Guild Renown Changes

[DocBenway]

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


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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.


See this?
The renown system is widely misunderstood. We are 26 pages into this thread and here is an intelligent poster with a well thought out post that still does not know about the hard coded minimum that I've been harping about for 8 months now.

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=362736

Whatever the final resulting system is, it needs to be well documented in an easy to reference area.

[slarden]

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
======================================
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...
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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.

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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.

Showing math is not emotional it is factual. The old decay was based on a min of 10 and then added 10 to that so the minimum was really 20 which is why your math is off. But even with your math off it shows how much more guild renown a small guild requires. Our guild of 6 has 2 active members, 2 casual players that play maybe 5-6 hours per month and 2 that log in once in a while. If someone is truly inactive their account doesn't count against decay anyhow.

Thank you for your response, but again I think if they keep the current system in place, they need to remove decay entirely. If not, just revert to the old system which was at least equitable.

[slarden]

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?

There is no such assumption. Small guilds and large guilds have those issues. You falsely assume this only happens with large guilds.

You have to make ridiculous assumptions for your logic to work and even then the system is unfair.

[Tshober]

See this?
The renown system is widely misunderstood. We are 26 pages into this thread and here is an intelligent poster with a well thought out post that still does not know about the hard coded minimum that I've been harping about for 8 months now.

http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=362736

Whatever the final resulting system is, it needs to be well documented in an easy to reference area.

Yes, and several seem to be unaware of the 1000 character hard cap on guild size as well and the effects that has on large guilds.

[jaedom]

This is great news as leader of a casual guild this means less stress on our usual players to maintain decay. ))

[Enoach]

Showing math is not emotional it is factual. The old decay was based on a min of 10 and then added 10 to that so the minimum was really 20 which is why your math is off. But even with your math off it shows how much more guild renown a small guild requires. Our guild of 6 has 2 active members, 2 casual players that play maybe 5-6 hours per month and 2 that log in once in a while. If someone is truly inactive their account doesn't count against decay anyhow.

Thank you for your response, but again I think if they keep the current system in place, they need to remove decay entirely. If not, just revert to the old system which was at least equitable.

But you didn't show math you showed your emotional state by using 150x per Active member, while I was showing its more like 6x. And if my math was incorrect because there is a hard coded minimum, than in reality the <10 member guilds didn't get hit under the new system with extra renown, but it also didn't help them either.

The point I was attempting to make is that this should only be the first step and more is still needed. But we can't get to this what MORE is needed if we keep waving our emotions around as facts.

I agree that there is something wrong with the decay system, part of what I see as a problem is that it is a daily decay, while most of the rest of Guild activity runs on Monthly (such as inactivity).

One thought I've had is to keep the calculations to the Old system, but instead of making it daily make the decay monthly. This would then use an average monthly active account measurement. The initial flaw I see is the Guild Leaving/Kick effect on active account measurement and how that should play in. But it could be taken care of by using the average of the Daily Active Account.

Of course this might be simplier if renown was just reduced to 1/30th.

[Chaos000]

You have to make ridiculous assumptions for your logic to work and even then the system is unfair.

Is there any guilds out there currently with 1000 characters with 200+ active accounts? (and by active you meant logged in at least once in a given month)

In this scenario you're using your guild as an example with 6 active accounts (within the same judging criteria "active" meaning logged in at least once in a given month)

I don't know of any 1000 character guilds out there with that level of activity that reasonably resembles the guild you're comparing your guild against. (screenshot or it didn't happen? :eek:)

The old system is flawed because it punishes casual players by counting them as active accounts if they log in at least once in a given month. Because larger guilds tend to have more casual players they were punished more severely for allowing them to remain in guild and the old system was unfair. I do believe the solution would be to give higher than the existing bonuses to smaller guilds to allow level progression where under the old system would merely allow them to maintain their level.

[Chaos000]

One thought I've had is to keep the calculations to the Old system, but instead of making it daily make the decay monthly. This would then use an average monthly active account measurement. The initial flaw I see is the Guild Leaving/Kick effect on active account measurement and how that should play in. But it could be taken care of by using the average of the Daily Active Account.

There's some merit in this idea.

[slarden]

But you didn't show math you showed your emotional state by using 150x per Active member, while I was showing its more like 6x. And if my math was incorrect because there is a hard coded minimum, than in reality the <10 member guilds didn't get hit under the new system with extra renown, but it also didn't help them either.

The point I was attempting to make is that this should only be the first step and more is still needed. But we can't get to this what MORE is needed if we keep waving our emotions around as facts.

I agree that there is something wrong with the decay system, part of what I see as a problem is that it is a daily decay, while most of the rest of Guild activity runs on Monthly (such as inactivity).

One thought I've had is to keep the calculations to the Old system, but instead of making it daily make the decay monthly. This would then use an average monthly active account measurement. The initial flaw I see is the Guild Leaving/Kick effect on active account measurement and how that should play in. But it could be taken care of by using the average of the Daily Active Account.

Of course this might be simplier if renown was just reduced to 1/30th.

The 150x math was absolutely correct comparing a guild with 6 accounts vs. the theoretical maximum of 1000. There was no emotion - it was simple math. I realize a 1000 account guild is highly improbable but it shows the range of possible distortion available in the game. Even with 200 it's quite dramatic.

If you look back at the other posts - those are driven by math and not emotion. Math requires no emotion actually.

I would like to see them keep the old system and reduce decay by 50%. If a guild is moving in place they should be able to move forward. I am also fine with just eliminating decay altogether. As a small guild, when one member take s a break our renown moves backwards.

I woui

[slarden]

Is there any guilds out there currently with 1000 characters with 200+ active accounts? (and by active you meant logged in at least once in a given month)

In this scenario you're using your guild as an example with 6 active accounts (within the same judging criteria "active" meaning logged in at least once in a given month)

I don't know of any 1000 character guilds out there with that level of activity that reasonably resembles the guild you're comparing your guild against. (screenshot or it didn't happen? :eek:)

The old system is flawed because it punishes casual players by counting them as active accounts if they log in at least once in a given month. Because larger guilds tend to have more casual players they were punished more severely for allowing them to remain in guild and the old system was unfair. I do believe the solution would be to give higher than the existing bonuses to smaller guilds to allow level progression where under the old system would merely allow them to maintain their level.

Fair enough, but the new system is such an over-correction that is much more unbalanced than the old system. I see large guilds advancing faster than my small guild and I see large guilds staying in place- that was before the change. If our small guild had an advantage it was only that we knew each other well and we felt the benefits of things like taking renown as an end reward and using guild elixirs at times.

[blkcat1028]

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?

Well, if every member of a 200 man guild logged in once a month that would = 200 days of play/ monthly.

If every member of a 2 man guild logged in everyday a month the would be 60 days of play/ monthly. Add in the small guild bonus of 180%, that would work out to roughly 168 days of play/ monthly.

Even in this extreme example the small guild is still ~15% behind.

The question I have is how many 200 member guilds out there that have a 3% activity level? I know of a few (at least) 2 man guilds.

[Chaos000]

Well, if every member of a 200 man guild logged in once a month that would = 200 days of play/ monthly.

If every member of a 2 man guild logged in everyday a month the would be 60 days of play/ monthly. Add in the small guild bonus of 180%, that would work out to roughly 168 days of play/ monthly.

Even in this extreme example the small guild is still ~15% behind.

I don't have any issue if the developers chose to give 2 man guilds a 15% boost or reduce their decay by 15%.

[EllisDee37]

Yeah, with a tweaking of the small bonus -- starting out much larger than 300% and maybe the bonus finally tapers off at 100 accounts instead of 50 -- this decay correction is probably a solid fix.

As a leader of a 22-account level 65 guild I'm not particularly bummed that now I'm on the short end of the stick, since we have been reaping the rewards of being on the favored side of the equation the last couple months. But I do chuckle, thinking of that old joke with the punchline:

"This all sounds great! But what happens Tuesday?"
"Tuesday is your day in the barrel."

[Tshober]

I have said many times before that I don't have any problem if the small guild bonuses are increased (within reason) to keep small and tiny guilds viable. It is unfortunate that some of them refuse to recognize the overwhelming good that has already been done and are actively advocating undoing it. Any significant reduction in renown decay is goodness. The change that has already been made removed the barriers to advancement for many guilds and significantly reduced the incentives to shun casual/social players. The last thing that should be done is to undo all that progress and go back to the old anti-social decay system. Instead we should build on it and work on ways to make the benefits extend to even tiny guilds that have not been helped yet. Increasing the small guild bonuses is one pretty simple and effective way to accomplish that.

[Claransa]

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!

Just thought i'd put this out there, I've recently (last few months) expanded my horizons by playing another MMO (zomg yes i said that). Thing is I've had my fun on this other MMO and wouldn't mind getting back to playing some DDO. Thing is I know that if I come back to DDO my guild's renown decay will go up and I'm really just wanting to play DDO, part time.

The point being, you should just get rid of renown decay altogether it causes some potentially returning players to stay away.

[slarden]

I have said many times before that I don't have any problem if the small guild bonuses are increased (within reason) to keep small and tiny guilds viable. It is unfortunate that some of them refuse to recognize the overwhelming good that has already been done and are actively advocating undoing it. Any significant reduction in renown decay is goodness. The change that has already been made removed the barriers to advancement for many guilds and significantly reduced the incentives to shun casual/social players. The last thing that should be done is to undo all that progress and go back to the old anti-social decay system. Instead we should build on it and work on ways to make the benefits extend to even tiny guilds that have not been helped yet. Increasing the small guild bonuses is one pretty simple and effective way to accomplish that.

DDO effectively elminated decay as an issue for large guilds at all. Why not just get rid of it all together.

I would not be in favor of implementing the new system until a change is made that allows small guilds to level as well. It is not "good" to implement a system that favors only large guilds. Going with the old system and reducing decay is also an easy fix and more equitable. The problem with the new system is that it is not equitable and makes leveling hard only for small guilds.

The assumption that small guilds have all active player and no casual players is just flat out wrong.

[eris2323]

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.

Another solution would be to recruit, and get away from that magic number of 'exploit the guild system with 6-12 accounts' that everyone has been using for a year, or more, now. Give some new players a home. Teach them the ropes.

Why Turbine gives such a huge bonus to small guilds is beyond me. They should be rewarding those who engage their players.

[eris2323]

On a related note....

Dear Turbine.

Please remove the guild 'leaderboards' entirely.

I am interested in playing a PVE game, and not a PVP game. And some seem to think the guiild system is a competition, instead of players finding and making their own homes.

I am not here to PVP.

Please remove guild leaderboards entirely. I don't care about joe schmoes guilds.

[Tshober]

Just thought i'd put this out there, I've recently (last few months) expanded my horizons by playing another MMO (zomg yes i said that). Thing is I've had my fun on this other MMO and wouldn't mind getting back to playing some DDO. Thing is I know that if I come back to DDO my guild's renown decay will go up and I'm really just wanting to play DDO, part time.

The point being, you should just get rid of renown decay altogether it causes some potentially returning players to stay away.

I have great news for you! With the most recent change that was made to the renown decay formula, your returning to DDO would NOT add any renown decay at all to your guild. Yay! The caveat to that is the change is temporary and the devs are currently evaluating the results and player feedback to decide whether to keep it or not.

[Tshober]

DDO effectively elminated decay as an issue for large guilds at all. Why not just get rid of it all together.


I'm good with that. I have been advocating for exactly that change for many months. But, realistically, I am uncertain it will happen. With no decay at all, how would the DDO store sell renown pots?

[Viisari]

Another solution would be to recruit, and get away from that magic number of 'exploit the guild system with 6-12 accounts' that everyone has been using for a year, or more, now. Give some new players a home. Teach them the ropes.

Why Turbine gives such a huge bonus to small guilds is beyond me. They should be rewarding those who engage their players.

You do realize that there are plenty of other reasons than guild renown for having a small guild?

Like, maybe, I dunno, wanting a small, organized and active group of people to play with? Or having a guild that only has IRL friends in it like my very first guild.

Thinking that every small guild was just looking to exploit the system is ********. Some of us don't want to randomly just recruit lots of people, guild renown doesn't even enter the equation much of the time. Our guilds are more about small, tightly knit groups rather than having tons of random people with the same guild name.

If this new system is to stay then just remove guild levels completely because they're going to mean nothing at all.

[eris2323]

You do realize that there are plenty of other reasons than guild renown for having a small guild?

Like, maybe, I dunno, wanting a small, organized and active group of people to play with? Or having a guild that only has IRL friends in it like my very first guild.

Thinking that every small guild was just looking to exploit the system is ********. Some of us don't want to randomly just recruit lots of people, guild renown doesn't even enter the equation much of the time. Our guilds are more about small, tightly knit groups rather than having tons of random people with the same guild name.

If this new system is to stay then just remove guild levels completely because they're going to mean nothing at all.

If you choose to play with a self-imposed penalty (like a small guild, or a permadeath guild), I do not see why the rest of us have had to suffer.

During all this time, the large guilds have been suffering, as people left to form these uber-small guilds to game the system. So, I don't have a lot of sympathy.

Some succeeded, some failed. Good luck to them.

A very large percentage of guild leaders would love a change to renown. We're worried about vastly more players than you. Under the new, proposed system, there is a solution to your problem - recruit. Under the old system, there was a solution to our problem - kick out casual players.

Your solution is less painful than our old solution. Feel thankful. I do hope in the future, the system will be changed to something that will allow all guilds to rise in levels, but I am not sure a guild of 6 people should be able to make it to level 100 in less than say, 6 years or so.

As the leader of a large guild with MANY casual players, I can say we did not shoot up in levels during this test. It was nice to not see the same decay every day, and to see a little, tiny bit of growth during this time.

I still hope this change becomes a permanent change - our guild would like to return to closer to our roots, and invite some poor newbies to game with us, and learn the games - so we can share in their fun journey.

But we can't, ever - without a major change to the renown system.

[Cernunan]

Another solution would be to recruit, and get away from that magic number of 'exploit the guild system with 6-12 accounts' that everyone has been using for a year, or more, now. Give some new players a home. Teach them the ropes.

Why Turbine gives such a huge bonus to small guilds is beyond me. They should be rewarding those who engage their players.

As usual you are being rude to those who do not agree with you.

The fact is that some of use value quality over quantity. Having been the leader of both a huge guild, as well as my current small guild, I just prefer to be in a group of friends who play and think and talk the way I do.
We have played and supported the game for YEARS. We find this environment much preferable to being in a guild of hundreds of people we do not even know, for the sole reason of waving hi to strangers.

Some of us do not care that larger guilds have it easier now. I am glad that you are happy. Have fun.
What we do care is that the new changes gut the equity of the system, so that small, organized, friend guilds of people who have played since the game started are no longer on an even playing field with those who have to build huge glut guilds of complete strangers.

[eris2323]

As usual you are being rude to those who do not agree with you.

The fact is that some of use value quality over quantity. Having been the leader of both a huge guild, as well as my current small guild, I just prefer to be in a group of friends who play and think and talk the way I do.
We have played and supported the game for YEARS. We find this environment much preferable to being in a guild of hundreds of people we do not even know, for the sole reason of waving hi to strangers.

Some of us do not care that larger guilds have it easier now. I am glad that you are happy. Have fun.
What we do care is that the new changes gut the equity of the system, so that small, organized, friend guilds of people who have played since the game started are no longer on an even playing field with those who have to build huge glut guilds of complete strangers.

If you perceived rudeness, sorry. That was not my intent.

I know all my guildies, a little - i built a community for us.

I have put a lot of working into creating the things that Turbine has not given us.

My large guild is my home. I am sorry you have not been able to find a home like ours.

[Viisari]

If you choose to play with a self-imposed penalty (like a small guild, or a permadeath guild), I do not see why the rest of us have had to suffer.

So wanting to build a specific kind of guild is supposed to be a "self-imposed penalty"? Seriously?


During all this time, the large guilds have been suffering, as people left to form these uber-small guilds to game the system. So, I don't have a lot of sympathy.

Large guilds are also the ones who got the best ship buffs first , not many of them have many, if any, noteworthy buffs left to get.


A very large percentage of guild leaders would love a change to renown. We're worried about vastly more players than you. Under the new, proposed system, there is a solution to your problem - recruit. Under the old system, there was a solution to our problem - kick out casual players.

The old system was in need of some tweaking, but in typical Turbine fashion they just straight out brought the sledgehammer out and smashed the system completely.

And your solution "to my problem" is the same as telling people to kick out casuals under the old system. You say you want casuals in your guild and don't want to kick them? We have always been very specific in our recruiting, basically you'd have to know one or several people from our guild for a good long while if you want in.

Our guild is built with some very specific ideas, and now you're telling us to just abandon those?`

See how the tables are now completely opposite from before? Large guilds get all the benefits in the world while small guilds have little to no benefits as far as renown is concerned.


Your solution is less painful than our old solution. Feel thankful. I do hope in the future, the system will be changed to something that will allow all guilds to rise in levels, but I am not sure a guild of 6 people should be able to make it to level 100 in less than say, 6 years or so.

You presume much. "Our solution" is something that we will never do because it does not fit the idea of our guild. At all.

On the other hand "your solution" under the old system was kicking out people who hadn't logged in for months or years. Why is kicking someone who has not logged in for years an issue in the first place? If they were ever to come back they could just join up again.


I still hope this change becomes a permanent change - our guild would like to return to closer to our roots, and invite some poor newbies to game with us, and learn the games - so we can share in their fun journey.

But we can't, ever - without a major change to the renown system.

And now that the system benefits your guild you're happily telling everyone that it's fine and everyone should just completely change the way their guilds operate to compensate? Classy.

I've stated in the past that I don't really care if the renown system is changed, but I guess I should've added that any such change should at least done sensibly and not with the typical sledgehammer approach like was done here again.


My large guild is my home. I am sorry you have not been able to find a home like ours.

But we do have a home we've built. And your solution is to completely demolish that.

[eris2323]

And now that the system benefits your guild you're happily telling everyone that it's fine and everyone should just completely change the way their guilds operate to compensate? Classy.

I've stated in the past that I don't really care if the renown system is changed, but I guess I should've added that any such change should at least done sensibly and not with the typical sledgehammer approach like was done here again.

Actually, I said I like the changes, and was hoping for more, as the devs have stated this was an easy-fix for them, and a test.

Since you are one of 'those' who puts words in my mouth, without following closely enough to realize you are wrong, this ends now. Good luck with your small guild!

Building a permadeath guild is a self-imposed penalty. So is building a guild with 2 players.

[Tshober]

You do realize that there are plenty of other reasons than guild renown for having a small guild?

Like, maybe, I dunno, wanting a small, organized and active group of people to play with? Or having a guild that only has IRL friends in it like my very first guild.

Thinking that every small guild was just looking to exploit the system is ********. Some of us don't want to randomly just recruit lots of people, guild renown doesn't even enter the equation much of the time. Our guilds are more about small, tightly knit groups rather than having tons of random people with the same guild name.

If this new system is to stay then just remove guild levels completely because they're going to mean nothing at all.

Of course not EVERY guild in the optimal size range for leveling under the old decay system chose that size deliberately to level up higher. But there is no denying that SOME guilds in that size range were made specifically for leveling up higher. If this change remains in place, then it will become pretty obvious which guilds were small because they really like being small and which were small because they really like leveling up. The former will remain small and the latter will jump to faster leveling guilds.

If the change remains in place, I would like to see the devs help out the smaller guilds some by increasing the small guild bonuses (within reason) so the tiny and small guilds remain viable. The players who really want to level up will migrate to whatever guild size is perceived as being the optimal for leveling. The rest of us will remain where we are now because we did not choose where are are based on leveling considerations.

[Viisari]

Actually, I said I like the changes, and was hoping for more, as the devs have stated this was an easy-fix for them, and a test.

Since you are one of 'those' who puts words in my mouth, without following closely enough to realize you are wrong, this ends now. Good luck with your small guild!

But you did tell us to recruit more players, which is the same telling us to completely change the way our guild operates.

No one has put any words in your mouth.


Building a permadeath guild is a self-imposed penalty. So is building a guild with 2 players.

I do not care about permadeath, and look! He's making silly assumptions again! Our guild has far more than 2 players, last time I check we were at 21 active accounts I think.

And thinking that wishing to build a small guild is, or should be a limitation is just flat out ********.

[Viisari]

Of course not EVERY guild in the optimal size range for leveling under the old decay system chose that size deliberately to level up higher. But there is no denying that SOME guilds in that size range were made specifically for leveling up higher.

Just as there were guilds who were only mass recruiting because that helped them blaze through the levels so quickly.

Only that doesn't work all the way, so for optimal playing the system you'd have to first mass recruit and then start kicking the people who aren't active enough when you hit level 65 or so.

With the new system large guilds have every single advantage, so if these changes stay in place we'll start seeing huge guilds again with the single purpose of getting to high guild levels.

[eris2323]

But you did tell us to recruit more players, which is the same telling us to completely change the way our guild operates.

No one has put any words in your mouth.



I do not care about permadeath, and look! He's making silly assumptions again! Our guild has far more than 2 players, last time I check we were at 21 active accounts I think.

And thinking that wishing to build a small guild is, or should be a limitation is just flat out ********.

I suggested a fix for what you perceive is an injustice in the system, which I do not perceive is an injustice in the system. It is a simple fix, and you would make new friends and level faster!

I use the number 2 to demonstrate my point. I did not mean YOUR guild had only 2 people in it. I mean, that when a guild is permadeath, or a guild of one, one has chosen a self imposed penalty, to make the game to your liking.

Small guilds like that, I believe, SHOULD take forever and a day to get to level 100, but should still have a chance of getting there.

Guilds that are homes to hundreds of accounts - seperate people, should be getting a bonus, for maintaining their community and growing something people want to be a part of. We SHOULD be levelling much faster than any 12 person guild, ever. In my opinion, of course.

I do not want to suffer because of someone elses self-imposed penalty.

Never once did I 'you're happily telling everyone that it's fine'.

This is where I take offence.

[Viisari]

Guilds that are homes to hundreds of accounts - seperate people, should be getting a bonus, for maintaining their community and growing something people want to be a part of.

This applies to small guilds as well, some issues are easier for large guilds and some are more difficult for them just as some issues are easier for small guilds and others are difficult for them. Both have their own goals and communities.


Small guilds like that, I believe, SHOULD take forever and a day to get to level 100, but should still have a chance of getting there.

We SHOULD be levelling much faster than any 12 person guild, ever. In my opinion, of course.

And that means this is utter nonsense. There's no reason why small OR large guilds should have any advantages over the other as far as the system itself goes. People should be free to choose what size of a guild they wish to build, how renown works should not enter the equation at all.

Both systems have failed in this but the previous system wasn't this unfair towards any kind of guild at any point. In the past different sizes had their benefits at different guild levels, now it's just go big all the way if you want renown.

What the old system did succeed in was the its designed intent though: The very highest levels were very difficult to achieve and were an accomplishment. That is no longer the case however, so even the intent behind the system has changed.

[Tshober]

Just as there were guilds who were only mass recruiting because that helped them blaze through the levels so quickly.

Only that doesn't work all the way, so for optimal playing the system you'd have to first mass recruit and then start kicking the people who aren't active enough when you hit level 65 or so.

With the new system large guilds have every single advantage, so if these changes stay in place we'll start seeing huge guilds again with the single purpose of getting to high guild levels.

If a guild becomes very large through recruiting (mass or otherwise) and retains those members and the members like the guild and keep playing DDO, that is a good thing, as far as I am concerned. Mass recruiting only becomes exploitive if you abuse the new players by later mass kicking them. There have already been a number of good suggestions made in this thread for ways to punish guilds for mass kicking. I support such penalties for mass kicking, as long as there is a reasonable time limit after which the penalty does not apply. For instance, if a member has not logged in for more than say 3 months, then the penalty should not apply because the player has obviously stopped playing DDO.

[Viisari]

If a guild becomes very large through recruiting (mass or otherwise) and retains those members and the members like the guild and keep playing DDO, that is a good thing, as far as I am concerned.

Sure, just as a new player finding a small guild with a bunch of players he loves playing with is a good thing.

There's absolutely no reason any size of guild should be favored. The old system favored very high activity of players with some leanings towards small guilds At the very highest guild levels; before that it overwhelmingly favored large guilds because decay was not an issue. The issue was that the very big guilds never, ever had anywhere near the same average activity as small guilds did.

So the system did actually accomplish what it was designed to do, reward very high average activity with the very highest guild levels. With the current system large guilds might as well have no guild renown to consider while it remains pretty much the same for the small guilds. And for small guilds they still do have to consider their size unless they go all the way, because if they start recruiting they'll also start losing their renown bonuses.

[Tshober]

Sure, just as a new player finding a small guild with a bunch of players he loves playing with is a good thing.

There's absolutely no reason any size of guild should be favored. The old system favored very high activity of players with some leanings towards small guilds At the very highest guild levels; before that it overwhelmingly favored large guilds because decay was not an issue. The issue was that the very big guilds never, ever had anywhere near the same average activity as small guilds did.

So the system did actually accomplish what it was designed to do, reward very high average activity with the very highest guild levels. With the current system large guilds might as well have no guild renown to consider while it remains pretty much the same for the small guilds. And for small guilds they still do have to consider their size unless they go all the way, because if they start recruiting they'll also start losing their renown bonuses.

I generally agree with your description of the change that has been made so far. But you left out the fact that the change eliminated the barriers to advancement for many guilds and significantly reduced the incentives to shun casual/social players. I view those as overwhelmingly positive changes. So my preference is to retain the change and those positives and build on it to make it even better. There have been many suggstions that would do exactly that. Increasing small guild bonuses to help keep small and tiny guilds viable. Penalizing guilds for mass kicking their membership after they level up. Perhapes even eliminating decay entirely. All of those and many more could be considered to improve upon the goodness that has already been achieved.

[Chaos000]

A 15% boost doesn't cut it. It based on the assumption that all people in small guilds are active and all play ever day and that people in large guilds log in only once per month. Those are false assumptions. Small guilds have the same issue that large guilds have with game play time and activity levels.

I would assume that a 2 person guild is fairly active... pretty sure it would be a whole lot easier to coordinate in smaller numbers... how else would they get any progression under the old system?

