Renown decay needs to stay. But it needs some serious reconsideration from its current form to one that is less discouraging and more guild COMMUNITY friendly. All the current system is doing is making a bunch of small size guilds that are exclusive to a small group of highly active daily players. In it's current state it promotes exclusivity, instead of fostering a COMMUNITY.

It is no mistake that this game is dying, and it is in large part because of this dumb daily renown decay system. No new players will ever have a hope of gaining entrance to many guilds, because as soon as they join they are going to be hit with "you need to get such and such renown per day, or we boot you."