Guild Renown Changes

[Ebuddy]

Great job stereotyping the complainers. Level 100, you did it! Good for you. Your guild may be casual, but I'd have to think you are very efficient. Group together, speed run the high level raids/quests, profit. Unfortunately, not all guilds are equiped like yours. My guild has 10 players, stretching across the spectrum of levels. We don't all get to play together, and we are of different levels of game expertise. Some will log-on and play one quest, one that may take him an hour to finish, one which experienced zergers can do in 3 minutes.

You can toss in all the stats you want. I don't care about any of that. This is a GAME, get it? I don't want to have to play like you to be 100. I don't care about hitting 100 tbh. I just want a level of return for our investment, be it slower than the "super" guilds, but some progress.

People have worried about spammer guilds returning. Really? You think there are that many new players coming into the game right now?

The best suggestion I've made (and seen) is that guild levels should go to 500, so you "super" guilds can still prattle on about your superiority. Turbine can give you announcements at every 25 levels telling the world how you are the best. Maybe even give you a mauve bat and a neon glowing guild name above your heads.

+1 Rep for this.

Too bad I already had to leave my guild of great people. I joined another guild of great people that didn't worry as much abour renown and I'll be darned if I'm going to ditch them. Too little, to late (imho). I applaud the devs for trying to take some action but it's really just a band aid (or lipstick on a pig, depending upon your perspective). I never understood what the specific, measureable objective of guild housing was (in Turbine's eyes) but perhpas if they shared it, this pretty astute player base could have given them something better to start with in the first place.

[Dawnsfire]

you boot them for being inactive for a year but what if they are deploied over sea's or fighting a war

On our guild forums we have a section where folks can drop a quick message if something like that can passed on. If worse comes to worse, drop your guild leader a quick in game mail. None of this is rocket science. . .

[wayreth602]

Small guild bonuses weren't touched. If you are saying you were getting them Sunday but aren't any more, there's a bug.

Small guild bonuses still work as of a few minutes ago. After your post I went in and ran Haverdasher on a lowbie. I got small guild bonuses on a kill and a heroic deed. This is on Cannith if it makes a difference.

[djl]

I miss where this change punishes small guilds. How did anything change for the worse for anyone?

Because small guilds get significantly less renown/week now than large guilds. If everyone in a large guild with 100 active players earns a measly 2k renown a day, the guild will get 200k renown. It would be a struggle for a 6-man guild to amass that much in a day.

[JOTMON]

The inequities are that the system is far more rewarding to larger guilds. A six-person guild receives 4x renown, so each person accomplishes what 4 people can do. That means that they are functionally equivalent to a 24 person guild. A guild with more than 24 active people in it will gain renown at a faster rate than a six-person guild, and it will increase significantly when you get up to 100 or 200 people in your guild.

That's the problem-- with flat-rate renown decay, the bonus small guilds receive can't begin to keep up with the amount large guilds earn. The bonus small guilds receive needs to be increased for the system to be fair to them.

Problem is much more convoluted.

a 6 man guild is likely a group of similar minded and similar time playing group of people., can run quests anytime together, and pickup 6 people from channels to put a raid together.

a 14 person guild has 2 people sitting out of a 12 man raid, so they do something else... or you break down into smaller groups and run different stuff.

a 80 person guild has some people TR'ing , some in different time zones, some raiding , some levelling, more casual players, the population becomes much more diverse.

From what I see Endgame raids take me more time to organize and run and drop less renown than zerging low level stuff, events dont drop renown at all so grinding events is harmful to guild renown. Renown does not really scale with difficulty, I still see Tales of Valor for running FR Epic Elites and from a renown prespective is is no better than running Korthos. Epic Raids should be dropping much more significant renown rewards.


I think the renown system needs to be more individually oriented.
Guild size is irrelivent renown is by player whether it is a 10 person guild or 1000 person guild.
Each person receives a renown goal when they log in. something like 25 renown/Guild level.
Decay should apply only for active players that enter a quest not those that log in and dont even run anything. Inactivity should apply 24 hours after you have logged out not 4 weeks later.
Limit guild renown loss by player, no player should be able to lose more renown than they have ever earned.
If a player drops below their required contribution amount they can no longer access the boat without invitation.
Locked out player can be invited by another guildie at the cost of reactiviating the boats daily decay for that person(can log in/out on the boat but if they exit the boat they cannot reenter without invitation or achieving their personal daily renown requirement).

Caclulate guild level decay based on entire guilds days earned renown(tally of all active guildies) vs total required for day to determaine a net guild growth or decay.
Active members that did not reach their individual goal for the day lose ship access and no longer count towards the next days guild daily decay(unless reinvited back onto the boat then they are reactivated for another day).

Apply achievement benchmarks
- player achieves 1 million Guild Renown gets a 25% reduction in personal decay.
- player achieves 2 million Guild Renown gets a 50% reduction in personal decay
- player achieves 5 million Guild Renown player no longer generates decay(automatically awarded daily quota).
Only applies to renown earned while in that specific guild, leave the guild and you lose your benchmarks.
Quit a guild lose 50% of your renown the remaining 50% gets applied to your new guild. quit again lose 50% again.
that way reforms, merges are not a lose lose situation.

Something like this I think would go a longer way towards balanced guild activity.
Players that don't generate renown are readily identified since they have to ask for ship invite or have the opportunity to go farm renown to achieve their requirement.
Guild size is irrelivent as the renown is based on individual requirements.

[Theolin]

I do believe that no matter what is done someone will always have it easier and someone will always have it more difficult.

I do not think this is an exception to the rule.

They are stuck between hurting one group over an other (rock & hard place).

I also think there is no solution that does not cause a set of groups more strife over other groups.

Therefore best they can do is try to not have more groups on the harm side then on the benefit side. So if we are lucky the benefit side has more than 50% of the population in it.

And for those complaining about the harm to the small guilds .... From what I have seen several of them are that way on purpose to take advantage of the way renown works (And I know some left large guilds and formed small guilds for just this reason, for that group I have no sympathy) - its just like the flavor of the month builds - sooner or later they change the game and we get to adapt.

[wayreth602]

Because small guilds get significantly less renown/week now than large guilds. If everyone in a large guild with 100 active players earns a measly 2k renown a day, the guild will get 200k renown. It would be a struggle for a 6-man guild to amass that much in a day.

I am a small guild leader with six or so accounts in our guild. Only two are really active. Those accounts can get at best 4K to 11K with a five hour day of play(at level). So it is true small guilds can't compete with the big guilds on reknown earning.

On the other side, we keep our guild small by choice and choose who we want in the guild.

We have only kicked one out of the guild, and that was after she told us it hurt her wrists too much to play (though she plays another MMO...lazy combat).

This change helps large guilds and does little for small guilds(but they may choose to remain small). But at least the Devs listened and are trying to help.

It is a wash as to what we will see happen with new players. With that caveat, I saw new recruiting on Cannith earlier with it being a blind invitation. If this is good or bad, we shall see.

Maybe Cordavan should add guild charters back into the lottos for a while and let new people win them and see what they think about guilds and running them.

[Tshober]

Problem is much more convoluted.

a 6 man guild is likely a group of similar minded and similar time playing group of people., can run quests anytime together, and pickup 6 people from channels to put a raid together.

a 14 person guild has 2 people sitting out of a 12 man raid, so they do something else... or you break down into smaller groups and run different stuff.

a 80 person guild has some people TR'ing , some in different time zones, some raiding , some levelling, more casual players, the population becomes much more diverse.

Yes, the problem is far more convoluted than the forum "mathematitions" try to portray it. Large guilds are not simply scaled up small guilds. They are a completely different animal. And all that diversity is why the old decay system did not allow them to progress as well as the smaller guilds, even though extremely simplistic math indicates that they should have.

The rest of your post is about how you suggest it might be solved and I tried to follow all of what your were sugesting but you were suggesting so much change to so many things all at once that, fankly, I could not keep track of all of the effects it might generate. So I am afraid I can't really say whether I lthink it would work or not. All I can say is it seemed complex.

[Ivan_Milic]

So a guild with lets say 3 people who play off and on a little every day, has no chance of reaching level 100 unless they specifically set out with pots, to gain as much renown as possible? Average in a day of playing i might get 6000 renown, maybe, that was with small guild bonus. Taking that away is like saying small guilds have to recruit, what if we dont want too? I like the other change, but give us back our small guild bonus, as it stands without it i may get 2000 renown in a day of playing. Combine that with the maybe 2000 the other two ppl get, 6000 renown is going to be canceled out by decay pretty fast.

But I agree with the general thinking no decay is preferred.

They just changed decay to be based on lvl of guild,you still have small and medium guild bonuses.

[guardianx2009]

It is nice to see renown being addressed, but I would've liked to see the following change instead:


#1 Change renown to be a function of activity, not a function of chests looted:

In general, DDO activities include:
- Favor Farming
- Loot/ingredient farming
- flagging for quest
- Running quests for xp.
- Explorer areas, Mabar/Cove events.

Current system punishes players that do anything above level for any purpose. It shouldn't be this way. Running quests above level to help other guildies farm/flag is still an ACTIVITY. Running challenges for ingredients is still an ACTIVITY. Doing favor runs is still an ACTIVITY. Guilds should not be punished for doing such activities.

Getting renown from chests should be a BONUS, not the main source of earning renown. Currently the renown system only rewards the following activity: Running quests at level or below level. But this is true only because the end rewards and chests actually drop best renown. And best renown comes from quests with most chests: Farming irestone over and over for renown is not fun.

Earning renown should be a function of activity (time), not a function of loot. It should come naturally just for being active and doing quests for whatever reason, regardless of difficulty.

Suggestion:
1. Grant renown reward upon quest completion (regardless of level) based on estimated quest duration:
Short Quests: ~100 renown
Medium quests: ~250 renown
Long Quests: ~500 renown
Raids: 1000 renown
2. Grant renown for completing optionals. (Maybe ~50-100 renown per optional)
3. Add % bonus for being 2 levels below quest difficulty.
4. Increase renown earned for kills

#2 Remove penalty for kickin inactive toons
Guilds should be allowed to maintain their roster without being punished 25% renown and incurring renown penalty for it.

#3 Remove penalty for leaving on good terms
Why should guilds be punished for guildies that leave on good terms? The punishment of losing a guildie is enough already.

#4 Adjust DECAY MULTIPLIER table
Removing the account modifier may be a bit drastic, I would've rather seen the MULTIPLIER was adjusted down a bit (say, maybe 10-25%) for levels 50+. This way guilds of all sizes benefit from reduced decay.

[HanzelC]

This will definately help large guilds. This will also have the affect of elevating guilds that take the time to plan activities for guild members. Folks will start heading to the larger guilds for the buffs, but imho, they will eventually move to where the action is.
Thus creating a more vibrant communty in general.

Meanwhile, the smaller guilds will not be affected.

Oldguy

[Dandonk]

I'm happy for the large guilds. Kicking people simply due to play time is not a great thing, and some people felt more or less forcecd to it.

But I do fear that it will become, for most guilds, a case of go large or go home now. Any large guild can now count on reaching level 100 within a not too long time. Small guilds will struggle or not, as they used to.

If decay is removed (which is what it more or less amounts to) for large guilds, why should small guilds keep it?

I like that Turbine is trying to do something about an issue that's been brought up many times in the forums, but I'm not convinced this is the best, or even a good, way to go about it.

[akiraproject24]

Look forward to more of the guild recruiting spams in general....havent seen that in years gladly....I can see it now every 3 seconds "**** is recruitng anyone with a pulse! Must be able to walk, jump and strafe, if you cant, thats fine too, just join so we get bigger boat". OVer and over and over

[Glenalth]

I would rather see the renown decay kept at the old rate per active account.

Instead, reduce the "inactive" timer for members considerably, possibly to only a few days. That way the system still scales for large guilds but doesn't penalize the casual guilds as much.

[Tshober]

It is nice to see renown being addressed, but I would've liked to see the following change instead:


#1 Change renown to be a function of activity, not a function of chests looted:

In general, DDO activities include:
- Favor Farming
- Loot/ingredient farming
- flagging for quest
- Running quests for xp.
- Explorer areas, Mabar/Cove events.

Current system punishes players that do anything above level for any purpose. It shouldn't be this way. Running quests above level to help other guildies farm/flag is still an ACTIVITY. Running challenges for ingredients is still an ACTIVITY. Doing favor runs is still an ACTIVITY. Guilds should not be punished for doing such activities.

Getting renown from chests should be a BONUS, not the main source of earning renown. Currently the renown system only rewards the following activity: Running quests at level or below level. But this is true only because the end rewards and chests actually drop best renown. And best renown comes from quests with most chests: Farming irestone over and over for renown is not fun.

Earning renown should be a function of activity (time), not a function of loot. It should come naturally just for being active and doing quests for whatever reason, regardless of difficulty.

Suggestion:
1. Grant renown reward upon quest completion (regardless of level) based on estimated quest duration:
Short Quests: ~100 renown
Medium quests: ~250 renown
Long Quests: ~500 renown
Raids: 1000 renown
2. Grant renown for completing optionals. (Maybe ~50-100 renown per optional)
3. Add % bonus for being 2 levels below quest difficulty.
4. Increase renown earned for kills

#2 Remove penalty for kickin inactive toons
Guilds should be allowed to maintain their roster without being punished 25% renown and incurring renown penalty for it.

#3 Remove penalty for leaving on good terms
Why should guilds be punished for guildies that leave on good terms? The punishment of losing a guildie is enough already.

#4 Adjust DECAY MULTIPLIER table
Removing the account modifier may be a bit drastic, I would've rather seen the MULTIPLIER was adjusted down a bit (say, maybe 10-25%) for levels 50+. This way guilds of all sizes benefit from reduced decay.

Any decay plan that is based only on activity is inherently discriminatory toward casual/social players. That was, in my mind, the main complaint about the old decay system. Unless I missed it, your suggestion does not address that issue at all. So, while I like some aspects of it, the bottom line is it does not really help with the main problem that plagued the old decay system. It does not remove, or even significantly reduce, the incentive to kick out casual/social players.

[Therigar]

I find reason in most of your statement aside the quote. above.

The problem here is that the small and medium guilds relatively to activity have mentioned they will be penalized does lie in the 3 level per day.

There are, perhaps, not many guilds smaller than the one I am in. It is called the Council of Village Idiots and is located on Orien.

I say this because my guild consists of me, my son, his friend and my daughter. Of those four real living people two are not active players (my son's friend and my daughter). One is scarcely active (my son). Of the four of us I am the only one who routinely logs on and plays.

Effectively, I am a guild of one. And, in my wildest dreams I cannot envision gaining more than 3 guild levels in a single day. Even if I ran guild favor to easily reached chests, drank guild favor potions from the DDO store and took nothing but guild favor as end rewards I could not imagine advancing at that speed.

So, while it will be true to some extent at the very low levels it will soon be overcome simply by the shear size of the renown needed to advance to the next guild level. This is why I think it is not really a big problem.

In fact, the change to guild renown actually encourages me to accept people into the guild who just want to park a character in a guild with a cool sounding name. And, it lets me move characters to other, larger guilds in order to have an active group of people to game with while not having to dismiss my guild leader -- Doofus the Village Idiot -- or the guild itself.

IMO the change is extremely positive and the concerns about speed of guild level increase is mostly unwarranted. And, I think this is what people will see from a practical POV in the game itself.

[Therigar]

The biggest issue with the guild system is that a group of friends that starts playing together can't build a guild of their own and expect it to work. It will take a very long time to get useful buffs, and the effect of those buffs in gameplay is too large.

IMO there are two sides to this.

From my own experience I know that it is still possible to quest without guild buffs and to do literally every level of content. I've gone without buffs into heroic casual content and into epic elite content. And, I've come out the other side sometimes dead but usually alive.

Keep in mind that if a character dies in a quest they are now running without the guild buffs. So this is effectively the same thing. Yet all content is routinely covered on the different servers every day.

OTOH, having the buffs is definitely nice and makes life a lot easier. Increased DCs, healing amps, elemental protections -- all of these makes it a lot more forgiving when you are in a quest.

So, I understand that people would like access to the full spectrum of buffs and that they would like to have that a lot sooner than they do now.

In my case, I find that it is almost always the case in pick up groups that those with larger ships are willing to invite the rest of the group on board for buffs. I think this is great.

But, for that part of the DDO community that Kmnh is talking about this isn't always an option. Right now I'm trying to place my most active characters into a new (to me) guild in order to have a somewhat static group to game with. If they accept me that will give them 6 or 7 real living people and most groups will be filled with only guild members.

So, when we go to buff we'll be on a low level ship with lower level buffs. And, I agree that it would be nice to see a way to get to those bigger ships and better buffs a little bit faster.

The idea Kmnh and others have floated of rewarding players for simply being online seems to already exist. I get guild renown just during questing even if I don't get a guild reward from a chest or as an end reward. But, what is different in their idea is to reward people for grouping with members of their own guild.

I like that idea, although I admit I have no idea how hard it would be to implement.

I also don't know how to implement such an idea without penalizing players who PuG. If guild renown is tied to the number of guild members in a group then there is even more reason to reject non-guild members. It could even work against guild alliances where people join together at raid times or to fill regularly scheduled quests.

So, while I like the idea I don't see a way to reward a guild for grouping together without introducing an even bigger potential problem to the whole community. :(

[ice584]

It would be a struggle for a 6-man guild to amass that much in a day.

This is true, but IMO this SHOULD be the case. One of the key intents of a guild system is to promote teamwork. The more people you can get to work together, the more you can get done. And I feel you should be rewarded in kind. Hence, large guilds should be able to get larger rewards, small guilds should get smaller rewards. If it was just as easy for a 6-man guild to get to level 100 as it is for a 60-man guild, there wouldn't be any incentive to grow your guild. I think there should still be things within the system that reward guilds for growth as well as sustainability.

However, I do believe that guild rewards as a whole (I.E. the "cool stuff") should be more and/or entirely focused on benefits to guild productivity (guild banks, crafting devices, teleport locations) rather than to gameplay directly (stat shrines, buff NPCs). And, if I may be so bold, I think that's where most of the animosity towards the guild system comes from. Smaller guilds feel cheated when they simply cannot get the same buffs to direct gameplay that larger guilds can. If you can separate guild productivity from direct gameplay I think the hatred for the guild system will largely decrease.

Renown calculation aside, I know that if there were more/better guild productivity items, our guild would focus more on increasing the guild level. A guild deposit box (to store in-game money) for example, is something our guild has been hoping to see for eons. I'm sure there are TONS of other good suggestions out there too.

My 2 cp.

[Zzevel]

It's like the political yahoos on tv...seriously.

When you build a house the more workers you have, the faster the house goes up. That should be true with Guilds as well, if you choose to have less members the work gets done slower simple as thet, it is your choice how fast you want to build.

As a Reward for staying smaller your government ..... Turbine .... has already chosen to subsidize your small/medium earnings (with the renoun bonus) even though they did not have to.... Yet you still scream you are not given enough / it isn't fair / I should be treated even MORE better than the next guy.... Seems like a political action Obamahama and Romromney need to weigh in on as the 'Underprivledged" feel they should get more just because they say so.

The political wire sways both ways and in the past the "want-ees" got their way, today the "earn-ees" are feeling the love. As it should have been the entire time.

http://static.lolyard.com/lol/yip-yip-politics.jpg

[DocBenway]

...
When you build a house the more workers you have, the faster the house goes up. That should be true with Guilds as well, if you choose to have less members the work gets done slower simple as thet, it is your choice how fast you want to build....

That, once again, is not the issue at all. I have said repeatedly that I'd rather step off the no progress roadblock treadmill and onto the sidewalk, even if it is on the steepest hill. The time to get there is absolutely no issue. Being artificially prevented from ever getting there is.

When you build a house with 40 people you get done faster. When you build a house with 6 people, you get done slower and are artificially prevented from installing a roof, and 1/2 the plumbing? So not really done at all.

That's how the actual analogy would go.

[Dandonk]

That, once again, is not the issue at all. I have said repeatedly that I'd rather step off the no progress roadblock treadmill and onto the sidewalk, even if it is on the steepest hill.

When you build a house with 40 people you get done faster. When you build a house with 6 people, you get done slower and are artificially prevented from installing a roof, and 1/2 the plumbing?

That's how the actual analogy would go.

Yup. That's what the new system is.

[chrisdinus7]

It's like the political yahoos on tv...seriously.

When you build a house the more workers you have, the faster the house goes up. That should be true with Guilds as well, if you choose to have less members the work gets done slower simple as thet, it is your choice how fast you want to build.

As a Reward for staying smaller your government ..... Turbine .... has already chosen to subsidize your small/medium earnings (with the renoun bonus) even though they did not have to.... Yet you still scream you are not given enough / it isn't fair / I should be treated even MORE better than the next guy.... Seems like a political action Obamahama and Romromney need to weigh in on as the 'Underprivledged" feel they should get more just because they say so.

The political wire sways both ways and in the past the "want-ees" got their way, today the "earn-ees" are feeling the love. As it should have been the entire time.

http://static.lolyard.com/lol/yip-yip-politics.jpg

Ignoring the politics aspect... More people does not always help in real life. 9 women don't produce a baby in 1 month instead of the typical 9 months for a woman soloing it. And when talking about renown, doing things with a smaller group is often more impressive. Take the 300 (it was actually somewhat more) defenders of at the Battle of Thermopylae. It is famous because they held back a much larger force for a while. If they had 100,000 troops at their disposal, no one would have been impressed. Achieving things with a smaller group is inherently more impressive than doing it with a larger group.

[Tshober]

Yup. That's what the new system is.

The new system removed the barriers to advancement for many guilds and significantly reduced the incentives to kick out casual/social players. It did not halt or even slow the advance of ANY guild at all, versus the old decay system. Your guild will advance at least as fast under the new as it would have under the old. That applies to every single guild in DDO. To pretend that your guild was somehow harmed by the change is not being honest about it. It may not be perfect and it may not have addressed every issue that the old decay system had, but I can see nothing other than overwhelming positives in it, when compared directly with the old system.

[Ague]

you boot them for being inactive for a year but what if they are deploied over sea's or fighting a war

This happened to me... I was with a guild (not to be named) and left for Afghanistan for a few months. The leader swore up and down that I would be an exception to the rule because of that. When I got back and was looking forward to chatting with all my buddies I had made in the guild, I was quite disappointed... So I started my own guild... :cool:

But back on topic, the whole renown system will NEVER be perfect to everyone's liking. Someone is always going to find that it favors large guilds, or small guild, or medium guilds. Nobidy is ever going to be happy with the system, even if they got rid of it, poor Turbine would get flamed so bad. Even though every other week, or so, there's a new thread saying get rid of decay and/or the renown system altogether.

My personal view is, put it back the way it was, and tweak it just a little bit. No need for a drastic change to the formula.

EDIT: Genius idea I just had!!! How about make decay somehow based around how much renown you earn in a specified time. For instance, daily decay: x% of total renown earned for that day. If the guild is a casual guild, and earned no renown that day, they have no decay for that day. Kind of like income tax.

Example 1:
Guild Level: 82
Guild Size: 6
Renown earned: 32,621
Decay rate: 8.2% (see what I did there :p)
Decay: 2,674 (dropped everything to the right of the decimal point)
Renown kept:

Example 2:
Guild Level: 61
Guild Size: 350
Renown Earned: 91,743
Decay rate: 6.1%
Decay: 5,596
Renown kept: 86,146

Example 3:
Guild Level: 38
Guild Size: 26
Renown Earned: 0 (very casual guild)
Decay rate: 3.8%
Decay: 0
Renown kept: 0

Bottom line, this lowers the overall penalty of having casual players in the guild. Or an entire guild of casual players, for that matter. So instead of "taxing" us on how large or small the guild is, how about tax how much renown they receive.

It's late here, so don't flame me too bad if the idea's not up to par...:eek:

[Vordax]

More people does not always help in real life. 9 women don't produce a baby in 1 month instead of the typical 9 months for a woman soloing it.

Sort of nit-picky, but they average 1/baby a month for 9 months though. :D:D

[Zzevel]

Ignoring the politics aspect... More people does not always help in real life. 9 women don't produce a baby in 1 month instead of the typical 9 months for a woman soloing it.

Building a baby is an exclusive task (after the birds and bees of course), completly differnt than building a house or guild. your reasoning is skewed.

No where is the small/medium guild being penalized or held back any different than before, they still earn renoun, still get a bonus and still can level to the highest level. The house and plumbing can still be implemented as they gain levl 100, that process has not changed in any way shap or form.

[theslimshady]

defenders of at the Battle of Thermopylae. It is famous because they held back a much larger force for a while. If they had 100,000 troops at their disposal, no one would have been impressed. Achieving things with a smaller group is inherently more impressive than doing it with a larger group.
this does not make any sense at all there are multible small guilds of 100 levels on my server and 1 that i know of across the servers with 200 or more accounts that have ever reached 75 so by this alone the mathmatics would show it is much more impressive for a large guild to hit 70 then a small guild to hit 100 even in the old system

[eris2323]

Let the record show that I have lifted my self-imposed ban on paying for DDO points today with the purchase of a points pack - solely due to this change in renown decay determination.

This gives me hope for the future that guilds can be home to many, many players who always have someone online to play with. For the type of player who wants it, they can always log in, and have someone there. For those who don't, they can form smaller, quieter guilds, and we can all be happy.

Please, please keep this permanent, and consider other changes and improvements for the guild system for the future as well; I'm about to TR, BOUGHT my heart instead of grinding it... and it would be nice to know this was here to stay, so people I meet along the journey back to 20 could be invited to join ;)

[mikarddo]

The new system removed the barriers to advancement for many guilds and significantly reduced the incentives to kick out casual/social players. It did not halt or even slow the advance of ANY guild at all, versus the old decay system. Your guild will advance at least as fast under the new as it would have under the old. That applies to every single guild in DDO. To pretend that your guild was somehow harmed by the change is not being honest about it. It may not be perfect and it may not have addressed every issue that the old decay system had, but I can see nothing other than overwhelming positives in it, when compared directly with the old system.

An ever better system though would be to only count those accounts that were online during the latest 24 hours when calculating decay as that would do all the things you mention without hugely favoring the creation of Korthos Army style guilds.

Current system: LevelMultiplier * ( Max(Modified Guild Size,10) + 10 )
In testing: LevelMultiplier * 20
My suggestion: LevelMultiplier * ( #Accounts in guild that logged in during the past 24 hours )

That way huge guilds dont automatically level at extreme speed though still much faster than small guilds - and there is no reason to kick out casual members (except for guilds near the 1000 member ceiling but that cannot be helped).

[Dirac]

Guild renown decay has been a major negative for a while and it is great to see it addressed. I'll have specific feedback once I see it in action, but thanks for putting it in the queue for getting fixed.