Taking guild size out of the equation is a good move. And to be honest removing guild decay once and for all is about as likely to happen as dungeon alert being taken out of the game. It's going to be there in some form whether we like it or not.

If the disparity is ~15%, simple solution = 15% boost. I am ok with small guilds being just as viable as a large guild but incentives to remain exclusively small? (like limiting guild size to the magic number of 6... why not 7? one more or less player is going to ruin your magic 300% multiplier?)

If we do go back to the old system the decay per active account should be monthly (as active accounts are counted as logged in once per month) or the number of active accounts should be assessed on a day-to-day basis. (as in logged in a 24 hour period)

Reducing decay based on the age of the guild is another idea... 1+ years = 25% decay reduction, 3 = 50%, 5+ years = 75%, 10+ years (if it ever gets to that) = 100% decay reduction. New invite everyone guilds tend to have a fairly short life anyhow so this will benefit the old establish guilds the most.

[Viisari]

But you left out the fact that the change eliminated the barriers to advancement for many guilds and significantly reduced the incentives to shun casual/social players. I view those as overwhelmingly positive changes.

The changes may have had some positive results, but the way it was achieved was just terrible. If those were the goals then just tweaking the old system would've been enough.

Now the system also inherently favors very large guilds.

The developers also need to make clear if it's intentional for the guild levels after 85 or so to become completely meaningless; they were designed to have very little in the way of any rewards and be about prestige and fame, with these changes that is simply not the case anymore.

[Bal-Sagoth]

Tolero, renown decay is back taking guild size into account. We lost 41k two days in a row now.


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!

[DogMania]

Tolero, renown decay is back taking guild size into account. We lost 41k two days in a row now.

Yep Maybar Off Guild renown decay back to what it was

[theslimshady]

all these pages of debate are moot if any have been paying attention the new system was on from mon-weds only and was reverted back for thusday and friday so even if mabar gets fixed it will prob be the old bleed out renown festivals of old

so back to the ole way of ignoreing renown decay or
dont feel happy about the festivals
watch your guild level never go up and drop when all others are having fun killing udead ----------------------------happy halloween

[Tshober]

Yep Maybar Off Guild renown decay back to what it was

This was reported yesterday too. Seems Mabar has undone the renown change.

[theslimshady]

yes i was thinking its a really big issue right now and maybe related to the mabar crash and burn i am afraid to check my bags this year

[Shmuel]

People seem to have a lot of opinions on this subject. Some see a problem with lots of level 100 guilds, others seen no problem, some want bonuses for casual players, some want active players to have a meaningful advantage since they p;lay more....

What if:

There was NO maximum guild level. Instead, guilds could keep advancing indefinitely, up to guild levels in the thousands even. Each level would take more renown to get than the last, just like it is now, and the amount of increase would also keep increasing, maybe by x^1.1 or something.

Along with this, have no decay at all, unless the effective guild level becomes zero. In that case, take 25% of the guild's total renown away each day that no account has logged on. This would eliminate guilds held by inactive players from being a major factor.

Keep the bonuses for small guilds, and allow that to only factor in active accounts.

Instead of absolute numerical levels needed to gain ship buffs and other guild bonuses, like it is now where for example you need to be level 50 to gain the 2nd non-store bought ship, have those things based on where your guild stands relative to other guilds at the time.

So for example if your guild had as much or more renown than the mean renown for all guilds on the server, you would have the same bonuses as you get now at level 50. To have a +2 chr shrine, you would need to be in the top 55%, for the final ship, your guild would need to be in the the top 15% of all guilds, in terms of renown currently held by all guilds.

Some of the numbers might need to be adjusted down a bit, maybe something like 10th, 15th, 30th, 35th, 60th, 65th percentile for ships or something else which could be debated. separately.

Should allow people to keep advancing, let the people who NEED to show everyone else how much better they are have a level 3000 guild, let everyone else be in whatever guild and keep the people we like without worrying about decay, and also mean if you want the top-tier buffs, you will have to keep moving, which Turbine wants to keep us all in the grind- but only at basically the same pace as everyone else on the server. Everyone wins. No?

[Tshober]

People seem to have a lot of opinions on this subject. Some see a problem with lots of level 100 guilds, others seen no problem, some want bonuses for casual players, some want active players to have a meaningful advantage since they p;lay more....

What if:

There was NO maximum guild level. Instead, guilds could keep advancing indefinitely, up to guild levels in the thousands even. Each level would take more renown to get than the last, just like it is now, and the amount of increase would also keep increasing, maybe by x^1.1 or something.

Along with this, have no decay at all, unless the effective guild level becomes zero. In that case, take 25% of the guild's total renown away each day that no account has logged on. This would eliminate guilds held by inactive players from being a major factor.

Keep the bonuses for small guilds, and allow that to only factor in active accounts.

Instead of absolute numerical levels needed to gain ship buffs and other guild bonuses, like it is now where for example you need to be level 50 to gain the 2nd non-store bought ship, have those things based on where your guild stands relative to other guilds at the time.

So for example if your guild had as much or more renown than the mean renown for all guilds on the server, you would have the same bonuses as you get now at level 50. To have a +2 chr shrine, you would need to be in the top 55%, for the final ship, your guild would need to be in the the top 15% of all guilds, in terms of renown currently held by all guilds.

Some of the numbers might need to be adjusted down a bit, maybe something like 10th, 15th, 30th, 35th, 60th, 65th percentile for ships or something else which could be debated. separately.

Should allow people to keep advancing, let the people who NEED to show everyone else how much better they are have a level 3000 guild, let everyone else be in whatever guild and keep the people we like without worrying about decay, and also mean if you want the top-tier buffs, you will have to keep moving, which Turbine wants to keep us all in the grind- but only at basically the same pace as everyone else on the server. Everyone wins. No?



You mean something like this: http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=385226

[Shmuel]

You mean something like this: http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=385226

In the sense of not limiting number of levels, yes, in the sense of the other rues you posted there, not so much. Seems a little complex.

The way I thought of it, each guild attains a level, and then also a percentile based on comparison with other guilds, and the percentile determined amenities. Meaning if you start slacking off and too many other guilds get ahead of you, you start to lose the ability to get amenities. Essentially like decay, but where instead of some arbitrary number picked by a programmer for the decay modifier, your ability to stay in the top 50%, 75%, 2% whatever of guilds was determined by how much renown you get compared to the other guilds, not just compared to some number picked by a dev.

All that other stuff about kicking people etc seems unnecessary to me, since any decent guild will not be doing that kind of stuff, and if the guild leader is the kind of person who does that stuff, i highly doubt they get invited to lots of groups anyway. announcements seem like fluff, and for people in level 100+ guilds, the cost of the amenities, with one or two exceptions, is trivial.

[Tshober]

In the sense of not limiting number of levels, yes, in the sense of the other rues you posted there, not so much. Seems a little complex.

The way I thought of it, each guild attains a level, and then also a percentile based on comparison with other guilds, and the percentile determined amenities. Meaning if you start slacking off and too many other guilds get ahead of you, you start to lose the ability to get amenities. Essentially like decay, but where instead of some arbitrary number picked by a programmer for the decay modifier, your ability to stay in the top 50%, 75%, 2% whatever of guilds was determined by how much renown you get compared to the other guilds, not just compared to some number picked by a dev.

All that other stuff about kicking people etc seems unnecessary to me, since any decent guild will not be doing that kind of stuff, and if the guild leader is the kind of person who does that stuff, i highly doubt they get invited to lots of groups anyway. announcements seem like fluff, and for people in level 100+ guilds, the cost of the amenities, with one or two exceptions, is trivial.

Hmmm, others have complained that it seemed complex as well. It seemed very simple and straightforward to me.

The announcements are fluff and the cost of the amenities is trivial. They were chosen that way on purpose so that there is no real benefit of leveling up beyond level 100 other than "bragging rights". That eliminates all incentive to exclude casual/social players from your guild. And this is why I don't like your version as well because it retains an incentive to filter out casual/social players.

The fear of large guilds kicking most of their members is the 2nd most common complaint about the change that the devs made. The most common one being that it is unfair to tiny guilds.

[slarden]

I would assume that a 2 person guild is fairly active... pretty sure it would be a whole lot easier to coordinate in smaller numbers... how else would they get any progression under the old system?

Taking guild size out of the equation is a good move. And to be honest removing guild decay once and for all is about as likely to happen as dungeon alert being taken out of the game. It's going to be there in some form whether we like it or not.

If the disparity is ~15%, simple solution = 15% boost. I am ok with small guilds being just as viable as a large guild but incentives to remain exclusively small? (like limiting guild size to the magic number of 6... why not 7? one more or less player is going to ruin your magic 300% multiplier?)

If we do go back to the old system the decay per active account should be monthly (as active accounts are counted as logged in once per month) or the number of active accounts should be assessed on a day-to-day basis. (as in logged in a 24 hour period)

Reducing decay based on the age of the guild is another idea... 1+ years = 25% decay reduction, 3 = 50%, 5+ years = 75%, 10+ years (if it ever gets to that) = 100% decay reduction. New invite everyone guilds tend to have a fairly short life anyhow so this will benefit the old establish guilds the most.

I know many people in small guilds that don't play much. I think they should declare a decay holiday until they figure out a better system, i.e., remove the decay completely or cut it in half using the old system. My guess is that a very small percentage of the DDO players will be disappointed by the removal of decay.

I think the monthly system would work. They can also look at decreasing the decay formula for larger guilds by maybe 50% so that a 200 person guild only suffered renown based on 100 - this would assume that the larger guilds can't manage their members the way a small guild can.

All in all, I say get rid of decay or cut it in half as a quick fix. The system is similar to chess ratings where you hit a wall based on your skill level. For guilds they hit a wall based on how active their players are. The wall is set too low.

[UrbanPyro]

Deleted.

[marybee]

Being a Small Guild at the moment, we did not notice a change in decay. I will await to see if our allied guilds are better off though. It sounds like they should be with this new system if it's still in place.

I think it's great to look at this and thank you for listening to people's very real concerns. Everyone has their own idea of what a guild should be, and that's fine as I think there will be a guild out there for each of us as we find others who think and play like we do. Many of us want to encourage new players and get their guild to grow. They also hope that old players just might come back again! Hopefully we can find a system that will be welcoming to all kinds of players, even those who are too busy in Real Life to play for hours each day. The few hours a week or even a month players are just as valid a part of our community as those who can afford to play for hours each day. At least that's what I think. :)

Marybee (Lyfa, Leader of the Little Dogs, Orien)

[DocBenway]

I know Mabar is broke and demanding all the attention, but the test lasted 3 days and there has been no reply to any feedback about its abrupt end.

Hey in there!
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v340/hemulator/stickygetoutdontleech.gif

Is it supposed to be reverted to former rates?

[Dekh]

On a related note....

Dear Turbine.

Please remove the guild 'leaderboards' entirely.

I am interested in playing a PVE game, and not a PVP game. And some seem to think the guiild system is a competition, instead of players finding and making their own homes.

I am not here to PVP.

Please remove guild leaderboards entirely. I don't care about joe schmoes guilds.

Guild System is a competition, otherwise why they make a levels with corresponding level-reward ?
All games online where u play with or against other people is a competition, if u want PVE play offline

[Tshober]

Guild System is a competition, otherwise why they make a levels with corresponding level-reward ?
All games online where u play with or against other people is a competition, if u want PVE play offline

Every player I hang out with views guilds as being about cooperation and helping each other out and socializing, none of which you can do in offline games. Studies of MMO's have shown that the number one thing that keeps people playing them is the social environment and online friendships they build. In this very long thread about guilds, you are only the 2nd poster to say that you think DDO guilds are about competition.

If you are trying to compete with my guild, then you are wasting your time because we don't want to compete with you. We are just trying to gain guild levels to help out our members. We are not even in a big hurry to do so, but we do want to get there eventually. I believe most players see their guild as being about cooperation and not about competition. Seems like it would be a pretty unsatisfying "victory" for you since most of your "opponents" don't want to compete and are not even aware it is a competition.

[Dekh]

Every player I hang out with views guilds as being about cooperation and helping each other out and socializing, none of which you can do in offline games. Studies of MMO's have shown that the number one thing that keeps people playing them is the social environment and online friendships they build. In this very long thread about guilds, you are only the 2nd poster to say that you think DDO guilds are about competition.

If you are trying to compete with my guild, then you are wasting your time because we don't want to compete with you. We are just trying to gain guild levels to help out our members. We are not even in a big hurry to do so, but we do want to get there eventually. I believe most players see their guild as being about cooperation and not about competition. Seems like it would be a pretty unsatisfying "victory" for you since most of your "opponents" don't want to compete and are not even aware it is a competition.

Yes i'm only the 2nd poster to say ddo guilds are about competition. Each of us plays with different ideals, but often the objective is the same. This will be not unsatisfying "victory" for me since most of the people (like you) don't want to compete in this competition, but will be a pretty satisfying victory for me compete with all those people that compete in this race.
And trust..the people you think do not take it as a competition are few..and they will not admit.

Peace. :D

[eris2323]

Seems to me if i wanted a competition amongst guilds, I'd be playing... guild wars?

I dunno, probably something with PVP... but since I'm not....

Please remove guild leaderboards entirely.

[Viisari]

If you are trying to compete with my guild, then you are wasting your time because we don't want to compete with you.

But some guilds do compete with other guilds, in guild renown, speed runs, number of TR's, who gets the first elite/epic elite raid completions from new raids etc etc.

DDO might be mainly a PVE game but that does not mean that there's no competition nor should such things be denied from people.

Why do you wish to see the guild leaderboard gone anyway? Most people probably don't even know such thing exists, nobody forces you to ever look at it and the only thing it tells is the amount of renown and the level a guild has. It's also quite useful for datamining.

PS. please fix the challenge leaderboard already. <edit> nvm looks like it's fixed :)

[Dirac]

Yes i'm only the 2nd poster to say ddo guilds are about competition. Each of us plays with different ideals, but often the objective is the same. This will be not unsatisfying "victory" for me since most of the people (like you) don't want to compete in this competition, but will be a pretty satisfying victory for me compete with all those people that compete in this race.
And trust..the people you think do not take it as a competition are few..and they will not admit.

Peace. :D

That's cool. I think we agree on the result. You are in favor of removing all renown decay so the competition is fair, right?

[Dirac]

But some guilds do compete with other guilds, in guild renown, speed runs, number of TR's, who gets the first elite/epic elite raid completions from new raids etc etc.

DDO might be mainly a PVE game but that does not mean that there's no competition nor should such things be denied from people.

Why do you wish to see the guild leaderboard gone anyway? Most people probably don't even know such thing exists, nobody forces you to ever look at it and the only thing it tells is the amount of renown and the level a guild has. It's also quite useful for datamining.



I think this is true and a positive aspect of the game. However, like PvP, it is important that the "guild wars" aspect of guild renown is a separate activity, so those who don't want to participate aren't affected negatively.

How about if we make it a choice for each guild? Each guild can choose not to have any renown decay. However, if they choose no decay, they can't be listed on the leaderboard, nor will their guild level be listed under their character name in game.

[Chaos000]

But some guilds do compete with other guilds, in guild renown, speed runs, number of TR's, who gets the first elite/epic elite raid completions from new raids etc etc.

DDO might be mainly a PVE game but that does not mean that there's no competition nor should such things be denied from people.

When I come across comments like this I can't help but wonder if they should not add any additional ship buff perks and allow the guild level to exceed 100 with no additional benefit other than the number being different.

Have it so that all guilds regardless of size will eventually progress to 100 after which decay increases after that point will not be adjusted to appease those who use renown as a source of competition

[Yan_PL]

Sorry. I've just read the whole thread and I can't be sure what's the current formula anymore, so many varied opinions. so, instead I'll just ask:
I'm in a lvl 77 guild which has 59 total members, 1 recent departure, and 6 inactive pplz (who are friends that we didn't want to boot). which means there are 53 people who logged in during last month;

How much renown do we lose daily to decay?
How much renown each active player in my guild needs to get to counteract decay? What if 20 of those people don't seem to be playing much (they seem to be piking), thus leaving other 33 people to get the renown?

My guess is, 17576 daily renown total (20*878.82), 331.6 per person, 532.6 per person if 20 people pike.

under assumption of 10 account minimum lifted: 14061, 265.3, 426

However, If my memory serves me well, guild renown dropped from 22,870k to 22,830k today.

also, how do you think - is it easy to maintain low piker percentage in 200+ account guild? Low member count guilds can do that much more easily.

[Tshober]

But some guilds do compete with other guilds, in guild renown, speed runs, number of TR's, who gets the first elite/epic elite raid completions from new raids etc etc.

DDO might be mainly a PVE game but that does not mean that there's no competition nor should such things be denied from people.


I will grant you that there are some people who feel they must make everything into a competition.




Why do you wish to see the guild leaderboard gone anyway? Most people probably don't even know such thing exists, nobody forces you to ever look at it and the only thing it tells is the amount of renown and the level a guild has.

I was not the one who suggested removing it. But I have suggested removing all of myddo.com before, except for the lotteries.




It's also quite useful for datamining.

You would be more likely to get accurate information from dataminig theonion.com than you would datamining myddo.com. Myddo is the most buggy and inaccurate such site I have ever seen. Most of the characters it shows on my account were deleted or re-rolled years ago. I would not trust anything at all that came from that useless web site. If it were not for the lotteries that I love, despite the fact that most of my winnings never get delivered because the characters don't exist anymore, I would say turn the whole thing off and stop misleading people with false data.

[Viisari]

When I come across comments like this I can't help but wonder if they should not add any additional ship buff perks and allow the guild level to exceed 100 with no additional benefit other than the number being different.

I would prefer to keep the levels at 0-100, it's simple and elegant. Adding more levels would make the system less simple and less elegant, to me anyway.


Have it so that all guilds regardless of size will eventually progress to 100 after which decay increases after that point will not be adjusted to appease those who use renown as a source of competition

I also don't understand why some people have such a great need to get to level 100, it's just a number and it provides basically no benefits. By level 70 you have basically everything important, by level 85 you have the last ship and after that you can't really argue that you want more stuff.

At that point wanting to gain more levels is just about stroking your personal ego. And hey, that's exactly what the old system was designed to be about at those levels only it was specifically built in a way that you'd really have to work for that ego boost.

That's just fine to me, if everyone could just progress to the max level given enough time the levels would become meaningless, they'd be just another time sink like all the rest.



I was not the one who suggested removing it. But I have suggested removing all of myddo.com before, except for the lotteries.

Even if inaccurate in some cases, MyDDO is still an useful tool. If it is removed there are still other methods for accessing the same character information so in the end removing it would achieve nothing.


You would be more likely to get accurate information from dataminig theonion.com than you would datamining myddo.com.

As far as I can tell the guild leaderboard is pretty accurate and that's what I was referring to as far as gathering data goes.

[Dysmetria]

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. Since you reverted the changes, how were those changes making matters worse?

[Tshober]

As far as I can tell the guild leaderboard is pretty accurate and that's what I was referring to as far as gathering data goes.

I just looked up my guild on myddo. It shows many players in our officer list who have not been in the guild for years, much less officers. It says we have 7644 members, despite the 1000 member cap. The guild info seems to be just as grossly wrong as the account and character info. If you want to go on trusting it, then that's your choice. But don't expect me to believe anything that comes from myddo.com.

[Chaos000]

I also don't understand why some people have such a great need to get to level 100, it's just a number and it provides basically no benefits. By level 70 you have basically everything important, by level 85 you have the last ship and after that you can't really argue that you want more stuff.

At that point wanting to gain more levels is just about stroking your personal ego. And hey, that's exactly what the old system was designed to be about at those levels only it was specifically built in a way that you'd really have to work for that ego boost.

That's just fine to me, if everyone could just progress to the max level given enough time the levels would become meaningless, they'd be just another time sink like all the rest.

Do you remember when death resulted in negative xp that could cause you to lose levels? Should they implement that for when people hit lvl cap? (therefore making ED farming in a PUG no longer desirable resulting in less open groups). If everyone could progress to max level given enough time... Introduce a ship with one more crafting location as a ship TR. Double the decay doesn't sound like fun for me and one more crafting spot isn't really worth it IMO but hey! incremental benefit to appease the ego.

The key word here is "you have basically everything important" Change the guild ship rewards to half (so biggest ship and best buffs can be achieved at guild lvl 50) and keep the renown decay the same.

[Impaqt]

http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instances/400x/29105425.jpg

[Dekh]

That's cool. I think we agree on the result. You are in favor of removing all renown decay so the competition is fair, right?

No, decay was right (amount of renow decay per number of accounts). But with these new changes who chose to make a small guild can not compete with the most common guilds (large and untreated).

[SeaWolf925]

I am an officer in The Dragon Order of Arcanix on the khyber server, we have existed since the beginning. We were first one guild and then we merged into a New Guild with a new guild name. The present system of renown has caused nothing but strife. We have well over a hundred accounts, sometimes people are real active and sometimes not. We have been flucuating between lvl 70 and 80 for over a year now. Some people could care less about guild renown, ( I am one of those, I will not boot people from guild to obtain some magical account size). We have had several purges in order to try to do this. We also froze any and all recruitement except for family and RL friends. After our second purge we started achieving our goal of guild lvl 85. We documented each dismissed member allowing for guild invite if they contacted an officer and we had officer meeting. We requested all members provide how many accounts and toons. Anyone not providing this information was dismissed from guild this was about a six process. Previously, dismissed people we allowed back in guild and we still have a no new recruits policy, with flexibility, several officers and officer's meeting to make guild invite or permenant guild invite. (2-week probation period is the new policy). This fighting between guild size and guild renown level has caused many old time members to leave guild. This guild was founded family, friends and then other good people that we ran into. There were no penalitis on guild size. We have not found within ourselves to hit the magic number for us of 50 accounts, hell we can not find it in our hearts to boot enough people to get to 100 accounts. Some people play often other do not, the most effective action would be to set guild account level at 50, require all members to provide toons and # of accounts, boot any and all who do not provide this information and then monitering player activity, we should then keep 50 accounts of active players boot all others and have no means of guild invites. This all violates the Rule 1. of the Guild: Remember this is game, have fun but not at other peoples expense. I really hope that this new process puts an end to all this in fighting we are, have experienced. Thank you for your efforts here.

[Dirac]

No, decay was right (amount of renow decay per number of accounts). But with these new changes who chose to make a small guild can not compete with the most common guilds (large and untreated).

I understand that you want the figure of merit to be renown/guild member. I understand, when you view it as a competition, it would be frustrating to see guilds level past you whose average member is not as good/active/whatever as your average guild member. However, at some point you have to admit you understand how absurd your argument sounds to others.

Say I love PvP. It is a huge part of my enjoyment of the game. However, I only choose to play 5 hours per week. That is the exact perfect fit with this game and my life. However, I have no chance to compete in PvP against those people who play 30-40 hours a week. That is totally unfair. Fair would be a mechanism that when every player who plays 5 hours or less gets a raid item, they magically get two more. Also, every person who who plays more than 10 hours a week will have a random raid item taken away, and another for every additional 10 hours per week they play. That will be fair because then I can beat them. I know that it will affect people who don't PvP, but so what. PvP is important to me and I can't possibly win otherwise.

I know guild advancement is not the same as character advancement, however it is a good check. If you have a mechanism for guild advancement, that if you were to apply to character advancement, 99% of your playerbase would leave and your game would fold, then that is most likely a bad guild advancement mechanism.

[McFlay]

Fair would be a mechanism that when every player who plays 5 hours or less gets a raid item, they magically get two more. Also, every person who who plays more than 10 hours a week will have a random raid item taken away, and another for every additional 10 hours per week they play. That will be fair because then I can beat them. I know that it will affect people who don't PvP, but so what. PvP is important to me and I can't possibly win otherwise.

Yeah that's a great concept of what fair is. Welcome to ddo communist edition. Everyone should just have a level 100 guild handed to them because its not fair theres a handful of players that pump ridiculous amounts of time into the game that have things you don't. Come on turbine, let's make things fair, the less you play, the more xp, loot, and renown should drop from each chest for you. Its not fair that I have a full time job, friends, family, college courses, a dog, and this game to split my time up amongst, so just give me less reason to play by making it more rewarding for me to play less.

[Dirac]

Yeah that's a great concept of what fair is. Welcome to ddo communist edition. Everyone should just have a level 100 guild handed to them because its not fair theres a handful of players that pump ridiculous amounts of time into the game that have things you don't. Come on turbine, let's make things fair, the less you play, the more xp, loot, and renown should drop from each chest for you. Its not fair that I have a full time job, friends, family, college courses, a dog, and this game to split my time up amongst, so just give me less reason to play by making it more rewarding for me to play less.

Do you understand that what I presented was an analogy of the small-guild argument in this thread? Many small guilds have been arguing that renown should be taken away from large guilds simply because the small guilds can't compete with them. Classic communism.

However, my opinion now is in line with you in your thread in the general section. Simply helping large guilds that aren't advancing and leaving small guilds that aren't advancing is no solution. All guild decay should be removed unless it is for completely inactive guilds.

I'm just getting frustrated with the idea that large guilds deserve to have their renown taken away from them. For some reason, some people don't think large guilds have earned the renown they, you know, earned. Without any bonuses. That this idea is being presented with such self-righteousness is pretty nauseating.

[Viisari]

That is totally unfair. Fair would be a mechanism that when every player who plays 5 hours or less gets a raid item, they magically get two more. Also, every person who who plays more than 10 hours a week will have a random raid item taken away, and another for every additional 10 hours per week they play.

It's like you haven't the slightest clue of what "fair" means.

In general, more time invested yields greater rewards in DDO. That is completely fair.

Taking items away from someone who spent more time to get them than someone else would be the very opposite of fair.


However, my opinion now is in line with you in your thread in the general section. Simply helping large guilds that aren't advancing and leaving small guilds that aren't advancing is no solution. All guild decay should be removed unless it is for completely inactive guilds.

I'm just getting frustrated with the idea that large guilds deserve to have their renown taken away from them. For some reason, some people don't think large guilds have earned the renown they, you know, earned. Without any bonuses. That this idea is being presented with such self-righteousness is pretty nauseating.

You do of course realize that small guilds also struggle with renown decay?

You also of course realize that by far the minority of small guilds are anywhere near level 70 or higher?

High renown decay at the high levels served a specific purpose that was stated by the devs when the system was new. Now they're destroying that purpose instead of tweaking the old system. And they're not really explaining the reasons for not simply tweaking it either.

[Dandonk]

Now they're destroying that purpose instead of tweaking the old system. And they're not really explaining the reasons for not simply tweaking it either.

Yes. This is the method used for many new things in DDO.

Why so, you ask?

The Lord Leto may know, but I sure don't.

[Dirac]

It's like you haven't the slightest clue of what "fair" means.
I know what fair means. Some people do not, which is why I tried to highlight their error with my analogy.

In general, more time invested yields greater rewards in DDO. That is completely fair.
Taking items away from someone who spent more time to get them than someone else would be the very opposite of fair.
You are exactly right. Taking guild renown away from a guild that spent more person-hours to get it is the very opposite of fair. As long as you understand what fair is, we are in perfect agreement.


You do of course realize that small guilds also struggle with renown decay?
You also of course realize that by far the minority of small guilds are anywhere near level 70 or higher?
Hmm, you may not be reading my posts closely. That is exactly what I said in the second paragraph in the post you quoted. :)


High renown decay at the high levels served a specific purpose that was stated by the devs when the system was new. Now they're destroying that purpose instead of tweaking the old system. And they're not really explaining the reasons for not simply tweaking it either.
That's irrelevant. Turbine has a long history of poor game design decisions (raid loot, xp penalty) realizing it and fixing them. This is one of them. As I stated before, they should fix the system to allow all active guilds to advance, regardless of size. We might be agreeing on almost everything. What exactly do you want to see?

[Tshober]

In general, more time invested yields greater rewards in DDO. That is completely fair.

Think about what you are saying. The large guilds have invested FAR more time than small guilds have. For example let's say all players play an average of 10 hours per week. A tiny guild of 6 players has invested a total 60 hours per week. A large guild of 120 players has invested a total of 1200 hours per week. By your statement above, and I agree with it basically, the large guild should advance 20 times as far as the tiny guild. Clearly the tiny guild can't compete with the large guild without some major help. To the rescue of the weak and underprivledged comes the old decay system that takes away 12 times as much renown from the large guild as it takes from the small guild and also tacks on a 300% tiny guild renown bonus as well. Now who is being subsidized communist style because they can't compete?

[Viisari]

Think about what you are saying. The large guilds have invested FAR more time than small guilds have. For example let's say all players play an average of 10 hours per week. A tiny guild of 6 players has invested a total 60 hours per week. A large guild of 120 players has invested a total of 1200 hours per week. By your statement above, and I agree with it basically, the large guild should advance 20 times as far as the tiny guild. Clearly the tiny guild can't compete with the large guild without some major help. To the rescue of the weak and underprivledged comes the old decay system that takes away 12 times as much renown from the large guild as it takes from the small guild and also tacks on a 300% tiny guild renown bonus as well. Now who is being subsidized communist style because they can't compete?

You assume that guild renown is about the total man hours invested.

Some the small guilds that are over level 90 pull something like 4000-6000 base (ie. renown before bonuses are applied, 4-6 legendaries per day if you will) renown per player per day on average, while in many large guilds it's only around 1000-1500 base renown per player on average. The total amount of man-hours invested is irrelevant because the system is designed to take guild size into account and isn't about total time played in the first place. If there were no bonuses for small guilds or bigger decay for large guilds then the system would be absolutely biased towards very large guilds like it was a few days ago with no size modifier in the game.

So the concept of the old system absolutely was fair. If a large guild was pulling anywhere near the renown numbers per player that many of the high level small guilds do then they would've been level 100 ages ago and way before any of the small guilds.

In practice the size modifier was overtuned, a level 100 guild of 6 players would need 1,5 legendaries per day to negate renown decay while a level 100 guild of 150 players would need 3,2 legendaries per day per player. So the unfairness in the system wasn't from the idea or concept but from modifiers that weren't really tuned too well.

But even ignoring this flaw in the system, small high level guilds are pulling more renown per player than any of the large guilds I've ever heard of which also means that yes, they do work harder for their renown. If this wasn't the case then they wouldn't be so high level in the first place because as you might've noticed, reaching level 90 takes 36,450,000 renown and reaching level 100 takes 50,000,000 renown. If they weren't pulling such huge numbers of renown per player then none of them would be near level 100 any time soon.

On the other hand, if the size of the guild is completely ignored then the system is inherently biased towards large guilds whereas with the old system any bias could've been taken care of by merely tweaking a few multipliers, be it with the renown bonuses small guilds receive or the size multipliers in the decay formula big guilds had.

[Tshober]

You assume that guild renown is about the total man hours invested.

Some the small guilds that are over level 90 pull something like 4000-6000 base renown per player per day on average, while in many large guilds it's only around 1000-1500 base renown per player on average. The total amount of man-hours invested is irrelevant because the system is designed to take guild size into account and isn't about total time played in the first place. If there were no bonuses for small guilds or bigger decay for large guilds then the system would be absolutely biased towards very large guilds like it was a few days ago with no size modifier in the game.

So the concept of the old system absolutely was fair. If a large guild was pulling anywhere near the renown numbers per player that many of the high level small guilds do then they would've been level 100 ages ago and way before any of the small guilds.

In practice the size modifier was overtuned, a level 100 guild of 6 players would need 1,5 legendaries per day to negate renown decay while a level 100 guild of 150 players would need 3,2 legendaries per day per player. So the unfairness in the system wasn't from the idea or concept but from modifiers that weren't really tuned too well.

But even ignoring this flaw in the system, small high level guilds are pulling more renown per player than any of the large guilds I've ever heard of which also means that yes, they do work harder for their renown.

On the other hand, if the size of the guild is completely ignored then the system is inherently biased towards large guilds whereas with the old system any bias could've been taken care of by merely tweaking a few multipliers, be it with the renown bonuses small guilds receive or the size multipliers big guilds had.

It is a GUILD leveling system, not a player leveling system. Why should we be comparing players? We should be comparing GUILDS. When you divide by the number of players you are no longer comparing GUILDS, you are comparing players. If it were a player leveling system then that might be appriate, but it is not.

[Viisari]

It is a GUILD leveling system, not a player leveling system. Why should we be comparing players? We should be comparing GUILDS. When you divide by the number of players you are no longer comparing GUILDS, you are comparing players. If it were a player leveling system then that might be appriate, but it is is not.

You're not making any sense. We're not comparing players, we're comparing guilds and how much renown the guild is capable of pulling PER player.

If we have a guild with 10 players, each of whom is pulling 5 legendary victories every day and a guild of 100 players, each of whom is pulling only 1 legendary victory every day then that is directly reflected in the guild level. The system is set up so that everyone in the guild has to pull their weight (on average anyway, there are always players who pull more renown than others, in every type of guild) and not just bruteforce through the system with sheer numbers.

That guild with 10 players, each whom is pulling 5 legendaries per day will eventually reach level 100. The guild with 100 players will get to level 77 and then be unable to stay at level 78. So they're already almost level 80 even though they're only pulling one fifth of the legendaries per active account as the small guild is. If they were to increase that to three legendaries they'd reach level 96 and with the fourth they'd get to level 100.

As I said, merely looking at the absolute number of legendaries pulled per guild (ie. 50 vs. 100) would be silly because then the large guilds would be greatly favored. The concept of this system was fair even if the implementation was not entirely so.

I'm also going to shamelessly quote Sirgog because he asked a very good and important question earlier in this thread:


Question: What is guild level supposed to be a measure of?

If it is supposed to be a metric to measure prestige then you don't want level 100 guilds composed of 1000 players that do not know what they are doing.

If it is supposed to be a guide to guild longevity or activity, then yes those 1000 player mass invite guilds should be able to hit 100. Ironically this would likely lead to some players inherently distrusting members of guilds of level 100 (just as on Khyber there were two guilds that for a long time were declined entry even into Shrouds in many PUGs because they had a server-wide reputation for incompetence that came from mass recruiting. Ironically one of them is now one of the best raiding guilds on the server)

If it is supposed to be a measure of average activity per player, then the previous system was the right way to do it.

And then some old dev quotes: (http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=22372&storypage=2)


ZAM: So what’s the decay like for guild renown?

Paiz: Once you get above certain guild levels, somewhere around 50 and 75, the decay becomes much more aggressive. To be honest, 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.


ZAM: How difficult will it be for guilds to rank up their renown score?

Paiz: That’s definitely something that we’re still trying to figure out and balance. There is some help for smaller guilds in this system… we don’t want to exclude a guild that might only include four people. We think that’s a totally valid way to play, and we’re trying not to force people to have 50 player guilds. If you’re in a small guild, you’ll get a small boost every time you pick up, what I call, a “renown token” because we want to make sure those guilds are able to get their airships and things like that.

This is a long term play; you’re not supposed to get up to level 25 in a day. This is more of a long term, stay engage with the game, sort of goal.

As I said, the old system wasn't perfect but it did achieve what the devs are saying here, fixing any unfairness in it wouldn't have taken more than some tweaking with numbers.

Which gets us back to the question above: Has the purpose of the system changed?

[Tshober]

You're not making any sense. We're not comparing players, we're comparing guilds and how much renown the guild is capable of pulling PER player.

If we have a guild with 10 players, each of whom is pulling 5 legendary victories every day and a guild of 100 players, each of whom is pulling only 1 legendary victory every day then that is directly reflected in the guild level. The system is set up so that everyone in the guild has to pull their weight (on average anyway, there are always players who pull more renown than others, in every type of guild) and not just bruteforce through the system with sheer numbers.

That guild with 10 players, each whom is pulling 5 legendaries per day will eventually reach level 100. The guild with 100 players will get to level 77 and then be unable to stay at level 78. So they're already almost level 80 even though they're only pulling one fifth of the legendaries per active account as the small guild is. If they were to increase that to three legendaries they'd reach level 96 and with the fourth they'd get to level 100.

As I said, merely looking at the absolute number of legendaries pulled per guild (ie. 50 vs. 100) would be silly because then the large guilds would be greatly favored. The concept of this system was fair even if the implementation was not entirely so.



No, you are the one not making sense. If you were going to rank countries in military power, would you take the total militay expenditures divided by polulation? Of course not, you would just use total military expendatures to rank them. If you were going to rank countries in economic power would you use GDP divided by population? Of course not, you would just use plain old GDP to rank them. That is because, in both cases, you are ranking countries, not the people in the countries. It is the same with guilds. If you want to rank guilds on renown then you can't divide by the numbers of players because then you would be ranking the players, not the guilds. The proper way to rank guilds on renown is by total renown earned by each GUILD.

Here's another example. Let's say you have 2 armies. Army A is made up of 3 highly trained Delta Force soldiers armed with the best high tech modern light weaponry. Army B is made up of 250 plain boot camp trained soldiers armed only with AK47's and bayonettes. Clearly army A has more per soldier killing power and has trained far harder. But which is the more powerful army? Which one will get squashed like a bug if they fight a battle?

[Viisari]

No, you are the one not making sense. If you were going to rank countries in military power, would you take the total militay expenditures divided by polulation? Of course not, you would just use total military expendatures to rank them. If you were going to rank countries in economic power would you use GDP divided by population? Of course not, you would just use plain old GDP to rank them. That is because, in both cases, you are ranking countries, not the people in the countries. It is the same with guilds. If you want to rank guilds on renown then you can't divide by the numbers of players because then you would be ranking the players, not the guilds. The proper way to rank guilds on renown is by total renown earned by each GUILD.

But guild renown isn't about power or money. It's about fame (heellooo, it's even called renown) (http://thesaurus.com/browse/renown) which means that you totally can divide it by the number of players because it's far more abstract than any of the things you brought up and thus isn't restricted by the logic you're applying to those.


Here's another example. Let's say you have 2 armies. Army A is made up of 3 highly trained Delta Force soldiers armed with the best high tech moden light weaponry. Army B is made up of 250 plain boot camp trained soldiers armed only with AK47's and bayonettes. Clearly army A has more per soldier killing power and has trained far harder. But which is the more powerful army? Which one will get swashed like a bug if they fight a battle?

Army A would obviously sneak into army B's camp at night, kill their commander and any officers they can while also planting explosives and incendiaries around critical targets in the camp. They'd then leave the camp and trigger their explosives while using sniper rifles to kill random targets to add more confusion.

This is a ******** example because these two forces would never, ever directly confront each other in combat. But regardless of that, both have their uses. Just because the other is more numerous doesn't mean it's good for tasks where the smaller force excels and where the small force would not succeed the large might be able to.

[djl]

No, decay was right (amount of renow decay per number of accounts). But with these new changes who chose to make a small guild can not compete with the most common guilds (large and untreated).

And there is a very easy solution: increase the small guild bonus multiplier.

[McFlay]

I'm suprised with all the chat about stupid guild features nobody mentions that for a very small guild with under 6 members to level if you have no intent of expanding your ranks is to random invite someone then kick them just to get your modified size up to 6 for max bonus.

If they want to make the entire guild system as fair as could be, then they should remove renown bonuses and scale xp to level a guild to guild size so a 10 man guild would need twice as much xp to level as a 5 man guild. The extra +10 multiplier in the decay formula should also be removed so adding a body to a level 74 guild would add the same exact decay whether the guild has 4 people or 40. That way a 2 person guild with an active person and a casual person would be in the same situation as far as decay/leveling as a 100 person guild with 50 actives and 50 casuals. At least that way all the bogus comparisons of large guilds loaded with casual players to small guilds with a super active roster would end.

[McFlay]

And there is a very easy solution: increase the small guild bonus multiplier.

Or for those of us who don't think every guild should hit 100 and sit there forever, that would have been a very easy way to compound the problem, not a solution.

[Tshober]

But guild renown isn't about power or money. It's about fame (heellooo, it's even called renown) (http://thesaurus.com/browse/renown) which means that you totally can divide it by the number of players because it's far more abstract than any of the things you brought up and thus isn't restricted by the logic you're applying to those.

It may represent fame and fame may be abstract, but that fame is represnted in DDO by a specific number and that number is renown and large guilds earn more of it than tiny guilds. The guild that earns the most renown has the most fame by definition. The logic still applies. To make a proper ranking of GUILDS, you can't divide by number of players. To do so makes it a comparison of players and not of GUILDS. We have all been brainwashed by the old decay system into thinking this was a proper way to rank GUILDS, but logically it isn't and never was.

I believe I have made my point so now I am willing to talk about how to make things more equitable for smaller guilds. First, going back to the old decay system is just about the worst thing that could possibly be done. It is not only logically flawed, but it would bring back the incentives to shun casual/social players and bar guilds with lots of such players from advancing forever. Instead we should keep the new, logically correct, system and increase the small guild bonuses so that small and tiny guilds remain viable. Make no mistake about it, these are pure subsidies given to the smaller guilds, because they just can't compete with the larger guilds without help. How much of an increase is needed? At the very least, it needs to be enough to ensure that they will not stagnate and be unable to advance. I think only the devs have enough data to say how much is needed to keep them advancing at a reasonable rate so they will be viable options for players. So I would recommend the devs set the new bonuses as appropriate.

[McFlay]

It may represent fame and fame may be abstract, but that fame is represnted in DDO by a specific number and that number is renown and large guilds earn more of it than tiny guilds. The guild that earns the most renown has the most fame by definition. The logic still applies. To make a proper ranking of GUILDS, you can't divide by number of players. To do so makes it a comparison of players and not of GUILDS. We have all been brainwashed by the old decay system into thinking this was a proper way to rank GUILDS, but logically it isn't and never was.

I'd have to disagree with you on this one. Its like your in the navy, and expect everyone to think your a tough guy. Quite a few people aren't going to. However, if your a navy seal and expect people to think your a tough guy, well in that case your right. Sure the navy as a whole has more people in it, but the seals get the wow factor.


I believe I have made my point so now I am willing to talk about how to make things more equitable for smaller guilds. First, going back to the old decay system is just about the worst thing that could possibly be done. It is not only logically flawed, but it would bring back the incentives to shun casual/social players and bar guilds with lots of such players from advancing forever. Instead we should keep the new, logically correct, system and increase the small guild bonuses so that small and tiny guilds remain viable. Make no mistake about it, these are pure subsidies given to the smaller guilds, because they just can't compete with the larger guilds without help. How much of an increase is needed? At the very least, it needs to be enough to ensure that they will not stagnate and be unable to advance. I think only the devs have enough data to say how much is needed to keep them advancing at a reasonable rate so they will be viable options for players. So I would recommend the devs set the new bonuses as appropriate.

And what the devs would see is a lot of large guilds plateaud in the 60-70 range, and a lot of small guilds who haven't even made it that far yet. I think the only logically correct system you'd agree with is one thats just a big giant easy button for everyone to be part of a level 100 guild and not have to worry about guild level ever.

[Tshober]

The most renowned guilds on Sarlona (based on how good they are) are not the biggest guild. .


In the game DDO, renown/fame is represented by a specific number and that number is guild renown. The guild with the most guild renown has the most renown/fame in DDO. What you, or anyone else outside of the game, thinks of them is irrelevent. In the world of DDO they have the most renown/fame. If you want to rank guilds on renown/fame, the logical way to do so is by guild renown. If instead of using guild renown, you use guild renown divided by numbers of players, then you are no longer ranking guilds, you are ranking players. A GUILD leveling system logically should be ranking GUILDS, not the players within the guilds.

[theslimshady]

this unfair/work harder argument is really frustrating
i never see any numbers only speculation
saying a guild because it is large is inactive or idle is insulting
my guild decays is 1 million renown a week no small guild every has bleed 1 million renown in a week the math did not allow it
so by defending truly biased leaderbords based on renown gained lets include stolen renown from decay to them leaderbords
so hard numbers last year we went from 76 -73 and are at around 20 million renown
we decay at 150k+ a day which is a million decay a week thats 52 million last year in decay alone so my guild who gets called lazy and inactive
has a grand total of over 72 million renown picked from quests and chests and drops
i would put on the leader-bored my 72 million renown picked last year against any guild that ever exsisted however by the ole rules only 20 million counts thats whats wrong with the system everything the guild leaderbored is saying does not do anything to ever add credibility to them guilds cause the whole system is phoney
if anything just like steroids they should have no chance in making it to the hall of fame based on exploiting a system that they are clearly aware by evidence that
1 does not reward guilds that clearly make more total renown in a week
2 does not have the biggest number of players
3 incourages small elite closed door policy thats leads to exclusion

so to stop this leaderbored thing lets make it renown aquired instead of renown gained and i will even give the small guilds there bonus no matter what they still wouldnt compete they activity would be to little

[Chaos000]

As I said, the old system wasn't perfect but it did achieve what the devs are saying here, fixing any unfairness in it wouldn't have taken more than some tweaking with numbers.

Which gets us back to the question above: Has the purpose of the system changed?

The old system punished active players by counting casual players when factoring decay. I am pretty sure that wasn't something that was considered at the inception of renown.

The new system took casual players out of the equation by making player size irrelevant. Small guilds are arguing there should either be 0 decay or that the old system was preferable because the bonus to renown that they currently receive was not equitable with this change to help a small guild with casual players progress as well. (meaning casual players in small guilds were being punished MORE than casual players in larger guilds)

Assuming that 0 decay is not an option. The solution would be in the old system to make the adjustment of not factoring an account as part of a daily decay if it has not acquired renown in a 24 hour period. This way in a 50 or 10 account guild, if only 6 members were active they would also get a 300% bonus to their renown gained that day for the amount of activity they contributed against the decay.

Something else that might work. In the new system, in a small guild (limit 10), for each account that has not acquired renown in a 24 hour period boosts the bonus to the renown gained by +50%. (6 guild members, only 1 logged in. The renown gained for that day is adjusted by 550%) Should an account not acquire renown in a month or longer their bonus no longer applies and is not factored in the guild size.

Bottom line. Going back to the old system is bad.

[slarden]

The old system punished active players by counting casual players when factoring decay. I am pretty sure that wasn't something that was considered at the inception of renown.

The new system took casual players out of the equation by making player size irrelevant. Small guilds are arguing there should either be 0 decay or that the old system was preferable because the bonus to renown that they currently receive was not equitable with this change to help a small guild with casual players progress as well. (meaning casual players in small guilds were being punished MORE than casual players in larger guilds)

Assuming that 0 decay is not an option. The solution would be in the old system to make the adjustment of not factoring an account as part of a daily decay if it has not acquired renown in a 24 hour period. This way in a 50 or 10 account guild, if only 6 members were active they would also get a 300% bonus to their renown gained that day for the amount of activity they contributed against the decay.

Something else that might work. In the new system, in a small guild (limit 10), for each account that has not acquired renown in a 24 hour period boosts the bonus to the renown gained by +50%. (6 guild members, only 1 logged in. The renown gained for that day is adjusted by 550%) Should an account not acquire renown in a month or longer their bonus no longer applies and is not factored in the guild size.

Bottom line. Going back to the old system is bad. This is not true, both small and large guild have players that are less active and casual. It is wrong to give rewards based soley on guild size. The old system was equitable and not perfect. The new system is not equitable and not perfect. We need to restore fairness and build from the old system.

[Tshober]

Judging a guild based on total renown earned is complete nonsense. The original system factored in guild size so that people weren't forced to huge guilds.

The origial system was complete nonsense.





Why can't people form small guilds and have the same opportunity as large guilds?
.

When you argue that guilds of ALL sizes should be treated exactly equally, then that means even guilds with 1 member must be treated equally. That means your argument boils down into an argument that makes grouping together into guilds meaningless from an advancement perspective. You are just as well off to go it solo as to group into a guild with others. At that point, why even bother with guilds at all? Just give every individual player the ability to earn their own private airships and buffs and they would be able to do so just as easily and quickly as guilds with any number of players in them.

[Chaos000]

This is not true, both small and large guild have players that are less active and casual. It is wrong to give rewards based soley on guild size. The old system was equitable and not perfect. The new system is not equitable and not perfect. We need to restore fairness and build from the old system.

Do you mean like rewarding small guilds with a renown bonus multiplier? By your statement that size should not be rewarded the renown bonus should not be based on size.

[eris2323]

Lisa: Bu-- my parents are counting on seeing me dance! And I've worked ever so hard.
Vicki: I'm sorry, Lisa, but giving everyone an equal part when they're clearly not equal is called what, again, class?
Class: Communism!
Vicki: That's right. And I didn't tap all those Morse code messages to the Allies 'til my shoes filled with blood to just roll out the welcome mat for the Reds.

[slarden]

The solution would be in the old system to make the adjustment of not factoring an account as part of a daily decay if it has not acquired renown in a 24 hour period. This way in a 50 or 10 account guild,

Bottom line. Going back to the old system is bad.

Another example that won't work. This punishes the person that runs for a little bit each day and rewards the person that runs all day on Saturday and no other time during the week.

Both the new system and your proposals are less fair than the original system which determine guild level increases by one thing - renown earned per account per day. I think the decay curve from 55 is too steep, but at least it was equitable. I would like to see DDO just lower the decay amounts - this would help large/medium/smal guilds and reduce the impact of casual and less active players on all guilds.

[Viisari]

The origial system was complete nonsense.

Says you. It was far more logical and fair than what they had on live for the few days.


When you argue that guilds of ALL sizes should be treated exactly equally, then that means even guilds with 1 member must be treated equally.

Sure, why not. Though that wasn't the case even before, renown decay was calculated for 10 players at minimum even if you had less.


That means your argument boils down into an argument that makes grouping together into guilds meaningless from an advancement perspective. You are just as well off to go it solo as to group into a guild with others. At that point, why even bother with guilds at all? Just give every individual player the ability to earn their own private airships and buffs and they would be able to do so just as easily and quickly as guilds with any number of players in them.

This is stupid. I've never heard of anyone who formed a guild for the sole purpose of gaining levels in it. Well, except for that one dude who soloed a guild to level 100 from scratch to prove a point, but he wasn't exactly playing the game, he was playing the guild system.

Guilds are social constructs and people should have the freedom to choose how large or small they want their constructs to be without worrying about how it'll affect their ability to gain renown. You love your huge guilds, we get it, but me and thousands of others don't like large guilds, so why should you have it easier with the removal of size multipliers. It makes no sense.

As I've said several times before: the old system wasn't perfect, but at least it attempted to give a fair chance to guilds of all sizes. What was on live did nothing of the like.


Do you mean like rewarding small guilds with a renown bonus multiplier? By your statement that size should not be rewarded the renown bonus should not be based on size.

The bonus is not there to reward anyone, it's there to make sure they can keep up with the large guilds.

Say a guild of 10 players is really active and everyone in there pulls 5 legendaries every day. That would equal to 170 000 renown per day.

Now here we have another guild with 200 players who are only pulling one legendary each every day, they'd make 200 000 renown every day even though their players aren't putting nearly as much effort into getting renown.

If the guild of ten players had no renown bonus they'd only get 50 000 renown per day, 1/4th of what the large guild is getting even though the players of the small guild are spending much, much more time and effort into getting renown.

What this means that if there was no renown bonus for small guilds they'd either have to completely nolife to advance in guild levels or they would be unable to do it at all.

[Tshober]

Both the new system and your proposals are less fair than the original system which determine guild level increases by one thing - renown earned per account per day. I think the decay curve from 55 is too steep, but at least it was equitable. I would like to see DDO just lower the decay amounts - this would help large/medium/smal guilds and reduce the impact of casual and less active players on all guilds.

The old system was NOT equitable. It was horribly unfair to casual/social players and to the guilds who had lots of those players in them. Further, it encouraged and rewarded the shunning of casual/social players and was harmful to DDO's social environment.

The new system does no substantial harm to any guild or type of player, when directly compared to the old system. It does help larger guilds more than it helps smaller guilds but there is a big difference between not helping and harming. Going back to the old system directly harms casual/social players and guilds that have lots of those players.

[McFlay]

This is stupid. I've never heard of anyone who formed a guild for the sole purpose of gaining levels in it.