[DocBenway]

No where is the small/medium guild being penalized or held back any different than before, they still earn renoun, still get a bonus and still can level to the highest level. The house and plumbing can still be implemented as they gain levl 100, that process has not changed in any way shap or form.

The underlined part is why the change did nothing to help small guilds, not any sore point that made it worse. It is unchanged from a system that was bad, That is all.

The bolded part is mathematically false. There is a point that renown intake will not match/overcome decay across many sizes, without a playstyle overhaul. A size range that this change reduces but still does not allow anyone below size 10 to progress any further than before. They are still artificially paused on a treadmill detour.

[chrisdinus7]

Building a baby is an exclusive task (after the birds and bees of course), completly differnt than building a house or guild. your reasoning is skewed.

No where is the small/medium guild being penalized or held back any different than before, they still earn renoun, still get a bonus and still can level to the highest level. The house and plumbing can still be implemented as they gain levl 100, that process has not changed in any way shap or form.

Sure, and the whole it doesn't hurt you argument is technically true. But it would also be true if they left the system unchanged for small guilds, and instantly level all guilds with 50+ players to level 100 and remove decay from said guilds. Small guilds wouldn't be hurt - but the system would still be unfair and people would still complain. Flipping the group that gets treated advantageously from small guilds to large guilds doesn't help the problem. It just changes who suffers.

As I have said before, just remove the levels altogether. Then we can all play in the kind of guild we like without any of this unfairness. Remove guild levels, let people form the guilds they want without bothering with a meaningless mechanic.

[Tshober]

An ever better system though would be to only count those accounts that were online during the latest 24 hours when calculating decay as that would do all the things you mention without hugely favoring the creation of Korthos Army style guilds.

Well, not quite everything. Your sugggestion would still penalize guilds of social players. Like role-players who spend the majority of their online time doing activities that garner little renown.



That way huge guilds dont automatically level at extreme speed though still much faster than small guilds - and there is no reason to kick out casual members (except for guilds near the 1000 member ceiling but that cannot be helped).

Yes, that can and should be helped by setting a reasonable time limit after which there is no penalty for kicking inactives. Say 3 months. At that point you can be pretty sure they are unlikely to return and penalizing a guild for kicking them at that point is just silly.

[bloodwork]

more rtarded "fixes". get rid of renown decay completely already. we don't need more mindless grind in this game that make it feel like a "job" to do something even more mindless just to offset the daily renown decay.

then again "evil" turbine got to make money somehow right?
here's an idea, start selling 7 day "renown decay protection" for 1000 turbine point.

[danotmano1998]

This is a step in the right direction.

Thanks, Turbine.

[blkcat1028]

As the leader of a small guild, 14 members, I think this is a good change. Even the smallest guild has had their renown decay cut in half.

I disagree with the argument that this will promote a "go large of go home" attitude towards guilds. Large guilds will level faster but small guilds have the small guild bonus to compensate. Sounds fair to me.

I was amazed at the amount of renown we lost everyday. I had to finally look up the formula.

At level 67 we were losing over 11,000 renown daily. With this change, it's has dropped to 9,474. With the small guild bonus, that's not too hard to manage.

If you look at a level 100 guild with 14 members, the decay would have been 81,000. Now it's 67,500. That's still a bunch but it's doable. With 100 members that's 675 renown per account daily. With 14 members it's 4,821 renown per account.

Again, sounds fair to me.

EDIT: Fixed some erroneous calculations

[rygard]

I hate this change as leader of level 91 guild. this is giving unfair advantage to large guilds and destroying balance between small, medium and large guilds. Small and medium guild multipliers are not enough for set a balance between different sized guilds. You have to change "Modified Guild Size Multipliers" for set a significant balance between small and large guilds.

Also at this point, if you wanna give us good guild system, i believe you have to check some other issues about guild systems too.

A few points i want to see in game about guilds;

1. I have a problem about definition of active accounts. it's not important anymore for large guilds ofcourse, but for small guilds, visiting passive accounts are kinda problem. If a player not playing regulary log in just for check something or for say simple hi, it's end up suffer for whole guild. so we have to deal with many days long extra renown punishment for visitors or kick our friends from our guild just becouse they don't have time for game atm. This is realy disturbing me. But if you set a timer for set an acount to switch active from inactive, it'll fix that problem for good.

So, for example, you can chenge definations of Active account like "30 days since any character has logged at least for 6 hours long(total time for all characters) in on that account,

2. Pool table! As for many of us told, screamed that before. We need way more customization options. We still can't change location of ship amenities, we can't put simple cosmetic objects, we can't have a little details for make us feel our guilds are unique and special and bound us to game more. I know, even the years old armor skin system are so crappy and limited, most likely what i want is one of entries in list of "good things never gonna happen". but i want it and i insist about that.

3. Okay this one not exactly about guild system (please keep reading mr dev! no, hands off from pagedown button, not cool, bad dev, BAD DEV!). after 6 years of game experience, with gigantic friend list and guild list, there's no way to understand who is who in my social lists. we need to friend list and guild members list based on account name, not character name. or another method for linking characters each other. even 20 years old MUD games has options likes that, it's realy not that hard. (maybe that's a good point for mention my CV i mail you before, lol)
edit: for possible privacy problems; that can be even manual managemtn. so at least give us a way for grouping character entries under custom name/label and manage them.

[SlyMagi]

Thank you for addressing this issue with guild renown. This will directly affect Pay it forward guild sarlona as a month ago we finally gave in to pressures, dismissing nearly 200 inactive members, to help our renown move up. We (the leadership team of Pay it Forward) disliked having to "boot" anyone as these are friends and acquaintances who do check in on occasion to say hi and play a few maps. We want to play, have fun, and help others have fun playing DDO: not deal with demoralized players who time and time again, loyally put guild before personal gain, only to see their efforts taken away.
This action taken by the developers will certainly be a step in keeping our guild principles and values more to that of when Pay it forward was founded. Thank you for your action.

[Cyiwin]

Ignoring the politics aspect... More people does not always help in real life. 9 women don't produce a baby in 1 month instead of the typical 9 months for a woman soloing it. And when talking about renown, doing things with a smaller group is often more impressive. Take the 300 (it was actually somewhat more) defenders of at the Battle of Thermopylae. It is famous because they held back a much larger force for a while. If they had 100,000 troops at their disposal, no one would have been impressed. Achieving things with a smaller group is inherently more impressive than doing it with a larger group.

Ahh but if the woman had 9 active members the chance of a baby would be 9 times greater.

[Faxe]

I would rather see the renown decay kept at the old rate per active account.

Instead, reduce the "inactive" timer for members considerably, possibly to only a few days. That way the system still scales for large guilds but doesn't penalize the casual guilds as much.

This would be a simple, consistent, and very fair change. Applying a new adjustment/multiplier experiment as we go just makes no sense.

[Lord_Darquain]

THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm so happy I could cry. :o

[SirValentine]

Even the smallest guild has had their renown decay cut in half.


How do you figure? The way I understand it, guilds of 1-10 accounts will see no change in decay, and the way I ran the figures, 11-29 accounts will see a benefit, but not to the point of half decay. Only size 30 or larger would see a rate of half or lower, with the mega-sized guilds getting a benefit of 1/50th of previous decay.



I disagree with the argument that this will promote a "go large of go home" attitude towards guilds. Large guilds will level faster but small guilds have the small guild bonus to compensate. Sounds fair to me.


Again, how do you figure? The spread of small guild bonus is tiny compared to the spread of guild sizes. Run the numbers, more is better, at every single step.



If you look at a level 100 guild with 14 members, the decay would have been 810,000. Now it's 33,750.


810,000? Where did that number come from? This change only lowers a 14-account guild decay by a factor of 5/6.

[SirValentine]

1. I have a problem about definition of active accounts.


This is spot on. This was a problem before, and remains a problem for any guilds that want to take advantage of the small guild renown bonus.

My suggestion, in two parts:

1. You only go from Inactive to Active when you enter a private instance (quest/challenge/wilderness). Running around the Market or chatting while on your guild ship or such does not mark your account as Active. So people who log on to say "Hi!" don't increase the Active account numbers for the guild.

2. You go from Active to Inactive...after 24 hours (or maybe 48). Not 1 month. So people who only play on the weekend don't count against the guild all week long, only for roughly the day(s) they are playing.

I think those changes would have helped alleviate anti-casual-player bias in a way that doesn't massively favor massive guilds.

[Shadow7375]

I personally don't like this new system.

The old system wasn't bad in my opinion ... All you had to do was to change the decay formula a bit so it wouldn't hurt guilds as much as it did in some cases. But that's just my thoughts on it.

Now probably everyone will try to invite as many players as possible to their guild, forming mega-guilds in size with 1000 in 'em as we used to have 'em on most servers, and just farm renown to gain the 2 to 3 levels per day they are allowed to. Not caring of who's really in the guild. Why should they? It's all about getting to level 100 asap.

Soon we have again a whole bunch of large (by members) guilds blacklisted that we don't want to group with ... History repeats itself ...

[Glenalth]

History repeats itself ...

I miss those days.

[ferrite]

I don't think these ideas will work. I mean they seem to have good intentions and all, but they won't work.

Without guild size taken into account, I foresee players uniting into a few, large level 100 guilds, at the cost of smaller, casual guilds which will become obsolete. Eventually with such minimal decay most large guilds will easily achieve 100 (or whatever the current guild max is), leaving only a dozen or two 'primary' guilds on a server, the rest a smattering of startup guilds that go largely unnoticed.

Whether this is a good or bad result depends on how you look at it, but one thing is clear; fewer guilds definitely translates to less guild-related sales in the DDO store, since most players would now be sharing the same guild resource. So there's that.

I still maintain (http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=390746) that the entire system should be scrapped, and give way to 'personal renown' of sorts, or renown that you earn and keep with you, that you bestow upon a guild simply by your presence. Because a guild of famous heroes should be more well known in the land than, say, a guild of peasants fresh off the boat from Korthos. I also believe now that there should be no cap at all on guild level or renown, but there does need to be a hard cap on members, say, the cap is the current guild level plus or minus some small arbitrary number. Simple enough.

Should be interesting to see how this works out.

[Faxe]

Why can you not just give us the hard numbers? What is the formula used to calculate decay? Is it some trade secret that you are planning to leverage once you figure out how to apply it to predict stock prices or future Super Bowl winners? Is it part of an otherwise classified CIA code-breaking program?
...


I have a feeling you already know the answer and your question is just rhetorical. But I'll try to answer it as honestly as I can for everyone's benefit even though I just like to make silly posts.

The answer is that it makes too much sense to publish the formula. It's more fun to let folks waste time trying to figure it out partially and make arguments based on their agendas. It also creates interesting thread like this one.

I think the super secret formula would look something like this:

renown_decay = pre_dcay_coef^(2.73-hidden_renown_drop_mod/7)*dcay_coef*((glvl-23)/6*(glvl+83)/26)/2*(53*glvl^3)/100^3*(acc_no + 10)
+
recent_drop_mod*(artificial_acc_mod-recent_depart)^2-(recent_arrival+recent_lvl)^0.25
-
ransack_mod*100^(renown_pot_sold_per_week/renown_pot_used)*renown_per_day/pot_per_hour*(temp_renown_boost)
+
(returning_bonus/stagnant_inactive_bonus)*sqrt(unknown_renown_varia ble)*guild_event_flag
+
renown_complaints_bonus - (recent_recent_complaints2/no_post*past_secret_adj) - sqrt(no_recent_complaints3/nerf_post^(exp-
first_posts/quit_posts)) * (ingame_activity/forum_activity)*acc_activity_bonus
+
log10(update_no)*0.5251*(store_buffs_sold/(2*account_no*(buff_per_day-plat_buffs)))*pi/e;

See? There's no reason to publish something like this. Players would just optimize for renowns, thereby reducing sales.

But let's not kid ourselves. The ONLY REASON RENOWN DECAY EXISTS NOW is to help sell more store items/renown potions. The next renown system (with decay or not) is one that would increase sales. Really.

That's also why this temporary solution is on live. It allows more ships to be purchased. I hate to say it, but the system will be adjusted back and forth until all guilds can buy their ships. Mission accomplished: potions + max ships sold. Once all the guilds have their ships and high levels, players are unlikely to buy anything else. Most likely, the system will be updated so store items are indirectly required to maintain a newer class of ships. By then we could see decay go away completely making everyone happy once again. :D

[niehues]

My guild is small and i will have no benefit from it at this point but i am really glad to see that the devs are taking this step and trying to help what is being asked on the forums...

I dont think is solved but is something...

great work..

I also being amazed how ppl come here to complain to something that do not affect or change for them... just because it make it better to some one else..

"i worked so hard.. now they get it easy like this.." (now i am not special anymore.. everyone can have the same..)

same happen with the ion stones back in the days..

dont worry it will pass and u can work hard and try being better in something else..

[Therigar]

But let's not kid ourselves. The ONLY REASON RENOWN DECAY EXISTS NOW is to help sell more store items/renown potions. The next renown system (with decay or not) is one that would increase sales. Really.

This is pretty absurd. Without guild renown what will happen is that me and my friends (hypothetical because I have no friends, but others and their friends) would do whatever it takes to get to maximum guild level with the biggest ship and best amenities. Then we would kick out everyone but the chosen few.

We'd enjoy the benefits of success and those on the outside would be left calling us a bunch of names that won't get past the obscenity filters.

That cannot possibly be a good thing.

Renown decay is a useful tool to ensure that guilds remain healthy -- not just in the number of bragging rights that they get for having a high level guild but in the things that make DDO worth playing. It helps to encourage recruitment of new players, it helps foster a sense of friendship and camaraderie, it helps to pass on learned knowledge to less experienced players and it helps to highlight those who can be relied upon to quest with when you want to ensure success.

There are two forms of renown -- the obvious one that we are all talking about and the less obvious one that is found in each server population. On Orien there are two or three guilds -- maybe more -- that every player knows. It knows that the people are good people, competent players and helpful to the server community. The same is certainly true of every server even though the guild names will be different.

That type of renown is not gained by rushing to L100 and sitting on the benefits. It is earned respect gained by being there in the game day in and day out for the whole server community to see.

What we do not need, and I hope what nobody wants, are guilds that do not have that kind of in game respect earning unmerited Turbine guild renown because there is no form of guild renown decay. Getting rid of decay is bad for DDO.

It isn't about selling stuff through the DDO store. It is about making sure that guilds with high game renown have earned it. Those who earn that form of renown invariably earn the server wide respect that forms the other type of renown.

So, guild renown is good and guild renown decay is also good. It is a key tool in maintaining a healthy DDO community.

[niehues]

This is pretty absurd. Without guild renown what will happen is that me and my friends (hypothetical because I have no friends, but others and their friends) would do whatever it takes to get to maximum guild level with the biggest ship and best amenities. Then we would kick out everyone but the chosen few.

We'd enjoy the benefits of success and those on the outside would be left calling us a bunch of names that won't get past the obscenity filters.

That cannot possibly be a good thing.

Renown decay is a useful tool to ensure that guilds remain healthy -- not just in the number of bragging rights that they get for having a high level guild but in the things that make DDO worth playing. It helps to encourage recruitment of new players, it helps foster a sense of friendship and camaraderie, it helps to pass on learned knowledge to less experienced players and it helps to highlight those who can be relied upon to quest with when you want to ensure success.

There are two forms of renown -- the obvious one that we are all talking about and the less obvious one that is found in each server population. On Orien there are two or three guilds -- maybe more -- that every player knows. It knows that the people are good people, competent players and helpful to the server community. The same is certainly true of every server even though the guild names will be different.

That type of renown is not gained by rushing to L100 and sitting on the benefits. It is earned respect gained by being there in the game day in and day out for the whole server community to see.

What we do not need, and I hope what nobody wants, are guilds that do not have that kind of in game respect earning unmerited Turbine guild renown because there is no form of guild renown decay. Getting rid of decay is bad for DDO.

It isn't about selling stuff through the DDO store. It is about making sure that guilds with high game renown have earned it. Those who earn that form of renown invariably earn the server wide respect that forms the other type of renown.

So, guild renown is good and guild renown decay is also good. It is a key tool in maintaining a healthy DDO community.


I think what u saying is true and can happen.. but lets see the bright side of it..

u have your guild u recruit ppl to lv it up.. u kick them..

they will move on..go to another and so on..

but on this process there will be ppl not like your not friends that will actually like those guys u kick and and start new friends..

see there is always a bright side on all this...

:D

[Tshober]

This is pretty absurd. Without guild renown what will happen is that me and my friends (hypothetical because I have no friends, but others and their friends) would do whatever it takes to get to maximum guild level with the biggest ship and best amenities. Then we would kick out everyone but the chosen few.

We'd enjoy the benefits of success and those on the outside would be left calling us a bunch of names that won't get past the obscenity filters.
.

That was the fastest way to level up a guild before this change as well. The only differnce is you started kicking them sooner, as soon has the decay started to slow you down significantly. And you graduated it so that the least active got kicked first and it was spread out enough so that the cost of kicking didn't hurt you much. But it is essentially the same strategy. Guild leaders have gone to the forums and admitted they did it that way and said it was very effective.

I agree they have done nothing substantial to address this but, again, neither did the old system really.

[blkcat1028]

How do you figure? The way I understand it, guilds of 1-10 accounts will see no change in decay, and the way I ran the figures, 11-29 accounts will see a benefit, but not to the point of half decay. Only size 30 or larger would see a rate of half or lower, with the mega-sized guilds getting a benefit of 1/50th of previous decay.

I'm using the formula in the wiki as my guide. If that's wrong then so am I.

The old formula was (modified guild size + 10)(guild Level Modifier) = Decay. The minimum guild level for this calculation was set at 10. The new formula for guilds with less than 10 members is (Guild level modifier * 10) = decay. The multiplier was reduced by half, so it would mean that for guilds of that size the decay half of what it was before.



Again, how do you figure? The spread of small guild bonus is tiny compared to the spread of guild sizes. Run the numbers, more is better, at every single step.

I never said more wasn't better. I said it wasn't so much better as to make small guilds obsolete.

edit: I wanted to add this section from the first post just to emphasize my point...

If you look at a level 100 guild with 14, the decay would have been 81,000. Now it's 33,750 for any level 100 guild. That's still a bunch but it's doable. With 100 members that's 337 renown per account daily. So 2 tales of valor and one heroic deed per day to maintain your current renown. With 14 members it's 2,411 renown per account. With the small guild bonus we need to each pull 2 impressive trophies daily to offset the loss.



810,000? Where did that number come from? This change only lowers a 14-account guild decay by a factor of 5/6.

The number came from me being zero happy and sliding the decimal place one point to the right. :D

The correct figure is 81,000.



Remarks in red

[Tshober]

What we do not need, and I hope what nobody wants, are guilds that do not have that kind of in game respect earning unmerited Turbine guild renown because there is no form of guild renown decay. Getting rid of decay is bad for DDO.
.

How, exactly, will having all guilds eventually able to reach level 100 harm DDO? Please spell it out. It is easy to see the harm that decay does to DDO's social structure because it so obviously encourages and rewards guilds that shun casual/social players. But exactly what are the problems that you claim its absence will create? Who will be harmed and how?

[DocBenway]

Remarks in red

The formula was (MAX(Mod Acc Size, 10)+10) * lvl Multiplier.

Now it is (MAX(NULL,10)+10) * lvl Multiplier. ---- This is basically works out to 20 * lvl Multiplier. That is the minimum anyone decayed before, it is now also the maximum.

[blkcat1028]

The formula was (MAX(Mod Acc Size, 10)+10) * lvl Multiplier.

Now it is (MAX(NULL,10)+10) * lvl Multiplier. ---- This is basically works out to 20 * lvl Multiplier. That is the minimum anyone decayed before, it is now also the maximum.

This is from the wiki,

The formula for renown decay is a level-based multiplier times an account-based multiplier (LevelMultiplier * AccountMultiplier). The account-based multiplier is the Modified Guild Size + 10. The level-based multiplier can be looked up in the list below.
Note: Minimum Modified Guild Size is 10! Account-based multiplier is therefore ( Max(Modified Guild Size,10) + 10 )

I read it as modified guild size or 10.

You make me wonder though...

[DocBenway]

This is from the wiki,

The formula for renown decay is a level-based multiplier times an account-based multiplier (LevelMultiplier * AccountMultiplier). The account-based multiplier is the Modified Guild Size + 10. The level-based multiplier can be looked up in the list below.
Note: Minimum Modified Guild Size is 10! Account-based multiplier is therefore ( Max(Modified Guild Size,10) + 10 )

I read it as modified guild size or 10.

You make me wonder though...
MAX meaning The largest or maximum of the numbers included in the following bracketed set. This makes 10 a minimum for the mod size since a size lower than 10 is not the "MAX", then the +10 happens
Also on the wiki:

Guild level:26, Member Count: 6
Renown lost = (LevelMultiplier * AccountMultiplier)
Renown lost = (2.197 * (max(6,10) + 10))
Renown lost = (2.197 * (10 + 10))
Renown lost = 43.94 [NOTE: rounding may apply]

Showing the min size in action on a size 6, decaying as 10 guild.

FWIW, I started a thread asking why this size minimum existed since I started running numbers myself on my less than 10 member guild and seeing similar "losing more than we think we should" posts in general renown discussions.
http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=362736

[Zargarx]

Ok for that temporary adjustment to get past Mabar.

For a real solution my suggestion is as follows:

1. Use of an inefficiency coefficient in the formula.
A = active accounts (with a minimum of 1)
I = inefficiency coefficient. I picked 0.995 but can be fine tuned.
Modified Guild Size = 5 + A*(I^A)
This also reduces the penalty for guilds with less than 10 active members by treating them as if they have 10 members.

2. Active accounts = accounts that logged in in the previous week (instead of two weeks).
If possible, only includes accounts that earned renown.

edit: adjust math and provided the following example for a guild size of 65 (i.e. 452 * modified guild size)

Total renown loss:
Accounts /Currently /New
3 /9040 /3474
6 /9040 /4705
10 /9040 /6289
20 /13560 /9969
50 /27120 /18870
100 /49720 /28038

So per active account the renown loss would be
Accounts /Currently /New
3 /3013 /1158
6 /1507 /784
10 /904 /629
20 /678 /498
50 /542 /377
100 /497 /280

[theslimshady]

T
There are two forms of renown -- the obvious one that we are all talking about and the less obvious one that is found in each server population. On Orien there are two or three guilds -- maybe more -- that every player knows. It knows that the people are good people, competent players and helpful to the server community. The same is certainly true of every server even though the guild names will be different.

That type of renown is not gained by rushing to L100 and sitting on the benefits. It is earned respect gained by being there in the game day in and day out for the whole server community to see.

lol i am on that server are you talking about the 3 100 level guilds

[bazooka99]

Reducing the effect of guild size I could understand, but all that ignoring guild size does is encourage guilds to invite as many people as possible and then kick them when they run out of room (if they want the most renown, at least). And IIRC, renown decay already ignores inactive accounts, so how does the current system encourage guilds to kick inactive players?

I do appreciate what the devs are trying to do, and my advice to them is to try something less drastic.

My suggestion: Use renown tax instead of renown decay. Same as before 15.2, only the amount the guild would normally lose each day is instead the amount subtracted from their renown gains each day. So if my guild decay were 1000/day, it becomes a tax of 1000/day. We can go a week without playing and our renown stays the same. But our guild size and level still has a significant effect on our ability to gain renown.

[avery61]

I like the changes. Thumbs up from me!

[blkcat1028]

MAX meaning The largest or maximum of the numbers included in the following bracketed set. This makes 10 a minimum for the mod size since a size lower than 10 is not the "MAX", then the +10 happens
Also on the wiki:

Guild level:26, Member Count: 6
Renown lost = (LevelMultiplier * AccountMultiplier)
Renown lost = (2.197 * (max(6,10) + 10))
Renown lost = (2.197 * (10 + 10))
Renown lost = 43.94 [NOTE: rounding may apply]

Showing the min size in action on a size 6, decaying as 10 guild.



So when they say that guild size has been removed from the equation, they're using a base modifier of 20 regardless?

[Therigar]

So when they say that guild size has been removed from the equation, they're using a base modifier of 20 regardless?

Yes, that appears to be the case.

[ladypummel]

love it thanks ddo relief from the drain of decay

[Therigar]

lol i am on that server are you talking about the 3 100 level guilds

Maybe.... :)

But, even if I'm talking a different set of guilds the point is still the same -- the best known and respected guilds have earned that by how they treat other players on the server.

I fundamentally disagree with those who are locked in on this "recruit then kick" mind set. I think that the change is geared more to addressing concerns of guilds that felt forced to reduce size because inactive accounts created too much of a drain.

Totally removing guild renown decay would only make the problem of guilds recruiting and kicking a bigger problem. So, some form of decay is necessary.

My personal feeling is that the penalty for kicking accounts should be higher than the 25% loss. That seems a better solution.

Meanwhile, the penalty for voluntarily leaving should be reduced or eliminated.

This directly addresses the concerns of people worried that the "recruit and kick" mind set will bleed over to the changes that have been announced. It also lets people leave guilds without severe impact.

Obviously guilds need to be able to kick people who are really a problem. But, IMO it is a bit of the guild's own problem of poor recruitment and failure to really verify a player when this happens. Doesn't account for every jerk that ever lived or played DDO, but it does apply most of the time I think.

So, I'd be in favor of fixing the "recruit and kick" issue by upping the penalty to 75% or even higher of that character's renown contribution. OTOH, I'd support dropping the voluntary penalty to 0%.

IMO the opportunity to voluntarily leave on "bad" terms and penalize the guild 25% seems petty and a bit childish. But, that's just me. It might make a difference if you could take all the renown with you and auto apply it to a new guild. But, since we don't bank renown and can't earn it unless in a guild, it seems sort of silly to me to put a "mean" reaction choice out there.

Oh well, in any case I think the changes from Turbine are mostly positive here and that is the biggest thing to me. It looks like Turbine heard the community and made a change. I'm having a hard time finding reasons to fault them for that.

[blkcat1028]

Yes, that appears to be the case.

That means that regardless of account size a level 100 guild will suffer 67,500 renown loss daily.

In a 100 account guild each account would be responsible for 675 renown and each account in a 14 member guild would need 4821 or 3 impressive trophies and a tales of valor daily.

If that's the correct formula, it definitely favours bigger guilds more than I initially thought. It will be interesting to see where it goes from here.

Thanks for all the info, very helpful stuff.