If this were true, why are there so many people complaining about renown decay and guild level. If people didn't care they'd be happy with a level 1 guild and anything over that is just a bonus, but the fact a lot of peopel are crying they end up hovering in the 60something range tells me otherwise.

[Viisari]

The old system was NOT equitable. It was horribly unfair to casual/social players and to the guilds who had lots of those players in them. Further, it encouraged and rewarded the shunning of casual/social players and was harmful to DDO's social environment.

But then again, the highest levels were never designed so they could be achieved by casual players. And this was done intentionally.

That doesn't mean it is unfair, focused groups who wished high guild levels spent a lot of effort the get them. In those groups every player has to pull his weight. What did your casual players do for them?

Going after high guild levels is a choice you have to make just as choosing shun casual or social players is a choice. Even my guild is currently pretty much stuck in the guild levels and nobody has been removed from the guild because of that.


The new system does no substantial harm to any guild or type of player, when directly compared to the old system. It does help larger guilds more than it helps smaller guilds but there is a big difference between not helping and harming. Going back to the old system directly harms casual/social players and guilds that have lots of those players.

So nobody is going to leave small guilds because they see the huge guilds that start going through the levels really quickly? The leaders of these large guilds were arguing just a few weeks ago that they're losing people to small guilds because they can advance in guild levels, why wouldn't the opposite happen here? People leaving small guilds for the large ones because they're now the ones advancing quickly.

You are so biased it's not even funny, what you've basically been saying is "well hey, tough luck" while giving the middle finger to all small guilds.

[Chaos000]

The bonus is not there to reward anyone, it's there to make sure they can keep up with the large guilds.

Say a guild of 10 players is really active and everyone in there pulls 5 legendaries every day. That would equal to 170 000 renown per day.

Now here we have another guild with 200 players who are only pulling one legendary each every day, they'd make 200 000 renown every day even though their players aren't putting nearly as much effort into getting renown.

Ok say there are 10 players all active in a 10 account guild. 20 players just as active in a 200 account guid say each player pulls the same amount of renown each... Which guild progresses more? How is this fair? More players working just as hard with no progress. We see that as the norm in the old system

[Viisari]

If this were true, why are there so many people complaining about renown decay and guild level. If people didn't care they'd be happy with a level 1 guild and anything over that is just a bonus, but the fact a lot of peopel are crying they end up hovering in the 60something range tells me otherwise.

Well I dunno, perhaps I'm old fashioned or something, but to me guilds are places to meet friends, run stuff, talk about useless stuff with other people and generally have fun. They're for people who have similar goals in the game with similar playstyles.

An ideal guild for me is around 20-30 players I get along with well, players who like running EE content, raids, loot runs, speed runs, quick TR's, going for max favor. People who like talking **** in the ventrilo and poking fun of each other.

I am in a guild like that, we might be powergamers or w/e, but we don't really take the game terribly seriously either. We have lots of people with wives and kids, everyone of us has a job or is studying full time, some spend time on hobbies other than DDO, go on vacations and take breaks (like I'm currently doing). This hybrid of a powergaming/casual guild has still managed to get to guild level 95, though now it looks like our progress has ended or at least slowed down a lot.

Our guild has never, ever farmed for renown and never will, we don't care if you take legendaries from end rewards but do encourage it. Yet if I recall right we've been still pulling something like 3-5 legendaries per player every day on average which is far more than the guilds who get stuck in the 60's or 70's are pulling. That has probably slowed down quite a bit now due to many of our players being inactive or playing very casually these days. And that shows, we're not really advancing through the levels much, if at all currently.

And that is completely fair, we're putting little to no effort towards the levels and many of our players aren't really playing that much. Why should we be advancing in the levels if this is the case?

Now perhaps there are people who have made serious guilds with the sole purpose of gaining levels, but that's not really what guilds are here for. Guilds were here before guild levels or guild ships and were doing just fine and they'll be here long after guild levels are gone if that day is to ever come.


Ok say there are 10 players all active in a 10 account guild. 20 players just as active in a 200 account guid say each player pulls the same amount of renown each... Which guild progresses more? How is this fair? More players working just as hard with no progress. We see that as the norm in the old system

It is fair because they're gaining the renown for 200 people, not for ten people like the other guild is. Why should they be able to carry ten times their number of people to fame?

[Tshober]

Going after high guild levels is a choice you have to make just as choosing shun casual or social players is a choice. Even my guild is currently pretty much stuck in the guild levels and nobody has been removed from the guild because of that.

Yes, that is a choice made by some players. But some players didn't get to choose in the old decay system. In the old system, a casual/social player who gets kicked out because they are unable to generate enough renown each day, didn't get to choose. They were just kicked with no choice offered to them. They also didn't really get to choose which guild to join after getting kicked because most guilds would not invite them. In the new system, players also have a choice. They can stay in a small guild or join a larger guild or grow into a larger guild. The difference is, in the new system, everyone involved has a choice and all of the choices are purely voluntary. No one is forced out with no choice.





You are so biased it's not even funny, what you've basically been saying is "well hey, tough luck" while giving the middle finger to all small guilds.


You have treated casual/social players and the guilds who have lots of them as members exactly the way you describe I have treated small guilds.

I have advocated for increasing the small guild bonuses so that small and tiny guilds can advance and level up like everyone else. What have you suggested that would eliminate the incentives to shun casual/social players or to help out guilds who have lots of such players?

[Chaos000]

It is fair because they're gaining the renown for 200 people, not for ten people like the other guild is. Why should they be able to carry ten times their number of people to fame?

So the active players in large guilds SHOULD be penalized for keeping casual players on their roster despite a higher number of players making the same effort as a small guild

[McFlay]

So the active players in large guilds SHOULD be penalized for keeping casual players on their roster despite a higher number of players making the same effort as a small guild

If you want to make a legit comparison amongst guild sizes you can't compare a 100 person guild with 10 super active players and 90 casual players to a 10 person guild of 10 super active players. The proper comparison would be to compare the 100 person guild with 10 super active players and 90 casual players to a small guild with 1 super active player and 9 casual players.

[McFlay]

This is not true, both small and large guild have players that are less active and casual. It is wrong to give rewards based soley on guild size. The old system was equitable and not perfect. The new system is not equitable and not perfect. We need to restore fairness and build from the old system.

You pretty much sum up the entire thread right here. A small guild with 3/4 of a roster of casual players isn't really any better off then a large guild with 3/4 of a casual roster.

People just refuse to admit that to themselves and keep trying to compare a handful of small guilds full of hardcore DDO'ers to their large casual guilds, while turning a blind eye to the fact that their large casual guild still manages to get to and maintain a higher level then most small casual guilds ever get.

[theslimshady]

no the people hiding behind the current system cant wrap there minds around the idea that my guild of 200 people gained 52 million renown last year to lose 3 levels
somehow we still have to listen to this fair to unfair aurgument or active to inactive aurgument the old system is broke it needs to be fixed
look how bad the little guilds are screaming for just a slight increase image if it was told to them that they wont ever go forward because it might hurt a very small minorty of players in this game is ludicrous

[Viisari]

People just refuse to admit that to themselves and keep trying to compare a handful of small guilds full of hardcore DDO'ers to their large casual guilds, while turning a blind eye to the fact that their large casual guild still manages to get to and maintain a higher level then most small casual guilds ever get.

Now now, who told you that you could use logic or comparisons that make sense in this thread?


no the people hiding behind the current system cant wrap there minds around the idea that my guild of 200 people gained 52 million renown last year to lose 3 levels
somehow we still have to listen to this fair to unfair aurgument or active to inactive aurgument the old system is broke it needs to be fixed
look how bad the little guilds are screaming for just a slight increase image if it was told to them that they wont ever go forward because it might hurt a very small minorty of players in this game is ludicrous

Yes and my guild has lost somewhere in the neighborhood of 22 million renown to decay during the last year or so, what's your point? You think renown decay only applies to large guilds? Currently we have about 21 active accounts in our guild which means that each person has had to earn about one million renown during that year just to beat the renown decay. We were also growing during this time which means we were in fact gaining much more renown than that.

Each member of your guild on the other hand only had to earn 260 000 renown to counter your decay, even if we take small guild bonus into account, each member of my guild had to earn around double the amount of renown when compared to your guildies just to break even.

[McFlay]

no the people hiding behind the current system cant wrap there minds around the idea that my guild of 200 people gained 52 million renown last year to lose 3 levels
somehow we still have to listen to this fair to unfair aurgument or active to inactive aurgument the old system is broke it needs to be fixed
look how bad the little guilds are screaming for just a slight increase image if it was told to them that they wont ever go forward because it might hurt a very small minorty of players in this game is ludicrous

Cool and what level is your guild, level 70 something? You pull at the rate of approx. 250k per person per year. My small guild for the last two years has been averaging a rate of 1.5 million per player per year. Divide that by 4 to assume we had the max bonus the entire time and we pulled more per player per year then your large guild, and I bet your still 20 levels above us. Yet here you are, complaining you have it worse then everyone else.

[slarden]

no the people hiding behind the current system cant wrap there minds around the idea that my guild of 200 people gained 52 million renown last year to lose 3 levels
somehow we still have to listen to this fair to unfair aurgument or active to inactive aurgument the old system is broke it needs to be fixed
look how bad the little guilds are screaming for just a slight increase image if it was told to them that they wont ever go forward because it might hurt a very small minorty of players in this game is ludicrous

Nobody is screaming. We just don't want to replace a flawed system with an even worse system. Why not just get rid of decay all together rather than requiring small guilds to generate enormous amount of renown to cover decay while large guilds need next to nothing.

Most small casual guilds never crack 50 even under the old system. The guild system requires members to play actively to maintain and grow their guild level once you get to 26. For every large guild that gets stuck in a level range, there are 20+ small guilds that get stuck in a level range. It was never a problem for just big guilds and guild size was not the issue. The math worked out for all guild sizes under the old system. It doesn't under the new system, small guilds are burdened while big guilds have an easy march to 100.

[theslimshady]

THIS tired ole system has only produced level 100 guilds 24 member or smaller
so do to majorty rules this seems to indicate only a small minorty of the playing publics cring for no change

that the leaderboards are biased based on nothing but structure of a guild not about amount of renown gained

that under the current renown system large guilds have no chance to obtain 100 levels ever based on the fact there is 0

matters of fact i am not even sure meduim size has hit the 100 platform ever either {so 50 or under}

that the idea of prestige is a factor is nonsense cause the horse-race was over when the first hit 100 {even if i didnt like it }

so imo the first say 10 in that order to hit 100 should be enshrined with a statue or something {this would be over already there is 10 right?}

-renown should be thrown out so guilds can get back to having fun and hanging out with friends without being forced to follow a certain mold to get buffs { xp being most important }and decay can stop taking the enjoymeat out of the game for all guild leaders in genral

[Dirac]

This thread demonstrates how important Drakesan's (http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?p=4729495#post4729495) guild leader survey was.

The renown decay mechanism is/was completely broken, and there has never been any intellectually honest defense for it. Many have pointed this out previously, but the arguments go back and forth anyway (like here), so one might think the playerbase is split on the issue.

We are not:

Like: 10
Dislike: 92
Meh: 21

Not only is the system broken, almost no one likes it. The current discussion does not need to continue. All that is left is to suggest what the new system will look like that fixes the problems, the most obvious one being active guilds not advancing. Removing all renown decay would be a worthwhile first step.

[Chaos000]

If you want to make a legit comparison amongst guild sizes you can't compare a 100 person guild with 10 super active players and 90 casual players to a 10 person guild of 10 super active players. The proper comparison would be to compare the 100 person guild with 10 super active players and 90 casual players to a small guild with 1 super active player and 9 casual players.

I'm actually ok with that. In both the scenario of 2 super active players and 8 casual players and 20 super active players and 80 casual players... Does a small or large guild make more of a progression assuming all the active players pull in the equal amount of renown? Arguing that size should not be rewarded is making the case that under the old system small guild should not be awarded bonuses. More casuals resulting in larger decay under the old system is not equitable because larger guilds have a higher potential of having more casual players.

Active players should not be penalized for having casual players in their guild. There should not be an incentive to remove the casual players ("who aren't pulling their weight") as a tradeoff to making any progression.

[Tshober]

This thread demonstrates how important Drakesan's (http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?p=4729495#post4729495) guild leader survey was.

The renown decay mechanism is/was completely broken, and there has never been any intellectually honest defense for it. Many have pointed this out previously, but the arguments go back and forth anyway (like here), so one might think the playerbase is split on the issue.

We are not:

Like: 10
Dislike: 92
Meh: 21

Not only is the system broken, almost no one likes it. The current discussion does not need to continue. All that is left is to suggest what the new system will look like that fixes the problems, the most obvious one being active guilds not advancing. Removing all renown decay would be a worthwhile first step.

I am good with that. I have made several proposals that I think would work well and would leave no guilds and no play-styles unable to advance. But when I see people advocating going back to the old decay system, I feel the need to explain what a poor system it actually was.

[slarden]

This thread demonstrates how important Drakesan's (http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?p=4729495#post4729495) guild leader survey was.

The renown decay mechanism is/was completely broken, and there has never been any intellectually honest defense for it. Many have pointed this out previously, but the arguments go back and forth anyway (like here), so one might think the playerbase is split on the issue.

We are not:

Like: 10
Dislike: 92
Meh: 21

Not only is the system broken, almost no one likes it. The current discussion does not need to continue. All that is left is to suggest what the new system will look like that fixes the problems, the most obvious one being active guilds not advancing. Removing all renown decay would be a worthwhile first step.

I dislike the old system. The proposed replacement system is far worse.

[McFlay]

THIS tired ole system has only produced level 100 guilds 24 member or smaller
so do to majorty rules this seems to indicate only a small minorty of the playing publics cring for no change

that the leaderboards are biased based on nothing but structure of a guild not about amount of renown gained

that under the current renown system large guilds have no chance to obtain 100 levels ever based on the fact there is 0

matters of fact i am not even sure meduim size has hit the 100 platform ever either {so 50 or under}

that the idea of prestige is a factor is nonsense cause the horse-race was over when the first hit 100 {even if i didnt like it }

so imo the first say 10 in that order to hit 100 should be enshrined with a statue or something {this would be over already there is 10 right?}

-renown should be thrown out so guilds can get back to having fun and hanging out with friends without being forced to follow a certain mold to get buffs { xp being most important }and decay can stop taking the enjoymeat out of the game for all guild leaders in genral

And if each of your members were pulling the same number of trophies per day as those smaller guilds you'd have hit 100 faster and stayed there.

[Dirac]

I just curious, but I wonder if there is a problem confusing two very different types of guild renown:

meta-game renown: This is what the accountant on the other side of the computer controlling the avatar thinks of your guild. Are all your members awesome, competent, lead good raids, die too often, don't know what is going on, rude, helpful, etc.

in-game renown: This is what Cydonie and Gerald Goodblade think of your guild. What counts is if (and how often) your protected the Havadasher, defeated the Stormreaver, or stopped the invasion.

I think it is a serious mistake for an in-game mechanic to try to measure meta-game renown. A lot of it can't be measured anyway. In-game renown is fairly straight-forward, it is the number of quests your guild completes, monsters killed, chests opened. Kind of what we have now (once decay is eliminated). As long as we are clear on the distinction, and not try to create an in-game mechanic to quantify meta-game guild renown, the path forward is easier.

[Chaos000]

I wouldn't be opposed to renown being measured by the total favor gained. Decay per player should be lower but it could be something I could get behind.

[Beidel]

We have an 82 level guild on Thelanis with 19 active members. Prior to the change our decay was roughly 45,000 renown per day. Since we hit 80 in December it has been everything we could do just to keep up with decay and we have been bouncing between 80-82 since. If most of our members do not log on daily, we lose renown. Since the change our decay is roughly 33,000 per day which has been helpful but still painful. I personally would like it lowered a bit more to help the smaller guilds. The build your guild event was also tremendously helpful and maybe should be implemented more often.

[McFlay]

More casuals resulting in larger decay under the old system is not equitable because larger guilds have a higher potential of having more casual players.

And here is what is wrong with your entire argument. Stop looking at the very small minority of small guilds with a dozen power gamers in them and comparing that to a casual guild. If all the level 100 small guilds merged into 1 guild they'd have no problem getting to and keeping level 100. There are plenty of small guilds that hover in the 30-40 range forever because they are mostly casuals, yet you don't compare your large casual guild to those. Hmm...wonder why.

You just keep comparing apples to oranges. Try comparing apples for a change. Large guilds don't get crippled by decay, casual guilds do, there is a big difference between the two.

[Viisari]

THIS tired ole system has only produced level 100 guilds 24 member or smaller


The reasons for this have been pointed out in this thread so many times that I'm not even going to bother with repeating them.


that under the current renown system large guilds have no chance to obtain 100 levels ever based on the fact there is 0

I guess you missed what Fernando said about the highest guild levels.


that the idea of prestige is a factor is nonsense cause the horse-race was over when the first hit 100 {even if i didnt like it }

Of course it's a factor, getting to and maintaining level 100 is still quite an achievement even if you weren't the first one there.


-renown should be thrown out so guilds can get back to having fun and hanging out with friends without being forced to follow a certain mold to get buffs { xp being most important }and decay can stop taking the enjoymeat out of the game for all guild leaders in genral

You are forced to do nothing. Making a big deal out of renown and renown decay is a conscious choice your guild has made.


The renown decay mechanism is/was completely broken, and there has never been any intellectually honest defense for it.

Just because you say so doesn't make it so. There's been plenty of perfectly reasonable explanations for why the current mechanics are pretty decent for what they're trying to achieve.


Does a small or large guild make more of a progression assuming all the active players pull in the equal amount of renown?

The larger guild will get to higher guild levels and it will do it much, much quicker. Not sure if the smaller guild would even have the time to get stuck in levels during this decade, guess it depends on how active the two players are.


Arguing that size should not be rewarded is making the case that under the old system small guild should not be awarded bonuses.

I explained the reasoning for size bonus a few hours ago and here you are talking utter nonsense again. If you wanted to get rid of both small guild bonus and size penalty multiplier then you'd have to overhaul the whole renown system.


More casuals resulting in larger decay under the old system is not equitable because larger guilds have a higher potential of having more casual players.

Casuals actually hurt small guilds more because they increase their decay and decrease their size bonus. By far the majority of all guilds in DDO are small casual guilds and they're the ones who're actually hurting the most under the old system. All the big guilds crying here have gotten almost all ship buffs and the larger ships ages ago, these small guilds don't even have those.

I was actually thinking a while ago that they should implement the new renown decay system for levels 26-85 and at level 86 the old decay system would kick in again. You'd have the option to lock your renown so you wouldn't start bouncing between levels 85 and 86. It would of course require tuning to make it fair towards all sizes of guilds for the new system.

[FranOhmsford]

I just curious, but I wonder if there is a problem confusing two very different types of guild renown:

meta-game renown: This is what the accountant on the other side of the computer controlling the avatar thinks of your guild. Are all your members awesome, competent, lead good raids, die too often, don't know what is going on, rude, helpful, etc.

in-game renown: This is what Cydonie and Gerald Goodblade think of your guild. What counts is if (and how often) your protected the Havadasher, defeated the Stormreaver, or stopped the invasion.

I think it is a serious mistake for an in-game mechanic to try to measure meta-game renown. A lot of it can't be measured anyway. In-game renown is fairly straight-forward, it is the number of quests your guild completes, monsters killed, chests opened. Kind of what we have now (once decay is eliminated). As long as we are clear on the distinction, and not try to create an in-game mechanic to quantify meta-game guild renown, the path forward is easier.

Meta-Game Renown "Could" be significant IF - The Devs allowed Renown to be earned for:

1. Explorers/Slayers/Rares

2. Crafting

3. Advice {Good advice obviously} - There are plenty of people in game who answer newbies questions in Harbour and Korthos.

4. Pugging Challenging Quests/Raids - No more than 2 players from Leader's Guild in Quest or 4 Players from Leader's Guild in Raid.

5. Forums - Yes I said it Forums - Forum renown is a strange entity I know {it would need changing if the devs were to consider this} BUT some in-game renown should go to those who help people out on the forums.
Trolling could confer negative renown - Real Trolling that is.

6. Favour Farming/Over Levelling - This is the big one for me - The Over-Level penalties on renown are ridiculously Draconian!
Favour Milestones equally should garner Guild Renown as well as TP - Every 250 Favour earned = 2,500 Renown perhaps.

[Dirac]

I dislike the old system. The proposed replacement system is far worse.

That you keep saying this hurts you. the replacement system technically isn't worse for you at all, except in your feelings, seeing other guilds being helped and not yours, yet.

If you were to stop focusing on demanding other guilds not be helped, you would make so much more progress helping yours.

"Look, this new system helps large guilds who were stuck, but they were not the only ones. Small guilds were also stuck; active but not advancing. The new system helps them, which is great for them, but we need help too."

Your demand that everyone acknowledge that which is simply not true (the change is somehow worse for guilds not advancing), is hurting our ability to change the system to benefit your guild. This bickering only increases the possibility the devs will not change the system at all because they think too many people are against change. We should be on the same side.

[Viisari]

We should be on the same side.

No. I'd rather they not touch the system at all than implement their previous test back in the state it was in.

[Tshober]

Large guilds don't get crippled by decay, casual guilds do, there is a big difference between the two.

I truly don't understand how you can advocate going back to the old decay system that had far more decay and hurt far more casual/social players than the new one does. If you REALLY cared about casual/social players, this would be a no brainer. Many of us would like to also help the casual players in tiny guilds too, but reverting back to massive decay that hurts all casual/social players is seriously the wrong way to go about that. Why do you insist on begrudging those that have been helped? Why not work toward extending that help to those that have not been helped yet?

[Viisari]

I truly don't understand how you can advocate going back to the old decay system that had far more decay and hurt far more casual/social players than the new one does. If you REALLY cared about casual/social players, this would be a no brainer. Many of us would like to also help the casual players in tiny guilds too, but reverting back to massive decay that hurts all casual/social players is seriously the wrong way to go about that. Why do you insist on begrudging those that have been helped? Why not work toward extending that help to those that have not been helped yet?

You do realize that the changes did pretty much nothing for small guilds? The ones who reaped the benefits from it were the big guilds, medium guilds got some minor relief and small guilds got nothing.

The small guilds that might actually feel some change from it were the ones who were already over level 90 or so.

[Tshober]

You do realize that the changes did pretty much nothing for small guilds?

Well, Yes, if you had read my post you would have seen that I acknowledged that not everyone had been helped yet and I offered my support in working toward extending help to those that had not yet.

[McFlay]

I truly don't understand how you can advocate going back to the old decay system that had far more decay and hurt far more casual/social players than the new one does. If you REALLY cared about casual/social players, this would be a no brainer. Many of us would like to also help the casual players in tiny guilds too, but reverting back to massive decay that hurts all casual/social players is seriously the wrong way to go about that. Why do you insist on begrudging those that have been helped? Why not work toward extending that help to those that have not been helped yet?

It doesnt hurt casual players. Last I checked any guild with any ship buffs helped casual players, unless low level guilds give all its members perm debuffs that I don't know about.

All you want to see is a system where everyone hits 100. I don't want to see that. I'm not at 100, and most likeley never will be. I want decay to stay, and if Turbine is going to overhaul it, it should effect guilds of all sizes equally. Otherwise you just end up with the post-change decay that is disgustingly skewed towards large guilds, where as the bias pre-change is only towards guilds with active rosters.

[slarden]

That you keep saying this hurts you. the replacement system technically isn't worse for you at all, except in your feelings, seeing other guilds being helped and not yours, yet.

If you were to stop focusing on demanding other guilds not be helped, you would make so much more progress helping yours.

"Look, this new system helps large guilds who were stuck, but they were not the only ones. Small guilds were also stuck; active but not advancing. The new system helps them, which is great for them, but we need help too."

Your demand that everyone acknowledge that which is simply not true (the change is somehow worse for guilds not advancing), is hurting our ability to change the system to benefit your guild. This bickering only increases the possibility the devs will not change the system at all because they think too many people are against change. We should be on the same side.

This is absolutely not true. I have repeatedly suggested that decay be reduced to help larger guilds and offered other suggestions as well if you read back in the thread. You are in fact doing here what you are accusing me of.

The devs should not keep the new system - they should revise the old system to reduce decay and on a sliding scale for larger guilds. Requiring that my guild generates more than 10x more renown per account to cover decay vs. a 200 account guild is not fair any way you measure it. It's even worse for a 2 person guild. You say I offered nothing to help large guilds but you are wrong - read the posts. What are you offering to help small guilds like mine with a mix of active, inactive and casual gamers?

Small guilds have also been stuck and many were disbanded because of this. Yet you make it seem like a large guild problem when it is not and never has been. It's a problem that the decay curve gets too steep once you reach level 50-60. Small guilds get stuck well before this level because they have problem on both ends - generating renown and decay where large guilds only struggle with the decay part.

I am on the same side as reasonable people. I want to see decay reduced so that all guilds have a chance to get to level 85 and get the biggest ship with all the important ameneties. The curve can stay steep from 85 to 100 as that is mostly about bragging rights and not something that really impacts game play.

[theslimshady]

And if each of your members were pulling the same number of trophies per day as those smaller guilds you'd have hit 100 faster and stayed there.


and again another little guild talking about ; after over a year that no guild with more then 50 members has ever done this so what you are saying is pure speculation
the proof that the ole system favored little tiny guilds is based on nothing but the fact that there are multple guilds that reached 100 levels 24 members or less- 0 over 50 members that would be a hard fact

[theslimshady]

The reasons for this have been pointed out in this thread so many times that I'm not even going to bother with repeating them.

does not matter just having a majority of paying customers saying its dumb it should be changed should be enough reason to overide a tiny minorty



I guess you missed what Fernando said about the highest guild levels.

he also said mabar would be up



Of course it's a factor, getting to and maintaining level 100 is still quite an achievement even if you weren't the first one there. dont care i just want to use my tp point bought 5 percent shrines that i had level 74 and now i dont so i cant use this is a broken game mechanic to perchuse something for real money then not be able to use it



You are forced to do nothing. Making a big deal out of renown and renown decay is a conscious choice your guild has made.
if you or your guildies bought something that uses real money and you could use then a week later you couldnt you sir would have a issue too and this nightmere has lasted over a year this in itself is a bad buisness model

[Tshober]

That you keep saying this hurts you. the replacement system technically isn't worse for you at all, except in your feelings, seeing other guilds being helped and not yours, yet.