[KithWinter]

I would like to thank you for your attention to Guild Renown Decay issues, so far it seems a huge improvement over the last renown update.
Thanks

[Postumus]

Reducing the effect of guild size I could understand, but all that ignoring guild size does is encourage guilds to invite as many people as possible and then kick them when they run out of room (if they want the most renown, at least). And IIRC, renown decay already ignores inactive accounts, so how does the current system encourage guilds to kick inactive players?



This makes no sense to me. Where is the motivation to kick people out of the guild after it reaches 100? What is the benefit?

Wouldn't it be more likely that no one would get kicked and we would just have more large casual guilds?

[theslimshady]

Maybe.... :)

But, even if I'm talking a different set of guilds the point is still the same -- the best known and respected guilds have earned that by how they treat other players on the server.

so if they have been rude to unknown players caught cheating renown rollback from exploiting always automatically on the attack when openly debated and kick small furry animals you would still feel they earned some kinda prestige based on guild level thank you for that humor +1 to you sir

[moops]

That means that regardless of account size a level 100 guild will suffer 67,500 renown loss daily.

In a 100 account guild each account would be responsible for 675 renown and each account in a 14 member guild would need 4821 or 3 impressive trophies and a tales of valor daily.

If that's the correct formula, it definitely favours bigger guilds more than I initially thought. It will be interesting to see where it goes from here.

Thanks for all the info, very helpful stuff.

You are assuming that all accounts in a large guild will log on and play everyday, and that is simply not the case.

In my medium Guild with 16 active accounts, we never have all accounts log on in even one week, heck even a month. However I just got 7k in a little under 2 hours of relaxed play time thanx to our bonus.

When reknown first came out, people on our server predicted that guilds like mine, would merge with other guilds to gain lvls fast or whatever. Many of us small and medium guilds never did merge, and even before reknown bonus, many of us remained in the top 25. Meanwhile some of the guilds that merged, imploded or eventually plateaued.

I feel that the Guilds who were around at that time learned their lessons, either personally, or from watching others, and we won't see the mass recruitsmerges going on unless they are from newer people. We also know that ship buffs aren't needed for any content, and aren't going to sacrifice our nice lawn.

I know each server has a different enviornment--but on Sarlona, it is the small guilds that have been able to achieve high lvls really fast....If that is what is important to these small guild people, I don't think that this is going to change much, small guild who build to lvl fast, will still lvl fast.

Also, there seems to be a misunderstanding about active/inactive accounts--If you are booting accounts that haven't been active in a year, they haven't bee counting towards your decay anyway.

[cantcurestoopid]

I can't thank the devs enough for making such a change. I can't tell you the number of times I have had to tell guild members who while trying to understand the guild renown system that we refused to kick people simply because they had a life outside of DDO... Now the renown system is a bit more fair. THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!


Serinah of Orien -- Officer in For Loot and Glory

[djl]

Also, there seems to be a misunderstanding about active/inactive accounts--If you are booting accounts that haven't been active in a year, they haven't bee counting towards your decay anyway.

This. Once an account goes inactive, it essentially doesn't exist until the person returns. They don't hurt you, nor do they help you. They're just... there. Booting them hurts you, leaving them be does not. Everyone thinks inactive accounts contribute to decay, when that's a fallacy.

As far as what the incentive for recruiting a bunch of noobs and then booting them at level 100, it's pretty simple: Free labor. You have a hundred newbies do all the work for you and then boot all the people you don't like to have your core small guild of close friends while keeping all the nice amenities. You retain 3/4 of the work all your minions did, so this is precisely why Turbine needs to reevaluate the penalties for booting people.

[Deadlock]

Because small guilds get significantly less renown/week now than large guilds. If everyone in a large guild with 100 active players earns a measly 2k renown a day, the guild will get 200k renown. It would be a struggle for a 6-man guild to amass that much in a day.

That's irrelevant to renown decay. Trying to compare a 6 player guild and a 100 player guild's ability to earn renown seems a bit futile and I can't think of any reasoning where they should be made the same.

[Ashario]

I think removing the guild size from the decay calculations is a great way to open up the guilds to newer players.

Some servers have seen a drastic decrease in old players and with new players getting the cold shoulder from established guilds they soon will turn to either another server or just give up on the game all together.

This lack of players has made finding parties more difficult, which again will scare off new players.

I believe any steps (without dumbing the game down) that would make the game more inviting for new players to become part of the community a win for both the guilds and the players, not to mention Turbine can make some cash too.

[Tshober]

This. Once an account goes inactive, it essentially doesn't exist until the person returns. They don't hurt you, nor do they help you. They're just... there. Booting them hurts you, leaving them be does not. Everyone thinks inactive accounts contribute to decay, when that's a fallacy.

If there were no cap on guild size, then leaviing inactives in your guild forever would not be a problem. But there is a cap. My guild is almost always at or near that cap. We almost always have a waiting list of people who want to join us. We have no choice in the matter, we must kick inactive players to make room for players who want to join right now.

People leave the game. It is a fact of MMO life. Some come back after many months away. But most that have been gone that long don't return. There needs to be a time limit after which you can kick players that have not logged in at all without a huge penalty, say 3 months. Punishing a guild for kicking people who have not played at all for 3 months or more to make room for someone who is playing right now is just stupid. Any large guild that keeps inactives forever and does any recruiting will eventually run up against the membership cap. And if you don't do any recruiting, then your guild is slowly dying as people leave the game.

For small guilds, this is not an issue. Many people who have only experienced small guilds are probably not even aware that there is a membership cap.

[blkcat1028]

This. Once an account goes inactive, it essentially doesn't exist until the person returns. They don't hurt you, nor do they help you. They're just... there. Booting them hurts you, leaving them be does not. Everyone thinks inactive accounts contribute to decay, when that's a fallacy.

As far as what the incentive for recruiting a bunch of noobs and then booting them at level 100, it's pretty simple: Free labor. You have a hundred newbies do all the work for you and then boot all the people you don't like to have your core small guild of close friends while keeping all the nice amenities. You retain 3/4 of the work all your minions did, so this is precisely why Turbine needs to reevaluate the penalties for booting people.

It took a little while and some research but I figured out how the inactive accounts worked about a year and a half ago. I'm the leader of a small guild that started out as a 2 man show and over 2 (nearly 3) years it's grown to 14. Our goal has never been to be a big guild. The small guild bonus makes it pretty easy for us to advance in level, albeit slowly. The only reason we boot accounts would be if they turn out to be hats of a posterior nature or if they go inactive for an extended period of time. I understand that inactive accounts do not affect renown decay, but it makes keeping track of everyone easier. :)

As far as this change goes, I agree with your statement that the lack of booting penalties could result abuse, but this a good start at fixing a broken system.

[Therigar]

so if they have been rude to unknown players caught cheating renown rollback from exploiting always automatically on the attack when openly debated and kick small furry animals you would still feel they earned some kinda prestige based on guild level thank you for that humor +1 to you sir

I think you missed my point.

There are guilds that have high rankings that do not have good reputations. Just because a guild is L80 or L90 or L100 that does not mean that they automatically have a good reputation.

OTOH, those with good reputations invariably end up able to reach those levels. The presence of decay helps to maintain the constant motivation to be useful to the whole server population. Being helpful and friendly is the biggest recruiting tool.

As for your allegations concerning how some of the high level guilds operate I don't have a lot of heart-burn over most of it. IMO if Turbine's developers do a poor job and players benefit from "exploits" that is Turbine's fault and players just doing what people naturally do -- try to get the most out of every opportunity. As an example, I did not have any angst over those who made lots of plat from the first Pirate's Cove even though I didn't log into the event until after Turbine recognized its mistake.

I also don't have a lot of problem with people vigorously defending their perspectives here in the forums. I have been on the receiving end from time to time and sometimes it feels like being bullied into submission. But, mostly I blame Turbine for that as well. If they didn't have the stupid forum reputation system where people could neg rep you into oblivion and if they were more proactive in moderating the forums (a huge task made easier in a business sense by the supposedly self-moderating influence of the rep system) then we'd have less of a problem and a lot more locked threads.

I really don't mind people who kick furry animals, especially small ones. But since this falls into the category of inane accusations without any evidence I'll treat it with the humor it deserves. :D

As for rudeness. I have not experienced that from any member in any of the large guilds on Orien -- and I don't care which one a person would like to point to. Each and every one of them has been friendly to me at some point over the years. While I know that people often have different experiences, I think it likely that bad experiences fall into one of two categories. Either a player happened to catch a guild or one of its members on a bad day (and face it, we all have bad days) or the player was doing something to encourage a negative reaction.

There are a number of people on Orien who have managed to make my ignore list because they are just hard to group with. They are either intentionally grief focused or they don't work towards group goals and objectives or they refuse to accept others as group leaders and run off to do their own thing -- often to the detriment of the rest of the group.

I don't particularly fault people for being rude to players like that.

So, to answer your statement directly -- guild prestige among the server's players isn't earned by the guild's level. But, the high level guilds have the respect of the server's players because most of us don't have issues with the things that seem to bother you and aren't affected by the innuendo.

[Therigar]

If there were no cap on guild size, then leaviing inactives in your guild forever would not be a problem. But there is a cap.

Well put and a cogent counter argument to the idea that I tossed out about raising the % penalty for kicking characters.

AFAIK the limit is 100 accounts. That is not 100 characters, it is 100 accounts. And, guild size is tied to accounts -- not to characters.

I could be entirely wrong in that. But, it is how I understand the system to work.

And, you are right in that guilds that want to be active and involved will also want to recruit new, active, talented players. That is good for the guild and it is good for the new players. This is hand-in-hand with the point I've tried to make about how decay serves to motivate guilds to remain active and helpful to the server's population.

So, maybe the way to handle the "recruit and kick" guilds that posters seem to worry about is to have a huge penalty for active accounts and the way to help guilds that are up against the account cap is to have a reduced penalty.

That seems to be a little bit of work but not too much. Maybe something like an initial 100% penalty minus 5% per month of inactivity. An account that has had no activity in 12 months would give a 40% penalty for kicking it. At 20 months there would be no penalty.

But, better, IMO would be to let inactive accounts not count against the 100 cap.

As has been rightly pointed out, most of the time when an account goes inactive the player is done with the MMO and has moved on to other things. Because games don't know how to identify those as different from people who are forced by work or circumstances to take a prolonged break the MMO's just leave the accounts but let them become inactive.

At some point guilds should not be penalized for those inactive accounts. And, if the people all magically reappeared -- something that is unlikely, but not necessarily impossible -- would it really matter? Would it really hurt the game if reactivated accounts took the guild above the 100 account limit?

What I'd suggest is that after 3 months of inactivity an account no longer count against a guild's account limit. Having run a guild other than the Council of Village Idiots, at which time we did have people other than just my immediate family as part of the guild, my experience is that if the player is gone more than 3 months they most likely are not coming back. So, IMO, that is a fair cut point to allow a guild to recruit new people without being faced with the choice of kicking out inactive players.

[Zargarx]

Further suggestions/comments:

- Booting inactives. Suggest if inactive over 6 months this be dropped to 10% (considered as voluntary)

- Renown decay, should scale somewhat for size of guild. However much less than what is was (and obviously more than no scaling as it is now).

- The calculation should remove the MAX(10,guild size). A guild size of 2 faces a huge mountain to climb versus medium and large guilds. It is ridiculous to have to cover the identical amount of renown if the guild was 5 times larger (so each member has to gain 5 times as much renown!). So the modified guild size would be 10 + actives using the current formula.
Keep in mind the bonus for guild sizes below 6 drops off very quickly where a guild size of 10 has much more of a bonus than a guild size of 2

[Captain_Wizbang]

Remove decay.

It's original design no longer applies in today's game.

[moiinwar]

http://i1285.photobucket.com/albums/a596/moiinwar/Renownneededperplayerzoom_zps73227886.gifhttp://i1285.photobucket.com/albums/a596/moiinwar/Renownneededperplayer_zps6049fbf9.jpg
Graphs are calculated using current renown bonuses.

Now that decay is no longer a practical issue for large guilds I suggest that smaller guilds get larger renown bonuses.
Also it doesn't make sense to me that decay exists at all anymore.

[Furbitor]

Anything to stop a guild from kicking its friends is good. anything else meh.

My guild is made of members that got booted over this stupid guild renown formula

[chance2000]

As a guild leader.
I hope they make and keep these changes.
My guild has around 30 active accounts and level 73.
We have been inching forward without changes.
Problem we have been having is we gain a level during the night and after decay hits we have to gain it again.
A good number of our members are in the US some are in Europe.
I like the ideal of loosing only around 14k per day at level 73 more than almost 30k each day.
If they do not keep the change we will hit a wall before level 85 and not advance.
At the wall we will have a choice to kick the non earning casual players for the players that have time to earn.
I had already told our members I am not kicking members over this so if we hit the wall we just will not advance.
We have all three crafting alters and the major resist shrines.
We have come across a few we would like to join our gaming family.
We have been unable to let them join due to the decay of 30k.
We know most of our members by our first names.
Well I give them all my 1st name they still like to call me Smig, Tam or Xap.
+1 to Turbine for looking in to an issue that has been effecting a lot of us.

[Cyr]

Remove decay.

It's original design no longer applies in today's game.



I agree.

With no guild size criteria being applied decay only serves as a game mechanic to add incentive to max size guilds as opposed to very active mid sized guilds (the previous system).

That said the change implemented is preferable to no change. It was not a good thing to have people worried about logging into the game because they were not playing enough, leaving their guilds so they did not hurt them, or being booted due to inactivity.

Turbine should be addressing guild size from the side of renown gain, not loss, and make guild size effect renown drops dynamically all the way upto the cap. With no decay every guild should be able to hit 100 eventually. At the same time the benefits of mass recruiting would not extend beyond the social aspects of doing so into game mechanics.

[Cryohazard]

Greetings! We are putting forth modifications currently trying out some temporary adjustments to the Guild Renown system and monitoring the outcome and feedback this week. The intent is to address concerns from guilds and guild leaders regarding the impact of optimizing guild size in order to gain or maintain guild levels. We’ll be making additional balance changes that we think you and your guildmates will appreciate, but for now we have applied the changes without downtime. As of today, you will notice two changes to your renown rates:


Renown decay no longer takes guild size into account. This should ease the pressure for guild leaders to “kick” members from the guild to offset daily renown decay rates. Renown decay now only takes a guild’s level into consideration rather than its size.
Renown ransack has been increased. Previously when a guild earned levels in a day, it would gradually reduce the renown drop rates. We’ve increased the rate so that a guild can only earn roughly 3 levels in a single day. This should prevent large guilds from completely dominating the field in terms of levels per-day.

There are some balance Pros and Cons to this method, but we’d like guilds to give us feedback about their experiences using the new settings this week. If players like the settings, or feel it is workable with minor tweaks, then we are ready to keep them! If players find the changes make matters worse, then we are scheduled to revert them. So this week, we encourage guild leaders/members to use this thread to give us feedback about how the changes are impacting your guild leveling dynamics. Important feedback for us is points where frustration has eased (or increased). Thanks for your participation as we work to improve our guild leveling system!

Hey devs, I'm overjoyed to see that you guys are finally addressing this. I talked to some of my officers last night and slept on it, so I thought I'd chime in with my thoughts. (I've read up to pg 14, so mea culpa if I'm repeating something :D)

In summation: I think its a step in the right direction, but it might be a few steps too far. There needs to be some sort of challenge for every guild in reaching Lvl 100, and at first glance it seems like these changes pretty much eliminated the challenge. The Mega guilds will be able to level very quickly with minimal decay, but the smaller guilds won't be able to keep up because they don't have as many members as the mega guilds.

To a point, it makes sense: More people, the faster you level. At the same time, I really, really, REALLY, don't want to see "Korthos Army" style guilds on the rise again. Its a very bad environment for new incoming players that need to learn a vastly complex MMO. I think the 3 levels/day limit is a good antidote for that, but I'm not sure its enough. I would almost drop it to 1 Level/day. There needs to be some sort of "brake" that will slow a guild's progression, and a corresponding strategy that a guild will have to develop in order to overcome the "brake". As of the old system, the brake was crippling decay at high levels, and the strategy was kicking casuals/innactives. Now, there doesn't appear to be much of a brake at all. Find something in between, and I think we're good.

I think there should be multiple strategies for guilds to progress. The multiple strategies should balance out so casual guilds and powergamers guilds have about the same chance of getting to lvl 100 in a reasonable amount of time. As of these new changes, Mega guilds have the sheer number of players pulling in renown, and small guilds have their small guild renown bonuses. At initial glance, it seems that Mega guilds have a significant advantage over the smaller guilds. The small guilds are left in the dust, and could use a bit of love, imo.

Speaking of multiple strategies...It would be nice to have other ways to gather renown to help level a guild. (Chest farming gets really old after a while). A Couple ideas:


Guildies should be rewarded more for grouping up with other guildies. I liked how "Build Your Guild" promoted that. Granted, it was an short-term extreme powerleveling event, but something similar on a smaller scale would be healthy for guilds, I think.
I'd like to see some sort of an Alliance system where guilds that become allies and run together recieve extra renown bonuses. It would encourage guilds to reach out and find other guilds to run with.
I'd also like to see more renown rewards on difficult content (raids, epic quests, etc); They're quite an achievement and should be rewarded accordingly.

[Renvar]

Reasons I like the change:

Large guilds get an equalizer to the very high small guild bonuses. A guild of 6-10 vs. a guild of 60. The small guild gets 200-300% boost on renown and 1/3rd the decay. Large guilds, unless they were insanely active, were at a huge disadvantage. Most of your 85+ guilds have no more than 20 accounts.

No need to boot casual players that have been in the guild a long time. If something changes IRL and someone can only log on 4-5 hours a week for a while, they aren't hurting you.

No penalty for having toons in multiple guilds. In the past, I knew players with toons in 3-4 guilds. That became less viable with the decay based on number of toons in guild. This will disappear and allow for multi-guild relationships.

Reasons I don't like the change:
It devalues guild level as a measure of player activity/commitment. It is possible in the current system to get a high guild level with lower quality players, but it is unlikely. The amount of time commitment required results in some growth in skills and knowledge by the time a guild gets ove 85. Now, there is no benefit to not adding as many renown earners as you can, regardless of quality (assuming guild level is your primary goal). And no negative to kicking them to the curb once they get you there. (That was always the case, but only very dedicated earners would help in the past. Now 200 casual earners can do more than 5-6 dedicated earners).

Given the small guild bonus caps at 300%(ish) a guild of 300 earning 500 renown per day each makes 150k. A guild of 6 would need to earn 25k each (8333 renown without the bonus) each. Today Qualty > Quantity. With these changes Quantity > Quality.

All in all, I like the direction it's going. It just means that guild level cannot be used as a measure of player quality. (Not that it ever really was).

[memloch]

As a guild leader of a mid size guild I like the change. I am hoping that they still remove the penalty for removing inactive players at some point during their inactive period. For me 2 months is a good bench mark.

I also do not understand the mentality of booting everyone once you reach 100. They are not affecting your decay. They allow more choices for grouping. If they are questing then they are helping to maintain the level. Truly perplexed here.

So I hope they keep this change and continue to work on improving the guild system.

[dagger2b]

This is a really good step in the right direction. I am second in a large guild with 130ish modified account size. Just a few weeks ago we made a very difficult decision to boot inactives between 2-4 weeks to slowly clean up the guild without taking a huge hit for booting the over 1 month inactives that don't hurt us.

We are a semi casual guild and some of us are very active while others are not. We like having a large guild and many guild mates to run with at all hours of the day, but it was impossible to stop our renown bleeding without taking drastic measures.

With this change we are finally able to move in the right direction again without having to kick people who went on vacation or took a small break. Not everyone who does so stays away forever. Look at the forums to see all the people who say they are leaving and come back a few weeks later. It's a shame to have to kick someone you know and like who will most likely play again soon because you want to keep your guild gaining in levels.

[MysticElaine]

1) I wanted to say this is a good step. I am a sm guild so am not affected, still getting over 4k decay. I am glad that we can't now say "I have to boot this casual player because they aren't pulling their weight"

2) I wished the guild decay would be done away with totally as others have stated it is a chore more than a reward. We are very casual players and can't even get to 60. We get so discouraged to see us fall so much renown when we haven't played for a few days and can only play a few hours.

3) To those who are worried about booting inactives...I got rid of a player's toons who said he was leaving the game and moving on. I started from the 4mo mark and onwards and noticed no renown was lost and no recent departures was added.

[dagger2b]

1) ...3) To those who are worried about booting inactives...I got rid of a player's toons who said he was leaving the game and moving on. I started from the 4mo mark and onwards and noticed no renown was lost and no recent departures was added.

So are you saying that any inactives booted this week won't count against our renown or our recent departures?

[Seikojin]

I am glad to see the decay being smaller than before. much more simple of a decay and it seems easier to handle.

[OpallNotten]

I am working on a post (not this one) to describe how this will effect me and my guys.

Guild <o>
6 Active
Level 72


What this does is allows all those guilds that managed to hit high levels very quickly after Guild Renown was introduced to keep getting higher levels even though they could have been dominating this entire time if they worked at it.

I am level 72.
It took me a little over a year and a half to get here. I worked at it.

Decay is not the problem here!
Decay is what keeps those large guilds in check.

This does effect small Guilds.

Let us not forget the LEADERBOARD on the MyDDO page.

This has always been the driving factor for <o>. It is a competition.
But now the large Guilds will have that handed to them.
I hope this is only a test. If this actually goes live.......It will be a sad day for people that seen Guilds the way they were meant to be seen.
Not as a buffing bonus
As a COMPETITION!

[Dekh]

Greetings! We are putting forth modifications currently trying out some temporary adjustments to the Guild Renown system and monitoring the outcome and feedback this week. The intent is to address concerns from guilds and guild leaders regarding the impact of optimizing guild size in order to gain or maintain guild levels. We’ll be making additional balance changes that we think you and your guildmates will appreciate, but for now we have applied the changes without downtime. As of today, you will notice two changes to your renown rates:


Renown decay no longer takes guild size into account. This should ease the pressure for guild leaders to “kick” members from the guild to offset daily renown decay rates. Renown decay now only takes a guild’s level into consideration rather than its size.
Renown ransack has been increased. Previously when a guild earned levels in a day, it would gradually reduce the renown drop rates. We’ve increased the rate so that a guild can only earn roughly 3 levels in a single day. This should prevent large guilds from completely dominating the field in terms of levels per-day.

There are some balance Pros and Cons to this method, but we’d like guilds to give us feedback about their experiences using the new settings this week. If players like the settings, or feel it is workable with minor tweaks, then we are ready to keep them! If players find the changes make matters worse, then we are scheduled to revert them. So this week, we encourage guild leaders/members to use this thread to give us feedback about how the changes are impacting your guild leveling dynamics. Important feedback for us is points where frustration has eased (or increased). Thanks for your participation as we work to improve our guild leveling system!

These new changes will kill all the guilds who have invested on the quality and not on numbers of their members.

My guild got only 11 very active accounts and we have achieved 93 guild levels in less than 1 year ( see Obscura Consilium - Sarlona), so now we will get the same renow decay of a guild level 93 with 200 accounts right?

Well, this does not seem respectful for all people who put diligence and sacrifices to obtain prestigious levels.

[DocBenway]

As a guild of 6, this change will keep you exactly where you were under the usual system. No decay easing for anyone under 10 in size.


...
I hope this is only a test. If this actually goes live.......It will be a sad day for people that seen Guilds the way they were meant to be seen.
Not as a buffing bonus
As a COMPETITION!

Guilds existed long before artificial numbers were attached. The "meaning" of my guild never had anything to do with competition or buffing bonuses. Guild ships and buffs were introduced well after the guild was formed.

Any competition aspect was introduced with renown. So the semantic nitpicker in me thinks that "meant to be" is not the proper term. "It will be a sad day for people that seen Guilds as competitors" would be more accurate.

[DocBenway]

My guild got only 11 very active accounts and we have achieved 93 guild levels in less than 1 year ( see Obscura Consilium - Sarlona), so now we will get the same renow decay of a guild level 93 with 200 accounts right?

Well, this does not seem respectful for all people who put diligence and sacrifices to obtain prestigious levels.

You have it wrong, you will get hit as though you were a 10 account, rather than the 11 you have now. That 200 member guild will also get hit as a 10 account. Everyone is 10 accounts and uses 20 * LevelMultiplier on the Wiki.

[OpallNotten]

Definition of LEADERBOARD

: a large board for displaying the ranking of the leaders in a competitive event

[DocBenway]

Definition of LEADERBOARD

: a large board for displaying the ranking of the leaders in a competitive event

That didn't exist until renown was introduced at the end of June 2010. It was introduced with renown. Any competition is not an actual part of the game as there is no in game Coin Lord Stanley Cup for being "top dog."

I just had issue with declaring guilds had competition inherent in their meaning when this wasn't the case. The competition is in the minds and spirits of the competitors themselves and that great if that's what turns their crank. What any other guild has has no bearing on my own guild's success/failure.

I take no issue with their being competition for some people, I take issue with that competition being some necessary and quintessential part of any and every guild axiomatically.

[OpallNotten]

I am not trying to argue with you Doc.

I am not alone in thinking it is a competition. There are plenty more that think/feel this way.

All I am getting at is handing victory to Large Guilds that do not deserve it, IMO, is just wrong.

Decay should stay. I like that decay has kept those Guilds in check.

[Tshober]

If this actually goes live.......It will be a sad day for people that seen Guilds the way they were meant to be seen.
Not as a buffing bonus
As a COMPETITION!

I am going to go out on a limb here and say that most people do not view guilds as a competition. At least everyone I hang out with wants and expects guilds to be about cooperation and helping and socializing. If you have been trying to compete with my guild, then you have been competing with an "opponent" who did not know it was a competition and does not want to compete. But congrats on "winning".

[DocBenway]

I am not trying to argue with you Doc.

I am not alone in thinking it is a competition. There are plenty more that think/feel this way.

All I am getting at is handing victory to Large Guilds that do not deserve it, IMO, is just wrong.

Decay should stay. I like that decay has kept those Guilds in check.
Yeah, not an argument but a quibble over definitions that still would never happen prior to renown and the decay thereof.

I just searched the thread to see if I was skimming over references to it while perusing the thread, to get a feel for the amount of support that the competitive aspect is showing. There were 3 posted results (will be 4 with this post) that contained the word leaderboard 1, now 2 are me replying to you, the other 2 are yours.

I would ask that you direct the others you know that like the competitive aspect and how this change gives larges guilds a 30 fold advantage or more, to this thread to post since that aspect of the renown system is being sorely underrepresented.

[Tshober]

These new changes will kill all the guilds who have invested on the quality and not on numbers of their members.

Kill?

Has your guild been rendered unable to advance? NO

Has your guild's advancement been slowed even a little bit? NO

How, exactly, has your guild been harmed?

[madmaxhunter]

I am going to go out on a limb here and say that most people do not view guilds as a competition. At least everyone I hang out with wants and expects guilds to be about cooperation and helping and socializing. If you have been trying to compete with my guild, then you have been competing with an "opponent" who did not know it was a competition and does not want to compete. But congrats on "winning".

Yup, and I'll add, my guild has been around since before there were airships. Have had many wonderful players come and go, and am now level 71. Dekh makes a guild to be in the "sweet zone". recruits power players , makes low 90s in less than a year and then says it's a competition? Competition with a helluva handicap system.

Edit: for correction (sorry Opal)

[OpallNotten]

Yup, and I'll add, my guild has been around since before there were airships. Have had many wonderful players come and go, and am now level 71. Opal makes a guild to be in the "sweet zone". recruits power players , makes low 90s in less than a year and then says it's a competition? Competition with a helluva handicap system.

I am Level 72...not 90.....

My guild has been around since 2006. Started small. Stayed small.

It has taken <o> 1 1/2 + to get to where we are at. <o> was left dormant for the 1st year and a bit.

And have you been to MyDDO? It clearly says LEADERBOARD.....just sayin.....

[madmaxhunter]

I am Level 72...not 90.....

My guild has been around since 2006. Started small. Stayed small.

It has taken <o> 1 1/2 + to get to where we are at. <o> was left dormant for the 1st year and a bit.

And have you been to MyDDO? It clearly says LEADERBOARD.....just sayin.....

So sorry Opal, I retract all that, reading this many posts my eyes got crossed. 93 was Dekh.

[OpallNotten]

So sorry Opal, I retract all that, reading this many posts my eyes got crossed. 93 was Dekh.

lol I understand:p

Lots to read in this thread.

[Beethoven]

These new changes will kill all the guilds who have invested on the quality and not on numbers of their members ...
Well, this does not seem respectful for all people who put diligence and sacrifices to obtain prestigious levels.

My wife only gets to play 2-3 days, consequently there are weeks were she likely causes more decay than she pulls renown. You basically accuse her of being a low quality player because of it. That's not very respectful either, now is it?


It will be a sad day for people that seen Guilds the way they were meant to be seen.
Not as a buffing bonus
As a COMPETITION!

Certain players spent half the effort 'competing' they spent using the system as cheap excuse to snuff their noses and throw insult the rest of Turbine's customers you might have a point. There has been no mechanism and no system causing an equivalent amount of strife, flame-wars and people coming out of the woodworks to tell others how they doing it wrong than this. You really wonder they change it?

Also, I disagree that you can measure the /quality/ of a guild solely by the amount of chest openings. The quality of a guild has always been and likely will always be measured by the reputation of their members. There are several guilds on Sarlona who built up a reputation as being good and that carries far more weight than the number attached to their guild tag.

You want to compete, I always found there are way better ways to do that; ie: fastest raid completions, achievements of individual members and/or establishing a reputation on your server that makes people recognize the guild tag (there have been guilds who made a point to take a couple pugs on guild raids to teach more and newer players, who hosted regular raids such as Titan, Abbot and Lob, and who got in touch with other guilds to form alliances to help individual members get completions and the latest gear and they got recognition for it).

[Dhalgren]

Guilds are about cooperation. Leaderboards are about competition.

Personally I couldn't care less about the leaderboard.

[Gremmlynn]

Because small guilds get significantly less renown/week now than large guilds. If everyone in a large guild with 100 active players earns a measly 2k renown a day, the guild will get 200k renown. It would be a struggle for a 6-man guild to amass that much in a day.Nobody is getting less renown/week than they were before. I really don't see what the rest has to do with anything as everyone is playing against the system, not each other.

That's not even mentioning, that I have never seen a large guild with 100 active players. More likely 10 active players and maybe about twice that number of others playing on any particular day in a 100 player guild. Which is why the old system wasn't working. It simply wasn't in the interests of those 10 active players to act as the glue that holds the guild together for the other 90. So we end up with 10 satisfied customers and 90, likely, former customers.

[OpallNotten]

Guilds are about cooperation. Leaderboards are about competition.

Personally I couldn't care less about the leaderboard.

I understand your point of view.

But then why did they title it a "LEADERBOARD"?

http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=22372&storypage=2
Note that even he says once you reach a certain level it's more about bragging rights.

[FranOhmsford]

These new changes will kill all the guilds who have invested on the quality and not on numbers of their members.

My guild got only 11 very active accounts and we have achieved 93 guild levels in less than 1 year ( see Obscura Consilium - Sarlona), so now we will get the same renow decay of a guild level 93 with 200 accounts right?

Well, this does not seem respectful for all people who put diligence and sacrifices to obtain prestigious levels.

And yet again the real issue gets lost:

You're Lvl 92 - You will have no problems finding 20-30 active players to join your guild! Even if you're only looking for the right players!

My Guild is Lvl 44 - We have 21 Actives {Up to 1 Month offline} BUT only 2 of whom play regularly - I am the only one who plays every day.
We have less decay now yes BUT it will still take us forever to get up to Lvl 55+ Never mind the 70s or 90s.

Many Guilds of Lvl 30-50 will simply fall by the wayside as the active players get poached by the Tiny Guilds like yours that have already made the highest Levels.
The Tiny Guilds who no longer need to keep their account size so low!
They can recruit now and remain "family orientated" - 30-50 Members will become the Norm, 75 -150 Member Large Guilds will also be popular.
The rest of us will fall by the wayside as no-one with any sense will join a Lvl 30-50 Guild if this change goes into full effect.

BTW of course we're not seeing these things happening during the test - It's a week long test - No Guild leader is going to be foolish enough to start filling his/her guild up yet!

[DocBenway]

http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=22372&storypage=2
Note that even he says once you reach a certain level it's more about bragging rights.

The source of the quote also brought us such classics as "I can take paralyze off of this weapon and put it onto that one" and everyone's favourite "Half-Elves are the most beautiful race in DDO!"

Just sayin...
:p

But seriously ask other guild leaders you know that like the competitive aspect to post, since up until this point in the thread it's gone unmentioned and seems to be something you value in the system. It is important to get as many aspects and supporting viewpoints of those aspects of the system out in the open while the developers are actively looking into Renown.

[Qezuzu]

The only problem I see with this change is that high guild levels won't be as hard to achieve, and can be achieved in a shorter amount of time; which isn't all that major a problem in my opinion, because guild level is a trivial indicator of "how much me and my friends play each day". Some of the best players I know are in small, low-level guilds.

As a compromise, guilds could get "stars", which would be like wings for a TRed toon; they'd just be on either side of a guild name as it appears above a player. It would be awarded for having a certain rate of renown per player per time period. Because I do know some people value the prestige that a guild level brings to them, and a guild that can get high levels quickly just by having a large number of players would take away a part of that away.

[theslimshady]

look the feedback imo should be based on your guild not what could happen and my guess is that that would be gains to renown for some larger for others and the idea seems to be great for all established guilds of all sizes so again thank you ddo this is the first mabar festival we dont have to fear bleeding out a level to enjoy

[Postumus]

I am not trying to argue with you Doc.

I am not alone in thinking it is a competition. There are plenty more that think/feel this way.

A

I see your perspective. It's probably the only somewhat reasonable argument I've seen against reducing guild decay for everyone.


I disagree with you that there are 'plenty more' that view guild levels as a competition. Or, at the very least, 'plenty more' is merely a drop in the bucket in terms of the percentage of total guilds that exist in this game.

I think that the 'competition' is in name only and as such it is essentially pointless. As other posters have noted there isn't really any difference between a L85 guild and a L100 guild.

[mikarddo]

Well, not quite everything. Your sugggestion would still penalize guilds of social players. Like role-players who spend the majority of their online time doing activities that garner little renown.

Yes, that can and should be helped by setting a reasonable time limit after which there is no penalty for kicking inactives. Say 3 months. At that point you can be pretty sure they are unlikely to return and penalizing a guild for kicking them at that point is just silly.

Guilds with extremely active players in terms of logging on every day would gain nothing in the system I propose that is true. But then the idea was to help the problems for casuals not the hyper active which need no help in the first place. So, I certainly maintain that the system I suggest is far superior to the absurd one being tested now.

As for the second part of your post you misread what I wrote (namely that it cannot be helped that guilds near the cap retain a reason to kick inactives - renown or not) but even so I do agree that removing someone that has not been logged in for 3 months straight should not cost anything. On the other hand removing anyone that still logs in should probably cost 100% of the renown they have gained if the system in testing is implemented for good as each member no longer causes decay. Otherwise there is no penalty to a guild that takes in lots of people to milk for renown only to kick them out when the guild level is high enough for the leaders liking.

Thus I restate the suggestion. Make only those that logged in during the past 24 (or 48) hours count when decay is calculated and remove the lower bound of 20 - otherwise keep the current system (not the one in testing).

Current system: LevelMultiplier * ( Max(Modified Guild Size,10) + 10 )
In testing: LevelMultiplier * 20
My suggestion: LevelMultiplier * ( #Accounts in guild that logged in during the past 24 hours )

[Sonofmoradin]

if they want to fix renown system, they should also add double time buffs on achieving 100 level. There should be some real incentive to this system.

In order for that to happen, the system must be challenging and fair. All guilds regardless size, should have an even ground - fair game.

[Dekh]

My wife only gets to play 2-3 days, consequently there are weeks were she likely causes more decay than she pulls renown. You basically accuse her of being a low quality player because of it. That's not very respectful either, now is it?

The word Quality in this case is determined from :
the time you spend daily on ddo ( so yes she' a low quality player )
the intelligence that you uses ingame (i can not rate cuz i don't know the player)
the ability to maximize the time you spend online in : progress for your characters, progress for your guild levels, progress for your interpersonal relationships ( i can not evaluate)

So summary : I can not say if your wife is a quality player or not, but i can say for sure that she can not ever enter in my guild :D

[Sonofmoradin]

This system should respect leaders that can decide wether to make a small quality guild and take the small guild bonus, or go for the numbers but sustain penalty. All I am saying is that variance in guild composition and uniqueness should be promoted, exactly like the character building system - you got to choose and make your own toon that will be different, and achieve what style you choose to have.

[Gremmlynn]

The underlined part is why the change did nothing to help small guilds, not any sore point that made it worse. It is unchanged from a system that was bad, That is all.

The bolded part is mathematically false. There is a point that renown intake will not match/overcome decay across many sizes, without a playstyle overhaul. A size range that this change reduces but still does not allow anyone below size 10 to progress any further than before. They are still artificially paused on a treadmill detour.That simply wasn't the issue the change was made to effect.

Simply put, the system was changed to take away the incentive to kick players from guilds and to give an incentive to invite players to guilds.

While I'll agree that the treadmill issue should also be looked at, from the point of view of the community as a whole, I'd have to say this was a more important issue. Before, how the guild system worked was only an issue for those who play enough for membership in a functional guild to even be an option. This change makes how the guild system works potentially an issue for the entire player base and thus more worth the time for the devs to look at it closer.

[Rapthorn]

Call me confused, but if the levels from 71 to 100 don't mean all that much, then why are we all arguing in the first place?

Under the pre-test system, a large guild could easily achieve level 70. At that level you get what I consider the last really good buffs; the large augment slots, and final shroud alter (although the alter to me is kinda meh). Judging from my own server (Argo), maintaining guild level 70 is not difficult for even the most casual friendly large guilds.

After level 70, is mostly fluff or things totally useless (epic alter). This leaves me to believe that after level 70, the guild levels are more about bragging rights than anything else (making it a competition).

Which only leaves one reason to me why all these large guilds are mad... the xp shrines. Is all of this really just over the xp shrines?! If that is the case, then please Turbine, just let the entitlement crowd get their shrines... lower the min guild level on them so everyone can have all the wonderful shinies. Then return the guild system back to the competition that it was.

[DocBenway]

That simply wasn't the issue the change was made to effect.

Simply put, the system was changed to take away the incentive to kick players from guilds and to give an incentive to invite players to guilds.

While I'll agree that the treadmill issue should also be looked at, from the point of view of the community as a whole, I'd have to say this was a more important issue. Before, how the guild system worked was only an issue for those who play enough for membership in a functional guild to even be an option. This change makes how the guild system works potentially an issue for the entire player base and thus more worth the time for the devs to look at it closer.

That quote was 80 posts ago and in direct reply to someone asking why small guilds made any noise about it. I was clarifying that small guilds were making noise because it did nothing to change their situation. I was specifically stating that this was not making small guilds worse off.

The main treadmill point was the fact that the house would never get built so the analogy was false regarding getting to the same place in more time.

As far as memberships, go another 100 posts back and I say:

...
What is different now? I don't feel pressure from a system to do what I never would and boot friends for math. This is good There is less deterrent to recruit. This is good...

So we are in complete agreement about the main "good thing" about the change.

[Gremmlynn]

This is spot on. This was a problem before, and remains a problem for any guilds that want to take advantage of the small guild renown bonus.

My suggestion, in two parts:

1. You only go from Inactive to Active when you enter a private instance (quest/challenge/wilderness). Running around the Market or chatting while on your guild ship or such does not mark your account as Active. So people who log on to say "Hi!" don't increase the Active account numbers for the guild.

2. You go from Active to Inactive...after 24 hours (or maybe 48). Not 1 month. So people who only play on the weekend don't count against the guild all week long, only for roughly the day(s) they are playing.

I think those changes would have helped alleviate anti-casual-player bias in a way that doesn't massively favor massive guilds.I agree. But I'm realistic enough to know that if there is a good solution that takes some work to effect and a workable solution that takes simply flipping a switch, Turbine's going to go with the workable solution. It simply isn't cost effective for them to do otherwise.

[gangrilar]

I think the temporary changes that have been made to guild renown are excellent. The pressure on guild leadership to kick folks out of guilds for casual participation is significantly relieved. Moreover, guilds now have an incentive to be more open to recruiting new members. The effects of this change both maintains the enthusiasm of casual players who will have a significantly reduced chance of logging on to find themselves guild-less and increases the welcoming aspect for new players looking for a group of people to run with. I strongly encourage this change be made permanent.

[Gremmlynn]

Maybe.... :)

But, even if I'm talking a different set of guilds the point is still the same -- the best known and respected guilds have earned that by how they treat other players on the server.

I fundamentally disagree with those who are locked in on this "recruit then kick" mind set. I think that the change is geared more to addressing concerns of guilds that felt forced to reduce size because inactive accounts created too much of a drain.

Totally removing guild renown decay would only make the problem of guilds recruiting and kicking a bigger problem. So, some form of decay is necessary.

My personal feeling is that the penalty for kicking accounts should be higher than the 25% loss. That seems a better solution.

Meanwhile, the penalty for voluntarily leaving should be reduced or eliminated.

This directly addresses the concerns of people worried that the "recruit and kick" mind set will bleed over to the changes that have been announced. It also lets people leave guilds without severe impact.

Obviously guilds need to be able to kick people who are really a problem. But, IMO it is a bit of the guild's own problem of poor recruitment and failure to really verify a player when this happens. Doesn't account for every jerk that ever lived or played DDO, but it does apply most of the time I think.

So, I'd be in favor of fixing the "recruit and kick" issue by upping the penalty to 75% or even higher of that character's renown contribution. OTOH, I'd support dropping the voluntary penalty to 0%.

IMO the opportunity to voluntarily leave on "bad" terms and penalize the guild 25% seems petty and a bit childish. But, that's just me. It might make a difference if you could take all the renown with you and auto apply it to a new guild. But, since we don't bank renown and can't earn it unless in a guild, it seems sort of silly to me to put a "mean" reaction choice out there.

Oh well, in any case I think the changes from Turbine are mostly positive here and that is the biggest thing to me. It looks like Turbine heard the community and made a change. I'm having a hard time finding reasons to fault them for that.Frankly, I could get behind a 100% renown loss for kicking players. If someone is so bad they need to be kicked, putting the guild in the same situation they would have been in if they had never invited them in the first place can hardly be considered a loss. This would also eliminate any advantage from inviting players with the intent to kick. This should be reduced or eliminated after a period of inactivity though unless the max guild size cap were to be done away with. Many MMO players are way to migratory for guilds to be limited by players that are already on their 3rd new game since last playing this one.

[Tshober]

Under the pre-test system, a large guild could easily achieve level 70. At that level you get what I consider the last really good buffs; the large augment slots, and final shroud alter (although the alter to me is kinda meh). Judging from my own server (Argo), maintaining guild level 70 is not difficult for even the most casual friendly large guilds.
.

This is flat out untrue for at least some large guilds. My guild ALWAYS has more players online playing than any other guild on my server, 24 hours per day and 7 days per week, and we have been that way for years. No other guild on our server even comes close to us in total online player activity. Yet we can not advance beyond level 61 because we are a very large guild and we have quite a lot of casual and social players. We got to 63 briefly during the Build Your Guild event but we dropped back down to 60 after it ended.

If my large guild, as incredibly active as it is in the aggregate, can't get past level 61, then I know there are others that can't as well.

[Merlin-ator]

Yay!

[bazooka99]

This makes no sense to me. Where is the motivation to kick people out of the guild after it reaches 100? What is the benefit?

Wouldn't it be more likely that no one would get kicked and we would just have more large casual guilds?

My comment about kicking wasn't really the point, but here's why I said it. This new system offers no incentive against creating large casual guilds (as you yourself seem to have acknowledged), so expect a fair number of guilds to fill up quickly with random newbs. Once a guild fills its roster and can no longer increase in size, the pragmatic thing to do is to boot the least useful members of the guild and fill their slots with more "useful" players.

In the previous system, this would not have happened because there was no practical incentive to invite newbs into a guild (in fact, there was disincentive). The only guilds interested in inviting newbs were the more philanthropic sorts who were genuinely interested in helping new players learn the game.

Now, this new system has opened the possibility for more cutthroat guilds to exploit large masses of newbs, farm them for renown while they can, and dispose of them once better players comes around.

(Thankfully, 25% of the earned renown is lost from kicking, so this effect will be somewhat mitigated.)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

My main problem with this new system is that it destroys the meaning of guild level by offering the potential for any guild to reach 100 (given enough time) if their guild is large enough.

This new guild renown system is like a worldwide facebook contest to see who can get a thousand friends. If you send an invite to every fb account you can find, you'll hardly get any refusals, because everyone else wants to get their thousand friends too. The same will soon happen with guilds, under this new system. Now that "bigger guilds are better", a lot of people are simply going to be interested in creating the biggest guild. Those guilds won't care who they invite (at first), they just want to get the biggest guild, and under this system they will eventually reach level 100. Of course, once the roster is filled, they won't be able to invite any more, so certain guilds might start replacing their less active players with more active ones so they can hit level 100 faster (or maintain it more easily).

[mondo]

The problem with the system overall is most guilds cant attain the highest level, or mayby even just the level they want. Obviously the system was created so if a guild wanted to attain a high level and keep it, they had to work hard and stay consistent to keep it. Did it ever occur to people that whatever level your guild is "stuck at" is as good as you are, and thats the problem everything else in the game is obtainable if you keep working to get it. Except guild level people think they are entitled to whatever the game has to offer, as you can see this thread is full of complaints from people this change doesnt help. The decay system makes sense but it hurts most guilds in the game, and these people pay money and keep the game going. I wouldnt say eliminate it all together but lower it alot across the board so everybody can cap there guild like they do there toons. And then they will be happy and they can carry on complaining about other things. My 2 copper

[Krell]

My experience is most guilds take pride in the quality of their members and would not be willing to fill up with problem or unknown players. That strategy risks losing quality players because their guild environment is no longer enjoyable. Also guilds that just fill with as many bodies as possible tend to get a certain reputation on the server that negatively affects the quality members. I don't think that strategy will be common for guilds that are currently well established and have any pride in their current member quality or reputation.

I think a number of guilds will now be able to reach 100 by doing what they do today: accepting new members that show promise and keeping quality players regardless of low or high game hours. Personally seeing more guilds reach and stay at 100 doesn't bother me any more than seeing players reach and stay at 25.

[Cryohazard]

My experience is most guilds take pride in the quality of their members and would not be willing to fill up with problem or unknown players. That strategy risks losing quality players because their guild environment is no longer enjoyable. Also guilds that just fill with as many bodies as possible tend to get a certain reputation on the server that negatively affects the quality members. I don't think that strategy will be common for guilds that are currently well established and have any pride in their current member quality or reputation.

I think a number of guilds will now be able to reach 100 by doing what they do today: accepting new members that show promise and keeping quality players regardless of low or high game hours. Personally seeing more guilds reach and stay at 100 doesn't bother me any more than seeing players reach and stay at 25.

That's generally the case with the guilds that have been around for a while and have established a core group of players, rules, and goals. I completely agree, very few leaders will risk alienating his/her core for the sake of a bigger number next to the guild name. Also, well-established guilds probably have witnessed these Korthos Army style guilds pop up and disappear, and learned from them. Sure, a few people will still do it anyway, but I can't see it being the major problem some folks here are pitchforking about.

[theslimshady]

so i am just following up on renown gains for a large guild

204 modifed accounts at toon cap
monday am 19742742
wed pm 20029888
total renown gained 287126
avg per day after decay 97702

difference with new system we gained old system we would have broke even or lost going into mabar which would have been a pure bleed so again thank you ddo

[bazooka99]

My experience is most guilds take pride in the quality of their members and would not be willing to fill up with problem or unknown players. That strategy risks losing quality players because their guild environment is no longer enjoyable. Also guilds that just fill with as many bodies as possible tend to get a certain reputation on the server that negatively affects the quality members. I don't think that strategy will be common for guilds that are currently well established and have any pride in their current member quality or reputation.

I think a number of guilds will now be able to reach 100 by doing what they do today: accepting new members that show promise and keeping quality players regardless of low or high game hours. Personally seeing more guilds reach and stay at 100 doesn't bother me any more than seeing players reach and stay at 25.

I agree with that, most guild members will want to stick with the people they know. In fact, I myself will continue to remain the leader of my level 27 guild of 3 accounts rather than join some massive level 100 guild of people I've never even played with. My guild and my personal investment in it is more important to me than the benefits of a level 100 guild. Still it just seems weird to me that Turbine should force anyone to make this kind of choice. If they change the renown system too much, they eventually may just be better off giving everyone the benefits of a max level guild and making renown just that - renown, something that doesn't affect gameplay but is more like "bragging rights" (or like the monster manual, with some small fringe benefits).

[Tshober]

Still it just seems weird to me that Turbine should force anyone to make this kind of choice.

Old Decay Choice: Kick out casual/social players & never invite newb players, OR stop advancing forever.

New Choice: Join a larger guild & advance faster, OR continue to advance at the speed you were before (or slightly better).

Which choice is more reasonable? Which has the more extreme consequences, for guilds and for DDO as a whole? I think it is very clear.




If they change the renown system too much, they eventually may just be better off giving everyone the benefits of a max level guild and making renown just that - renown, something that doesn't affect gameplay but is more like "bragging rights" (or like the monster manual, with some small fringe benefits).

I wish they had done that to begin with. It would have saved us all a great deal of anguish.

[Faxe]

My feedback after reading almost every post in this thread so far including the really long one with the fancy charts and statistics:

This change is good for the game. PLEASE KEEP IT. Someone even purchased more DDO points after this change.

Ideas from others that I like:

Other ways to gain renown such as reaching certain levels/favors, completing quests/raids, hitting slayers/explorers
Lower the number of days before an account goes inactive
Adjust the bonus to give smaller guilds a fair chance
Remove 100% renown from players who are kicked
Remove 0 renown for leaving on good terms
Make ship buffs last longer or until death
Raise the level to 500
Provide more ship option/customization including a pool table
Just remove decay completely already (This is supported by many, but best stated by bloodwork)
9 women can average 1/baby a month for 9 months


I understand the level of efforts that many guilds have previously put into achieving their current high levels. It is just as impressive that many large, casual guilds have achieved levels over 60. But I cannot see any reason how this change will hurt current guilds or the game by creating large mass-recruit guilds.

My feeling is that renown and guild level should not be confused as a 'prestige' or 'activity' measurement. The actual good deeds that players/guilds have done for others in game do not need any measurement. The in-game renown is just a number that we gain while adventuring that allows our guilds to unlock more airship features. That should be all. That is why it should not be a system to exclude guilds because of sizes or activities.

[countfitz]

If they change the renown system too much, they eventually may just be better off giving everyone the benefits of a max level guild and making renown just that - renown, something that doesn't affect gameplay but is more like "bragging rights" (or like the monster manual, with some small fringe benefits).

I made this suggestion a long time ago, except I said use DDO Store for low level guilds and Plat for high levels.

So basically, a low level guild could buy everything a high level can, but with Turbine points instead of plat.

As it is, the DDO Store sells ship amenities five levels before you can buy them with plat, so the idea is there... the problem is they're still too high for casual guilds.

So just allow any level 1 guild to buy everything they want with RL money.

Renown becomes what it should be, a mark of respect, not something that divides casual players and power gamers even further.

And, IMO, a casual gamer (stereotypically) has a real life and job, and therefore the money to do this, a powergamer has the time to level a guild and the plat to spend. It makes sense.

Finally, it will make Turbine more money.

And it isn't unbalancing, any casual gamer can get a ship invite from a powergamer in a high level guild and get the same benefits, but for free instead of paying Turbine... so the only person who wins in this suggestion is Turbine (and nobody loses.)

[9Crows]

as a guild leader of a guild with 100 active accts the removal of penaltys for having many accts in guild is a positive step in the right direction

we were a mass recruiting guild when we started and i lOVED it

we had lots of different people at all skill lvls and all play/build styles and it was fun

more people = more fun

i loved recruiting new players,watching thier enjoyment of a new game was like watching kids open presents at christmass

then alot of forumites started saying mass recruiting guilds were just exploiting the sytem for fast lvls.that it ws all about guild lvls prestige and so forth..turbines responce was decay...which effectivly killed large guilds ...why because people want to advance,even slowly regardlss of rewards so alot of people left large guilds which werent advancing to join small guilds that were..and large guilds started reducing acct size drastically to stay viable

to all the people who equate what guild your in as sign of your social worth in game or how good of a player you are..or discriminate against players because of thier skill lvl or what guild they are in.... i dont think you ever played pnp d&d

D&D was always about fun 100% not being the strongest or the smartest or having the best gear or about the highest social standing groups that were about fun and kept the game fun lasted far longer than play for status groups


i think this is where the fight is in ddo ....its play for fun guilds who want to grow VS play for status guilds who think guilds are a measure of your worth



i miss recruiting people just for fun i really really miss it... i met alot of fun crazy(albiet short term) players that way

[Thayion516]

Ok .. so im horrible with math .. Whats the decay now with lv65 guild with 280 active accounts? per day.

Plz work thru the math so i can see how u got it for future use.