If you were to stop focusing on demanding other guilds not be helped, you would make so much more progress helping yours.

"Look, this new system helps large guilds who were stuck, but they were not the only ones. Small guilds were also stuck; active but not advancing. The new system helps them, which is great for them, but we need help too."

Your demand that everyone acknowledge that which is simply not true (the change is somehow worse for guilds not advancing), is hurting our ability to change the system to benefit your guild. This bickering only increases the possibility the devs will not change the system at all because they think too many people are against change. We should be on the same side.

I actually think some of these are just stealth supporters of the old decay system that are not willing to fess up to it. They will not accept any substantive change from the old decay system. Their purpose is to create bickering in hope that the devs will throw up their hands and go back to the old decay system. Unfortunately, to completely ignore them might lend a veneer of credability to their arguments. I don't see an option other than to keep pointing out the untruth of their claims. The devs are smart people. They should be able to see what is really going on here. It's pretty obvious who is wanting to cooperate and help everyone and who isn't.

[curiouspilot]

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.

This is really an immature comment...Vansh did not brag about how superior he is, being in a level 100 guild. The stats he provided was to simply show everyone how this new change will progress large guild size guilds.

So here's an example for you. If I play basketball, and I don't really care how good Kobe Bryant is, and I also don't care about getting into NBA, maybe I should suggest them to change the basket in official games to ten feet high? So I can see how much those professional players really can do?

[slarden]

example with the following assumptions
- guilds start at minimum of level 60
- 30 days in the month
- large guild gets 50 renown per heroic deed and small guild gets 120 per heroic deed with 4 person small guild bonus

UNDER THE OLD SYSTEM

Level 60 guild with 4 accounts trying to get to level 61 in one month
-Needs to earn 9.45 heroic deeds per account per day to cover renown loss
-Needs to earn 47.58 heroic deeds per account per day to level to 61

Level 60 guild with 200 accounts trying to get to level 61 in one month
- Needs to earn 4.76 heroic deeds per account per day to cover renown loss
- Needs to earn 6.60 heroic deeds per account per day to level to 61

UNDER THE PROPOSED SYSTEM

Level 60 guild with 4 people trying to get to level 61 in one month
-Needs to earn 9.45 heroic deeds per account per day to cover renown loss
-Needs to earn 47.58 heroic deeds per account per day to level to 61

Level 60 guild with 200 accounts trying to get to level 61 in one month
- Needs to earn less than 1/2 of a heroic deed per account per day to cover renown loss
- Needs to earn 2.28 heroic deeds per account per day to level to 61 (this is less than 5% of what the 4 person guild must generate)

This example doesn't include the new renown reduction under the new system that will occur when a guild gains 1 level which I think will cause many small guilds to get caught in an infinite non-leveling loop unless they plan around it.

The mythology is that the old system favored small guilds. The math backs up that small guilds have always had to work harder to earn levels than large guilds. Under the new system this gap would get ridiculous and almost make small guilds obsolete. This is not right.

What about the money spent on guild elixirs to level our guild that is now obsolete? Will that be refunded?

[curiouspilot]

I know not everyone will approve, but for our situation, we no longer have to be concerned if a player's real life home and work situations will allow them to play regularly or not when inducting them into our guild. If they get along with us well, we can take them in even if they rarely play. We do not yet have such scrutiny in our rules, but I certainly have not been making an effort to recruit anyone who can rarely ever play to avoid feeling like I am adding a burden to the guild's efforts to hit level 70. Now, if the person is fun and a good fit, I'll take them right in. All due to this change by Turbine which our members appreciate.

In response to Vanshilar who I respect for all of his excellent renown research over the years, although you may be correct that a few players would play more if given more incentive (perhaps more guild events or more attention paid to their characters) in my experience, folks who don't logon much have real-life issues such as work, school, and family and no matter the incentive they would not be playing more often. Therefore, the reduction in decay is perfect to help those folks get into and remain in a caring, supportive guild.
I am gonna be perfectly honest here, but if they don't or can't play nearly as much as the rest of the members in the guild, then they ARE a burden to the guild, no offense intended.

Everyone's got a life outside of the game, so if the majority of the guild can remain active, why can't they? If they can't contribute to the guild, then they don't deserve to be in the guild at that level, period. If you allow those members to stay in the guild, then it's not fair for others because they may have sacrificed their own time to work on the renown.

And you're right, some people really don't have much time to spend on the game, so have them stay in a lower level guild, simple. After all, it's all about how much one cares about the game, if they have something else more important to do, they will get more things done there, not here in DDO.

[Chaos000]

And here is what is wrong with your entire argument. Stop looking at the very small minority of small guilds with a dozen power gamers in them and comparing that to a casual guild.

The example that you keep bringing up is how much less renown per account is required in a large guild in comparison to a small guild per account. Is there even a large guilds currently with the ranking of 100? I know for a fact that there are small guilds with the ranking of 100.

The point I'm making is that once you factor in an equal ratio of casual accounts, the old system favors smaller guilds EVEN IF larger guilds have MORE accounts generating the same amount of renown as a smaller guild per account. More players... working just as hard but having to generate more renown to cover the burden of casual players.

For example slarden figured his assumption comparing a lvl 60 guild with 4 accounts and a lvl 60 guild with 200 accounts. Take it a step further. lvl 60 guild with 4 accounts and 2 casual accounts (6 person small guild bonus) lvl 60 guild with 200 accounts 100 casual accounts. Assumption is that casual accounts log in once a month but does not generate any renown. Despite the burden does the large guild of 300 come out ahead of the small guild of 6 under the old system?

It's the casual gamer that is put at a disadvantage. You want to keep the old system? fine. But decay per day should not factor in casual gamers period.

[Tshober]

And you're right, some people really don't have much time to spend on the game, so have them stay in a lower level guild, simple. After all, it's all about how much one cares about the game, if they have something else more important to do, they will get more things done there, not here in DDO.

These people are paying customers too. The old decay system made them unwelcome in most DDO guilds and the only established guilds that would take them are stuck in place forever at lower levels. Virtually no other MMO has a level decay mechanism like DDO's that discriminates against casual/social players. Shunning them makes it much more likely they will choose to leave DDO for almost any other MMO that offers a gaming environment that is more tolerant of their chosen play-style.

And on top of that, it makes DDO's social environment just plain unfriendly. Getting rid of them from your guild does not solve the problem for DDO, it only solves it for you. We should be making casual/social players and new players feel welcome in DDO so they will stay and help the game grow and prosper. Our old decay system encouraged and rewarded exactly the opposite. I think it is well past time for that to be changed.

[McFlay]

and again another little guild talking about ; after over a year that no guild with more then 50 members has ever done this so what you are saying is pure speculation
the proof that the ole system favored little tiny guilds is based on nothing but the fact that there are multple guilds that reached 100 levels 24 members or less- 0 over 50 members that would be a hard fact

So whats your point? Power gamers who dump ridiculous amounts of time into the game and actually want to get their guild up to 100 tend to guild with other like minded power gamers? Why would such power gamers bother making 1 huge uberguild when if you have 10 people who all play 5-6 nights a week around the same time you already always have enough to run any 6 man content or form a solid backbone for any raid?

[curiouspilot]

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?
Since Vansh is probably too modest or too busy to reply, I'll attempt this.

First of all, I would like to ask, what do you define as an active guild? Is it a guild size 6 guild which everyone plays ten hours a day, or a guild size 60 guild which everyone plays an hour a day? I'd say both are active guilds, but does this mean anything in particular? No, nothing. There are plenty of active guilds out there, rewarding active guilds is like rewarding most of everybody, absolutely pointless.

Now rewarding individuals who spend time and work harder is another thing. It's almost like a real life situation, which if you work harder, have a higher education, you're more likely to get a high paid job, and needless for me to point out(but I guess I'd better), all companies out there are active, but are they all the same? Is Nokia active? yes. Is Apple active? yes. But would you work for Apple or Nokia? or rather, are you more qualified to work for Apple or Nokia? Now of course I don't mean to say that Nokia is a bad company, but it's certainly an inferior company when compared to Apple, according to their sales. So to conclude: The more competitive(active) a worker(player) you are, the more you deserve to be in a better company(guild), thus better paid(ship buffs, etc.)

Further, the old renown system is like Capitalism, and the new system is much like Communism, which everyone does little and expect great rewards, and we can all see how much that has done for China before they changed their ways. It's also like the invention of Euro, now most Europeans are lazy, except Germans are complaining, simply because they work the hardest and they get no particular return in hard working using the same currency. Basically they work hard so others can be lazy, now that, is not fair, which is the example why we need to reward active players, not active guilds, because some players care more about the game and they rush back to play after work and pay their full attention while playing, while some players just log on to chat mostly, and multi-tasking while they quest, therefore they don't deserve the same kind of benefits that high level guild members get(better ship buffs, recognition, access to high end raid gears, etc.)

In essence, it's either Karl Marx or Milton Friedman, take your pick.

Though I am sure Vansh can defend his points better than I can, but since he's not doing it, and some people here may think the reason why he made that post was because he's a member of a level 100 guild, therefore he's got to oppose to this new system. so here I am, a nobody, expressing my thoughts regarding this, while supporting what he posted, a hundred percent.

[McFlay]

For example slarden figured his assumption comparing a lvl 60 guild with 4 accounts and a lvl 60 guild with 200 accounts. Take it a step further. lvl 60 guild with 4 accounts and 2 casual accounts (6 person small guild bonus) lvl 60 guild with 200 accounts 100 casual accounts. Assumption is that casual accounts log in once a month but does not generate any renown. Despite the burden does the large guild of 300 come out ahead of the small guild of 6 under the old system?

Lulz, yeah, we should balance guild levels around players who log in once a month and don't pull any renown, thats a great idea.

What you'd end up seeing in guilds of varying sizes that all had a make up of 2/3 active, 1/3 casual players is the larger the guild, the faster they would level, and the lower they would plateau. If it takes your massive guild 2 months to hit 65ish and plateau, and it takes a small guild pulling a similiar amount of trophies per player per day to a year and a half, but they manage to hit 75 before they plateau, seems like a fair trade off to me.

Like I said before, if turbine wants it to be exactly fair, then take away small guild bonuses, redo the decay formula so its simply number of accounts x guild level, and scale renown required to level a guild by number of active accounts that would auto adjust as accounts join/leave/go inactive.

[curiouspilot]

These people are paying customers too. The old decay system made them unwelcome in most DDO guilds and the only established guilds that would take them are stuck in place forever at lower levels. Virtually no other MMO has a level decay mechanism like DDO's that discriminates against casual/social players. Shunning them makes it much more likely they will choose to leave DDO for almost any other MMO that offers a gaming environment that is more tolerant of their chosen play-style.

And on top of that, it makes DDO's social environment just plain unfriendly. Getting rid of them from your guild does not solve the problem for DDO, it only solves it for you. We should be making casual/social players and new players feel welcome in DDO so they will stay and help the game grow and prosper. Our old decay system encouraged and rewarded exactly the opposite. I think it is well past time for that to be changed.
That's one element which makes DDO a good MMO, and not others.

We're all paying customers, so we should be focusing on what's a good balance for the game. You know that it's easy to get into a level 60 guild, which has most essential ship buffs one could need. The only thing they won't get is the 4%/5% exp buff, so I don't think it's such a discrimination against them, not to mention the game can be played without ship buffs, and there are plenty of guildless players out there.

As far as I can see, most new players are welcomed by others in the world of DDO, and almost anyone can get into a guild no problem, but the question is, are they trying to get into a higher level guild than they deserve to get into?

Oh and please don't jump into conclusions. I am not in a high level guild, nor am I in a small guild, trying to compete with large guilds, so this will not affect me much, as in personal gain.

[slarden]

The example that you keep bringing up is how much less renown per account is required in a large guild in comparison to a small guild per account. Is there even a large guilds currently with the ranking of 100? I know for a fact that there are small guilds with the ranking of 100.

The point I'm making is that once you factor in an equal ratio of casual accounts, the old system favors smaller guilds EVEN IF larger guilds have MORE accounts generating the same amount of renown as a smaller guild per account. More players... working just as hard but having to generate more renown to cover the burden of casual players.

For example slarden figured his assumption comparing a lvl 60 guild with 4 accounts and a lvl 60 guild with 200 accounts. Take it a step further. lvl 60 guild with 4 accounts and 2 casual accounts (6 person small guild bonus) lvl 60 guild with 200 accounts 100 casual accounts. Assumption is that casual accounts log in once a month but does not generate any renown. Despite the burden does the large guild of 300 come out ahead of the small guild of 6 under the old system?

It's the casual gamer that is put at a disadvantage. You want to keep the old system? fine. But decay per day should not factor in casual gamers period.

I agree with what you are saying about casual gamers, but they impact small guilds and large guilds alike. Achieving level 100 was intended to be hard and I've done the math and no our small guild could never make level 100. I am not sure if we can even get to 80 based on play level, the steep decay curve and the extra work required by small guilds to begin with. The guilds that achieved level 100 or even 90+ did so by being extremely selective and ensuring that they only took players where there primary hobby in life was DDO. Those are going to be small just because there are very few people that fit that category and they won't all end up in the same guild. It's unrealistic to expect a guild that accepts anyone will generate the same amount of renown as a guild that only takes people whose favorite thing in life is DDO. Over the past few years I've probably received 30 random guild invites on my backpack toon that is not in a guild. It's unrealistic to expect people's backpack toons to generate renown when all they ever do is store items. If your guild spams random invites and ends up recruiting backpack toons - you can't expect to receive the same results as guilds that only want dedicated players that spend 20+ hours per week on DDO.

I think the easiest solution is to the lower decay and reduce the decay curve below 85. Above 85 benefits are marginal so let 85-100 be for bragging rights and a few items.

Other alternatives are lower the level requirements for ship ameneties and the bigger ships. I don't care what level my guild is really, but I would like a chance to get the biggest ship and all the key ameneties. The ameneties you get by 63/64 - the bigger ship @ 80/85 just lets you get a few more. If guilds can get the biggest ship and all key amenities by 60 I don't think anyone would care that much about renown and decay. The # of large guilds that can't make it to 60 is very small. 60 seems to be the place where large guilds start to have trouble. Most small guilds never even make it to 60.

[Tshober]

Further, the old renown system is like Capitalism, and the new system is much like Communism, which everyone does little and expect great rewards, and we can all see how much that has done for China before they changed their ways. It's also like the invention of Euro, now most Europeans are lazy, except Germans are complaining, simply because they work the hardest and they get no particular return in hard working using the same currency. Basically they work hard so others can be lazy, now that, is not fair, which is the example why we need to reward active players, not active guilds, because some players care more about the game and they rush back to play after work and pay their full attention while playing, while some players just log on to chat mostly, and multi-tasking while they quest, therefore they don't deserve the same kind of benefits that high level guild members get(better ship buffs, recognition, access to high end raid gears, etc.).

I am not sure why people insist on dragging politics into a game, but you have it exactly backwards. Tiny and small guilds can't possibly compete with larger guilds in renown earning power so renown decay, essentially a huge tax on renown earned, and small guild bonuses, subsidies, are introduced to "level the field" so that the smaller guilds can compete with the larger guilds. The larger the guild, the higher the renown tax rate they must pay daily. The smaller the guild, the more they are subsidised with renown bonuses. These are very much socialist/communist like policies.

As far as rewarding individuals who work harder, that would make some sense if the system were actually a player leveling system, but it is not. It is a guild leveling system. If you are going to rank guilds by renown, then the only way that makes sense to compare them is by total renown earned. If you instead use renown divided by number of players then you are no longer ranking guilds, you are ranking players.

For example, if you were going to rank countries in military power, would you take the total militay expenditures divided by polulation? Of course not, you would just use total military expenditures to rank them. If you were going to rank countries in economic power would you use GDP divided by population? Of course not, you would just use plain old GDP to rank them. That is because, in both cases, you are ranking countries, not the people in the countries. It is the same with guilds. If you want to rank guilds on renown then you can't divide by the numbers of players because then you would be ranking the players, not the guilds. The proper way to rank guilds on renown is by total renown earned by each GUILD.

[slarden]

I am not sure why people insist on dragging politics into a game, but you have it exactly backwards. Tiny and small guilds can't possibly compete with larger guilds in renown earning power so renown decay, essentially a huge tax on renown earned, and small guild bonuses, subsidies, are introduced to "level the field" so that the smaller guilds can compete with the larger guilds. The larger the guild, the higher the renown tax rate they must pay daily. The smaller the guild, the more they are subsidised with renown bonuses. These are very much socialist/communist like policies.

As far as rewarding individuals who work harder, that would make some sense if the system were actually a player leveling system, but it is not. It is a guild leveling system. If you are going to rank guilds by renown, then the only way that makes sense to compare them is by total renown earned. If you instead use renown divided by number of players then you are no longer ranking guilds, you are ranking players.

For example, if you were going to rank countries in military power, would you take the total militay expenditures divided by polulation? Of course not, you would just use total military expenditures to rank them. If you were going to rank countries in economic power would you use GDP divided by population? Of course not, you would just use plain old GDP to rank them. That is because, in both cases, you are ranking countries, not the people in the countries. It is the same with guilds. If you want to rank guilds on renown then you can't divide by the numbers of players because then you would be ranking the players, not the guilds. The proper way to rank guilds on renown is by total renown earned by each GUILD.

I am not even sure where to begin with this except to insert "no" in all the appropriate places. Small guilds have always had to earn the most renown per account to level and have always had to generate the most renown per account to cover decay - and that includes the small guild bonus being factored in. It is very simple math to confirm this. The purpose of guilds is to give a place for people to group together. It makes no sense to rank guilds based on size as every guild could get to 1000 characters if it wanted to.

This is a game and not an army or country. First and formost it needs to be fair and fun. Decay is not fun and should be reduced, but the math example I did above shows that small guilds were always disadvantaged, but with the proposed change it would be utterly ridiculous.

[Tshober]

Decay is not fun and should be reduced, but the math example I did above shows that small guilds were always disadvantaged, but with the proposed change it would be utterly ridiculous.

I agree that decay is not fun. IMO, it should be eliminted. You say reduced. The new system reduced it a lot, but only for guilds with more than 10 members.

I agree that smaller guilds are disadvantaged. They can't possibly compete with larger guilds in renown earning power. I said so explicitly in my post. I was merely pointing out that the old decay system used a huge renown tax (decay) that heavily taxed larger guilds and subsidies (bonuses) that favored smaller guilds to try to level the playing field. Whether that is a good thing or not, is another question.

[Gremmlynn]

I will grant you that there are some people who feel they must make everything into a competition.
Yes and they make driving down the highway soooo interesting. At least in DDO they are less likely to get you killed as permanently.

[Gremmlynn]

I also don't understand why some people have such a great need to get to level 100, it's just a number and it provides basically no benefits. By level 70 you have basically everything important, by level 85 you have the last ship and after that you can't really argue that you want more stuff.

At that point wanting to gain more levels is just about stroking your personal ego. And hey, that's exactly what the old system was designed to be about at those levels only it was specifically built in a way that you'd really have to work for that ego boost.

That's just fine to me, if everyone could just progress to the max level given enough time the levels would become meaningless, they'd be just another time sink like all the rest.

Actually, the last real perk comes at 93. What they do with the levels past that, I think most really don't care.

[curiouspilot]

I am not sure why people insist on dragging politics into a game, but you have it exactly backwards. Tiny and small guilds can't possibly compete with larger guilds in renown earning power so renown decay, essentially a huge tax on renown earned, and small guild bonuses, subsidies, are introduced to "level the field" so that the smaller guilds can compete with the larger guilds. The larger the guild, the higher the renown tax rate they must pay daily. The smaller the guild, the more they are subsidised with renown bonuses. These are very much socialist/communist like policies.

As far as rewarding individuals who work harder, that would make some sense if the system were actually a player leveling system, but it is not. It is a guild leveling system. If you are going to rank guilds by renown, then the only way that makes sense to compare them is by total renown earned. If you instead use renown divided by number of players then you are no longer ranking guilds, you are ranking players.

For example, if you were going to rank countries in military power, would you take the total militay expenditures divided by polulation? Of course not, you would just use total military expenditures to rank them. If you were going to rank countries in economic power would you use GDP divided by population? Of course not, you would just use plain old GDP to rank them. That is because, in both cases, you are ranking countries, not the people in the countries. It is the same with guilds. If you want to rank guilds on renown then you can't divide by the numbers of players because then you would be ranking the players, not the guilds. The proper way to rank guilds on renown is by total renown earned by each GUILD.
If you saw the word "capitalism", you'd know I was talking about economics, not politics.

Renown tax is applied to both large guilds and small guilds. If it's a guild size of 6, it's levelMultiplier*(10+10), if it's a guild size of 300, it's levelMultiplier*(300+10), it seems fine to me, so I don't really know what you're saying here, if anything, I'd say that smaller guilds of 10 or less has to take that extra guild size up to 10, which is probably not necessary.

Now the small guild bonuses isn't an advantage over large guilds, it's there to help small guilds to advance, like those few handicap parking spots in a parking lot, because they're at such a disadvantage, otherwise it would take forever to level the guild, not to mention to keep up with the enormous renown gaining power of large guilds.

Look at this example. Let's say there are two guilds competing with each other on renown gain, both are level 60, which has a levelMultiplier of 226.8. Guild A has 300 members while guild B has 6. If each member of guild A earn 1000 renown per day, then it's 300,000 renown total, while taking a 226.8*(300+10)=70308 renown decay hit, so that nets 229692 renown increase in the end. Now to keep up with that, each member of guild B has to earn (229692+(226.8*(10+10)))/(6*4)=9759.5, which means each member of guild B has to work roughly 9 to 10 times(9759.5 vs 1000) harder than each member of guild A, factored in the 300% small guild bonuses. This shows how much workload there is to put on each member of a small guild, and if they can pull it off, then they really deserve it, after all, it's easier to find 100 members who could play an hour a day, than to find 10 members who could play ten hours a day, or ten times more efficient.

The reason why it's not a player leveling system is because individuals who play more are already rewarded, by getting loot from chests, end rewards, etc. So since individuals are taken care of, now we move on to rewarding players in groups, or another term if I may, teamwork. That's why there're airship buffs and the need to work on renown, because it's a direct score of how much a group has worked together. If you think it's only fair to compare them by total renown earned, then it's too easy to achieve higher guild level. As I have presented earlier, it's harder for small guild members to compete with large guild members, and they have to either spend more time, or get better at the game, therefore completing quests much faster, that's why most high level guild members are very good players, completing quests in minutes rather than hours, and therefore they deserve to be in a high level guild because of how efficient they are and how much they contribute in renown gain, individually.

If this system is permanently implemented, there could be two effects. First, it widens the gap in renown gaining speed between a large guild and a small guild. Let's say renown decay is now only 226.8*10=2268, 300,000-2268=297732, divide that number by 24, it equals 12405, that means each small guild member has to work about 25% harder than before, which also means about 12 times harder than a large guild member. If each small guild member plays four hours a day to match that earlier, now that person has to spend five hours instead. This is an indirect punishment to small guilds. Second, large guild will get to level 100 easily, and there could be little to no distinction between a good player and an average player, since there will be many level 100 guilds out there, so a newbie who just joined the guild could appear to be a good player, but he's not. I personally like to know how good a player is, by looking at his guild level as a general indication.

Lastly, you can't use neither military power nor economic power here as examples. Those two only represent partial prospects of what a country can offer, while guild level/renown represents a guild's total advancement. You could, however, rank companies for example, if a company has fewer workers or executives to make more profit than a larger company which has more employees, then overall it'll be ranked as a better company, because it's efficient, and worthy of investment.

Whether or not you or others agree with me, I don't feel like discussing this no more because I think I've explained myself clear enough. I'll see you guys in game.

[Viisari]

Actually, the last real perk comes at 93. What they do with the levels past that, I think most really don't care.

Are you telling me, with a straight face, that getting 5% xp bonus instead of 4% xp bonus is "a real perk"? While leveling a legend character that translates to something like 10k extra xp if you can keep it up all the time (which you can't).

No, of course you're not telling me that. Because that would be ridiculous.

[Tshober]

Lastly, you can't use neither military power nor economic power here as examples. Those two only represent partial prospects of what a country can offer, while guild level/renown represents a guild's total advancement. You could, however, rank companies for example, if a company has fewer workers or executives to make more profit than a larger company which has more employees, then overall it'll be ranked as a better company, because it's efficient, and worthy of investment.


Your company example might make some sense if the small guilds actually earned more renown (profit in your example) than the large guilds. But in reality they earn far, far less. When companies make their annual reports for investors and shareholders, do they report their profits AFTER dividing by their number of employees? Of course they don't. They report plain old total profits. To divide profits by the number of employees would be silly when you are comparing companies. Dividing guild renown by number of players when comparing guilds is just as silly.

[Viisari]

Your company example might make some sense if the small guilds actually earned more renown (profit in your example) than the large guilds. But in reality they earn far, far less.

And in reality large companies also have far, far larger expenses. So in the end, their actual net profit can be low or might even be negative.

Kinda like with guild renown, large guilds have much, much lower net renown gain because they're not efficient.

You're thinking too much about this whole dividing with the number of players business, it's merely a method to make it easier to understand how much actual renown is being pulled when the size of the guild is noted. And you cannot pretend that it's not relevant, as guild renown stands, it' very relevant.

So no, it's not silly at all, you just misunderstand the purpose behind it.

[Tshober]

Renown tax is applied to both large guilds and small guilds. If it's a guild size of 6, it's levelMultiplier*(10+10), if it's a guild size of 300, it's levelMultiplier*(300+10), it seems fine to me, so I don't really know what you're saying here, if anything, I'd say that smaller guilds of 10 or less has to take that extra guild size up to 10, which is probably not necessary.

Let's use your preferred analogy of companies here. If company A is taxed at a rate of 20 (10+10) and company B is taxed at a rate of 310 (300+10), clearly the tax is far, far heavier on company B. Remember, we are talking about companies (guilds) here and not about employees (players). Obviously, to anyone who isn't biased to the point of blindness, the larger guilds are being taxed at a far higher rate than the smaller guilds. That is done on purpose to help level the playing field because the smaller guilds simply can't compete with the larger guilds when it comes to earning renown. The only way smaller guilds can get ahead is if the larger guilds are taxed (decay) far more heavily and the smaller guilds are subsidised (bonuses) heavily as well.

[Tshober]

So no, it's not silly at all, you just misunderstand the purpose behind it.

The purpose of it is very clear. The purpose is to give advantage to smaller guilds to offset the superior ability of larger guilds to earn renown.

[Viisari]

Let's use your preferred analogy of companies here. If company A is taxed at a rate of 20 (10+10) and company B is taxed at a rate of 310 (300+10), clearly the tax is far, far heavier on company B. Remember, we are talking about companies (guilds) here and not about employees (players). Obviously, to anyone who isn't biased to the point of blindness, the larger guilds are being taxed at a far higher rate than the smaller guilds. That is done on purpose to help level the playing field because the smaller guilds simply can't compete with the larger guilds when it comes to earning renown. The only way smaller guilds can get ahead is if the larger guilds are taxed (decay) far more heavily and the smaller guilds are subsidised (bonuses) heavily as well.

Large corporations often have tons of bureaucracy, stupidly thought out projects, general inefficiency, bored/stupid management etc etc, it's not just merely taxes that shoots the expenses through the roof for large corporations.

But these comparisons are silly anyway, guilds are not corporations and the developers said that they wanted all guilds to be on somewhat equal footing. That is why large guilds have larger renown decay, no amount of real world comparisons is going to invalidate the reasoning behind it no matter how you wish it.


The purpose of it is very clear. The purpose is to give advantage to smaller guilds to offset the superior ability of larger guilds to earn renown.

With how the renown system currently works it's perfectly reasonable to compare how much base renown each player is pulling in their respective guilds because that is what actually matters in this system. Now if it was some other system it might not matter and you might have a point, but in this system it is very relevant. And this comparison shows us that the players in small high level guilds are pulling much more renown than players in large guilds.

The absolute number of renown gained by each is irrelevant because they've different amounts of decay. This also means that the net renown gain for these small guilds is higher than for the large guilds, so we can in fact say that the small guilds have the superior renown gathering ability. And it's not because of the system, large guilds could do it too if they wished to.

[Tshober]

But these comparisons are silly anyway, guilds are not corporations and the developers said that they wanted all guilds to be on somewhat equal footing. That is why large guilds have larger renown decay, no amount of real world comparisons is going to invalidate the reasoning behind it no matter how you wish it.

I was not the one who said that removing renown decay was analagous to communism and having renown decay was analagous to capitalism. I merely pointed out the incredible backwards logic in that comparison.

[Tshober]

With how the renown system currently works it's perfectly reasonable to compare how much base renown each player is pulling in their respective guilds because that is what actually matters in this system. Now if it was some other system it might not matter and you might have a point, but in this system it is very relevant. And this comparison shows us that the players in small high level guilds are pulling much more renown than players in large guilds.

And it is perfectly reasonable to point out the logical flaws in that system. This is after all a thread to help find a potential replacement system.

[Viisari]

And it is perfectly reasonable to point out the logical flaws in that system. This is after all a thread to help find a potential replacement system.

The only flaws in the system were in some of the numbers, the logic behind is sound. You might dislike it but you can't really go claiming it illogical when it is not so. None of your comparisons work because they assume that the system was designed to do something it was clearly not designed to do.

The design was:
Make early levels very easy to get, up to level 60 or so
Make high levels very difficult to get, after level 65 or so renown decay starts kicking in more and more heavily, you will also note that going from level 75 to level 100 you have to more than double your current renown pool
Make by far the majority of anything useful easy to get, last truly significant ship buff is the Altar of Devastation at guild level 70
Make the playing field about even for all guilds regardless of size, high activity among all members is rewarded, size is not rewarded


The system reaches most of these goals reasonably well and in the light of these goals there's nothing illogical about anything it does. I've said it before and I will now repeat it again: the system wasn't perfect, but unless these goals have changed then any imbalance could've been fixed with just tweaking the numbers.

But if these goals have changed then we do need a new system. What was proposed in the opening post of this thread was not a good system unless the new design is to favor large guilds above everything else.

[Cernunan]

And it is perfectly reasonable to point out the logical flaws in that system. This is after all a thread to help find a potential replacement system.

Well, the truth is the system gives such high powered rewards and perks there has to be a steep price involved in acquiring said perks, that is why some of us see no problem with a rich, complex system of guild renown. You are earning some very potent rewards for your investment of time. Those perks should not just be given for free just because you have huge quantity of people vs quality of people.
And the entire point of those in favor of the original system would be, mostly huge casual guilds EASILY have access to 98% of ship buffs, and they have access to them MUCH quicker than more efficient active guilds.

The more I see people against the old system, the more I see people just wanting everything for free without the price of substantial activity, the more I believe the entire system should be scrapped.

I can tell you though, the casual player base would be hurt much more from the removal of all amenities and buffs from the ships. My guildies would not be too hampered in a post ship buff game. We got along just fine before the ships, and most good players will get along just fine without them.

[Viisari]

I can tell you though, the casual player base would be hurt much more from the removal of all amenities and buffs from the ships. My guildies would not be too hampered in a post ship buff game. We got along just fine before the ships, and most good players will get along just fine without them.

Personally I'd love it if they removed all resistance and stat buffs from ships, they're silly, waste time and make especially the early levels extremely easy.

Keep the convenience items like teleporters, crafting altars, mail boxes, auction houses etc and add some more of them. It'd be perfect.

[Tshober]

The only flaws in the system were in some of the numbers, the logic behind is sound. You might dislike it but you can't really go claiming it illogical when it is not so. None of your comparisons work because they assume that the system was designed to do something it was clearly not designed to do.

The design was:
Make early levels very easy to get, up to level 60 or so
Make high levels very difficult to get, after level 65 or so renown decay starts kicking in more and more heavily, you will also note that going from level 75 to level 100 you have to more than double your current renown pool
Make by far the majority of anything useful easy to get, last truly significant ship buff is the Altar of Devastation at guild level 70
Make the playing field about even for all guilds regardless of size, high activity among all members is rewarded, size is not rewarded


The system reaches most of these goals reasonably well and in the light of these goals there's nothing illogical about anything it does. I've said it before and I will now repeat it again: the system wasn't perfect, but unless these goals have changed then any imbalance could've been fixed with just tweaking the numbers.

But if these goals have changed then we do need a new system. What was proposed in the opening post of this thread was not a good system unless the new design is to favor large guilds above everything else.

I don't feel constrained by your rules. I take it as a full review of the system. If you wish to limit yourself, that's fine with me.

[eris2323]

It is amazing how long an argument can go on with just a couple of people out of the thousands of players playing.

It might be a good idea to take this moment to remember that by about a 10:1 margin, the vast majority of guild leaders polled dislike the system.

If a couple of forum-ites like to argue, let's all keep that in mind. 10. to. 1.

[Viisari]

I don't feel constrained by your rules. I take it as a full review of the system. If you wish to limit yourself, that's fine with me.

Huh?

If the system is designed with some specific goals in mind and it achieves those goals you cannot call it illogical on those grounds.

What you can disagree with are the goals set when the system was designed.

I take it you don't often design things?


It is amazing how long an argument can go on with just a couple of people out of the thousands of players playing.

It might be a good idea to take this moment to remember that by about a 10:1 margin, the vast majority of guild leaders polled dislike the system.

If a couple of forum-ites like to argue, let's all keep that in mind. 10. to. 1.

Yes and the people in that poll are a tiny fraction of all players so it doesn't mean much either.

And even if it was all the players it is still meaningless because it only asked them their opinion of the system, it didn't poll if they wanted the whole thing gone or did they just wish to see it balanced more.

I've yet to see anyone argue in this thread that we should absolutely leave the current system as it is. Specifics are important in a discussion like this, and you have none of those, merely a blank yes/no/blargh.

[eris2323]

Huh?

Yes and the people in that poll are a tiny fraction of all players so it doesn't mean much either.

And even if it was all the players it is still meaningless because it only asked them their opinion of the system, it didn't poll if they wanted the whole thing gone or did they just wish to see it balanced more.

I've yet to see anyone argue in this thread that we should absolutely leave the current system as it is. Specifics are important in a discussion like this, and you have none of those, merely a blank yes/no/blargh.

Yes, I get it - you want a competition amongst guilds, you want decay re-instated, and you want guild leaders to have to choose between casual players, and renown.

90% of the forumites polled disagree with you and dislike the system.

Less than 10% of the forumites polled were happy with the system.

I'm not really here to argue with the 10%, I'm only waiting to hear about the other changes turbine has in store with guild renown - it is nice to know they are considering changes to help our casual and new players.

However, keeping the argument going like you have been is keeping the thread in the new topics page - and I keep hoping to hear from a dev, and all I get is players arguing again.

You have no numbers to prove differently - so until you manage to show any, I think we'll trust that 90% of the guild leaders polled hate the system, and think it should change.

[slarden]

example with the following assumptions
- guilds start at minimum of level 60
- 30 days in the month
- large guild gets 50 renown per heroic deed and small guild gets 120 per heroic deed with 4 person small guild bonus

UNDER THE OLD SYSTEM

Level 60 guild with 4 accounts trying to get to level 61 in one month
-Needs to earn 9.45 heroic deeds per account per day to cover renown loss
-Needs to earn 47.58 heroic deeds per account per day to level to 61

Level 60 guild with 200 accounts trying to get to level 61 in one month
- Needs to earn 4.76 heroic deeds per account per day to cover renown loss
- Needs to earn 6.60 heroic deeds per account per day to level to 61

UNDER THE PROPOSED SYSTEM

Level 60 guild with 4 people trying to get to level 61 in one month
-Needs to earn 9.45 heroic deeds per account per day to cover renown loss
-Needs to earn 47.58 heroic deeds per account per day to level to 61

Level 60 guild with 200 accounts trying to get to level 61 in one month
- Needs to earn less than 1/2 of a heroic deed per account per day to cover renown loss
- Needs to earn 2.28 heroic deeds per account per day to level to 61 (this is less than 5% of what the 4 person guild must generate)

This example doesn't include the new renown reduction under the new system that will occur when a guild gains 1 level which I think will cause many small guilds to get caught in an infinite non-leveling loop unless they plan around it.

The mythology is that the old system favored small guilds. The math backs up that small guilds have always had to work harder to earn levels than large guilds. Under the new system this gap would get ridiculous and almost make small guilds obsolete. This is not right.

What about the money spent on guild elixirs to level our guild that is now obsolete? Will that be refunded?

After thinking it about it more I think the right thing for Turbine to do is lower the level requirement of amenities and the largest ship. If a level 60 guild can get the biggest ship and all the key buffs by 60 (30 resists and +2 stat shrines) I don't think there would be so much contention about guild level. Let 60-100 being about bragging rights since most people don't really care anyhow.

Imagine how many astral diamonds would be purchased the month that Turbine did that :) Most guilds will never get to 85 under the old system. I am not sure whether that was the intent or not, but it is the reality.

[eris2323]

The poll was about whether people like the cujrrent system. It isn't about the new system which I dislike much more than the old system because it renders small guilds obsolete. There are many people in small guilds that have no idea about the new system because they are still struggling to get to 50 which has always been easy for large guilds. Read the post above this one - there are some numbers for you that show how bad the new system is.

I saw no polls that had over 100 guild leaders responding that said they hated the new system, and the vast majority of responses I saw to the changes were positive.

Except for 1 or two people.... who really, really, really like to argue.

[slarden]

I saw no polls that had over 100 guild leaders responding that said they hated the new system, and the vast majority of responses I saw to the changes were positive.

Except for 1 or two people.... who really, really, really like to argue.

Oh I wouldn't call it arguing. This is an official feedback thread. And the problem is that most small guild members don't realize what is happening. They will when they see large guilds go up in level each week while small guilds get stuck for months. Don't you want to see small guilds get fair treatment? Why should only large guilds be helped when they had the easiest time leveling to 60 in the first place. Most small guilds never to get 50 and many are disbanded because of the difficulty in obtaining the levels necessary to get good ship buffs? What about the people that want to group with their small circle of friends?

You asked for math. What about the math a few posts above? Does that look fair?

[Dandonk]

I saw no polls that had over 100 guild leaders responding that said they hated the new system, and the vast majority of responses I saw to the changes were positive.

Except for 1 or two people.... who really, really, really like to argue.

I'm happy to support a system that doesn't hurt casuals, or at least hurts them as much.

But why does the payoff need to be that small guilds have to have it way harder than large ones? Why can't we find a more fair system instead, one that takes both points into account? Does it really have to be one or the other?

[Viisari]

Yes, I get it

After reading your post I can only say that no, you didn't get it at all.

[eris2323]

[QUOTE=slarden;4746755]Oh I never argue. And the problem is that most small guild members don't realize what is happening. They will when they see large guilds go up in level each week while small guilds get stuck for months. Don't you want to see small guilds get fair treatment? Why should only large guilds be helped when they had the easiest time leveling to 60 in the first place.[/QUOTE

No, my interests lie in making sure casual and new players have a home in guilds - large guilds. I'm not interested in small guilds, or the power-gamer guilds who figured out the renown formula and made 6-12 person guilds to try to game the system. Our guild is built to be a social community - and we created the tools that Turbine didn't give us, to make that happen.

For the people that have only small, real-life friends in their guild - that's your choice. You can always recruit. If you can't find a core of people willing to play under your banner, then does the guild really deserve to go up in the levels in the first place?

Large guilds never, ever had a choice. Since renown, there is always a wall. There is always a stopping point, and there is always a point where casual players are considered for expulsion.

This is what the 100+ guild leaders who left their mark had to say.

We want that to change.

[Dandonk]

We want that to change.

And you don't care that the new system was unfair, since it wasn't unfair to -you-.

Again, I support a change to make it easier on casuals. I just don't want it to be unfair to a different segment of the guild population.

[Tshober]

[QUOTE=Viisari;4746729]If the system is designed with some specific goals in mind and it achieves those goals you cannot call it illogical on those grounds.

What you can disagree with are the goals set when the system was designed.
QUOTE]

Yes, I disagree with the goals you stated.

[eris2323]

And you don't care that the new system was unfair, since it wasn't unfair to -you-.

Again, I support a change to make it easier on casuals. I just don't want it to be unfair to a different segment of the guild population.

I did not see the new system as unfair - it is rewarding active players - without penalizing casual players.

What people are not keeping in mind is Turbines stated text: THIS WAS A TEMPORARY change, to go along with OTHER CHANGES in the future, that are harder to program.

I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, until we heard what the other changes were.

Of course, the DDO community is up in arms immediately though, as they perceive the new system as unfair - when they didn't have the patience to see the other changes.

I hope this doesn't color turbines decision to make emergency changes in the future; they do something to make 100 guild leaders very happy, and then get complaints for days from the 5-10 people it annoyed.

[eris2323]

No, my interests lie in making sure casual and new players have a home in guilds - large guilds. I'm not interested in small guilds, or the power-gamer guilds who figured out the renown formula and made 6-12 person guilds to try to game the system. Our guild is built to be a social community - and we created the tools that Turbine didn't give us, to make that happen.

For the people that have only small, real-life friends in their guild - that's your choice. You can always recruit. If you can't find a core of people willing to play under your banner, then does the guild really deserve to go up in the levels in the first place?

Large guilds never, ever had a choice. Since renown, there is always a wall. There is always a stopping point, and there is always a point where casual players are considered for expulsion.

This is what the 100+ guild leaders who left their mark had to say.

We want that to change.

And there sums up your view point. You just want to help your own large guild and you could care less us about small guilds which by the way also have casual gamers. I am not a power gamer and neither are most of the people in small guilds. My guild could never reach 100 or 90 or even 80 due to the renown and decay formulas.

It's a falacy to assume that all casual gamers will join large guilds. You aren't interested in casual gamers, just your own guild.[/QUOTE]

Yup - I don't have much sympathy for you - you could always recruit, and give homes to new players.

[Viisari]

This is what the 100+ guild leaders who left their mark had to say.

According to this page (http://ddocrafting.info/index.php?p=guildList) there are currently 11542 guilds in DDO. From what I can tell that number is probably too low.

That means your 100+ guild leaders equal to about 0,87% of all guild leaders. A rather insignificant portion, don't you agree? And you still have no data about what even those hundred leaders of yours wanted to actually be done about the system. You don't know if they only wanted lesser renown decay for large guilds, easier leveling for small guilds or if they wanted to get rid of renown decay completely. Or perhaps they wanted something entirely else done.

The only thing you know that an insignificant portion of guild leaders dislike how the system is currently set up, you don't know their reasons for disliking it and you do not know what they would like to be done about it.

That means your poll is completely meaningless to this discussion here because what is being discussed here is not whether or not we should leave the current system as it is.

What is being discussed here is how to change the system, has the reasoning behind the system changed and how to ensure that the system is fair to guilds of all sizes.

But by all means, keep on pointing to your meaningless statistics if it makes you feel better even though they have no relevance to the discussion.


Yes, I disagree with the goals you stated.

Then why not simply say so instead of trying to dance around and trying to make the system sound like it had completely failed to meet the goals set for it?


I did not see the new system as unfair - it is rewarding active players - without penalizing casual players.

The only thing the new system rewarded was the number of accounts pulling renown. It rewarded absolutely nothing else.

[eris2323]

According to this page (http://ddocrafting.info/index.php?p=guildList) there are currently 11542 guilds in DDO. From what I can tell that number is probably too low.

That means your 100+ guild leaders equal to about 0,87% of all guild leaders. A rather insignificant portion, don't you agree? And you still have no data about what even those hundred leaders of yours wanted to actually be done about the system. You don't know if they only wanted lesser renown decay for large guilds, easier leveling for small guilds or if they wanted to get rid of renown decay completely

The only thing you know that an insignificant portion of guild leaders dislike how the system is currently set up, you don't know their reasons for disliking it and you do not know what they would like to be done about it.

That means your poll is completely meaningless to this discussion here because what is being discussed here is not whether or not we should leave the current system as it is.

What is being discussed here is how to change the system, has the reasoning behind the system changed and how to ensure that the system is fair to guilds of all sizes.

But by all means, keep on pointing to your meaningless statistics if it makes you feel better even though they have no relevance to the discussion.



Then why not simply say so instead of trying to dance around and trying to make the system sound like it had completely failed to meet the goals set for it?

I see you still trying to argue - the only argument I will accept, is a forum poll with 100+ leaders responding.

I will not accept your 'numbers' argument.

Sorry about that.

Your arguments are COMPLETELY MEANINGLESS to me.

[eris2323]

You are forcing those of us in small guilds to recruit hundreds of people into our guild. We don't want to do that - not be cause we are elitists or wanting to exclude people - we just want to group with our friends.

It's wrong to take the small guild option away from casual gamers. You are acknowledging what we already know -the new system renders small guilds obsolete and will require us to either recruit massive amounts of people or disband our guild and join a large gulid.

We worked hard to build up our small guild - always taking renown as and reward - taking elxirs from the DDO store. Will that money be refunded since small guilds will be obsolete under the new system? I hope so.

Large guilds never had a choice. It was 'hit the wall, or boot casuals'.

You have a choice. No one is saying you need to recruit hundreds of players. If you are having troubles levelling, you could recruit a few players.

We. Never. Had. A. Choice.

[Dandonk]

I did not see the new system as unfair - it is rewarding active players - without penalizing casual players.

It only rewards active players in large guilds. And does nothing to help casual players in small guilds.

The old system rewards guildwise activity, regardless of size. If nothing else, it's consistent in that.

But that means that large guilds who have a sizeable segment of casual players get stuck in levels somewhere. Just like my own smaller guild (10 active accounts) is stuck where we are, since the two of us who are really active cannot earn enough renown to level further.

But perhaps the best way would be to make the in-game benefits easier to have for ALL guilds. And make the level race open-ended, so people who like that sort of thing can go for it. In that case, the specifics of the decay mechanism wouldn't matter to me - as long as we can all reasonably expect to get the in-game benefits.

[Seikojin]

Why not try doubling the rewards? Leave the decay alone, but increase the values gained per reward; either in larger bonuses for guild size (make a bell curve favoring barely medium sized, high level guilds, since they are the ones seemingly the most impacted), or increase the value/frequency of the drops.

[slarden]

example with the following assumptions
- guilds start at minimum of level 60
- 30 days in the month
- large guild gets 50 renown per heroic deed and small guild gets 120 per heroic deed with 4 person small guild bonus

UNDER THE OLD SYSTEM

Level 60 guild with 4 accounts trying to get to level 61 in one month
-Needs to earn 9.45 heroic deeds per account per day to cover renown loss
-Needs to earn 47.58 heroic deeds per account per day to level to 61

Level 60 guild with 200 accounts trying to get to level 61 in one month
- Needs to earn 4.76 heroic deeds per account per day to cover renown loss
- Needs to earn 6.60 heroic deeds per account per day to level to 61

UNDER THE PROPOSED SYSTEM

Level 60 guild with 4 people trying to get to level 61 in one month
-Needs to earn 9.45 heroic deeds per account per day to cover renown loss
-Needs to earn 47.58 heroic deeds per account per day to level to 61

Level 60 guild with 200 accounts trying to get to level 61 in one month
- Needs to earn less than 1/2 of a heroic deed per account per day to cover renown loss
- Needs to earn 2.28 heroic deeds per account per day to level to 61 (this is less than 5% of what the 4 person guild must generate)

This example doesn't include the new renown reduction under the new system that will occur when a guild gains 1 level which I think will cause many small guilds to get caught in an infinite non-leveling loop unless they plan around it.

The mythology is that the old system favored small guilds. The math backs up that small guilds have always had to work harder to earn levels than large guilds. Under the new system this gap would get ridiculous and almost make small guilds obsolete. This is not right.

What about the money spent on guild elixirs to level our guild that is now obsolete? Will that be refunded?

Eris you asked for math and then ignored the math. Here it is for you again. All people want is a small guild solution that doesn't force every DDO player into a big guild. Again this all about ships and ship buffs. An easy solution is to make those more accessible and I could care less what my level is. Why should small guilds that don't boot casuals suffer.

[eris2323]

Why not try doubling the rewards? Leave the decay alone, but increase the values gained per reward; either in larger bonuses for guild size (make a bell curve favoring barely medium sized, high level guilds, since they are the ones seemingly the most impacted), or increase the value/frequency of the drops.

Nay.

I liked what the devs did, and am waiting with held breath to see what their other changes will be. If they keep the new changes, it will open our guild back up to being completely newbie-friendly (instead of just helping newbies outside the guild, we can have them with us again), and we can run our fun training raids again, all in-house, with an in-house communication system to help us. To me, the new changes were a breath of something new, a chance at freedom; to both grow in levels, as well as new faces. And I am really looking forward to them, to bring some new life into this game.

I see no reason to argue this point. I'd like a dev to re-visit the topic, but after this many arguments back and forth, it'll take them days to get through the thread.

[Sonofmoradin]

Something I am not aware off? We decayed 100+k just now in a level 98 guild. Was there more changes I missed?

[eris2323]

Eris you asked for math and then ignored the math. Here it is for you again. All people want is a small guild solution that doesn't force every DDO player into a big guild. Again this all about ships and ship buffs. An easy solution is to make those more accessible and I could care less what my level is. Why should small guilds that don't boot casuals suffer.

I don't see a problem with large guilds levelling faster; they have more members, after all, and more active players per day.

The only math I will not accept is fake-math - like someones post about number of guilds, vs number of responses to the leader-poll

Someone who had not even read the thread, or they'd know that most of the leaders DID have suggestions as to changes, or specific complaints.

I will not accept fake math; the other math, I don't have a problem with. To me, that is natural - a large guild will level faster. It just makes sense, to me.

Now - what you are forgetting is the fine print... MORE CHANGES ARE IN STORE - perhaps some will address your perceived problems?

[eris2323]

Something I am not aware off? We decayed 100+k just now in a level 98 guild. Was there more changes I missed?

We are back to the old system - some suggest that when they tried to put in mabar and it broke, the changes were reversed at that time.

No word from devs - but they is busy fixing mabar ;)

[Cernunan]

Notice how somebody came into the thread and started to rudely attack everybody who did not agree with him and the entire debate screeched to a halt?

I see what you did there.

[eris2323]

Notice how somebody came into the thread and started to rudely attack everybody who did not agree with him and the entire debate screeched to a halt?

I see what you did there.

Good - meaningless argument clouds the threads when we want dev responses.

If a few circular arguments were ended, great.

Please do note - taking my quotes of context (for instance, when 'completely meaningless' is actually a quote of a quote of the original person) - does tend to look bad....

But thanks for your... contribution...

[Vargouille]

We are aware that the changes have been reverted. Don't take this to mean that we are intending any long term reversal out of this change, though ultimately the long term solution may end up being different. The previously stated goals remain the same for now.

We're looking into possible mishaps where some guilds may have experienced extra decay as well.

Sorry for the lack of communication. Busy week last week.

[theslimshady]

thanks for the info

[slarden]

I don't see a problem with large guilds levelling faster; they have more members, after all, and more active players per day.

The only math I will not accept is fake-math - like someones post about number of guilds, vs number of responses to the leader-poll

Someone who had not even read the thread, or they'd know that most of the leaders DID have suggestions as to changes, or specific complaints.

I will not accept fake math; the other math, I don't have a problem with. To me, that is natural - a large guild will level faster. It just makes sense, to me.

Now - what you are forgetting is the fine print... MORE CHANGES ARE IN STORE - perhaps some will address your perceived problems?

I think this pretty much sums up the entire argument. The issue isn't that big guilds are disadvantaged. This issue is that you want large guilds to have huge advantages.

I think DDO should support multiple play styles and not require all people to join mega guilds where they are going to get lost. I have people from big guilds asking me to help them flag, or run an epic or farm for an item all the time. You make it seem like only big guilds have a place in DDO. I don't agree with this and think Turbine should implement a fair guild system for all unlike the new proposed system which makes small guilds like mine obsolete.