[EllisDee37]

Ok .. so im horrible with math .. Whats the decay now with lv65 guild with 280 active accounts? per day.

Plz work thru the math so i can see how u got it for future use.On this page (http://ddowiki.com/page/Guild_Renown), look up your level modifier and multiply it by 20. That's your daily decay. There is no longer an account modifier. (There is, but it's always 20 regardless of your number of accounts.)

Level 65 level modifier: 384.475000
280 account modifier: 20

Your daily decay is now 384.475 * 20 = 7689.5

It used to be 384.475 * 290 = 111,497.75

[bazooka99]

It sounds like the renown level is calculated the same as before, only with a fixed account multiplier of 20 (previously the min. multiplier). So decay is now calculated as follows:

(Level^3)*(1 for levels 26-30, 2 for 31-35, ..., 15 for 96-100)*(2.5 for levels 26-40, 3 for levels 41-60, 3.5 for levels 61-80, 4 for levels 81-99, 4.5 for level 100)/1000 renown decay per day

Which is a bit simpler than before. Or, you can just look up the level multiplier from the table on the wiki's guild renown page, multiply by 20, and you should get the same result.

Edit: ^ beat me to it :)

[Singular]

Greetings! We are putting forth modifications currently trying out some temporary adjustments to the Guild Renown system and monitoring the outcome and feedback this week. The intent is to address concerns from guilds and guild leaders regarding the impact of optimizing guild size in order to gain or maintain guild levels. We’ll be making additional balance changes that we think you and your guildmates will appreciate, but for now we have applied the changes without downtime. As of today, you will notice two changes to your renown rates:


Renown decay no longer takes guild size into account. This should ease the pressure for guild leaders to “kick” members from the guild to offset daily renown decay rates. Renown decay now only takes a guild’s level into consideration rather than its size.
Renown ransack has been increased. Previously when a guild earned levels in a day, it would gradually reduce the renown drop rates. We’ve increased the rate so that a guild can only earn roughly 3 levels in a single day. This should prevent large guilds from completely dominating the field in terms of levels per-day.

There are some balance Pros and Cons to this method, but we’d like guilds to give us feedback about their experiences using the new settings this week. If players like the settings, or feel it is workable with minor tweaks, then we are ready to keep them! If players find the changes make matters worse, then we are scheduled to revert them. So this week, we encourage guild leaders/members to use this thread to give us feedback about how the changes are impacting your guild leveling dynamics. Important feedback for us is points where frustration has eased (or increased). Thanks for your participation as we work to improve our guild leveling system!

Fantastic, thank you!

I'm a guild leader on Thelanis. We're a smallish guild, with 25 or so members and most of them casual, including many very casual (7-9 inactive accounts), and a couple members with primary toons on other servers. In the previous system, I came to the conclusion we'd have to dump some people, though I didn't really know how as characters are not linked to accounts, so I didn't know if I was booting unused alts or accounts.

Anyways, I don't want to boot people. I want a guild that has lots of people and play styles - and your new system here achieves this. Now I never have to kick anyone and, when they miss DDO and find the time to log in, they'll find us waiting to join up again.

RE this week: Renown has been increasing at much higher levels than last week. We've had steady, small gains each day and that's uplifting.

RE suggestions for change: minimum level platforms might be a good idea, from which if guilds reach they do not drop from. I would not like to see rules about recruiting or booting players, though, since this game has ever been about choice in play style. I personally don't care how our guild competes on the leader boards, I just want a fun atmosphere with lots of players.

It makes sense that a larger guild would gain renown faster. Guilds are made powerful by their social interaction - the same is true in game. More people, more social networks, more innovation.

[Singular]

I'm not sure I like the idea of low-end blind recruitment guilds getting to the same levels of high end quality guilds who have earned their rank. With the old system casual and so-so guilds would peter out and be forever trapped at whatever level while the active quality guilds would continue on. If a guild can recruit the whole of Korthos everyday and be able to mathmatically make 100, why even have ranks? They'd be meaningless.

Why does it matter to you how a guild other than your own performs?

[Singular]

So we still get a penalty for removing inactive players, but with this there is no real reason to remove them because they WILL NOT contribute to decay.
If we remove them, we are penalized. But if we just leave them, the list of inactives will grow and grow. My guild just did a cleanup in order to counteract the dead weight decay. Under this new system, there will be absolutly no reason to do this in the future.

I guess what i'm saying is: we no longer have incentive to remove inactives other then to shorten the member list. In the future, could some-thing be added to allow us to remove clearly inactive, abandoned-DDO players (assuming something like this is pernament)? Something like 'after 2 monthes, removing the player will not cause additional decay of loss of earned renown'.

People who were inactive in my guild for 6 months vanished from our guild roster. However, on my friend's list, they still appear as if in my guild.

[Singular]

This was a relatively simple change we could try make without bringing down a server, today instead of months from now. We're still happy to hear ways to manage guilds of different sizes reasonably while also not motivating guilds to kick players.

We know there's some players who have likely spent as much or more time thinking about these things as we have individually. Feel free to discuss pros and cons, such as whether or not 1000 player guilds reaching and staying at level 100 is a problem that needs solving.

I can't imagine why it would be a problem for a large guild to reach 1000 players, unless the complainer is a person who needs a competitive environment to feel content. If that's the case, and if some people want guild levels to mean "we're better because we play every day" then how about having "prestige" levels about 100 that use the old decay system?

[Singular]

This does nothing but reward max recruiting guilds. There's no reason for this and it's a poor move that punishes small guilds

It doesn't punish any guild size. It simply removes the punishment from having casual players.

Why are you so worried that some guilds might benefit from this change?

[Singular]

These new changes will kill all the guilds who have invested on the quality and not on numbers of their members.

My guild got only 11 very active accounts and we have achieved 93 guild levels in less than 1 year ( see Obscura Consilium - Sarlona), so now we will get the same renow decay of a guild level 93 with 200 accounts right?

Well, this does not seem respectful for all people who put diligence and sacrifices to obtain prestigious levels.

So you're only way to judge your worth is if others perform poorly because of a system that penalizes casual players?

[Singular]

as a guild leader of a guild with 100 active accts the removal of penaltys for having many accts in guild is a positive step in the right direction

we were a mass recruiting guild when we started and i lOVED it

we had lots of different people at all skill lvls and all play/build styles and it was fun

more people = more fun

i loved recruiting new players,watching thier enjoyment of a new game was like watching kids open presents at christmass

then alot of forumites started saying mass recruiting guilds were just exploiting the sytem for fast lvls.that it ws all about guild lvls prestige and so forth..turbines responce was decay...which effectivly killed large guilds ...why because people want to advance,even slowly regardlss of rewards so alot of people left large guilds which werent advancing to join small guilds that were..and large guilds started reducing acct size drastically to stay viable

to all the people who equate what guild your in as sign of your social worth in game or how good of a player you are..or discriminate against players because of thier skill lvl or what guild they are in.... i dont think you ever played pnp d&d

D&D was always about fun 100% not being the strongest or the smartest or having the best gear or about the highest social standing groups that were about fun and kept the game fun lasted far longer than play for status groups


i think this is where the fight is in ddo ....its play for fun guilds who want to grow VS play for status guilds who think guilds are a measure of your worth



i miss recruiting people just for fun i really really miss it... i met alot of fun crazy(albiet short term) players that way

I totally agree with you.

[Theloser]

So this week, we encourage guild leaders/members to use this thread to give us feedback about how the changes are impacting your guild leveling dynamics. Important feedback for us is points where frustration has eased (or increased). Thanks for your participation as we work to improve our guild leveling system!

So far we are liking the guild changes in one of the guilds I am in. Before this week we were backsliding in levels since most of our members are casual players and a few are off playing other games for a little while. They still log in every week or two to say hi and chat for abit so they caused decay before this week. We have no intention of removing any of them so it is nice to see these changes so we have a chance of moving forward again.

[Aons]

Would it be possible to counterbalance with renown penalties when a character:

- dies in quest
- is afk (>5minutes maybe) in a quest
- fails or abandons a quest

The amounts dont have to be big, but enough maybe to cancel an heroic deeds.

After all, making renown by finding trophies sounds easy, why not counterbalancing by something that would, in a RP mode, dishonor the character?

Any idea on this?

[moiinwar]

Would it be possible to counterbalance with renown penalties when a character:

- dies in quest
- is afk (>5minutes maybe) in a quest
- fails or abandons a quest

The amounts dont have to be big, but enough maybe to cancel an heroic deeds.

After all, making renown by finding trophies sounds easy, why not counterbalancing by something that would, in a RP mode, dishonor the character?

Any idea on this?

I don't like it because it would make hard content give players less renown than easy content. I think that players should get more renown if they manage to beat hard content.

[Dekh]

So you're only way to judge your worth is if others perform poorly because of a system that penalizes casual players?

Yes, was so far.

[Aons]

I don't like it because it would make hard content give players less renown than easy content. I think that players should get more renown if they manage to beat hard content.

Well, the game should actually reward more a difficult content than an easy content and it doesn't. This precise point requires balance too. Finding renown in chests doesnt illustrate the fact that u have potentially been brave and heroic.

But it would lead to change the renown system in its conception and i think that's becoming off-topic.

[AmaWibble]

I'd like to add another vote in favour of this change.

We're a mid-sized guild (50+ accounts), and we hit a wall around level 80. We have a number of casual players, and we took a decision to live with not being able to make renown work for us rather than booting anyone. The fact that we couldn't make it beyond 80 was discouraging enough that many people stopped bothing with renown rewards, to the point that we were slowly back-sliding. This week, we've reversed the trend and we're slowly heading back to 80. With Mabar, I doubt we'll actually get back up there before the trial ends, but personally, I've felt energised to play again by the renown changes - feeling like we actually have a chance to get that top-tier ship makes it far more worthwhile. We have had a few people self-boot, or remove alt accounts to try to reduce the penalties.

To those who think the system needs to prevent bumhats from exploiting (e.g. invite a bunch of newbies, get to high level, boot the newbies), the problem is that making rules (that affect everyone) to control the actions of a few bad apples tends to screw everyone EXCEPT the bad apples (who simply find other ways to game the system at the expense of others). By the same logic, we should get rid of guild chests, or guild plat pooling (towards another airship), as what's to stop people inviting a bunch of newbs and getting them to contribute something as an 'entrance fee', then booting them? How many times have you heard of people joining a guild just to loot the guild chest? Ultimately, like any relationship, there has to be a level of trust inherant in a guild; if the trust is lacking, the guild will generally disintegrate anyway, or end up shunned and ignored by everyone else.

I have no problem at all with people forming Korthos army guilds to hit top guild level. If they can make it work, more power to them. I personally would never join such a guild, and we'll never take people on just to boost renown. We recruit based on whether we think someone would be a good fit for the guild, and we do reject those we think wouldn't be, or who don't make it through a trial period, and the proposed changes to renown won't change that at all. We try not to let renown decay be a factor in recruiting, but it'd be really nice to know that it definately wouldn't be (if this change becomes permanant).

Although there will be a few mass-invite guilds, I really don't see that the majority of guilds will do anything very different; many people seem to prefer being in a more tight-knit grouping of like-minded individuals, and you don't get that with a mega-guild. For those who enjoy being in a 1000-char guild, why should they be penalised? So long as I don't have to play like that (and nothing about these changes forces me to), why should I care? Guild reputation is based on the actions of members: if a particular guild is known to have a lot of people who don't listen or don't know what they're doing, they'll find people don't group with them. It's happened in the past, it'll happen again in the future, and nothing about guild renown changed that. Reputation takes a long time to build up, and almost no time to trash. The slight down-side is getting spammed with invites on non-guilded characters; maybe a way to disable guild invites (part of the lfm-invisibility setting, perhaps?) would solve this? Even if we just had to live with it, it's not a huge deal, and I know of plenty of people who formed 'free parking' or 1-man guilds to get around this, back in the day.

To those in smaller guilds, who don't see a lot of benefit in these changes, I'd like to see some more change that specifically targets you. However, the current trial doesn't seem designed to address your issues, but rather the issues of large guilds getting stuck. Take comfort in the fact that renown suckiness is finally being addressed, and instead of whining about how it's not fair that large guilds are getting all the lovin', continue to provide constructive suggestions for how things could be made better for you. For example, it seems like the renown multipliers for smaller guilds could be considerably boosted up to make the playing field a bit more level - this would (I assume) be a reasonably easy change to make, since it doesn't require changing the underlying mechanics, just some constants.

In summary, the renown changes being trialed have been super-positive for us, and I really hope to see them become permanant ASAP. Allowing massive guilds an easy ride to 100 as a side-effect really isn't a problem; they still have to trade off the intimacy of a smaller guild for the management headache of herding cats to get the benefit. Please continue to consider how to sort out other complaints, but let this be the first step to a renown system we can all enjoy.

[Hendrik]

Suggestion to DEVs;

Keep the test going or postpone it until Mabar ends.

The introduction of Mabar will skew any attempts to gather meaningful data on the renown changes - especially in the first few days.



Feedback;

In the first few days, initial feedback is positive. 80 Account and plateaued at 80 in previous system just by normal gameplay. Under same conditions we are slowly making advancements in test system.

:)

[Dandonk]

Why does it matter to you how a guild other than your own performs?

Things do not exist in a vacuum.

The new decay mechanics can lead to mass invites/blind invites, and mass exodus to huge impersonal guilds. For example.

Changing the mechanics affects ALL guilds, whether directly or indirectly.

I agree that the old mechanics were harsh against casuals in large guilds. But the new ones do not help casuals in small guilds. And they make large guilds almost certain to reach level 100 in a reasonable timeframe, whereas small guilds will still struggle as before.

I think a great system would be an even playing field, where the choice of small or large guild is due to preference, not forced (or at least strongly encouraged) by in-game mechanics. And yes, where casuals are not frowned upon.

One of the ideas thrown around that I like is lowering the time you're counted as active drastically. This would really help casuals, I think.

[eris2323]

Things do not exist in a vacuum.

The new decay mechanics can lead to mass invites/blind invites, and mass exodus to huge impersonal guilds. For example.

Changing the mechanics affects ALL guilds, whether directly or indirectly.

I agree that the old mechanics were harsh against casuals in large guilds. But the new ones do not help casuals in small guilds. And they make large guilds almost certain to reach level 100 in a reasonable timeframe, whereas small guilds will still struggle as before.

I think a great system would be an even playing field, where the choice of small or large guild is due to preference, not forced (or at least strongly encouraged) by in-game mechanics. And yes, where casuals are not frowned upon.

One of the ideas thrown around that I like is lowering the time you're counted as active drastically. This would really help casuals, I think.

I think you are just afraid that deep down, people liked large guilds, and will start to abandon the small guilds when they realize they can get the buffs AND be in large guilds with their friends again... and not have to suffer in small 6-12 person guilds that never have anyone online, solely to get their buffs.... logging in to 20 friends online already playing is great. Logging in with no one online - not so much, I guess it'd be pug time?

Which might happen, and I'm all for it. Too many guilds out there.

[Hendrik]

I think you are just afraid that deep down, people liked large guilds, and will start to abandon the small guilds when they realize they can get the buffs AND be in large guilds with their friends again... and not have to suffer in small 6-12 person guilds that never have anyone online, solely to get their buffs.... logging in to 20 friends online already playing is great. Logging in with no one online - not so much, I guess it'd be pug time?

Which might happen, and I'm all for it. Too many guilds out there.

Ummm, this happened before the renown test this week - started when the first guild was higher then any others. Will continue to happen after any changes as well. Has nothing to do with renown but everything to do with human and gamer nature.

[Drakesan]

In response to the original post asking for feedback:

1. Thank you very, very much for your attention to this matter! Seriously. Our guild is very thankful it is getting worked on. +1

2. Our guild at the start of this was very slowly bleeding renown and was at the lower end of level 72. We are currently at the middle area of level 72. Moderate gains based on our member activity. We had an account leave the guild yesterday, and gains are still being seen. +1

3. IF this change was to be permanent, our guild will go back to moderate recruiting, based on requests to us. On a related note, we added 4 new people and their alts to our guild before this change, and none since. We are cautiously optimistic. +1

4. Last, and the biggest yay for us: We do not even have to contemplate removing inactives/casuals from our guild based on their activity. A member logs on, checks things out, then doesn’t log on for two weeks? No problem. A member doesn’t have to worry about resetting the renown timer when he/she logs on. More focus on play time, not worrying about negatively impacting the guild from simply logging onto the game. HUGE +1.

I’ve gone through several reiterations on this post trying to think of counter points to this change. I failed, and it may very well be that my desire and experiences skew my thoughts. I believe that other posts on here show the potential downside to this and should be considered (even though I disagree with them all).

If this change was to become permanent, it would have my wholehearted support.

[Arzoc]

Didn't even know decay existed, but after reading some of the posts I'm 100% for this. I have a guild of people I enjoy playing with but I'm restricted with alts (which I love playing, to the point of not capping 1 toon yet) because of guild size vs renown gain, which I didn't understand and found quite frustrating. I find it to be a winning argument that logging on to a reasonable group of people in a larger guild beats any "close knit" feelings of small guilds, be social...this is an MMO right?

[theslimshady]

The new decay mechanics can lead to mass invites/blind invites, and mass exodus to huge impersonal guilds. .

This is a theory it is as bad as saying the end of the world is coming in dec.

[MysticElaine]

Question to Dev:

Is the decay supposed to be the same no matter where u are at in guild lvl or is more as u progress in the level. I ask because I have been keeping track and the decay jumped by 500 renown from the previous day, which coincides with us getting a lot of renown the night before. I was the last to log and the first to log the next day after decay hit, so I know the reading is accurate and no one else added to renown after I left.

[Alcedes]

I am really happy to see Turbine addressing the Renown issues. I hope this first attempt was more of a temporary solution to alleviate some of the aggravation while they find a new solution though. I do not like the idea of massive guilds getting the go ahead nudge just because they have vastly superior numbers.

[Levonestral]

In summary, the renown changes being trialed have been super-positive for us, and I really hope to see them become permanant ASAP. Allowing massive guilds an easy ride to 100 as a side-effect really isn't a problem; they still have to trade off the intimacy of a smaller guild for the management headache of herding cats to get the benefit. Please continue to consider how to sort out other complaints, but let this be the first step to a renown system we can all enjoy.

Entirely well said and I fully agree with everything.

The Madborn, like Archangles, made a very similar choice. We decided very early on we would not remove any member simply because they are casual. Heck, we have players that only log in once or twice a year, many military members who play months at a time, then disappear for a year. They're all welcome and continue to remain in guild because we actually care about them as people, not just renown machines.

Like AA, we also got "stuck", but sadly just shy of 85. It's been a tough one to swallow.

Before this change, due to many members currently being on breaks, we were unable to break even during the weekdays and would only be able to generate enough renown to cover the losses during the weekends; leaving us with no gain from week to week and some weeks falling further behind.

This change has given us a chance to start gaining again. We can now break even during the week and this coming weekend will push us forward again.

Will we change how we recruit? Nope, we intend to stay exactly the way we are now. The renown system didn't change it before, it's not going to change it now.

I fully understand those that are concerned about their small guilds (less than 10), but keep in mind, this was just "stage 1" of Turbines overall plan to make changes. They only did it now because it was a "quick and easy" way to gain some immediate feedback on the larger guilds. I have no doubt your calls will be listened to, it will just require them to make actual changes in the code in order to support.

People need to be allowed to decide for themselves what they want their own guild to become. Guilds of all makes, mixes, styles and size should all have the same chance at reaching 100 as anyone else. Turbine should not place any kind of limitation on their ability to reach to 100.

Another suggestion for decay:

Keep a daily decay like it is now (not based on members), BUT only have it kick in when nobody has logged in at all for the previous day. That way "dead" guilds will decay slowly and should their players return, they'll have to make up for those losses then. Any amount of activity (maybe through looting at least some kind of renown for the day) should keep the decay from hitting the guild for that day.

[theslimshady]

i just lost 138641 renown at about 10;30 did any others have this happen this was my daily decay prior to this change

[Alcedes]

i just lost 138641 renown at about 10;30 did any others have this happen this was my daily decay prior to this change

my guild just lost about 20k it looks like.

[DocBenway]

Have read one and heard one report in party chat over voice of guild being hit at old decay today. Maybe the Mabar Kobold switch is connected to the Decay test switch.

My guild's decay remained the same as we have a size below hard coded minimum 10.

[theslimshady]

yes it seems to have rollbacked to its ole bleed out state

is it wrong that this upsets me more then mabar crashing

[Tshober]

This change hurts small guilds. Why not just cut the decay rate in half so that small guilds aren't disadvantaged?

Our small guild with only 6 people @ level 69 needs 1.5k per person per day to break even. This is hard to do when we are getting penalized after reaching a new level. We will just drop down and go back up again and be caught in a cycle of poor renown drops. It is hard to get the renown to offset decay after leveling which only ensure we will drop down to the next level.

This is a really bad change. The math makes no sense on a per member basis.

Hurts?

How exactly did this change hurt your guild?

Your guild will advance at least as fast and as far under the new system as it did under the old decay system. That is true of every single guild in DDO. No guild has been "hurt" or even inconvenienced in any way by this change, versus the old decay system. It may be true that this change did not help your guild as much as it helped some other guilds, but to say that your guild (or any guild for that matter) was hurt by this change is not being honest about it.

[OpallNotten]

Hurts?

How exactly did this change hurt your guild?

Your guild will advance at least as fast and as far under the new system as it did under the old decay system. That is true of every single guild in DDO. No guild has been "hurt" or even inconvenienced in any way by this change, versus the old decay system. It may be true that this change did not help your guild as much as it helped some other guilds, but to say that your guild (or any guild for that matter) was hurt by this change is not being honest about it.

You have no right speaking for every single Guild in DDO.

This change has/will hurt my Guild if it stays live.

I don't care about the buffs and the shrines.

I have always seen this as a competition. It was introduced as one. The decay serves a purpose....to keep large guilds in check. To this day, there is still a LeaderBoard.

So If this stays live, Turbine has just given Large Guilds an unfair advantage.

~Opall~

[Drakesan]

You have no right speaking for every single Guild in DDO.

This change has/will hurt my Guild if it stays live.

I don't care about the buffs and the shrines.

I have always seen this as a competition. It was introduced as one. The decay serves a purpose....to keep large guilds in check. To this day, there is still a LeaderBoard.

So If this stays live, Turbine has just given Large Guilds an unfair advantage.

~Opall~

"to keep large guilds in check" Are you implying that there needs to be a mechanic to hamper a large guild's working towards a goal? Why? I don't understand why anyone would care what a different guild does or does not do in relation to your guild? What any other guild does or doesn't do has zero impact on you and your guild. Are you going to stop working towards level 100 if another guild gets there first?

I agree that levelling the "playing field" as far as a race towards guild level 100 is concerned would be fair, but neither I nor my guild was ever in that race. Take that number and throw it away as far as MY guild is concerned, we couldn't care less about it.

And I take from the gist of your post that as long as the advantage is in your favor, you are perfectly fine with it. I could be wrong, but that is my take on it.

[Dirac]

You have no right speaking for every single Guild in DDO.

This change has/will hurt my Guild if it stays live.

I don't care about the buffs and the shrines.

I have always seen this as a competition. It was introduced as one. The decay serves a purpose....to keep large guilds in check. To this day, there is still a LeaderBoard.

So If this stays live, Turbine has just given Large Guilds an unfair advantage.

~Opall~

The majority of guilds are not competing with you. The old mechanic was broken and needed to be changed, because active guilds were not advancing at all. I sympathize that it affects how you are looking at the game. But most don't want to play your version of guild wars, they want their guild to advance in levels as long as they are active.

[DocBenway]

And I take from the gist of your post that as long as the advantage is in your favor, you are perfectly fine with it. I could be wrong, but that is my take on it.

Opal's guild, at size, did not benefit either way. Decay for her was unchanged being below 10, BUT she greatly values the competitive aspect of the guild leaderboard, and the change did affect some guilds "handicap" to use a golf term. The playing field is not level if it is to be considered competitive is what I think the issue is.

[Gremmlynn]

My main problem with this new system is that it destroys the meaning of guild level by offering the potential for any guild to reach 100 (given enough time) if their guild is large enough.What is this "meaning of guild levels" and why is it so important as to make less active players poor guild members?


This new guild renown system is like a worldwide facebook contest to see who can get a thousand friends. If you send an invite to every fb account you can find, you'll hardly get any refusals, because everyone else wants to get their thousand friends too. The same will soon happen with guilds, under this new system. Now that "bigger guilds are better", a lot of people are simply going to be interested in creating the biggest guild. Those guilds won't care who they invite (at first), they just want to get the biggest guild, and under this system they will eventually reach level 100. Of course, once the roster is filled, they won't be able to invite any more, so certain guilds might start replacing their less active players with more active ones so they can hit level 100 faster (or maintain it more easily).So a system that encourages guilds to get and retain many members has a higher potential for players to end up guild-less than one that encourages guilds to get lean and mean as far as membership goes? I don't see that.

While the current system may not be perfect, it seems to me that a system that encourages guilds to retain the best 1000 players they can find to be a more inclusive than one that encourages them to retain the best 11.

[Dirac]

Opal's guild, at size, did not benefit either way. Decay for her was unchanged being below 10, BUT she greatly values the competitive aspect of the guild leaderboard, and the change did affect some guilds "handicap" to use a golf term. The playing field is not level if it is to be considered competitive is what I think the issue is.

Yep, you are exactly right. Everyone should think about what this really means. If it really were a competition, why the handicap?

Some guilds cannot earn the renown of other guilds because they are much smaller. Therefore, for the sake of competition, they demand that other guilds' renown be taken away from them so they can "compete" even though the majority of the other guilds aren't competing with them. That is absurd on every level.

I have always been in favor of small guild bonuses, so people can be in small guilds and still advance even though they can't earn the renown that you can with a lot of people. To turn this around and say: "because you have so many people to earn renown you should never be able to advance at all" is pretty awful.

[Phemt81]

Any thoughts regarding new ship buffs for 71-100 range levels?

Maybe accessible from eveningstar? :cool:

[Zargarx]

I can't believe that some people don't understand that this change is both unfair and hurtful to many small guilds.

Unfair because it changes the rules we've all have followed to give only one group a massive benefit that far exceeds any percieved prior disadvantage. For those mentioning renown bonus for small groups, do the math as see why it is a joke. Not to mention tiny guilds to be considered as a size of 10 adding even more discimination.
Hurtful as this makes recruiting for a small guild, except for a few special cases much harder. With the current approach, there will be many large guilds at high levels recuiting making recruiting very difficult, and perhaps retention as well, for almost all small guilds, as they can't get to those levels due to renown decay.