The problems I mentioned are not perceived. It's simple math which you can see a few posts above. I don' think any new system should be rolled out until these issues are addressed.

[Dirac]

We are aware that the changes have been reverted. Don't take this to mean that we are intending any long term reversal out of this change, though ultimately the long term solution may end up being different. The previously stated goals remain the same for now.

We're looking into possible mishaps where some guilds may have experienced extra decay as well.

Sorry for the lack of communication. Busy week last week.

Thanks for the update. Understandable. Good luck.

[Chaos000]

I see no reason to argue this point. I'd like a dev to re-visit the topic, but after this many arguments back and forth, it'll take them days to get through the thread.

An easy determination would be for the Devs to check how frequently mega guilds hit the ransack cap after they adjusted decay based on guild level instead of per account.

The "zmog! their progression will be too fast!" will be weighed against actual metrics during the change.

I'm ok with smaller guilds getting a boost on their renown gain however that boost should be assessed from the guild with the maximum guild size bonus against the minimum guild size (51?) that nets 0 guild size bonus to get a conservative adjustment.

[Spoonwelder]

You are forcing those of us in small guilds to recruit hundreds of people into our guild. We don't want to do that - not be cause we are elitists or wanting to exclude people - we just want to group with our friends. All of us were new players when we joined the guild.

It's wrong to take the small guild option away from casual gamers. You are acknowledging what we already know -the new system renders small guilds obsolete and will require us to either recruit massive amounts of people or disband our guild and join a large gulid.

We worked hard to build up our small guild - always taking renown as and reward - taking elxirs from the DDO store. Will that money be refunded since small guilds will be obsolete under the new system? I hope so.

Sorry to come back to this debate so late but I was checking if there was any commentary on the roll back of the change and noted this little argument.

My issue with what you stated: before the change - your small guild got hit by renown at worst the same as it is hit with the change. How does the change in anyway affect you aside from in a comparative basis, which btw existed before the change as well? Ie. there were large high level, small high level and medium high level guilds before the change that any of you members could have jumped to if that was there hearts desire. The situation has not changed for small guilds except for the fact that it is comparatively easier for medium and large guilds to level up now.

Does that need to be corrected? To me this question is entirely separate from whether the current formula change is better or worse than the system in place before the change.

Additionaly the change really only upped the spot where guilds will hit a wall (without recruiting or changing tactics). Ie. my guild was stuck at 70/71 ish....with the new formula we can reach 85....in about 2-3 years....assuming everything stays the same. Will there be some pump and dump guild scams - yes - there will be a few on each server. Nobody is forcing you (and most will recommend against) to join these guilds. Guilds should be about community and they were becoming about seclusion/exclusion.

The problem being solved was that the renown system punished larger guilds with casual players such that they were either being booted or asked nicely to leave AND recruiting was being restricted. .

IMO the change is better, not perfect, but better than the system in place before. I still prefer a system that targets decay on daily activity....ie set players inactive immediately after decay hits then if the account logs in the guildsize number goes up until decay hits again (this would also potentially reduce the impact of the server bounces double hitting guilds with renown).

[Spoonwelder]

We are aware that the changes have been reverted. Don't take this to mean that we are intending any long term reversal out of this change, though ultimately the long term solution may end up being different. The previously stated goals remain the same for now.

We're looking into possible mishaps where some guilds may have experienced extra decay as well.

Sorry for the lack of communication. Busy week last week.

Thanks for the official response.

[Enoach]

During this brief period with the Guild Renown Decay reduction of all guilds having the same amount of decay as a 10 member guild.

The guild that I'm a member of, which is considered a large guild of 100+ active accounts, did not have a significant change in our renown standings. We are still teetering between 70 and 71.

A couple reasons why I believe this is the case:


Not enough time given for evaluation
Low guild activity during the week (or 3 days guild decay was adjusted) - Guild has many Weekend-warrior types and Week events like this are missed by this crowd.


What it shows for a guild like mine is that we are one of the "Large" guilds filled with "Casual" players. We have are "every day" crowd but even they cannot overcome the daily decay that the guild has reached.

One of the key points to the guild renown formula that only Turbine knows is "What is the expected daily capability to pull renown per player" - not the adjusted small guild bonus amount, but actual amount they use to determine the daily decay off. We can speculate that this amount was seen to be around 500 - 1K (Not just enough for decay, but enough to progress) based on the average daily/adjusted daily for small guilds. I think this works out to roughly 2 to 3 quests a day (depending on luck) - again only speculation based on my own observations/renown averages.

Personally I do not see why size of a guild was even part of the decay. While some will see a reduction in Large Guild Decay as a death Knoll to small guilds, I would point out that many small guilds have a purpose for being small; be it a close nit group based on shared ideals/goals/friendship or to escape the internal politics that eventually creep in to larger organizations.

I just am hoping for a system that rewards guilds not based on their size but their activity; and not just their internal activity but their community activity.

[slarden]

Sorry to come back to this debate so late but I was checking if there was any commentary on the roll back of the change and noted this little argument.

My issue with what you stated: before the change - your small guild got hit by renown at worst the same as it is hit with the change. How does the change in anyway affect you aside from in a comparative basis, which btw existed before the change as well? Ie. there were large high level, small high level and medium high level guilds before the change that any of you members could have jumped to if that was there hearts desire. The situation has not changed for small guilds except for the fact that it is comparatively easier for medium and large guilds to level up now.

Does that need to be corrected? To me this question is entirely separate from whether the current formula change is better or worse than the system in place before the change.

Additionaly the change really only upped the spot where guilds will hit a wall (without recruiting or changing tactics). Ie. my guild was stuck at 70/71 ish....with the new formula we can reach 85....in about 2-3 years....assuming everything stays the same. Will there be some pump and dump guild scams - yes - there will be a few on each server. Nobody is forcing you (and most will recommend against) to join these guilds. Guilds should be about community and they were becoming about seclusion/exclusion.

The problem being solved was that the renown system punished larger guilds with casual players such that they were either being booted or asked nicely to leave AND recruiting was being restricted. .

IMO the change is better, not perfect, but better than the system in place before. I still prefer a system that targets decay on daily activity....ie set players inactive immediately after decay hits then if the account logs in the guildsize number goes up until decay hits again (this would also potentially reduce the impact of the server bounces double hitting guilds with renown).

It is in fact worse than before because now when we gain a level we get a temporary nerf on our renown rewards in chests/end rewards. This will almost ensure that our small guild will lose a level as we need massive renown to cover decay relative to large guilds. When we go down a level and start getting renown normally we will gain a level - our renown will be nerfed and we will lose a level

That change really hurts small guilds as we need so much more renown to cover decay and to gain a level. That is the reason large guilds can easily march to 50 and even 60 and most small gulids never get to 50 in the first place. People always like to use the small 90+ guilds as an example but those are so few as a percentage it's not the right comparison.

I think the change needs to the address the small guild problem before it is implemented. It is not that hard really. Why should a small guild of 4 get the same decay as a guild of 200. If the goal is to make the game more friendly to casual gamers it fails as there are many gamers in small guilds as well.

[Viisari]

What it shows for a guild like mine is that we are one of the "Large" guilds filled with "Casual" players. We have are "every day" crowd but even they cannot overcome the daily decay that the guild has reached.


With the new system your renown decay will a whopping 10805 at level 70. That means each person in the guild would have gain the significant number of about 110 to beat your daily renown decay.

The decay will be basically "not there" for big guilds under the new system.

[slarden]

example with the following assumptions
- guilds start at minimum of level 60
- 30 days in the month
- large guild gets 50 renown per heroic deed and small guild gets 120 per heroic deed with 4 person small guild bonus

UNDER THE OLD SYSTEM

Level 60 guild with 4 accounts trying to get to level 61 in one month
-Needs to earn 9.45 heroic deeds per account per day to cover renown loss
-Needs to earn 47.58 heroic deeds per account per day to level to 61

Level 60 guild with 200 accounts trying to get to level 61 in one month
- Needs to earn 4.76 heroic deeds per account per day to cover renown loss
- Needs to earn 6.60 heroic deeds per account per day to level to 61

UNDER THE PROPOSED SYSTEM

Level 60 guild with 4 people trying to get to level 61 in one month
-Needs to earn 9.45 heroic deeds per account per day to cover renown loss
-Needs to earn 47.58 heroic deeds per account per day to level to 61

Level 60 guild with 200 accounts trying to get to level 61 in one month
- Needs to earn less than 1/2 of a heroic deed per account per day to cover renown loss
- Needs to earn 2.28 heroic deeds per account per day to level to 61 (this is less than 5% of what the 4 person guild must generate)

This example doesn't include the new renown reduction under the new system that will occur when a guild gains 1 level which I think will cause many small guilds to get caught in an infinite non-leveling loop unless they plan around it.

The mythology is that the old system favored small guilds. The math backs up that small guilds have always had to work harder to earn levels than large guilds. Under the new system this gap would get ridiculous and almost make small guilds obsolete. This is not right.

What about the money spent on guild elixirs to level our guild that is now obsolete? Will that be refunded?

With regards to your big guild hitting a wall and the impact of casual gamers. The issue exists for small and large guilds alike, but only small guilds have such a high rewown requirement to level.

[Spoonwelder]

It is in fact worse than before because now when we gain a level we get a temporary nerf on our renown rewards in chests/end rewards. This will almost ensure that our small guild will lose a level as we need massive renown to cover decay relative to large guilds. When we go down a level and start getting renown normally we will gain a level - our renown will be nerfed and we will lose a level


This is a legitimate beef - I actually wondered why this was there in the change but I could see it being very easy for a larger guild to zoom through the lower-mid-levels (no real impact at the higher levels due to the amount needed per level). I think this should be changed such that the reduced gain is after the second level in a day but hits a bit harder. Thus if you go form 50-51 no prob but 50-51-52 you start getting pinched.

That said in the three days the new renown formula was in place did you actually see the effect OR is this supposition based upon speculation of what would happen. I say this because it was a fairly undefined statement from Tolero and I have seen no numbers on what the impact should/would be.

[Bronko]

We are aware that the changes have been reverted. Don't take this to mean that we are intending any long term reversal out of this change, though ultimately the long term solution may end up being different. The previously stated goals remain the same for now.

We're looking into possible mishaps where some guilds may have experienced extra decay as well.

Sorry for the lack of communication. Busy week last week.

Was there a reason for the reversion that you can talk about? Is there a reason that you can't talk about? Or was the reversion an accident?

I ask because I was liking the change but I was hoping for more time to see how it played out and what it might mean in the long term. I there wasn't a reason to revert than I'm more than a little upset.

[jb111]

This change makes a lot of sense. Thanks for considering it

[Gremmlynn]

Are you telling me, with a straight face, that getting 5% xp bonus instead of 4% xp bonus is "a real perk"? While leveling a legend character that translates to something like 10k extra xp if you can keep it up all the time (which you can't).

No, of course you're not telling me that. Because that would be ridiculous.It's an in-game bonus, which is all it takes to be a real perk. Personally, I'm all for opening levels above 93 (or 100 since our minds find it easier to calculate things in multiples of the number of fingers we have) with all the decay anyone would want for those who feel the game needs a competition for who can spend the most time in game per day. Just no game affecting rewards.

[slarden]

This is a legitimate beef - I actually wondered why this was there in the change but I could see it being very easy for a larger guild to zoom through the lower-mid-levels (no real impact at the higher levels due to the amount needed per level). I think this should be changed such that the reduced gain is after the second level in a day but hits a bit harder. Thus if you go form 50-51 no prob but 50-51-52 you start getting pinched.

That said in the three days the new renown formula was in place did you actually see the effect OR is this supposition based upon speculation of what would happen. I say this because it was a fairly undefined statement from Tolero and I have seen no numbers on what the impact should/would be.

Yes in fact like most people in small guilds I had no idea this change was being considered or implemented. I only found out about it after our guild leveled and we were obviously getting reduced renown.

Our guild went up a level and we were getting very little renown compared to usual. Of our guild only me and one other person were on and we both noticed we weren't getting any renown. After sending /advice in the marketplace about our lack of renown I found out about the change and eventually found this thread. We stayed up much later than usual to get enough renown to cover our decay for the next day. Thankfully the change was reverted the very next day because I doubt we could cover our renown on a weekday with another day of reduced renown. Between the 2 of us we needed to get enough renown to cover 20 people because of the way the decay formula works.

[Gremmlynn]

And in reality large companies also have far, far larger expenses. So in the end, their actual net profit can be low or might even be negative.

Kinda like with guild renown, large guilds have much, much lower net renown gain because they're not efficient.

You're thinking too much about this whole dividing with the number of players business, it's merely a method to make it easier to understand how much actual renown is being pulled when the size of the guild is noted. And you cannot pretend that it's not relevant, as guild renown stands, it' very relevant.

So no, it's not silly at all, you just misunderstand the purpose behind it.In reality, companies fire or lay off employees based on their performance or the profitability of their responsibilities. Do we really want to make that the basis for guild membership? Do we base who we hang out with in taverns based on how much they drink or how much time they spend there? I know I don't. Because for most of us guilds, everything in DDO for that matter, have a lot more in common with who we hang with at the tavern than that nasty thing most of us have to do in order to be able to afford to go to the tavern.

[Tshober]

During this brief period with the Guild Renown Decay reduction of all guilds having the same amount of decay as a 10 member guild.

The guild that I'm a member of, which is considered a large guild of 100+ active accounts, did not have a significant change in our renown standings. We are still teetering between 70 and 71.

A couple reasons why I believe this is the case:


Not enough time given for evaluation
Low guild activity during the week (or 3 days guild decay was adjusted) - Guild has many Weekend-warrior types and Week events like this are missed by this crowd.


What it shows for a guild like mine is that we are one of the "Large" guilds filled with "Casual" players. We have are "every day" crowd but even they cannot overcome the daily decay that the guild has reached.
.

Yes, my guild had basically the same experience during the short test. We stayed at level 60 but close to 61. We did not gain even 1 level during the short test period. We are a very large guild with a high number of casual/social players. We have been between 60 & 61 since shortly after Build Your Guild ended.

[Enoach]

With the new system your renown decay will a whopping 10805 at level 70. That means each person in the guild would have gain the significant number of about 110 to beat your daily renown decay.

The decay will be basically "not there" for big guilds under the new system.

I think you missed my point, which was based on my own guilds progress for the days this change was active. During the week day we still did not turn over enough renown to beat the 110 per account decay as the burden of this was on the shoulders of about 1/5 of the membership. I list my reasons why I believe that is the case. During my normal "Time" in game - as I'm one of the daily players, we have a core of 10 people you can be sure to run into 90% of the time. Many of our members are weekend warriors and roving shift workers, so I pointed out that my observation was only based on the Weekday progression. But I also pointed out that we continued to flux between 70 and 71 just as we had before the decay reduction.

Many of the arguments about how much a large guild vs small guild can bring in renown all deal with each active account being able to bring in the same average daily renown. Even as individuals we can all agree that a player that runs more activities that produce renown means that they will bring in more, while those who do more non-renown activities will produce less. Example: 2 hours in game crafting vs 2 hours in game running quests pulling loot and moving to next quest while at level vs XP farmer (1-2 minute completion type that does not pull end reward/chests) - The one questing (not farming XP) will produce more renown.

At 110 renown daily (or 1 quests worth) taken out for 1 month comes out to 3300 a month or approx 30 quests. My guild (again only talking towards mine and not putting any speculation on others) would mean that it is expected for the Weekend warriors to run approx 8 quests each weekend or spend at least 4 to 8 hours in game a week just to make their renown decay goal.

So while I totally understand that small guilds see large guilds potential for earning lots of renown based on the premise that all "Active Members" are actually "Active". I do wonder, if for all intensive purposes if smaller guilds should be able to "manage" a perfect size/activity level to avoid large decay and benefit from 2.4 to 3 times the renown. Personally I still see decay as the problem "across the board", it is not a small vs large guild issue it is a guild activity issue.

In order for Turbine to make any meaningful change they need to evaluate their player base and its "Real" activity at an account level and not base it off of "Powergammer", "Joe Gammer" or "Casual" activity. Until all of these are evaluated the system cannot have a chance to "Balance" the field between Guilds and the desire of Guild members as to size.

[slarden]

I think you missed my point, which was based on my own guilds progress for the days this change was active. During the week day we still did not turn over enough renown to beat the 110 per account decay as the burden of this was on the shoulders of about 1/5 of the membership. I list my reasons why I believe that is the case. During my normal "Time" in game - as I'm one of the daily players, we have a core of 10 people you can be sure to run into 90% of the time. Many of our members are weekend warriors and roving shift workers, so I pointed out that my observation was only based on the Weekday progression. But I also pointed out that we continued to flux between 70 and 71 just as we had before the decay reduction.

Many of the arguments about how much a large guild vs small guild can bring in renown all deal with each active account being able to bring in the same average daily renown. Even as individuals we can all agree that a player that runs more activities that produce renown means that they will bring in more, while those who do more non-renown activities will produce less. Example: 2 hours in game crafting vs 2 hours in game running quests pulling loot and moving to next quest while at level vs XP farmer (1-2 minute completion type that does not pull end reward/chests) - The one questing (not farming XP) will produce more renown.

At 110 renown daily (or 1 quests worth) taken out for 1 month comes out to 3300 a month or approx 30 quests. My guild (again only talking towards mine and not putting any speculation on others) would mean that it is expected for the Weekend warriors to run approx 8 quests each weekend or spend at least 4 to 8 hours in game a week just to make their renown decay goal.

So while I totally understand that small guilds see large guilds potential for earning lots of renown based on the premise that all "Active Members" are actually "Active". I do wonder, if for all intensive purposes if smaller guilds should be able to "manage" a perfect size/activity level to avoid large decay and benefit from 2.4 to 3 times the renown. Personally I still see decay as the problem "across the board", it is not a small vs large guild issue it is a guild activity issue.

In order for Turbine to make any meaningful change they need to evaluate their player base and its "Real" activity at an account level and not base it off of "Powergammer", "Joe Gammer" or "Casual" activity. Until all of these are evaluated the system cannot have a chance to "Balance" the field between Guilds and the desire of Guild members as to size.

And small guilds also have casual gamers and less active gamers. Decay is most certainly the problem here and it is an even bigger problem for small guilds. Our guild has 5 real life friends with only 2 of us being active more than 1-2 days per week. We have also added some extra people that specifically asked to join our guild.

Why not just let small guilds have the same advantages as big gulids. Like big guilds some will lever quicker than others while some will still not move forward much.

I see no reason to make it easier for large guilds and make it harder for small guilds by keeping everything the same for small guilds while adding the new guild reward reduction for 3 days after gaining 1 level.

[Tshober]

This is a legitimate beef - I actually wondered why this was there in the change but I could see it being very easy for a larger guild to zoom through the lower-mid-levels (no real impact at the higher levels due to the amount needed per level). I think this should be changed such that the reduced gain is after the second level in a day but hits a bit harder. Thus if you go form 50-51 no prob but 50-51-52 you start getting pinched.

That seems reasonable. I also think the small and tiny guilds probably need an increase in the small guild bonuses too, to keep them viable and advancing. The change has already helped guilds with more than 10 players, the small guilds should get some help too.

[Enoach]

And small guilds also have casual gamers and less active gamers. Decay is most certainly the problem here and it is an even bigger problem for small guilds. Our guild has 5 real life friends with only 2 of us being active more than 1-2 days per week. We have also added some extra people that specifically asked to join our guild.

Why not just let small guilds have the same advantages as big gulids. Like big guilds some will lever quicker than others while some will still not move forward much.

I see no reason to make it easier for large guilds and make it harder for small guilds by keeping everything the same for small guilds while adding the new guild reward reduction for 3 days after gaining 1 level.

I disagree that Large Guilds have less of an issue with decay than Small ones. The line is not that easily drawn, this issue is the activity level and the expected activity level. As I pointed out in my observations of my guilds progress the 20ish actual accounts needed to earn 5ish times their own decay goal to hold the Guilds Total Daily. And these 20ish accounts while active were not that active during the period of time this 'change' was in play. So based on 3ish days - my guild did not benefit from the change as we are considered a Large Guild. But I also pointed that the case period was also not a good statistical sample as it missed out on 4/5 of my guilds "Active" players being able to contribute.

I do agree that the system needs to be dealt with in such a way that Size is not the factor on decay

[Eladrin]

It is in fact worse than before because now when we gain a level we get a temporary nerf on our renown rewards in chests/end rewards. This will almost ensure that our small guild will lose a level as we need massive renown to cover decay relative to large guilds. When we go down a level and start getting renown normally we will gain a level - our renown will be nerfed and we will lose a level
This isn't actually new - we've always had a reduction in renown drops after you've gained a level in a day. In the experiment we did increase the magnitude of the value to reduce the maximum number of levels that could possibly
be gained in a single day (from 7 to 3), but it was rarely hit past the lower guild levels.

[Viisari]

At 110 renown daily (or 1 quests worth) taken out for 1 month comes out to 3300 a month or approx 30 quests.

Eh, what quests are you running? Run through demonweb once and you'll get that much from just the end rewards if you're lucky.

The renown decay is so low that three people who play 3 hours every day could cover it just by themselves. And you have another 97+ people pulling renown in addition to that.

Do your guild members run quests over level a lot or something? If your guild truly is so casual that you cannot cover a renown decay that would be covered by just two or three of my guildies alone without any small guild bonuses I'm thinking we might need two different kinds of renown systems completely...

[Spoonwelder]

With regards to your big guild hitting a wall and the impact of casual gamers. The issue exists for small and large guilds alike, but only small guilds have such a high rewown requirement to level.

I get your argument though I think your numbers are skewed. The whole argument for the change was that the 200 account active guild didn't really exist(or were so few as to be a non-factor). Most if not all were maybe 200 accounts but only 25% of those still active. Even adjusting for that your numbers would still show a disparity between a large and small guild.

Again though the point I made is still valid - did the change make a small guild worse off.....not in actuality - only in comparison. Your numbers show that exact fact.

[Enoach]

Eh, what quests are you running? Run through demonweb once and you'll get that much from just the end rewards if you're lucky.

The renown decay is so low that three people who play 3 hours every day could cover it just by themselves. And you have another 97+ people pulling renown in addition to that.

Do your guild members run quests over level a lot or something? If your guild truly is so casual that you cannot cover a renown decay that would be covered by just two or three of my guildies alone without any small guild bonuses I'm thinking we might need two different kinds of renown systems completely...

Thank you for your numbers, please understand not everyone can have the activity that you are producing. And no we don't run Over level, we have a small core of 5 to 8 of use that regularly run Epic Elite content but due to our RL schedules can usually get only 1 to 2 EEs in a night as we don't run the short ones, we run the longer ones the 30 minute to 1 hour type, all optional areas as we are questers using this as a form of entertainment. Keep in mind that not all guilds have their membership running the 20+ content, but instead are running the sub level 10 content. Be it Alt-itus, or slow leveling, or constant TRng at 20 for "The Plan" perfect build. My guild is open to all of these playstyles.

Again my observations was based on my guilds progress for that time period, which for my guild proved the 3ish days at the reduced renown decay still produced the same results, these three days being Weekdays and not weekends where 4/5 of our guild is more active, but still not so active as to be able to dedicate 4 to 8 hours of game time for the entire weekend. And your premise is based on your experience of earning renown. Both valid and both based off of different observations against the system.

Please also keep in mind that we also were hit with reduced renown drop-age every time we crossed from 70 to 71. Which occurs every day for my guild and has for the last 3 months.

[Tshober]

Do your guild members run quests over level a lot or something?

I can't speak for his guild but for mine, yes, some probably do. Some probably run lots of solo or come and go slayers too because it does not require the time commitments that quests/partys require. Some run lots of challenges. A small number spend much of their online time roleplaying in the public zones and little time questing. More don't log in at all that day because they are, you know, casual. What did you think casual/social meant?

[fco-karatekid]

a
...we've always had a reduction in renown drops after you've gained a level in a day. In the experiment we did increase the magnitude of the value to reduce the maximum number of levels that could possibly
be gained in a single day (from 7 to 3)...

So I have a guild of 1 now that the kids quit playing, so I've not really much of a dog in the hunt; but why such a completely arbitrary mechanic? If a guild runs the content, why arbitrarily prevent their success? It is this kind of silly mechanic that makes MMO's feel like their purpose is player griefing.

[Tiamas]

This isn't actually new - we've always had a reduction in renown drops after you've gained a level in a day. In the experiment we did increase the magnitude of the value to reduce the maximum number of levels that could possibly be gained in a single day (from 7 to 3), but it was rarely hit past the lower guild levels.


That cut in renown after a level up felt quite big. Basically our guild is going 94/95 each day for like a month now. Before your change we basically worked our way up so each day we made it a bit further into 95. And this only with like 3-4 really active people during that time. Then you changed it and at the same time a lot of guildies started playing a bit more again so we had easily 6-8 really actives a day. You would expect our level to go easily into 95 and stay there. But we were still flipping between 94 and 95 each day, basically 0 progress here. So I looked a bit closer to my renown numbers, could be really bad luck but some numbers here that felt really wrong. (Numbers after we hit 95 on that day, so the renown cut was active):

5 full wizking hard runs with lvl 14 toons. We split up so I had the loot of 1 tower and the 3 endchests. Combined renown of chests and kills over those 5 runs: ~460 (with small guildbonus, we are getting around 100% extra so basically 230)
F2P lordsmarch plazaa chain elite, lvl 14 toon, combined renown from chests and endrewards: 900 (again 450 without guild bonus, 3 heroics 2 valors)
As I said, could be bad luck, but I hardly see any renown drops in chests or endrewards once we gained a level. So basically that cut seems a bit too harsh. I suggest no cut in renown drops for the first level gained at that day, its very annoying in the highlevel area.

[Viisari]

What did you think casual/social meant?

Well to be honest casual is a very loose definition and can mean almost anything. For example if someone was a powergamer in the past but only plays very casually these days? His playstyle will be vastly different from someone who's never gotten past level 14 but has made a bazillion alts.

Even a person who has always been playing very casually is capable of pulling thousands of renown within a few hours if they know what they're doing and get a bit lucky.