Change is needed, but don't forget small guilds as well.

[Alcedes]

if i had to choose renown as it was or as it is now, i would choose it as it is now. but then again,

<south park> its choosing between a giant ****** and a turd sandwich. </south park>


the fact is, the old system had more flaws than we could begin to list and agree upon.
this system is just a slightly modified version of the old one and i suspect very incomplete.

while i flat out despised the old system entirely, i just dont care for this one as it is.

If i have to choose between the every day headache of calculating renown and looking over my roster and only being able to GUESS who is contributing (Hint, Hint Turbine!!!) or just not really care and watch every single guild with 500+ members start leveling every single day untill 100....

ugh...



id prefer to see those massive guilds. sucks. but if i have to choose between losing my left eye or my right eye, im choosing my left eye.

[Dirac]

Renown decay should be eliminated and have two leaderboards. One representing total renown and other could be a weekly and/or monthly competition. Ignoring all small guild bonuses, the game would track the total earned renown per active guild member.

Every week that leaderboard reflects the guild with the highest concentration of active members that week. This way, people can compete in this way who want to, and it doesn't hurt everyone else. We can watch the leaderboard change week-to-week as guilds become more active, rise and fall, and maybe have a special recognition for those who spend the most weeks at number one at the end of the year.

[Dirac]

Renown decay should be eliminated and have two leaderboards. One representing total renown and other could be a weekly and/or monthly competition. Ignoring all small guild bonuses, the game would track the total earned renown per active guild member.

Every week that leaderboard reflects the guild with the highest concentration of active members that week. This way, people can compete in this way who want to, and it doesn't hurt everyone else. We can watch the leaderboard change week-to-week as guilds become more active, rise and fall, and maybe have a special recognition for those who spend the most weeks at number one at the end of the year.

There could be one amenity only available to whomever is number one that week. One other permanent amenity to the guild with most number one weeks at the end of the year.

[bazooka99]

What is this "meaning of guild levels" and why is it so important as to make less active players poor guild members?So a system that encourages guilds to get and retain many members has a higher potential for players to end up guild-less than one that encourages guilds to get lean and mean as far as membership goes? I don't see that.

While the current system may not be perfect, it seems to me that a system that encourages guilds to retain the best 1000 players they can find to be a more inclusive than one that encourages them to retain the best 11.

I never said more players will end up guildless in the new system - quite the opposite. Every guildless player will now find himself swarmed with guild offers because there's no penalty to adding another player (unless you've hit the size cap, which is when a guild will finally start to apply some form of selection).

Yes, it was messed up that guild level was previously a function of hours/week spent in the game. But at least the guild level meant something - that is, it indicated how active your guild was (which for my level 27 guild isn't all that much).

But what do you have now? Guild level is now ultimately just a function of the number of players you're able to collect. Under the new system, if I left my current guild, I could find a level 70+ guild willing - no, begging - to invite me in a matter of minutes, simply because there's no reason not to. Without some incentive for guilds to be selective, a newb can achieve a guild level of 100 as soon as he leaves Korthos by just getting invited to such a guild, which destroys the work of all those who have tried to level their own guild to 100 themselves.

It once took at least a year to attain a guild level of 100. Now it can (easily!) be achieved in a matter of minutes by asking an existing level 100 guild to invite you (and why would they say no?). This is what I mean when I say that the meaning of guild levels, and all the hard work that so many people have put into earning them, is utterly destroyed by this change.

[Gremmlynn]

These new changes will kill all the guilds who have invested on the quality and not on numbers of their members.

My guild got only 11 very active accounts and we have achieved 93 guild levels in less than 1 year ( see Obscura Consilium - Sarlona), so now we will get the same renow decay of a guild level 93 with 200 accounts right?

Well, this does not seem respectful for all people who put diligence and sacrifices to obtain prestigious levels.I have a hard time being respectful of those who diligently sacrificed those who got in the way of their obtaining prestigious levels. I can also understand how Turbine might have qualms about continuing to reward those who diligently sacrificed those who helped support their bottom line in order to obtain those prestigious levels.

Systems that separate the winners from the losers are generally only profitable when enough non-participants are willing to pay to watch the process.

[OpallNotten]

Renown decay should be eliminated and have two leaderboards. One representing total renown and other could be a weekly and/or monthly competition. Ignoring all small guild bonuses, the game would track the total earned renown per active guild member.

Every week that leaderboard reflects the guild with the highest concentration of active members that week. This way, people can compete in this way who want to, and it doesn't hurt everyone else. We can watch the leaderboard change week-to-week as guilds become more active, rise and fall, and maybe have a special recognition for those who spend the most weeks at number one at the end of the year.

That system you talk about would put Large Guilds at a huge advantage.

Here is what I suggest:

It has been said and numbers have been run that a Large Guild can make it to 70-75 no problem. Turbine PLEASE, give these guilds all the shrines/buffs they want. Make a safe spot. When you reach 70, you can't lose that.

People are saying over and over again that they don't care about the level......that's not what those people think make their Guild. (I see their pov btw) I think ALL this is because Everyone thinks they deserve everything a game has to offer without earning it.
Large Guilds have had the upper hand. They got all the buffs way before small Guilds.
I did not complain. I knew back then I would catch up. I would get my stuff......because I worked at it. Earned it.
Due to the massive amounts of forum outcries, Turbine has caved a bit, IMO.

Please, Please, Please, Turbine!! Give them their silly buffs. Let them lock in a certain level. KEEP the DECAY! Please!

Please KEEP the competitive spirit!
DO NOT allow Large Guilds to make a Joke of that LeaderBoard....Please Turbine.

~Opall~

[Tshober]

Opal's guild, at size, did not benefit either way. Decay for her was unchanged being below 10, BUT she greatly values the competitive aspect of the guild leaderboard, and the change did affect some guilds "handicap" to use a golf term. The playing field is not level if it is to be considered competitive is what I think the issue is.

Why would you want to compete with guilds that are not even trying to compete with you?

Everyone I hang out with wants and expects guilds to be about cooperation and helping and socializing. My guild is not trying to compete with anyone else's. We are just trying to advance in guild levels. We are not even in a great hurry to advance. We just don't want to be unable to advance at all, as was the case with the old decay system.

Sure seems like it would be an awfully unsatisflying competition if your opponents were not even trying to "win" and did not even think it was a race.

[Dirac]

I'm a little confused.


That system you talk about would put Large Guilds at a huge advantage.

My new leaderboard idea specifically negates guild size completely.




It has been said and numbers have been run that a Large Guild can make it to 70-75 no problem.

This is demonstrably false, as has been pointed out.



People are saying over and over again that they don't care about the level......that's not what those people think make their Guild. (I see their pov btw) I think ALL this is because Everyone thinks they deserve everything a game has to offer without earning it.

But the guilds did earn it. They are earning renown every day and it gets taken away. They are asking for the rewards they earned just like you did.



Large Guilds have had the upper hand. They got all the buffs way before small Guilds.
I did not complain. I knew back then I would catch up. I would get my stuff......because I worked at it. Earned it.
Due to the massive amounts of forum outcries, Turbine has caved a bit, IMO.


This boggles the mind a little. Other guilds grew faster because they were earning more renown than you. Why was that unfair? Fair is to have the guilds that make less renown higher level?

Most guilds aren't interested in your competition. Active guilds are earning renown, and they should be advancing in level. period. If you want a competition, come up with one that doesn't screw over everyone else. I'm trying, but if you don't like my idea, suggest your own.

[DocBenway]

Why would you want to compete with guilds that are not even trying to compete with you?

Everyone I hang out with wants and expects guilds to be about cooperation and helping and socializing. My guild is not trying to compete with anyone else's. We are just trying to advance in guild levels. We are not even in a great hurry to advance. We just don't want to be unable to advance at all, as was the case with the old decay system.

Sure seems like it would be an awfully unsatisflying competition if your opponents were not even trying to "win" and did not even think it was a race.

You are now taking the same side I did, of the guild definition discussion Opall and I had a few pages back. I was just clarifying that she, as a guild leader who's opinion was solicited in this thread, valued the competitive implications of the Leaderboard.

A guild is defined by the spirit of its membership. If that is a competitive spirit, then more power to them and they deserve to be heard in the discussion.

But the important Question at the moment is:
Was the test meant to only be 3 days long, as the old decay rates have reverted!

[Tshober]

Yep, you are exactly right. Everyone should think about what this really means. If it really were a competition, why the handicap?

Some guilds cannot earn the renown of other guilds because they are much smaller. Therefore, for the sake of competition, they demand that other guilds' renown be taken away from them so they can "compete" even though the majority of the other guilds aren't competing with them. That is absurd on every level.

I have always been in favor of small guild bonuses, so people can be in small guilds and still advance even though they can't earn the renown that you can with a lot of people. To turn this around and say: "because you have so many people to earn renown you should never be able to advance at all" is pretty awful.

^This!

Excellent points. +1

edit: Darn, I tried to +1 you but apparently I am out. So +1 in spirit!!!

[Gremmlynn]

You have no right speaking for every single Guild in DDO.

This change has/will hurt my Guild if it stays live.

I don't care about the buffs and the shrines.

I have always seen this as a competition. It was introduced as one. The decay serves a purpose....to keep large guilds in check. To this day, there is still a LeaderBoard.

So If this stays live, Turbine has just given Large Guilds an unfair advantage.

~Opall~It's still a competition. It's just no longer about how much one plays, now it's about how many one is willing to play with.

[theslimshady]

yes as leader of a large guild since the decay started my only issue is about bleeding out renown it is demoralizing we have gone from level 76 with 200+ actives to 73 200+actives so alot of us have tp point shrines 5 percents stuck in the bank with a system that says we where lucky to get em at all

all festivals like mabar and cc are nothing but stress points because its a huge bleed

reading the forums is nothing but a giant insult about how we are inactive and a korthosstyle mega guild even thou the truth is we are always at toon cap so recruitting becomes should we kick inactive for space mentality which is horrible i got peeps on my list that have had medical problems family problems computer problems and in one case possible passed away

i am not saying anything about other guilds cause really i dont care but the idea that we should restructure or deal with it is hard to stomach

140k decay a day is absurb thats 980k a week just in decay so for us to make any gains we need a million a week in renown with only a 20k net thats 52 million renown in a year with a net profit of 240k towards next level and all this huge amount of math is based off a random drops and random end rewards

by the way level 100 is 40 million renown we are over 20 million so by my math we have decayed out more renown then it would have took to hit 100 already

[OpallNotten]

It's still a competition. It's just no longer about how much one plays, now it's about how many one is willing to play with.

I don't like that.......

<o> Founded 2006
Founders 6
Recruitment = in all these years I have taken on 10. Booted 8. Not because I wanted a "perfect" number. Because I did NOT like them as people/players.

I never wanted a Large Guild.
I will never want a Large Guild.

I shouldn't have to recruit to stay competitive. I have managed just fine with what I have. Keep in mind, I did not play on accounts related to <o> the 1st year of GR. We are on page 3. We check nightly the LeaderBoard. Simple math (<-- off topic but spellcheck is telling me I spelled Math wrong?) tells me that within 2-3 weeks, <o> will be on page 2.

That simple Math was before Turbine did this though......:(



~Opall~

[Postumus]

That system you talk about would put Large Guilds at a huge advantage.

Here is what I suggest:

It has been said and numbers have been run that a Large Guild can make it to 70-75 no problem. Turbine PLEASE, give these guilds all the shrines/buffs they want. Make a safe spot. When you reach 70, you can't lose that.

People are saying over and over again that they don't care about the level......that's not what those people think make their Guild. (I see their pov btw) I think ALL this is because Everyone thinks they deserve everything a game has to offer without earning it.
Large Guilds have had the upper hand. They got all the buffs way before small Guilds.
I did not complain. I knew back then I would catch up. I would get my stuff......because I worked at it. Earned it.
Due to the massive amounts of forum outcries, Turbine has caved a bit, IMO.

Please, Please, Please, Turbine!! Give them their silly buffs. Let them lock in a certain level. KEEP the DECAY! Please!

Please KEEP the competitive spirit!
DO NOT allow Large Guilds to make a Joke of that LeaderBoard....Please Turbine.

~Opall~

Actually small active guilds seem to have the largest advantage in the current system. I like the small guild bonus because I am in one and it helps offset the decay, but how is giving small guilds bonus multipliers for renown 'fair?'


"Fair" would be a level playing field for everyone. No bonuses for size. No penalties for size. The same opportunity to recruit and build a guild like everyone else. We don't have 'fair' now.


And as for the 'competitive spirit' argument, it appears that most respondents in this thread don't really care about that. I know my guild does not.


We care about level only so much as it regards which ship amenities we can have, not who has more renown than whom. Obviously you don't feel this way, but from the responses in this thread it appears that most guilds aren't competing against anything else except renown decay.

[Dirac]

I don't like that.......

<o> Founded 2006
Founders 6
Recruitment = in all these years I have taken on 10. Booted 8. Not because I wanted a "perfect" number. Because I did NOT like them as people/players.

I never wanted a Large Guild.
I will never want a Large Guild.

I shouldn't have to recruit to stay competitive. I have managed just fine with what I have. Keep in mind, I did not play on accounts related to <o> the 1st year of GR. We are on page 3. We check nightly the LeaderBoard. Simple math (<-- off topic but spellcheck is telling me I spelled Math wrong?) tells me that within 2-3 weeks, <o> will be on page 2.

That simple Math was before Turbine did this though......:(



~Opall~

Oh my goodness. And you insult other people about entitlement. You want a specific guild exactly your way. Great. But, such a guild is not competitive in a competition you want but most don't. So, you then demand that they be nerfed so you can compete with them. yikes.

[OpallNotten]

I misspoke about the "easy to get 70-75" part. It was 60. I think F.Piaz sp? He is the one who said that with the 70-75.

In case you guys missed it, I will add this in. Might not hurt to take a look and read it.


This change essentially just rewards the one segment of the guild population that was already high level compared to everyone else and needed little help, and does very little to the remaining 98% of the guild population that are still struggling to reach those high levels that they take for granted.

As already pointed out, the original renown system rewarded active players. It followed the typical MMORPG paradigm of the more you play, the more you are rewarded. Most of the incentive systems in this game (or many games for that matter) follow this paradigm, such as grinding for XP (unlocking new character abilities) or gear (increasing the DPS or other statistic of a character), etc. Guilds that can encourage their players to be more active and play this game more were the ones that got to higher levels and benefited the most under this system. It should be readily obvious that encouraging players to play more also improves Turbine's bottom line.

By negating the guild size factor in the decay formula, there is little incentive for a guild leader or officers to invest in each player individually; it is much simpler to just spam as many guild invites as possible, since it takes much less effort to /guild recruit XXXXX to get a certain amount of renown than to court each individual player, spend the time taking them out on quests, showing them the game, and getting them excited about the game and for them to continue logging in.

It's very straightforward to see proof of this dynamic in action. When the renown system was first released, since all guilds were low-level, renown decay was a negligible mechanic. Thus, just like with this change, the incentive at the time was to simply maximize total guild activity, rather than activity per player. And what did we see? Many of the fastest-leveling guilds at the time had character counts that looked like this:

http://i898.photobucket.com/albums/ac182/Vanshilar/2010GuildMemberByDate_zps086aa95e.png

In less than 2 weeks there were 4 purges totaling over 300 characters. Let that sink in for a moment. The guild's turnover rate was over 15% per week and yet this was one of the fastest-growing guilds in all of DDO -- and just like some guilds right now, they bragged that they were the biggest and most active guild around. Their MotD simply said something to the effect of "people who don't log in after 4 days will be removed".

Under a system where simply getting people into the guild is rewarded more than investing in each player, this is the natural outcome. For all the talk of supposedly "it's for the casuals!" there is rarely ever any mention of how casuals feel about this game when they get booted from a guild for not logging in for a few days so that the guild leader can make space for other casuals.

The obvious rebuttal to this is of course "but don't guilds lose renown for booting characters?" and this is correct. However, by losing 25% of the character's renown, the guild is still keeping 75% of whatever the character had gained for the guild. So it just means that the strategy is still 75% as effective as it was previously -- as if that's a big impediment.

Under the current system, inducting anybody and everybody that is willing to join is still the best strategy for leveling up in the low to middle levels (roughly level 1 to level 60). Simply having many bodies in the guild will level the guild up. This is why the majority of large guilds are above level 60 -- the sheer number of accounts in the guild ensures that they will blow through the renown needed to reach those levels (and for those that are curious, there are exactly zero guilds with 501 or more characters that are level 41 or below). For everyone else, even reaching level 60 itself is an achievement. To date, 44 out of 52 (85%) active guilds with 501 or more characters are at guild level 61 or above, while only 885 out of 17479 (5.1%) active guilds with 500 or less characters have reached level 61 or above. (By "active", I mean guilds where the renown has changed within the last month, indicating someone has logged in; guilds whose renown stayed constant, indicating no activity, were thus filtered out and not counted.) Even with the renown system in its state prior to the change, simply having a lot of bodies in the guild will just about guarantee that you can enjoy good ship buffs.

The flip side of that was that because renown decay became larger as the levels increased, guilds that wanted to keep leveling up would invest more in the players that they already have in the guild, in other words, encourage their members to like the game and want to log in.

To see why this is important, it is helpful to look at the current renown decay formula's level multiplier (the part that depends on a guild's level):

http://i898.photobucket.com/albums/ac182/Vanshilar/DDORenownDecayLevelMultiplier_zpsa315bf30.png

The initial decay is very small. However, at the higher levels, the amount of renown needed to offset decay increases very, very rapidly. In other words, the majority of guilds should be to maintain the lower to mid levels, while the higher levels are more difficult to reach.

Now if you count the number of ship benefits at each guild level, it looks like this:

http://i898.photobucket.com/albums/ac182/Vanshilar/DDOGuildRenownRewardsByLevel_zpsbdd66d7d.png

There basically are not many rewards per increase in level until you hit around level 20, at which point you steadily gain a lot of rewards until you hit around level 60, where it sort of tapers off until level 100 (and I'm counting the guild-wide announcements as rewards too, even though they don't provide any in-game benefit; they make up about a quarter of the benefits after level 60). In other words, you've gained a lot of the rewards that there are to gain -- about 80% on a count basis -- by level 60, roughly before the renown decay really starts being more progressive.

To make this point more direct, this is the plot of how much of the benefits you get by each level, versus the amount of renown decay for that level:

http://i898.photobucket.com/albums/ac182/Vanshilar/DDOGuildRenownRewardsByDecayMultiplier_zps4f67c835 .png

For relatively little effort, you can get the vast majority of the benefits, while for a great deal of effort, you can get marginally better benefits than that.

This is by design. All I've really done is just to quantify what Fernando Paiz qualitatively said about the renown system when it was introduced: that once you get to those levels it’s much more about bragging rights than anything you might get from being of a guild level that high (http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=22372&storypage=2). In other words, the purpose of renown decay should be readily obvious for anyone who bothers to look into the background of the system and what Turbine has said about it.

Of course, the people leading the complaints about renown decay are in guilds that are already at the upper part of the renown decay curve -- the part where it starts increasing sharply because guilds are encouraged to make their members more active. The complaints are not about not getting the basic buffs like +2 dex or +2 damage but about how they "have to" settle for a +3% XP shrine instead of a +4% XP shrine, etc.

Not only do those guilds have the majority of the benefits already, but they actively try to convince others that it is because of decay that guilds can't level up, rather than simply the vast amount of renown points to get between level 1 and level 100 (or just simply level 1 to level 60). If a guild is in the upper part of the curve, then decay is the reason, but the vast majority of guilds are simply not there yet -- they're still trying to get to those levels where decay makes a difference, and not enough renown gain is the main problem for the vast majority of guilds out there.

It's somewhat ludicrous to convince a small guild that goes from level 1 to 26 in a year that decay is the problem with the system, rather than how the system stacks the points needed for each level in favor of simply having many bodies. Newsflash for those guilds: If it takes you a year to go from level 1 to level 26, even with 0 decay it will take you 12 years to get to level 60 (=10,800,000/878,800), and 57 years to get to level 100 (=50,000,000/878,800).

Yet these people will shamelessly claim exactly this and say that the renown system benefits small guilds more because they will eventually reach slightly higher levels than large guilds -- as opposed to large guilds who gets benefits within months. That somehow, in a game that has existed for around 6-7 years and where this system has been out for somewhat longer than 2 years, it is much better to wait around for years for a slightly better benefit (and not have "pretty good" benefits for much of that time), than to get pretty good benefits now (and not get those slightly better benefits years down the line). I was going to say something comparing the length of time you'd need for this "delayed gratification" compared with the average length of a marriage, but it was difficult to quantify the latter properly.

Complaining that people don't understand the problems facing a large guild trying to overcome decay at level 60 misses out on that for 95% of the guilds out there, the problem is how to get to level 60 in the first place.

And that is the biggest flaw with the current system as it was: that the system was intended so that "just about any guild" should be able to reach the mid levels, yet in practice the amount of renown needed to reach those levels was so big that only large guilds and extremely active small guilds (relatively speaking) could reach them; large guilds simply by having hundreds of players contribute to the same pot of renown, extremely active small guilds by having a very high renown-per-player ratio. Smaller casual guilds, which collectively make up more characters than all the large guilds and extremely active small guilds combined, are left out in the cold under the renown system (http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p=4527827&postcount=248).

Large guilds like to claim that there's a small guild size bonus which makes up for the lack of manpower in a small guild, as if a 6-account guild being considered as a 24-account guild has comparable renown gain to a 450-account guild making those complaints about renown decay. For that 6-account guild to be on par in manpower with the 450-account guild, it would need a size multiplier of 75x (or +7400%) instead of the current 4x (or +300%). Yet we still get complaints about how small guilds have it so easy because of this bonus.

The bottom line is that the major problem with the renown system was that to reach the majority of ship buffs in any reasonable amount of time, you had to either join a large guild or join a very active small guild. Contrary to what's been posted, it has always been easy to join a casual large guild that's above level 60; I was able to do this multiple times on other servers for favor farming (which was obviously with very low-level and under-equipped characters -- so it's not as if those guilds were being picky or had high entrance requirements).

It's only the guilds where the guild leader starts to see the guild level as more important than guild atmosphere that it's problematic to join -- the same guilds that were complaining about losing players to other higher-level guilds and are now telling everyone else that it doesn't affect them that these guilds will now level much faster. Again, let this sink in for a moment. The same guilds that previously complained about the renown system because they were losing players to higher-level (i.e. more active) guilds, are now telling people that losing players to higher-level (i.e. larger under this change) guilds is just fine.

What Turbine should be addressing is the vast disparity in guild levels achieved by guilds of different sizes -- i.e. the renown gain part of the system, which is highly dependent on manpower (number of accounts in the guild). Instead, the change to renown decay will make this disparity even bigger: high-level guilds will be able to reach even higher levels, while low-level guilds will stay mired at those low levels. Since the change removed the per-account part of renown decay, it really means that high-level large guilds (or actually, large guilds in general -- except there are no low-level large guilds because they blow through the lower levels so quickly anyway) will be the main beneficiaries. This despite the fact that large guilds as a group are already higher level than the vast majority of other guilds. They don't need the help, or at least until the 98% of other guilds that are below them reaches their levels.

Under the original system, because reaching higher levels meant each player in the guild was on average more active (more renown per day per player), guilds that wanted to continue progressing once decay was substantial had an incentive to encourage members to be more active -- in other words, give players a reason to continue logging in. This meant forming stable relationships with each player and setting up the guild culture and activities such that people want to log in to this game and play it, over all the other distractions in their busy lives. I know it's anecdotal at best (because I don't have the account information on each guild that Turbine would), but most of the high-level guilds (at least on Orien) are characterized by relatively stable rosters with very low turnover rates, not just among the "core" players of the guild but among the rest of the guild as well.

And the evidence for this is, as they say, the proof is in the pudding. As I've mentioned elsewhere (http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?p=4628691#post4628691), Over Raided is actually a relatively casual guild in terms of playtime, with most of the members of the guild having full time jobs/school and/or married with kids, etc., despite people who continually try to mis-characterize level 100 guilds as not having "real lives" (http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p=4629702). It is because members don't have much free time to spend that the guild focuses on getting things done quickly and efficiently. It's not as if members are focused necessarily on renown when they log in either; I can guarantee you that the over 500 hours of game time that I've spent on collecting data for weapon and guard proc rates (http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=354768) has given the guild exactly 0 renown (apparently, killing the training dummy over and over is not considered renown-worthy) -- and this is just the length of the videos, it doesn't include the time it took to count them all up.

Yet Over Raided was able to reach level 100 because the guild leader and officers set up an environment where despite the lack of available playtime, members could be productive when they do have time to log in. The proof for how to level a guild is staring detractors in the face -- yet all they can reply with are snarky comments (http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p=4628973&postcount=268) without ever addressing the substance of what I say, and continue claiming that they have no option but to boot all those poor casuals.

People who complain about the renown system meaning they have to boot casuals have learned exactly the wrong lesson about the system's social dynamics, showing that their priority is on fishing around the player base for active players (i.e. easy to get in and then easy to boot if the player isn't on often enough for the guild leader's liking), rather than improving on the players in the guild so that they will naturally want to log in (and then the renown will naturally flow from their playing the game). In short, the system was fundamentally about maximizing gains (encourage members to log in by making the guild a fun place to be) to get from the mid levels to the high levels, while these people focused on making it into being about minimizing losses (booting the members that are deemed to not be gaining enough renown, and then complaining that "the system" is making them do it).

That Turbine would cave in to demagoguery instead of well-documented reasoning is somewhat disappointing. The arguments are continually debunked (http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?p=4637415) and I've repeatedly shown that they exaggerate claims about their own guild (http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p=4351018&postcount=120) to try to sway the forum community. Let this sink in for a moment. I've shown multiple times that what people claim about their own guild to complain about decay is in fact false. It's perhaps not surprising that these people then resort to histrionics such as claiming that the renown system makes them kill their close, personal friends (http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=388555), yet these are the arguments that Turbine chooses to pay attention to.

If Turbine were interested in getting players "hooked" on the game and wanting to play it more (and spend money on the game as a corollary), incentive systems such as the guild renown system should be designed around benefiting guilds that are successful at encouraging members to log in and play, that spends the time to invest in each player in the guild. The change to renown decay instead encourages guilds to simply induct as many members as possible and treat players as faceless drones in the hive for renown, without regard to the individual player. Many players say the reason why they stick with the game is because of the people they meet and the relationships that they form, and this change discourages this time investment to the detriment of the gaming community.

[DocBenway]

And as for the 'competitive spirit' argument, it appears that most respondents in this thread don't really care about that. I know my guild does not.

Yes, as of up to page 18, there were 4 mentions of leaderboard in the entire thread and 2 were Opall's and 2 were mine replying to her. I mentioned that if there were many guilds that enjoyed the aspect as it was very under represented in the thread.

Under representation might also be caused by half of in game guild leaders not even knowing any kind of renown experiment was happening, and now it has reverted.

[Gremmlynn]

I never said more players will end up guildless in the new system - quite the opposite. Every guildless player will now find himself swarmed with guild offers because there's no penalty to adding another player (unless you've hit the size cap, which is when a guild will finally start to apply some form of selection).

Yes, it was messed up that guild level was previously a function of hours/week spent in the game. But at least the guild level meant something - that is, it indicated how active your guild was (which for my level 27 guild isn't all that much).

But what do you have now? Guild level is now ultimately just a function of the number of players you're able to collect. Under the new system, if I left my current guild, I could find a level 70+ guild willing - no, begging - to invite me in a matter of minutes, simply because there's no reason not to. Without some incentive for guilds to be selective, a newb can achieve a guild level of 100 as soon as he leaves Korthos by just getting invited to such a guild, which destroys the work of all those who have tried to level their own guild to 100 themselves.

It once took at least a year to attain a guild level of 100. Now it can (easily!) be achieved in a matter of minutes by asking an existing level 100 guild to invite you (and why would they say no?). This is what I mean when I say that the meaning of guild levels, and all the hard work that so many people have put into earning them, is utterly destroyed by this change.It means that making the guild social circle accessible to as more players is rewarded. It means that "casual" players will have access to a more stable gaming environment than harbor chat and the LFM board. It means guilds will be rewarded for making the game better for more players, where the old system did the exact opposite.

Frankly, I find it a good thing that guild levels went from showing who could pop the most chests per day to, more or less, showing who's improving the play environment for the most players.

So what does a level 100 guild now represent? A guild that provides an environment that can attract and retain enough members to get and maintain that level despite the competition from other level 100 guilds. Players will no longer have to live up to the standards of the guild leaders, guild leaders will now have to live up to the standards of the players. Despotism has been changed to a form of democracy.

[Dirac]

Vanshilar is playing guild wars, DDO style, so a lot of what he says is irrelevant. Not necessarily wrong, and I appreciate his effort and data collection, but irrelevant. He says one very accurate and very useful thing:

"As already pointed out, the original renown system rewarded active players."

His entire house of cards starts falling apart when you ask a very simple question: why should a guild reward system be based on active players and not active guilds?

[Cap_Man]

There's a competition?!? :eek:

All this time I thought people only wanted to advance their guild level to get more amenities.

Who knew?

I thought the changes were a step in the right direction .. but then again, I don't really care what level other guilds are at. ;)

[slarden]

I think the fix is really simple. The old decay curve was too high as you increased levels. Flatten the curve so that guilds can get to 85 without every person in the guild playing 40 hours per week.

I don't think they should change the system to favor one guild size over another. Under the old system I realize that large guilds complained more about the decay problem than smaller guilds. That wasn't due to the system, but the reality that people in large guild were less likely to feel ownership for their guild level, less likely to take guild renown as an end reward, less likely to run with guild renown boosts, etc. With a small guild it's easier to mobilize the members to go after renown and easier to identify when people aren't active. If they want to give a small boost to larger guilds that is fine, but having a guild of 1,000 suffer 10 renown per day per account while a guild of 6 suffers over 1500 per day per account is not the right answer.

Why should small guilds receive such massive penalties due to their size.

[Postumus]

Yes, as of up to page 18, there were 4 mentions of leaderboard in the entire thread and 2 were Opall's and 2 were mine replying to her. I mentioned that if there were many guilds that enjoyed the aspect as it was very under represented in the thread.

Under representation might also be caused by half of in game guild leaders not even knowing any kind of renown experiment was happening, and now it has reverted.

True. I can only use the information I have a available which is why I restricted my data set to this thread. How representative it is of guilds at large I have no idea.

Yet I do not think it is a stretch that if 1% of the posters have brought this up as an issue, then it probably isn't an issue for most guilds.

[Gremmlynn]

I don't like that.......

<o> Founded 2006
Founders 6
Recruitment = in all these years I have taken on 10. Booted 8. Not because I wanted a "perfect" number. Because I did NOT like them as people/players.

I never wanted a Large Guild.
I will never want a Large Guild.

I shouldn't have to recruit to stay competitive. I have managed just fine with what I have. Keep in mind, I did not play on accounts related to <o> the 1st year of GR. We are on page 3. We check nightly the LeaderBoard. Simple math (<-- off topic but spellcheck is telling me I spelled Math wrong?) tells me that within 2-3 weeks, <o> will be on page 2.

That simple Math was before Turbine did this though......:(



~Opall~Here's my problem with the system. I help run a guild that tries to provide a quality gaming environment for anyone who is willing to act in a civilized manner. But this silly guild level system keeps causing the members we can rely on to log in regularly to go to guilds that are advancing faster. This causes the rest of the guild to quit logging in at all as there isn't a reliable source of people to play with.

Now take this and expand it game wide. We end up with an ever shrinking group of players who simply play enough to beat decay and and ever expanding group who simply either can't or are unwilling to trade enough of the rest of their lives to do so. How does this do anything but motivate more and more players into looking into games that don't have systems designed to make losers and rejects out of them simply because they don't treat the game as anything more than a game.

But I can see how you can find your position on the "who plays the most boards" is more important than what other game a bunch of losers are playing.

[Thayion516]

As far as a "Competition" with guilds goes, no Guild Leader i know of on Ghallara knows/cares about it.
Its a Non-Factor.

BUT what the ALL DO Care about is the broken renown system. Where we have massive decay that forces us to boot members for casual play to reach lv. That Sucks.

[Gremmlynn]

Not it does not. They increased the penalty for reaching a new level. So while big guilds have a much easier time leveling smaller guilds will have a harder time. Same decay, but when we reach a new level we will suffer lower renown rewards and with so few people we will likey drop a level. Then when we reach the level again we will suffer lower renown - a cycle that makes no sense. Before the change, the amount of renown required per account was roughly the same for a small guild as a large guild - with large guilds needing slightly less.Actually those lower rewards wouldn't kick in until a guild has gained 3 levels in the same day and would go away on the next day. Seeing as my guild has been stuck at 46 for the last month or so, I have a hard time empathizing with anyone who thinks getting lower rewards after gaining 3 levels in the same day is an onerous penalty.

[Tshober]

Vanshilar is playing guild wars, DDO style, so a lot of what he says is irrelevant. Not necessarily wrong, and I appreciate his effort and data collection, but irrelevant. He says one very accurate and very useful thing:

"As already pointed out, the original renown system rewarded active players."

His entire house of cards starts falling apart when you ask a very simple question: why should a guild reward system be based on active players and not active guilds?

Another excellent point. Why should the average renown per player per day be what determines advancement for a guild? Would it not make much more sense if the total renown earned by the entire guild were what determined advancement for that guild? After all it IS a guild leveling/reward system and not a player reward system.

If you wanted to know which of two guilds was more wealthy, you would add up all the money that each guild had and compare the two numbers. You would not divide each total by the number of players first because to do so would be measuring the wealth of the players, not the wealth of the guilds. It is the same for renown. If you want to compare the renown of two guilds, then you should add up all of the renown each guild earns and compare the two numbers. Dividing the totals by the number of players changes it from a comparison of guilds to a camparison of players. Logically, guild renown should be used for guild leveling and guild rewards, not average player renown.

It really sucks that I am out of +1's.

[bazooka99]

It means that making the guild social circle accessible to as more players is rewarded. It means that "casual" players will have access to a more stable gaming environment than harbor chat and the LFM board. It means guilds will be rewarded for making the game better for more players, where the old system did the exact opposite.

Frankly, I find it a good thing that guild levels went from showing who could pop the most chests per day to, more or less, showing who's improving the play environment for the most players.

So what does a level 100 guild now represent? A guild that provides an environment that can attract and retain enough members to get and maintain that level despite the competition from other level 100 guilds. Players will no longer have to live up to the standards of the guild leaders, guild leaders will now have to live up to the standards of the players. Despotism has been changed to a form of democracy.

What? First of all, the Korthos Army guilds that will be the powerhouses in the new guild system don't at all do what you seem to think they will do. They provide about as much of a social circle as do the thousand Facebook friends you acquired to win a worldwide contest. The new system doesn't reward guilds for helping new players, it just rewards guilds for using them (the two can but need not cooccur).

A system of guilds of size 1000, from a social point of view, is as good as no guild system at all. I'm about as likely to know someone in my guild of 1000 (which is what the new system incentivizes) as I am to know random people on the LFM panel.

We have not gone from despotism to democracy, but from an (albeit incredibly screwed up) free market to a universal guildcare policy, where whether or not you receive guild benefits is dependent on your willingness to abandon your small guild and join one of the huge "corporate" guilds.

[deathwarrior666]

That i must say is a great idea now all you have to do is make it to where looting a chest 6 times in a quest to more like 10 times or something like that or increase the drop rate of rare items and seals and shards to make it better. The scroll drop rate is great the way it is ty for that. but it is just an idea.

[rayworks]

Greetings! We are putting forth modifications currently trying out some temporary adjustments to the Guild Renown system and monitoring the outcome and feedback this week. The intent is to address concerns from guilds and guild leaders regarding the impact of optimizing guild size in order to gain or maintain guild levels. We’ll be making additional balance changes that we think you and your guildmates will appreciate, but for now we have applied the changes without downtime. As of today, you will notice two changes to your renown rates:


Renown decay no longer takes guild size into account. This should ease the pressure for guild leaders to “kick” members from the guild to offset daily renown decay rates. Renown decay now only takes a guild’s level into consideration rather than its size.
Renown ransack has been increased. Previously when a guild earned levels in a day, it would gradually reduce the renown drop rates. We’ve increased the rate so that a guild can only earn roughly 3 levels in a single day. This should prevent large guilds from completely dominating the field in terms of levels per-day.

There are some balance Pros and Cons to this method, but we’d like guilds to give us feedback about their experiences using the new settings this week. If players like the settings, or feel it is workable with minor tweaks, then we are ready to keep them! If players find the changes make matters worse, then we are scheduled to revert them. So this week, we encourage guild leaders/members to use this thread to give us feedback about how the changes are impacting your guild leveling dynamics. Important feedback for us is points where frustration has eased (or increased). Thanks for your participation as we work to improve our guild leveling system!


I've got a better plan. Get rid of renown decay entirely. It serves no useful purpose.

[Dhalgren]

I only care about my own guild's level, and only because of tangible benefits which that level can bring to the guild.

The ****ing contest that is the leaderboard is an utter non-factor to me, and as far as I know, to my guildies. In fact I've never even heard anybody (in guild or out) mention it in-game.

If the leaderboard disappeared tomorrow it would probably be a very long time before I even noticed--and much, much longer before I cared.

[Gremmlynn]

That's fine. Everyone agrees the steep curve for decay should be reduced. It should to be changed in a way that is fair to all guilds, not just large guilds.Frankly, that's up to Turbine. But if I were in their position I would do it in a way that favors those guilds that do the most to help me retain customers. So yes, mine would reward large guilds as I know there are a lot more passive players than there are organizers and I would reward those organizers who give passive players a reason to keep spending money on my game.

[Devlinus]

I generally just lurk here on the forums, picking up tips from other players here and there. But this conversation has forced me to think over my opinions, and thereby speak out when I normally would be passively silent.

First, I would like to thank the developers for looking at this in more detail. I'm a member of a large guild, with a lot of casual players, and even more casually-casual players. Very few really active players (even though the equations say we have lots of active players by game definitions). So, we have been perpetually stuck at level 60 for so long that I had given up caring.

So, in reading some posts, people are saying that a change like this will 'flip' the tides of inequality to favor the really, really large guilds (read 1000 accounts) vs the really, really small guilds (read 6 accounts). And to that, I can't really disagree. I think they are right, and the 'maths' should be easy to prove that (as some have already done... 6 active accounts = 18 after bonus, so any guilds approaching 18+ active accounts will have an inherent bonus for every +1 account over 18). And I think there was another post that said the most 'efficient' guild size was actually 11 accounts in the old system versus 6 accounts? But either way, I think we should all be able to do the simple algebra needed to understand that 1000 member guilds should be able to outpace the smaller guilds, and hence I agree that this probably flipped the 'inequality' equation.

But then I have to agree with the developer, who asked "is that a problem?" Really, is that a problem? Really, is it going to break the game???

So, as I've read through this thread, several pros and cons have been suggested. And as I read some of those concerns/suggestions, it lead me to think back over the last few years.

One concern was that 'power gamers' would adjust to this new system, and start to actively recruit to 1000 accounts to maximize renown gains. My experience is that those power gamers are going to do whatever it takes to land on that 'maximum gain' point of the curve no matter what system is picked. Here is why I think that...

Now I am by no means the expert with it comes to the guild system, guild renown, guild decay. But from my memory, at least on the server I play on, I think the first thought from everyone was to have as large of a guild as possible. But then as people figured out the decay equations, it started to become obvious that smaller guilds had the advantage (in guild renown terms anyway). So what happened, a lot of those 'power guilds' actually broke up... to the point that I think some of them split into multiple smaller guilds (and then created 'guild channels' to link the smaller guilds into a larger umbrella for questing and raiding). And in doing so, they were able to 'min/max' their guild gains... there are plenty of 70+ small guilds now... heck I've lost count of the number of 100 lvl guilds on my server now.

But why is this bad? For one, PUG'ing and guild invites. How many times have you been in a PUG group, and the last person joins, asks for a ship invite from a larger guild (for the buffs obviously) and they can't get on any of the ships from the other members of the PUG because everyone is a member of a 6 man, high level guild.. that has at most 2-3 of those members online at any given time, and rarely if ever someone on the ship. Heck, I can even remember a few Shroud raids where the entire raid had to wait on the healer to 'hump it' to Meridia because no one could give him a ship invite without 'humping out' themselves.

Chances are that with larger guilds, and more online accounts at any given time, this should diminish. In fact, in most cases, those larger guilds that originally split up into smaller guilds might decide to recombine membership again. I all honesty, the only 'group' that I can see as 'losing' from going from the 'many/small guild' model to the 'fewer/large guild' model is Turbine themselves (less crystals sold through the store, etc).

Another concern has been the 'Korthos-Army' concept of mass inviting random new players, leeching the GR from them as fast as possible, and then kicking them when it suits the guild leaders motivations. Once again, I recognize the potential is there, and given the 'min/maxing' mentality of most of those power gamer types, I wouldn't discount it. In response, my suggestion is to make a change to the 'kick a guild member' penalty. Instead of losing 25% (or whatever it is now), increase the penalty to 100%.

[NOTE: I am only talking about a guild 'kicking' a member... for a member that 'leaves' of his on accord, the penalty should be very little, if any. Now, maybe a member should be allowed to 'punish' a guild for not making them feel welcome? So maybe it should be an option of 0% or 25% for a member volunteering to leave??? In all honesty, they did receive the benefits of the guild for the time they were a member, so I'm kind of in favor of 100% for being kicked, and 0% for leaving. But I can see it now, next will be complaints that the 'power gaming' guilds 'harass/bully' the unwanted member into volunteering to leave... so who knows... maybe a variable amount from 0% to 100% for volunteering to leave... although in all honesty, I'd probably just squelch the harassers and be done with it.]

See, this is my reason: There should really only be one reason to kick a guild member... when their 'play style' doesn't fit with the rest of the greater guilds... and by 'play style' I am NOT talking about their 'play ability'. Now for some, 'play ability' might equate to what they fill the 'guild goal' is. We all know that there are a lot of 'elitist' guilds out there, and so them removing a member for not playing up to the elite level expected of that guild is 'ok'. What I mean is that if they are giving the guild a bad reputation (stealing loot from a chest, bad chat behavior, harassing other players on the server, etc). In that case, the guild leadership has to make the choice... kick the guild member to save the reputation of the guild, or keep the renown, and suffer the reputation impacts. Knowing the general population of the DDO community, and the effect that reputation can have (both good and bad), I doubt that decision would be very hard for most guild leaders.

Now, maybe another reason to kick a guild member is to make room for more active players. I don't think that decision would have to made until a guild hit 1000 accounts (or is it members?). Which on at least my server might be hard to do even if there was only ONE guild on the entire server... LOL again. That would be funny... the entire guild is the entire PUG LFMs as well.

But still, for some older/larger servers, that could very well be an issue, so I can see/support the requests to have 'highly inactive accounts' be allowed to be purged with no renown lost... now how do you define a 'highly inactive account'? 2 months? 6 months? 1 year? Depends... but I would say the longer the better.

About the only argument that I've seen so far that I can't reconcile in my head are the 'competitors'. The ones that see the guild levels as a competition... as a 'status' symbol on their server, or as a sense of 'accomplishment'. And if that is how they define 'fun and enjoyment' for them, then so much the better. I saw some suggestions for leader boards for 'weekly gains' and/or for 'per account gains'. Personally, I think that seems like a lot of coding just to stroke the 'epeen' of the few... but I wouldn't be opposed to the ideas, since in reality it doesn't negatively affect anyone (except for maybe the Turbine coder that has to figure out the metrics, etc). However, I personally wasn't a fan of the 'shrine perks' for Number 1 on the leader boards... leader boards should be for 'bragging rights', and nothing more... every player should have access to all of the game, casual or otherwise... only that the active players will get it faster.

And then there are the arguments about the small 'tight' guild versus large 'internal PUG' guilds. Once again, this should be a choice of play style and social style. And I hate that the 'flip of inequality' will negatively affect those smaller guilds that choose to be small guilds because they like that play style. But as some have pointed out, really, those small guilds are no different off 'today' vs 'yesterday' when comparing to themselves... really for them, nothing has changed... the 'negativity' is in relation of 'them' to the 'larger' guilds of 'today'. Meaning that their pace has not changed at all before/after, but now other larger guilds should be able to get to the end goals faster than them now... which equates in head to 'I am no different than before, but now some other group gets a benefit that I don't get, and that's not fair.'

Anyway, sorry for the wall of text. But as I see it, the benefits of these changes for everyone is FAR greater than the drawbacks to to the few here and there.

Happy gaming,
Devlinus

[cidchronic]

As a leader to a very small guild (6), I think the changes are unfair to the little guys, all that is going to happen is that we will have large guilds at high lvls inviting everyone. Everyone in our guild knows that they helped get us to lvl 41, and we dont care how long it takes to get up to high lvls, but we will know we did it ourselves. mass invites were a problem before and now they will get worse as every new guild will try to get to high lvls. Being a guild of PnP people we follow different rules then most, which is why we remain a very small guild. For the most part, we remain unaffected by these changes, to those these changes benifit the most, dont abuse it or brag about how fast your guild lvled, you didnt earn it

[Gremmlynn]

What? First of all, the Korthos Army guilds that will be the powerhouses in the new guild system don't at all do what you seem to think they will do. They provide about as much of a social circle as do the thousand Facebook friends you acquired to win a worldwide contest. The new system doesn't reward guilds for helping new players, it just rewards guilds for using them (the two can but need not cooccur).

A system of guilds of size 1000, from a social point of view, is as good as no guild system at all. I'm about as likely to know someone in my guild of 1000 (which is what the new system incentivizes) as I am to know random people on the LFM panel.

We have not gone from despotism to democracy, but from an (albeit incredibly screwed up) free market to a universal guildcare policy, where whether or not you receive guild benefits is dependent on your willingness to abandon your small guild and join one of the huge "corporate" guilds.Those that don't provide it will find they lose their members to those that do. Frankly I believe they will provide a lot more to most players than all those small guilds that would never even consider inviting them to in the first place. Every large guild I have been a member of has always asked first in guild chat before pugging. Every large guild I have been a member of has always had members that helped put organize players looking for something to do. Every large guild I have been a member of has held it's members accountable to a higher level of conduct than you find in the general population, though this has rarely been needed because people generally act better simply by knowing they can be held accountable.

Yes players will be leaving their small guilds for the greater game play options that large guilds provide. No more doing whatever the group (or the GL) decides thy are going to do that day. Now they can have access to enough guildies to find a others who want to do whatever tickles their fancy at any given time without giving up the buffs that used to require surrounding yourself with a small group to get. Looks like an improvement for all but the despots who no longer hold all the leverage over who gets buffs and who doesn't.

[bazooka99]

Those that don't provide it will find they lose their members to those that do. Frankly I believe they will provide a lot more to most players than all those small guilds that would never even consider inviting them to in the first place. Every large guild I have been a member of has always asked first in guild chat before pugging. Every large guild I have been a member of has always had members that helped put organize players looking for something to do. Every large guild I have been a member of has held it's members accountable to a higher level of conduct than you find in the general population, though this has rarely been needed because people generally act better simply by knowing they can be held accountable.

Yes players will be leaving their small guilds for the greater game play options that large guilds provide. No more doing whatever the group (or the GL) decides thy are going to do that day. Now they can have access to enough guildies to find a others who want to do whatever tickles their fancy at any given time without giving up the buffs that used to require surrounding yourself with a small group to get. Looks like an improvement for all but the despots who no longer hold all the leverage over who gets buffs and who doesn't.

Alright here's the thing with your point of view. You seem to argue that the purpose of a guild is not to discriminate between who gets benefits and who doesn't, but to provide the optimal social environment (which I find entirely agreeable). Now, given the implications of that view, would it not be better to remove this discrimination entirely and grant all guilds the same benefits, regardless of level? Let players decide whether they want to be in a small guild (as I do) or a large guild (as you do) without penalizing them for making either choice. That way everybody's happy, not just the lovers of small guilds or the lovers of large guilds.

Further, by removing the ulterior motive to create large guilds, you ensure that the only large guilds that will invite new players are those genuinely interested in helping them to understand the game, and in promoting a positive social environment.

The differentiating factor between guilds would be plat and what types of airships/airship amenities they can afford to buy, so this still encourages large guilds, to the extent that they can pool their resources together to buy amenities and airships.

[AmaWibble]

To everyone who is a member of a small-medium guild, and who thinks that they'll lose members to giant, Korthos army guilds with this change: if the change became permanant, would you, personally, move? Would you leave the camaraderie of your small group to join a guild where you'll never know everyone? Just for faster access to buffs?

Extend this thought experiment a little further: assume for a moment you weren't a member of a guild; assume also that you'd played DDO for long enough to get a feel for the game and see some different content, plus meet a few people and start to recognise a few names. If you were in the market for a guild, would you want to join a group of like-minded people, or would you just want to gain access to guild buffs, without wanting any social stuff?

In both cases above, I would join the guild that suited my play style and personality. The size of the guild would matter not one iota - I'd rather join an under-equipped guild that suited me and help build it up than a level 100 guild that didn't match my needs. Based on what a lot of people have said, I suspect that many, if not most people here would behave in a similar manner. For those who just want guild buffs, or who actually like being in a mega-guild, or who don't really care and are happy to hop on the first band-wagon that comes along, well, you're probably not people I'd want to be in a guild with (and that's a good thing), as we don't want the same things from our guilds. Vive la différence!

Please don't hammer this change just because it doesn't improve your personal situation. Aside from the leaderboard bunnies (and you appear to be in a minority of 1 so far), nobody is actually disadvantaged by the (proposed) change, and given that nobody else seems to be competing, I'm not convinced that the leaderboard bunnies are actually disadvantaged anyway. Encourage Turbine to make other changes that sort out your particular issues without disadvantaging others, and bear in mind that the simple suggestions are more likely to be implemented than the complex ones. Someone else getting a leg-up does not equate to you getting pushed down. I'm fairly sure that nobody here is arguing that the current change is everything that's needed, or that there doesn't need to be some additional balancing, but I am seeing a whole load of small-guild folks who aren't hugely affected by this arguing that the change that doesn't affect them isn't fair because it only helps someone else.

[Tshober]

Now, maybe another reason to kick a guild member is to make room for more active players. I don't think that decision would have to made until a guild hit 1000 accounts (or is it members?). .

It's 1000 members. And my guild hits that limit all the time. We almost always have a waiting list of people who want to join us. We really have no choice, we have to kick players who have been inactive for quite awhile to make room for players who want to join right now.

Even so, I am not opposed to your suggestion of a 100% renown penalty for kicking members, as long as there is a reasonable time limit after which the penalty goes away. If a player has not logged in at all for more than say 3 months, then the guild should not be penalized for kicking them to make room for a currently active player. The fears of a legion "Krothos Army" guilds destroying all that is good and wholesome about DDO are way overblown, but your suggestion of a 100% kick penalty would help reduce the hysteria some. There is no way you can argue that someone who has not logged in for more than 3 months was somehow being abused because the guild kicked him to make room for a currently active player. You should be able to do that penalty-free.

[theslimshady]

yes, but the whole speculation about mass booting, after renown farming, is nothing more then another fear campaign. you can already do it under the current system. If you gain 60k and i boot you, you take less then 20 k with you. i keep 40 and have a +1 to modified account size for 14 days. So the only thing different is the +1 to modified account size for 14 days. I would still keep 75 percent of all renown gained.

[Chaos000]

What if players had the option to pull 0-100% of their renown with them after being booted from the guild? would that be a viable alternative? And whatever guild they joined next would get 25% of their total renown gained.

[bazooka99]

To everyone who is a member of a small-medium guild, and who thinks that they'll lose members to giant, Korthos army guilds with this change: if the change became permanant, would you, personally, move? Would you leave the camaraderie of your small group to join a guild where you'll never know everyone? Just for faster access to buffs?

Extend this thought experiment a little further: assume for a moment you weren't a member of a guild; assume also that you'd played DDO for long enough to get a feel for the game and see some different content, plus meet a few people and start to recognise a few names. If you were in the market for a guild, would you want to join a group of like-minded people, or would you just want to gain access to guild buffs, without wanting any social stuff?

In both cases above, I would join the guild that suited my play style and personality. The size of the guild would matter not one iota - I'd rather join an under-equipped guild that suited me and help build it up than a level 100 guild that didn't match my needs. Based on what a lot of people have said, I suspect that many, if not most people here would behave in a similar manner. For those who just want guild buffs, or who actually like being in a mega-guild, or who don't really care and are happy to hop on the first band-wagon that comes along, well, you're probably not people I'd want to be in a guild with (and that's a good thing), as we don't want the same things from our guilds. Vive la différence!

Please don't hammer this change just because it doesn't improve your personal situation. Aside from the leaderboard bunnies (and you appear to be in a minority of 1 so far), nobody is actually disadvantaged by the (proposed) change, and given that nobody else seems to be competing, I'm not convinced that the leaderboard bunnies are actually disadvantaged anyway. Encourage Turbine to make other changes that sort out your particular issues without disadvantaging others, and bear in mind that the simple suggestions are more likely to be implemented than the complex ones. Someone else getting a leg-up does not equate to you getting pushed down. I'm fairly sure that nobody here is arguing that the current change is everything that's needed, or that there doesn't need to be some additional balancing, but I am seeing a whole load of small-guild folks who aren't hugely affected by this arguing that the change that doesn't affect them isn't fair because it only helps someone else.

Yes, you are correct that nobody is disadvantaged by this change, and I believe you are correct that most of us would stick with our small/medium guilds despite the new advantages of large guilds. But try to think about this from the perspective of a medium sized guild that spends years leveling, only to find that all they had earned during those years can now be achieved by a Korthos army guild in a matter of weeks/months, or a matter of minutes from a simple invite from one.

Imagine if Turbine started selling completionist tomes in the DDO store. Sure, no one would be disadvantaged by the change, and most people would find it unfulfilling to simply buy a completionist tome (and so wouldn't buy one). But wouldn't it sort of destroy your sense of achievement if all those years of earning a completionist build could now be done by a player with a few hundred (or thousand?) extra turbine points to spare?

[Rapthorn]

True. I can only use the information I have a available which is why I restricted my data set to this thread. How representative it is of guilds at large I have no idea.

Yet I do not think it is a stretch that if 1% of the posters have brought this up as an issue, then it probably isn't an issue for most guilds.

I find it really difficult to believe that all of these problems people have with decay exist for the buffs alone... The same buffs that I read threads stating that they are overpowered. The same buffs that other threads consider worthless and a waste of gaming time.

That really only leaves one other reason to complain about guild renown decay and that is that it is a competition. No one wants to come out and flatly state that is what it's about because then they get flamed for taking a "game" too seriously.

There is another thread going on right now about the dislike of the test system. In it I have read the opinions of two guilds that were "stuck" at level 80-84... They are obviously happy about the test system because now they can advance the last few legs to get to 100. What does 100 get them that 80-84 did not? And why should Turbine pander to people like this when the VAST majority are below level 80?

It took my small guild 1 1/2 YEARS to get to 72. Doing the rough math of how long it will take to get to 80-84, based on 35000 renown a day (which is our average over the 1 1/2 years) it will take us 280 days just to get to the point where these particular large guilds are complaining. Do you think this is fair? Some of these guilds say they are facing decay roughly around the 150k mark and yet they are maintaining their guild level with that decay. How can I compete against a guild that can earn 150k renown a day?

The system was already unfair against the smaller guilds because of how long it would take them to reach the higher levels compared to the large guilds and this "test" system makes it even worse by miles.

[Dirac]

Yes, you are correct that nobody is disadvantaged by this change, and I believe you are correct that most of us would stick with our small/medium guilds despite the new advantages of large guilds. But try to think about this from the perspective of a medium sized guild that spends years leveling, only to find that all they had earned during those years can now be achieved by a Korthos army guild in a matter of weeks/months, or a matter of minutes from a simple invite from one.

Just to be clear. What you want is complete removal of guild decay right? Because I think many people in favor of the change would prefer that as well. I think many, including me, were so happy that they made a change at all that we didn't appreciate how this didn't solve the problem for many guilds. That should still be a concern. As long as you are not advocating the old system.

[Chaos000]

Imagine if Turbine started selling completionist tomes in the DDO store. Sure, no one would be disadvantaged by the change, and most people would find it unfulfilling to simply buy a completionist tome (and so wouldn't buy one). But wouldn't it sort of destroy your sense of achievement if all those years of earning a completionist build could now be done by a player with a few hundred (or thousand?) extra turbine points to spare?

not to derail the thread but that would be awesome. Turbine would probably make more money by selling them separately... "tome of class completion (monk)" "tome of class completion (bard)"... etc. There are just some classes that I don't find very desirable to level up as a TR. Cost vs Benefit.

[Tshober]

That is not true - lowered guild renown starts with 1 level increase and by the time you increase 3 levels you get nothing.

Again, it is hard for those of us who have been stuck at the same level (or going backwards) for many months to sympathize with a guild that has already gained a level that day being unable to gain 2 more levels in that same day. I am a slobbering fool at tear-jerker movies, but I just can't work up anything over your complaint.

Any guild with more than 10 players, got a renown decay reduction. Any guild that actually has to worry about gaining more than 1 level per day (much less 3 per day) is not really in need of any help.

[Dirac]

It took my small guild 1 1/2 YEARS to get to 72. Doing the rough math of how long it will take to get to 80-84, based on 35000 renown a day (which is our average over the 1 1/2 years) it will take us 280 days just to get to the point where these particular large guilds are complaining. Do you think this is fair? Some of these guilds say they are facing decay roughly around the 150k mark and yet they are maintaining their guild level with that decay. How can I compete against a guild that can earn 150k renown a day?

The system was already unfair against the smaller guilds because of how long it would take them to reach the higher levels compared to the large guilds and this "test" system makes it even worse by miles.

I cannot get my head around this. If a guild earns 150k a day, you are saying it is not fair for them to keep it. If a guild earns a lot more renown than your guild earns, they don't deserve it. And the reason they don't deserve it is because it is more than your guild earned. You choose a small guild that can't earn enough renown to compete against a large guild. However, you want to compete against them anyway, therefore, Turbine must nerf them so that you win, even if they don't want to compete against you. Did I get your argument right? How is that not crazy? And you are claiming unfairness?

I get the argument that all decay should be eliminated because the "test" system doesn't help stuck smaller guilds. Since it helps the larger ones, a greater disparity can make the lives of smaller casual guilds worse. But this idea that large guilds must be punished with decay because there are small guilds who want to beat them, but can't without decay, is nuts.

[Chaos000]

The system was already unfair against the smaller guilds because of how long it would take them to reach the higher levels compared to the large guilds and this "test" system makes it even worse by miles.

If we're talking "fair" the decay should be based on the percentage of *active* players...

Active would be determined by how much renown each player pulls in each day to determine if they are active that day or not.

This change would punish active players in large and small guilds equally (but not equally because smaller guilds would have a higher % of active players). Current system penalizes active players that choose to tolerate casual players in their guild.

How about a compromise? Decay being assessed by the level of guild takes casual players out of the equation as it should. Reduce that decay by 75% for small guilds and lock out guild size if it expands from small to any of the larger sizes.

[bazooka99]

Just to be clear. What you want is complete removal of guild decay right? Because I think many people in favor of the change would prefer that as well. I think many, including me, were so happy that they made a change at all that we didn't appreciate how this didn't solve the problem for many guilds. That should still be a concern. As long as you are not advocating the old system.

I certainly like the idea of removing guild renown (if that's how this all played out, I'd be happy). There's just one concern for me, and that's that there will be a bunch of capped out guilds, all level 100, who no longer have any reason for earning renown. Maybe expanding the level cap (w/o additional benefits, please) and/or offering a one-time reward for every million earned renown (plat? xp? turbine points?) would solve the issue.

Once this is done, we can think about changing the guild size modifiers so that guilds of 100 aren't twice as effective as guilds of 50. Make it so that guilds gain a slight advantage from adding members (just as PUGs gain a slight advantage from adding members on norm/hard difficulties), but don't gain a huge advantage over smaller guilds.

[Dirac]

I certainly like the idea of removing guild renown (if that's how this all played out, I'd be happy). There's just one concern for me, and that's that there will be a bunch of capped out guilds, all level 100, who no longer have any reason for earning renown. Maybe expanding the level cap (w/o additional benefits, please) and/or offering a one-time reward for every million earned renown (plat? xp? turbine points?) would solve the issue.

Fair enough. and I agree they should raise the cap. I think there are lots of possibilities for marginal improvements for guild levels 101-200. My suggestion was simply to repeat all the 1-100 amenities except have buffs last for 2 hours. I think adding an extra 1% xp bonus every 20 levels is not game breaking. How about an extra 1% movement buff every 20 levels? With a little brainstorming, we could come up with a bunch of stuff.

[Rapthorn]

I cannot get my head around this. If a guild earns 150k a day, you are saying it is not fair for them to keep it. If a guild earns a lot more renown than your guild earns, they don't deserve it. And the reason they don't deserve it is because it is more than your guild earned. You choose a small guild that can't earn enough renown to compete against a large guild. However, you want to compete against them anyway, therefore, Turbine must nerf them so that you win, even if they don't want to compete against you. Did I get your argument right? How is that not crazy? And you are claiming unfairness?

I get the argument that all decay should be eliminated because the "test" system doesn't help stuck smaller guilds. Since it helps the larger ones, a greater disparity can make the lives of smaller casual guilds worse. But this idea that large guilds must be punished with decay because there are small guilds who want to beat them, but can't without decay, is nuts.


I love getting words put in my mouth... not sure how you came to your conclusions but my point was that the system was already unfair for the small guilds and under the "test" system is even worse.

I agree that something needed to be done about the casual gamer issue and renown decay but making a skewed system for large guilds even more skewed is for lack of a better term, flawed.

I am hoping that Turbine can come up with a formula that is fair for every single player involved.

[Chaos000]

Fair enough. and I agree they should raise the cap. I think there are lots of possibilities for marginal improvements for guild levels 101-200. My suggestion was simply to repeat all the 1-100 amenities except have buffs last for 2 hours. I think adding an extra 1% xp bonus every 20 levels is not game breaking. How about an extra 1% movement buff every 20 levels? With a little brainstorming, we could come up with a bunch of stuff.

House P buffs should last for 2 hours...

I think the problem with guild levels 101-200 is because assuming decay will continue to be determined by guild level, unless decay caps out at lvl 100, there's going to be a threshold a guild will hit that they will not be able to exceed. Non-progression despite effort... unless it's the max variable you can hit is not fun. I think the idea of TRing a guild ship is also an option (ya know, increase all the buffs by an hour but doubling the decay and the amount of renown required... ick) but that doesn't sound like fun to me!

[Rapthorn]

If we're talking "fair" the decay should be based on the percentage of *active* players...

Active would be determined by how much renown each player pulls in each day to determine if they are active that day or not.

This change would punish active players in large and small guilds equally (but not equally because smaller guilds would have a higher % of active players). Current system penalizes active players that choose to tolerate casual players in their guild.

How about a compromise? Decay being assessed by the level of guild takes casual players out of the equation as it should. Reduce that decay by 75% for small guilds and lock out guild size if it expands from small to any of the larger sizes.

Now this is finally something that I can start to agree on. Currently sounds fair to me, although I will leave it open in case there is something exploitable I haven't thought of.

[Dirac]

I love getting words put in my mouth... not sure how you came to your conclusions but my point was that the system was already unfair for the small guilds and under the "test" system is even worse.

I agree that something needed to be done about the casual gamer issue and renown decay but making a skewed system for large guilds even more skewed is for lack of a better term, flawed.

I am hoping that Turbine can come up with a formula that is fair for every single player involved.

Sorry about that then. I agree that renown should be eliminated so everyone can advance. It is important to emphasize that letting guilds keep the renown they earned is not unfair.

[Dirac]

I think the idea of TRing a guild ship is also an option (ya know, increase all the buffs by an hour but doubling the decay and the amount of renown required... ick) but that doesn't sound like fun to me!

that might be a real interesting idea to consider...

[Tshober]

I am hoping that Turbine can come up with a formula that is fair for every single player involved.

Call me a pessimist, but I don't see that happening unless they eliminate guild levels entirely. That would annoy many players and hurt DDO's revenue from all those astral diamonds and renown pots, but it would be fair to everyone. I am convinced that no plan will make everyone happy. Some will always feel cheated.

[Tshober]

You keep mentioning 3 levels, but I am talking about a small guild getting stuck at the same level due to the combo of renown decay and the nerfed renown rewards you get as soon as you gain 1 level. This makes it hard to keep that level so you go back a level, then eventually up a level and the cycle repeats.

The complaint is simple math. A large guild of 1000 only needs to earn 10 renown per account to avoid going backwards. A small guild needs to earn 1500 renown per account. If you don't see the difference between 10 renown per account vs 1500 account being significant, there is nothing anyone can do to explain it to you :)

It takes way more than a day to earn a level for our guild. We work really hard at it, but with the old system we had the same decay vs. earning issue as larger guilds. Under the new system it is much easier for large guilds and the additional penalty applied when obtaining a new level adds an additional burden to small guilds. There is nothing right about this. I am sorry to say your argument is without any merit at all. It ignores math, it ignores common sense and it ignores logic.

I don't mean to sound unsympathetic toward the tiny guilds that got no help from the change. No guild should be stuck unable to advance. I have strongly advocated for the total removal of renown decay in these forums for many months. I still think that would be the best solution. But I am absolutely overjoyed that the devs are actually moving in the right direction by greatly reducing renown decay after so long.

This change removed the barriers to advancemment for many guilds and also significantly reduced the incentives to shun casual/social players. Those things are overwhelmingly positive. I do not want to see the devs undo all that good because the tiny guilds that did not get any help from it complain about it "hurting" small guilds. It did not hurt small guilds. It just failed to help them like it did the larger guilds. If, instead of saying this change was hurting small guilds, you had advocated going even further and eliminating renown decay entirely so that even the tiny guilds get a big break, then I would not be arguing with you. I would be saying YES, THIS PLEASE!

So my appeal to you is don't portray the change as having done harm, because it actually did a ton of good. Instead say that it did not go far enough. If you go that way, many of us will stop arguing with you and support you instead.

[Chaos000]

The complaint is simple math. A large guild of 1000 only needs to earn 10 renown per account to avoid going backwards. A small guild needs to earn 1500 renown per account. If you don't see the difference between 10 renown per account vs 1500 account being significant, there is nothing anyone can do to explain it to you :)

We are not comparing "per account" in this simple math because you have to account for the the number of casual accounts in a large guild of 1000. Honestly, what is the statistical probability that each account in this mythical large guild of 1000 is active every day? probably more likely all the members of the small guild are active.

So say there is half the number of of active members in this large guild of 1000 compared to the small guild. And just to be fair say 500 of the other members log in maybe once every 2 weeks. The rest taking a break for a year. how much renown do the active members in this large guild have to pull in on a daily basis and is this WAY smaller than the small guild?

[slarden]

We are not comparing "per account" in this simple math because you have to account for the the number of casual accounts in a large guild of 1000. Honestly, what is the statistical probability that each account in this mythical large guild of 1000 is active every day? probably more likely all the members of the small guild are active.

So say there is half the number of of active members in this large guild of 1000 compared to the small guild. And just to be fair say 500 of the other members log in maybe once every 2 weeks. The rest taking a break for a year. how much renown do the active members in this large guild have to pull in on a daily basis and is this WAY smaller than the small guild?

We also have casual people that don't play often in our small guild. They need to scrap this horrible change and put something in place that is fair to guilds of all sizes rather than help large guilds and penalize small guilds. Not to mention if they take a break for a year they are inactive for 12 months and not increasing guild size for around 10 1/2 of those months - the exact same scenario small guilds face. There is no need to make small guilds earn 1500 renown per day per account to cover decay while a 1000 member guild only needs to get 10 renown per day per account. Large and small guilds both have casual and inactive members.

[Tshober]

They have absolutely done harm and it needs to be scrapped. We got no reduction to decay and instead recieved more of a penalty each time we advance 1 level.

Oh well, I tried to be reasonable. Let's hear your suggestion for something that will be fair and please everyone.

[Chaos000]

We also have casual people that don't play often in our small guild. They need to scrap this horrible change and put something in place that is fair to guilds of all sizes rather than help large guilds and penalize small guilds.

So you agree that casual and non-active players should not count when assessing guild decay. This "horrible change" does that by taking number of accounts out of the equation because it is an arbitrary number.

I would be ok with guilds of varying sizes either getting a increased bonus to their renown gained or a reduction (based on size) on guild decay. Even small guilds should be able to get at least "some" advancement. This of course is assuming there are examples of small guilds unable to reach the next level since the change.

[slarden]

Oh well, I tried to be reasonable. Let's hear your suggestion for something that will be fair and please everyone.

Fair? Leaving the new system is anything but fair. Requiring small guild members to earn 1500 renown per day to make up for decay while large 1000 member guilds only need 10 renown to cover decay is not any fair any way it is measured.

There are several possible solutions:

1) Reduce the amount of decay by 50% across the board to start and see how that works. I noticed many casual guilds leveling during the build your guild event that proves even a small change will make a difference. This encourages playing the game but doesn't require active players to earn so much renown to make up for inactive players.
2) The curve is very steep as guilds level up with decay getting higher at each level. Flatten the curve so reaching high levels is more reasonable for guilds with casual players. If they want to make the curve steeper, do it at level 85 so that 85 to 100 is about bragging rights and not better buffs
3) Just get rid of decay altogether and let guilds get to 100 like people level to 25 with their characters.

[Dhalgren]

They have absolutely done harm and it needs to be scrapped. We got no reduction to decay and instead recieved more of a penalty each time we advance 1 level.

Did they change the level multiplier? If so I'd like to take a look at how the new system affected our guild.

[slarden]

So you agree that casual and non-active players should not count when assessing guild decay. This "horrible change" does that by taking number of accounts out of the equation because it is an arbitrary number.

I would be ok with guilds of varying sizes either getting a increased bonus to their renown gained or a reduction (based on size) on guild decay. Even small guilds should be able to get at least "some" advancement. This of course is assuming there are examples of small guilds unable to reach the next level since the change.

I think decay needs to be addressed, but the new proposed changes miss the new mark so much it needs to be scrapped. The new system can't require small guilds to gain 150 times more renown as large guilds to make up for daily decay. Using the old system and reducing decay by 50% would be a much better option or removing decay completely.

[SiliconScout]

I am in a small guild (7 acccounts). We are somewhat casual. two players play daily and the rest play a couple 3 times a week.

With the old system (and new as it makes no change for us) we imagined we would top out in the low to mid 80's. This is good enough to get us all the ships, etc we are interested in.

So I don't see how it's unfair excepting if you want to say that all the other guilds can get to 100 if they have 20 or so members.

Yeah ... probably ... what does that really give them though. E-Peen and that is about it really.

If they are worried about the small guild then bump it's bonus up say 10% maybe 15% and it should be just fine.

I guess I don't get it because I am grounded enough that I don't need any e-peen showing so it doesn't bother me at all.

[SiliconScout]

We also have casual people that don't play often in our small guild. They need to scrap this horrible change and put something in place that is fair to guilds of all sizes rather than help large guilds and penalize small guilds. Not to mention if they take a break for a year they are inactive for 12 months and not increasing guild size for around 10 1/2 of those months - the exact same scenario small guilds face. There is no need to make small guilds earn 1500 renown per day per account to cover decay while a 1000 member guild only needs to get 10 renown per day per account. Large and small guilds both have casual and inactive members.

Actually assuming the guilds are of same level it the 10 man guild needed 1500 a day per account then the 1000 man guild would need 15 not 10.

It's linear in that respect they both earn the exact same amount of decay.

[Tshober]

Actually assuming the guilds are of same level it the 10 man guild needed 1500 a day per account then the 1000 man guild would need 15 not 10.

It's linear in that respect they both earn the exact same amount of decay.

There are no 1000 account guilds. That is a myth. There is a cap on guild size at 1000 characters. Very few accounts have only 1 character. The larger guilds have several hundred accounts. There might be a very few that have 500+ accounts but most large guilds will have less than 2 or 3 hundred accounts. They will have even fewer active accounts because the 1000 character cap includes all inactives.

[slarden]

Actually assuming the guilds are of same level it the 10 man guild needed 1500 a day per account then the 1000 man guild would need 15 not 10.

It's linear in that respect they both earn the exact same amount of decay.

6 person guild and I rounded down - so more than 1500 is actually required. As for your other example, getting to 85 is a good goal to get a bigger ship and more amenities.

For our 6 person guild under the new proposed system at level 84 we will need to earn 4,742 renown per day per account to cover renown loss. A 1000 member guild will only need to earn 28.45 renown per day per account to cover decay loss at level 84. Even with the 300% tiny guild bonus that means we need over 300 heroic deeds per account per day just to cover decay while a larger guild needs less than 1. There is no way that can be called fair. It's just simple math.

The new system was a nice idea and a nice try, but they need to come up with something that is fair to all guilds. I get that large guilds that aren't leveling want to move up, but it's just not right to require small guilds to do so much more than large guilds.

[Chaos000]

I think decay needs to be addressed, but the new proposed changes miss the new mark so much it needs to be scrapped. The new system can't require small guilds to gain 150 times more renown as large guilds to make up for daily decay. Using the old system and reducing decay by 50% would be a much better option or removing decay completely.

When you say 150 times more renown is just an arbitrary number if you're comparing renown required per account.

A large guild does have the "potential" for having an easier time IF they have more active guild members (in comparison to an average smaller guild) in-game every single day. In practice however, in a large guild, inactive accounts are MORE likely to outnumber the active accounts than it would be for a small guild.

Therefore I posit that active members in a large guild picking up the slack for all the inactive members will significantly reduce the "150 times" required of a smaller guild.

[Chaos000]

For our 6 person guild under the new proposed system at level 84 we will need to earn 4,742 renown per day per account to cover renown loss. A 1000 member guild will only need to earn 28.45 renown per day per account to cover decay loss at level 84. Even with the 300% tiny guild bonus that means we need over 300 heroic deeds per account per day just to cover decay while a larger guild needs less than 1. There is no way that can be called fair. It's just simple math.

Because of the statistical improbability that 1000 member guild (allowing no more than 1 character per account) will all be in game every single day on every single account for a week this simple math is flawed and not realistic.

[slarden]

When you say 150 times more renown is just an arbitrary number if you're comparing renown required per account.

A large guild does have the "potential" for having an easier time IF they have more active guild members (in comparison to an average smaller guild) in-game every single day. In practice however, in a large guild, inactive accounts are MORE likely to outnumber the active accounts than it would be for a small guild.

Therefore I posit that active members in a large guild picking up the slack for all the inactive members will significantly reduce the "150 times" required of a smaller guild.

I showed you the math it's not abritrary. The math will change based on actual # of accounts, but even @ 100 or 200 accounts the math still works. Arbitrary is the system - a system that benefits only very large guilds.

The new system is not fair and needs to be scrapped. Using the old system and reducing renown decay across the board would make much more sense or just getting rid of decay altogether.

[slarden]

Because of the statistical improbability that 1000 member guild (allowing no more than 1 character per account) will all be in game every single day on every single account for a week this simple math is flawed and not realistic.

Not relevant. The math works the same with 200 person guild and there are guilds out there with 1000 characters so they are very likely to have 200+ active accounts.

A 2 person guild @ 84 needs to earn 14,223 renown per day per account to cover decay.

A 200 person guild @ 84 needs to earn 142 renown per day per account to cover decay

The system is just as unfair if you compare a 2 person guild to a 200 person guild.

[Viisari]

Cool, so in a month or two we're going to have tons of level 100 guilds around and being in one won't really mean anything.

Why not just remove the guild levels if we're going to make them have no meaning at all? At least nobody can whine then...

[Chaos000]

I showed you the math it's not abritrary. The math will change based on actual # of accounts, but even @ 100 or 200 accounts the math still works. Arbitrary is the system - a system that benefits only very large guilds.

Actual # of accounts are irrelevant. If the small guild and large guild have roughly the same number of "active" accounts. The actual amount of renown that is needed to maintain the level is exactly the same. In fact. In this scenario if you take the bonuses into account the small guild ends up not having to work as hard.

[Tshober]

Cool, so in a month or two we're going to have tons of level 100 guilds around and being in one won't really mean anything.

Why not just remove the guild levels if we're going to make them have no meaning at all? At least nobody can whine then...

Ha, you seriously underestimate the D&D player's capacity to whine. I would vastly prefer no levels to the old decay system we had. I am for anything that makes your guild choice be about how you want to play and who you want to play with, rather than about guild levels.

[slarden]

Actual # of accounts are irrelevant. If the small guild and large guild have roughly the same number of "active" accounts. The actual amount of renown that is needed to maintain the level is exactly the same. In fact. In this scenario if you take the bonuses into account the small guild ends up not having to work as hard.

You are talking in circles. Inactive accounts are excluded from the guild account count to begin with.

There is no way a guild of 200 accounts (which by the way mean the account has been logged into the last month) has the same # of active accounts as the guild with 2 accounts. I am sorry this is the worst argument yet.

The new system needs to go.

[Enoach]

I think decay needs to be addressed, but the new proposed changes miss the new mark so much it needs to be scrapped. The new system can't require small guilds to gain 150 times more renown as large guilds to make up for daily decay. Using the old system and reducing decay by 50% would be a much better option or removing decay completely.

While I realize that your 150x as a Large guild comment is more an emotional than factual I thought I would take a moment to point out it is not as big a gap as that, but it is not a small gap either.

I'll use my Level 71 123 Active Accounts

Under the Old System

123 Active Account decay = 83,304 or 678 per Active Account

6 Active Account decay = 10,022 or 1,671 per Account <- Add in that Guild Renown is earned at 300% so now becomes 557

10 Active Account decay = 12,527 or 1,253 per Account <- Add in that Guild Renown is earned at 240% so now becomes 522

Under the Temporary change
123 Active Account decay = 12,527 or 102 per Active Account

6 Active Account decay = 12,527 or 4,176 per Account <- Add in that Guild Renown is earned at 300% so now becomes 695
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Basically any guild that was under the 10 Active Member mark was hit with more in the case above the 6 member guild would now be required to pull in approx. 140 more renown a day to stay even. While the 123 Active Account Guild now has a reduced amount per account by approx 575 to stay even.

If you bring this out to level 100 the 6 active member Guild still only needs to earn 6x the amount as a 123 active account.

It could be argued that more ants build a nest faster...
======================================

However, what is almost always not discussed is "How Active are members". While my Guild does have 123 Active Accounts, not all 123 accounts are active every day, some are weekend warriors, others have one or two nights/days they can play all depending on the Shift they have been assigned. Some are military and are deployed for a few weeks at a time to even a month or more.

Larger guilds generally have a larger ratio of these types of players then the smaller ones.

========================================

I do applaud Turbine for actually taking what I see as a FIRST step towards balancing the renown system. This however, should not be their last step. In the short term this will allow some of the static level guilds to possibly get out of the rut of gaining and losing a level.

But I hardly see the <10 Active member guilds as being hurt significantly as most of these guilds are powered by Very Active members and the extra 140 renown per day per person is not as big a deal as some make it out to be.

[Chaos000]

There is no way a guild of 200 accounts (which by the way mean the account has been logged into the last month) has the same # of active accounts as the guild with 2 accounts. I am sorry this is the worst argument yet.

Your argument is under the assumption that a guild of 200 accounts will all log in as frequently on a per day basis as the guild with 2 accounts. Assuming the members of the 2 account guild log in every single day and each member of the guild of 200 accounts log in once a month how much is the disparity between the two after you assign the bonuses a small guild receives?