A social player can mean a number things too, a roleplayer who spends his time in a tavern talking with people won't generate any renown, but a social player could just as well mean someone who doesn't really play unless there's a guild party up and going which can generate lots and lots of renown depending on what is being run.

So it's not about not knowing what the words mean but rather that they are very loose definitions for playstyles.

I mean my guild is at level 95 yet some of our players would currently fit the word "casual" pretty well.

[Tshober]

So it's not about not knowing what the words mean but rather that they are very loose definitions for playstyles.



I totally agree that those terms can mean very different things to different people and even in different contexts. In the context of our discussions about renown decay, when I say someone is a casual/social player, I mean they are someone who's play-style is such that on average they earn less renown than they would have cost in decay under the old decay system.

[Dirac]

This isn't actually new - we've always had a reduction in renown drops after you've gained a level in a day. In the experiment we did increase the magnitude of the value to reduce the maximum number of levels that could possibly
be gained in a single day (from 7 to 3), but it was rarely hit past the lower guild levels.

Eladrin, thanks again for dropping by with the info.

I suggest when you put in a new test, simply remove decay instead of just removing the guild size bonus. Doing that helps the large guilds, but it does not help small guilds that are stuck at lower levels.

Maybe that is not the final system, but that should be the next thing to try.

[PsychoBlonde]

Based on what I'm reading, most of the advantage that a small guild has now will be eliminated. It will be to a guild's advantage to have as many members as possible even if they aren't extremely active. A guild with 1000 semi active members now has the huge advantage that a 6 person guild had previously. Or perhaps I'm missing something.

Even if this is true, I don't see the problem. Should you want to join a guild in order to play with people you like? Large guilds are much harder to manage and maintain. They shouldn't be getting penalized on top of that.

Personally, I think that once you hit level 100 on a guild, your renown should freeze and you should stop getting decay altogether. It'd be nice if there were other milestones, like 25, 50, and 75.

It would also be nice if it were possible to merge 2 guilds and the larger guild gained like 30% of the renown that the smaller guild had, so if you have a very small guild and the members decide they'd like to have more guildies to hang out with, they can find another small guild (or a large one) and decide to merge. Maybe even allow a guild rename at that time (with a "merge certificate" or something).

What really irks me is that the last few levels require huge massive gobs of renown but you get NOTHING for achieving most of them, whereas at the lower levels you're getting something pretty much every time you gain a level. If it's vastly more effort to accomplish, shouldn't you GET something for it? The way it is currently, it'd be like your last 5 levels giving you no hp, no saves, no sp, no new spells, no special abilities, no enhancement points, and taking 10x as much XP. What the heck.

[slarden]

This isn't actually new - we've always had a reduction in renown drops after you've gained a level in a day. In the experiment we did increase the magnitude of the value to reduce the maximum number of levels that could possibly
be gained in a single day (from 7 to 3), but it was rarely hit past the lower guild levels.

Thank you for the response. I've never noticed a renown reduction like I had during the test. I suppose it could have been bad luck, but it seemed worse to me. In our case we only gained a single level which is the most we could ever gain in a day.

[slarden]

I disagree that Large Guilds have less of an issue with decay than Small ones. The line is not that easily drawn, this issue is the activity level and the expected activity level. As I pointed out in my observations of my guilds progress the 20ish actual accounts needed to earn 5ish times their own decay goal to hold the Guilds Total Daily. And these 20ish accounts while active were not that active during the period of time this 'change' was in play. So based on 3ish days - my guild did not benefit from the change as we are considered a Large Guild. But I also pointed that the case period was also not a good statistical sample as it missed out on 4/5 of my guilds "Active" players being able to contribute.

I do agree that the system needs to be dealt with in such a way that Size is not the factor on decay

You are assuming that small guilds have highly active players. That is true in some cases but not many. In fact most guilds never even hit 50. Many give up and join a large guild because they can't ever make progress.

[Enoach]

You are assuming that small guilds have highly active players. That is true in some cases but not many. In fact most guilds never even hit 50. Many give up and join a large guild because they can't ever make progress.

I think you need to re-read. I said the lines are not that easy to draw between Large and Small as it is based more on Activity.

I totally agree if the % of active accounts for Large and small are the same, the Larger guilds will generate more. However, if you consider for a moment a large guild that has the same number of active accounts per night as a small guild, than the numbers slant towards the smaller guild in that they earn renown at 2.4 to 3 times the amount per account than the larger guild even though for that same day they had the same number of accounts actively gaining renown. In this case the break even point would be that a large guild needs 2.4 to 3 times the people active to equal the same renown, or for simplicity 5 to 6 active accounts for a small guilds 2. However, under the decay system in both cases the active accounts for that day are responsible for the entire guilds decay amount. So yes you can average out on a per account basis, and larger guilds have more to spread that too, but in truth the number it is actually spread to for both large and small is the number that was actually active that day.



The Activity Level is the problem. It has been obscured by Guild Size and has caused a polarization on that issue which is preventing many to engage the real issue. The real issue is what "Activity Level is Turbine using to determine average renown gains" 1 hour, 4 hours, 8 hours a day average?

[Tshober]

The Activity Level is the problem. It has been obscured by Guild Size and has caused a polarization on that issue which is preventing many to engage the real issue. The real issue is what "Activity Level is Turbine using to determine average renown gains" 1 hour, 4 hours, 8 hours a day average?

I agree that small versus large is not the real issue and I have been saying that for many months now. Unfortunately some people just can't get past that and that makes it hard to have a real discussion. Some people I think genuinely believe they are being disadvantaged because they are in a small guild and just can't see beyond that to the real issue. But I think some other people who really know better are deliberately trying to make it into a debate about small versus large because they know they can't win the debate if it is not about small versus large.

[Tshober]

Tshober it is in fact the folks in large guilds saying they are disadvantaged. Most of those folks are proposing helping large guilds and giving no benefit to small guilds. If you read the messages some people clearly state they don't care about small guilds because they can just recruit and get bigger.

Under the old decay system, ALL guilds that accepted casual/social players in significant numbers were disadvantaged. Under the new system, small guilds that accept casual/social players remain disadvantaged. That still needs to be addressed and remedied. There are several ways to do that. I have recommended increasing the small guild bonuses to keep tiny and small guilds advancing and leveling up like everyone else. Another option would be to eliminate decay entirely. Or you could even do both.

[Tshober]

Then why not simply say so instead of trying to dance around and trying to make the system sound like it had completely failed to meet the goals set for it?

Because prior to that post you had not put out a list of carefully worded "goals" that would have forced us back to the old decay system if we accepted them. I reject your rules as flawed. I reject the old decay system as flawed.

I will reject any guild leveling system that divides the DDO playerbase into groups based on play-style and then proceeds to discriminate against one or more of those groups with a reward system that is anything more than cosmetic. Such systems ruin the social environment of the game and encourage/reward anti-social behavior on the part of guilds. A guild leveling system should encourage cooperation and helping others and socializing, not competition. If there is to be guild competitions, they should be separate from leveling, and the rewards should be temporary or cosmetic, and particiption in them should be voluntary.

You are free to reject my rules, as I have rejected yours. But at least we both know where we stand.

[Cordovan]

We've now re-enabled our temporary adjustments to guild renown, as specified in the first post in this thread:



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.


These changes are anticipated to remain in-game through at least Update 16. We are continuing to look into a bug which may be causing additional decay issues, and will have more information about that when we can. Thank you!

[slarden]

I think you need to re-read. I said the lines are not that easy to draw between Large and Small as it is based more on Activity.

I totally agree if the % of active accounts for Large and small are the same, the Larger guilds will generate more. However, if you consider for a moment a large guild that has the same number of active accounts per night as a small guild, than the numbers slant towards the smaller guild in that they earn renown at 2.4 to 3 times the amount per account than the larger guild even though for that same day they had the same number of accounts actively gaining renown. In this case the break even point would be that a large guild needs 2.4 to 3 times the people active to equal the same renown, or for simplicity 5 to 6 active accounts for a small guilds 2. However, under the decay system in both cases the active accounts for that day are responsible for the entire guilds decay amount. So yes you can average out on a per account basis, and larger guilds have more to spread that too, but in truth the number it is actually spread to for both large and small is the number that was actually active that day.



The Activity Level is the problem. It has been obscured by Guild Size and has caused a polarization on that issue which is preventing many to engage the real issue. The real issue is what "Activity Level is Turbine using to determine average renown gains" 1 hour, 4 hours, 8 hours a day average?

Under the old system a guild of 5 would have had decay based on 20. A guild of 200 would have had decay based on 210 so the small guild bonus really only helps small guilds break even in that regard. If 20% of the small guild is online earning 240% they are geneating renown to cover 2.4 out of the 20 used in the decay formula (12%). If 20% of a 200 guild is online they are generating 40 out of 210 used in the decay formula (19%). Under no circumstance does the small guild ever come out ahead with regards to math if the same percentage of guildies are casual, inactive, skipping chests or leaving renown in chests. But there have obviously been some focused guilds (usually around 10-20 people) that have been able to reach very high levels due to high play time and strict recruiting standards. Zerging guilds also get more renown generation because chests are opened in a smaller amount of time.

I do acknowledge full that people in large guilds tend to have more complacency with regards to renown generation. That is a big challenge for large guilds and this should be dealt with so that large casual guilds can advance. But any notion that small guilds can overcome these issues easier than large guilds is completely false. Large guilds will sail to level 50 even with no concern about guild renown. Most small guilds will never get to 50 and many will just disband due to lack of progress. I would like to see people have a choice between small and large guilds - based on their personality and preferences. I also want to see the big guild issues resolved. I have many in-game friends that are in big guilds and I want them to have a chance to get bigger ships and better amenities.

I don't agree that large guilds are out to help casual players while small guilds are not (not directed at you - but I see these type of false comments in this thread). Many people get lost in large guilds and find a better home in small guilds. My small guild never booted a single casual player and we only booted inactives that were gone a long time and obviously not returning. When someone asked to join our guild we never declined, we only asked that they agree to represent our guild well with kind behaviour to others. We don't reject people because they aren't hardcore players.

[eris2323]

We've now re-enabled our temporary adjustments to guild renown, as specified in the first post in this thread:



These changes are anticipated to remain in-game through at least Update 16. We are continuing to look into a bug which may be causing additional decay issues, and will have more information about that when we can. Thank you!

I thank you all again, from the bottom of my heart.

[Tshober]

We've now re-enabled our temporary adjustments to guild renown, as specified in the first post in this thread:



These changes are anticipated to remain in-game through at least Update 16. We are continuing to look into a bug which may be causing additional decay issues, and will have more information about that when we can. Thank you!

Thanks for the update and thanks again for trying out alternatives!

[eris2323]

Will there be a refund policy for elixir purchased by small guilds? There should be because the new system is rendering small guilds obsolete.

This is just silly.

Did large, casual guilds get a refund on the years of using potions to try to stay even?

No.

Don't be bitter; they have said they have more changes.... maybe, perhaps, try a little patience.

[Chaos000]

Will there be a refund policy for elixir purchased by small guilds? There should be because the new system is rendering small guilds obsolete.

Provided there is a drastic reduction in small guilds by the time update 16 hits I'm pretty sure they would consider the validity of this request at that time.

[Dandonk]

Provided there is a drastic reduction in small guilds by the time update 16 hits I'm pretty sure they would consider the validity of this request at that time.

Or maybe a drastic increase in people recruiting, and then kicking people again once they reach the desired level.

I'm disappointed that Turbine hasn't seen fit to address the entire problem, but I'm not surprised.

Well, congratulations to the large guilds. Hopefully the patience of the small guilds will be rewarded.

Miracles do happen, they say.

[eris2323]

Not really, those potions purchaesd by big guilds were done so knowing the rules The potions purchased by small guilds were done so based on the old rules and the rules were changed -rendering small guilds obsolete.

But - nothing has changed for you - you can still gain renown. Your potions still work. They caused you to get a bonus to renown - why should you get a refund?

You're just mad because you see that large guilds will finally LOSE their penalty, compared to small guilds. You're not even willing to give them a little time (one update, even) to see any other changes they have in store, because this angers you so much.

In short, you want to argue, and complain - because someone else is getting a penalty removed, and you are angry that your small guild isn't getting an instant bonus to help you out.

[Dandonk]

You're just mad because you see that large guilds will finally LOSE their penalty, compared to small guilds. You're not even willing to give them a little time (one update, even) to see any other changes they have in store, because this angers you so much.

In short, you want to argue, and complain - because someone else is getting a penalty removed, and you are angry that your small guild isn't getting an instant bonus to help you out.

They did not have a penalty compared small guilds. With equal activity on average for each member, small and large guilds would advance fairly equally.

With the new system, large guilds get a huge bonus while small guilds are left with the old system, the one that you obviosuly didn't like (at least not for large guilds).

I think it is unfair to address only one part of the problem. But I suppose we can always mass invite 50 new players and kick them again after we get to 93. No big problem to me.
But is that what Turbine wants?

[Heikenmoore]

One change I would like to see to guild renown is being able to boot inactive accounts without taking a 25% renown hit.

We have several accounts that have been inactive for 3-6 months, but since booting them means we lose 25% of the renown they added to the guild, it is better to keep them as inactive in the guild rather than boot them.

We should change it so that you take a 25% reduction if only 1 month inactive, a 10% reduction if 2 months inactive, and if greater than 3 months, 0% reduction. That way we can better manage our guild and know how many actives we really have at any one time.

Thanks.

[eris2323]

They did not have a penalty compared small guilds. With equal activity on average for each member, small and large guilds would advance fairly equally.

With the new system, large guilds get a huge bonus while small guilds are left with the old system, the one that you obviosuly didn't like (at least not for large guilds).

I think it is unfair to address only one part of the problem. But I suppose we can always mass invite 50 new players and kick them again after we get to 93. No big problem to me.
But is that what Turbine wants?

You are incorrect.

All large guilds previously would hit a wall, causing players to leave for SMALL GUILDS.

Some would stay, of course - our core group.

For 2 years, we've been the same level because of this garbage.

Now the people who left are mad because they should have stayed in the larger guilds, waited it out, and they'd have their own high levels?

Our only choice was to KICK OUT casual and social players in favour of power-gamers. Some guilds did it, some just suffered with decay.

This has led to many people, in many guilds, being removed from their homes.

The fact that you are considering, even in jest, the 'invite everyone then kick them' - shows me that you are only looking to exploit the system yourself. Is that why you formed a small guild?

Or were you kicked from a large guild? Why so bitter?

[katz]

hmm. small guilds obsolete? funny... *checks ship full of +30 resists and +2 stats* i don't FEEL obsolete. meh. *shrug*

[MysticElaine]

@heiken I stated earlier in this thread that I booted ppl at 4months and over due to knowing they were leaving the game for good. I didn't receive 25% hit or an increase to recent departures...u should be ok

[Dandonk]

You are incorrect.

All large guilds previously would hit a wall, causing players to leave for SMALL GUILDS.

Some would stay, of course - our core group.

For 2 years, we've been the same level because of this garbage.

Now the people who left are mad because they should have stayed in the larger guilds, waited it out, and they'd have their own high levels?

Our only choice was to KICK OUT casual and social players in favour of power-gamers. Some guilds did it, some just suffered with decay.

This has led to many people, in many guilds, being removed from their homes.

The fact that you are considering, even in jest, the 'invite everyone then kick them' - shows me that you are only looking to exploit the system yourself. Is that why you formed a small guild?

Or were you kicked from a large guild? Why so bitter?

Yes, theey kicked casuals. Because they had a large proportion of casuals. Small guilds with the same proportion would hit the same wall.

The system used to reward activity, whether you were large or small guild. Now it just rewards size.

This seems unfair to me, as I prefer to play with my friends in the small guild we have. This is the way our guild has always been - no thought to exploit anything there. But if Turbine wants to make something to blatantly unfair to small guilds, I can play that game too and be unfair in my own way.

Again, as I have said in previous posts: I think anyone getting kicked for renown reasons is a bad thing. So I support this being fixed - but for ALL guilds, not just the large ones.

[eris2323]

hmm. small guilds obsolete? funny... *checks ship full of +30 resists and +2 stats* i don't FEEL obsolete. meh. *shrug*

Exactly.

A few naysayers seem to think there will be no more small guilds after this change; I highly doubt that. Some people can't get along with others, and will always be in a small guild. Some people just want their TR group to be their entire guild - I don't see that changing, either.

And some of us want to be able to log into our large guild and say 'GUILD SHROUD, 10 MINUTES, WHOS WITH ME?'

I highly doubt we are seeing the death of small guilds.

We might see a small reduction in the 6-12 person powergamer guilds though - as some of those players realize they can re-join the larger guilds, instead of re-inventing the wheel themselves - with renown leashed, as it is...

And we might not.

[eris2323]

Yes, theey kicked casuals. Because they had a large proportion of casuals. Small guilds with the same proportion would hit the same wall.

The system used to reward activity, whether you were large or small guild. Now it just rewards size.

This seems unfair to me, as I prefer to play with my friends in the small guild we have. This is the way our guild has always been - no thought to exploit anything there. But if Turbine wants to make something to blatantly unfair to small guilds, I can play that game too and be unfair in my own way.

Again, as I have said in previous posts: I think anyone getting kicked for renown reasons is a bad thing. So I support this being fixed - but for ALL guilds, not just the large ones.

And more changes are coming....

This is not the be-all and the end-all of renown changes.

So why complain, when suddenly people who have been running the same treadmill for years finally get a break? Just because yours is still running?

Your break might be coming too... just gotta give it a chance.

[Dandonk]

And more changes are coming....

This is not the be-all and the end-all of renown changes.

So why complain, when suddenly people who have been running the same treadmill for years finally get a break? Just because yours is still running?

Your break might be coming too... just gotta give it a chance.

My treadmill was running exactly as slow as yours. Given same average activity, we would advance in guild level more or less equally.

Now you get a huge bonus, but we're left behind. That is not fair.

I see a flimsy and indefinite "we'll look into it", but no promises of anything specific to help out small guilds later on. And no idea of when that "later" will be. With Turbine's record, it could be years.

[eris2323]

My treadmill was running exactly as slow as yours. Given same average activity, we would advance in guild level more or less equally.

Now you get a huge bonus, but we're left behind. That is not fair.

I see a flimsy and indefinite "we'll look into it", but no promises of anything specific to help out small guilds later on. And no idea of when that "later" will be. With Turbine's record, it could be years.

I am sorry your concerns haven't been addressed with the recent, emergency-easy fix that Turbine has provided for large guilds - and hopeful in the future that your guild will see some example of fairness returned to you, regardless of what that might be.

As long as it doesn't kill my large guild, that is.

[Dandonk]

As long as it doesn't kill my large guild, that is.

Oh, so it's OK that the current "fix" may destroy some smaller guilds, but not OK if the next "fix" may do the same to your guild?

Check, I understand now.

[eris2323]

Well I've conceded that Turbine is going with the bigger is better strategy. I really liked being in my real life friend guild but I am not going to keep buying elixirs for people if they are going to reward size only.

I don't like the change but I accept Turbine is trying to do the right thing.

We are going to start exploring mergers with other guilds. If we don't like being in a big guild there is always other hobbies, but I do feel like a fool for buyiing guild exlirs without considering that Turbine would change the rules on me. I would never try to build a small guild again - we spent so much time focusing on renown not to mention the elixirs that were wasted.

You're in an MMO. Things change.

I feel like a fool for laying down 80 bucks for underdark, when it was so obviously broken at release.

I got over it though.

[eris2323]

Oh, so it's OK that the current "fix" may destroy some smaller guilds, but not OK if the next "fix" may do the same to your guild?

Check, I understand now.

Exactly.

I do not agree it will destroy small guilds though - I think the only small guilds it will DESTROY is power gamer guilds who don't really care about their friends after all, and were only looking for a quick ride to their own high level buffs...

I would not like to see another 'fix' which will destroy large guilds ability to take in casual and social players though.

[Chaos000]

Or maybe a drastic increase in people recruiting, and then kicking people again once they reach the desired level.

Actually yes. The intent is to increase the enjoyment level of all players to result in increased revenue and higher player retention. The number of guilds that kick people out once they reach 100 should be something monitored to see if it will be common in the event the change was made permanent. Mere speculation at this point doesn't help anyone because there is currently no real data to work with.

All we have right now in measurable metrics is the number of guilds at 95-100 and their guild size. If the number of large guilds at 95-100 outnumber the small guilds at 95-100 then the current size bonus will need to be re-evaluated and boosted up.

If with this change increases the number of large guilds at 95-100 over that of the current small guilds at 95-100. That should prove that large guilds are the only ones benefiting from this change. If large guilds are rapidly hitting the 3 level cap after this change, per the concern, that can be measured and addressed. Should large guilds not be affected outside of a slow progression to next level, this also can be measured. If small guilds under a certain size is not progressing in the manner of the guild the next tier up, that can be monitored and addressed.

[eris2323]

The developer commens indicated nothing that will help small guilds and just reiterated that the goal remains the same - basically to help big guilds. I see no reason to hold out hope that small guilds will be given any consideration. If they were, it would have been done before a 2nd implementation.

"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."

[Dandonk]

Exactly.

I do not agree it will destroy small guilds though - I think the only small guilds it will DESTROY is power gamer guilds who don't really care about their friends after all, and were only looking for a quick ride to their own high level buffs...

I would not like to see another 'fix' which will destroy large guilds ability to take in casual and social players though.

Thank you for telling me how my guild and my friends are. I wasn't aware we were so evil uber powergamers who care for noone, but you have surely opened my eyes.

And thank you for your informed opinion of small guild mechanics, since you admittedly do not play in one.

[eris2323]

Thank you for telling me how my guild and my friends are. I wasn't aware we were so evil uber powergamers who care for noone, but you have surely opened my eyes.

And thank you for your informed opinion of small guild mechanics, since you admittedly do not play in one.

Oh, I didn't say YOUR guild would destroy itself merging into another... why, are you worried it might happen?

[katz]

ok. seriously guys.. tell me..... EXACTLY... how this will kill small guilds? i wanna hear this. cuz i ain't seein it.

[chrisdinus7]

Actually yes. The intent is to increase the enjoyment level of all players to result in increased revenue and higher player retention. The number of guilds that kick people out once they reach 100 should be something monitored to see if it will be common in the event the change was made permanent. Mere speculation at this point doesn't help anyone because there is currently no real data to work with.

All we have right now in measurable metrics is the number of guilds at 95-100 and their guild size. If the number of large guilds at 95-100 outnumber the small guilds at 95-100 then the current size bonus will need to be re-evaluated and boosted up.

If with this change increases the number of large guilds at 95-100 over that of the current small guilds at 95-100. That should prove that large guilds are the only ones benefiting from this change. If large guilds are rapidly hitting the 3 level cap after this change, per the concern, that can be measured and addressed. Should large guilds not be affected outside of a slow progression to next level, this also can be measured. If small guilds under a certain size is not progressing in the manner of the guild the next tier up, that can be monitored and addressed.

There are more measurable metrics then that. I posted in more detail previously, but for example, it is easy to show that under the old system that more players implied a higher guild level, on the whole (I did some simple analysis on every level 32+ guild on Argo - using MyDDO for the initial data). Overall, even the old system favored large guilds - as there is a positive correlation between character count and guild level. The more characters a guild has, the higher their level.

That said, all guild ought to be able to advance.

[Chaos000]

The developer commens indicated nothing that will help small guilds and just reiterated that the goal remains the same - basically to help big guilds. I see no reason to hold out hope that small guilds will be given any consideration. If they were, it would have been done before a 2nd implementation.

Their test ran short due to Mabar, therefore there wasn't enough data to assess whether the impact it had. Therefore it hasn't had a chance to hit the 2nd implementation.

I don't believe the developer made any comments to the effect that they plan to do nothing to help small guilds. "Their actions prove my point" argument is a bit of a stretch.

By not counting guild size guess what? the casual members in a small guild are not penalized either. Whatever guild had the most casual members will benefit most by this change. The benefit? recruiting casual players is no longer undesirable.

This test needs to play out to determine if the numbers you proposed will play out in a game environment. I agree that a large guild can potentially produce a ridiculous amount of renown IF ALL the members were active and if you measure "per account" taking casual members out of the equation the individual members of the guild potentially have to do less work.

By taking the number of accounts out of the equation with this change, we'll be able to see how much of a bonus small guilds should be receiving for the same level of progression of an average large guild. But we need to see it play out for real numbers to work with.

[Chaos000]

There are more measurable metrics then that. I posted in more detail previously, but for example, it is easy to show that under the old system that more players implied a higher guild level, on the whole (I did some simple analysis on every level 32+ guild on Argo - using MyDDO for the initial data). Overall, even the old system favored large guilds - as there is a positive correlation between character count and guild level. The more characters a guild has, the higher their level.

That said, all guild ought to be able to advance.

I appreciate your work chrisdinus7, and I agree that all guilds ought to be able to advance.

I also believe the old system favored large guilds up to a point. If there is a positive correlation between character count and guild level then there should be (in theory) more large guilds near max level in comparison to small guilds near max level.

If the opposite is true, it's something that needs to be noted in the correlation.

[DocBenway]

We've now re-enabled our temporary adjustments to guild renown, as specified in the first post in this thread:



These changes are anticipated to remain in-game through at least Update 16. We are continuing to look into a bug which may be causing additional decay issues, and will have more information about that when we can. Thank you!

Now how about a reasoning why minimum size for decay existed at all? It has been asked all year, and never so much as a peep as to why. What good is giving 1 person a +150% bonus to renown earned when you decay them at +900%?

Yes this all has to do with the old system, but a lack of information has plagued the system since introduction and developers seem to make no effort to clarify or explain. Everytime is it ambiguous like the:


This coming week all guilds should be seeing decay as if they guild were a size 6 guild from last week. Large guilds of all levels are expected to experience less decay than before (assuming they were high enough to have decay). No guild should see more decay than before, with these current changes we're looking at this week.
Where it seems someone working on the system has no idea about the hard coded minimum size, when confronted with this:

My apologies. I just used 6 as an example size for a small guild.

No acknowledgement of the size minimum, just a statement that "that was an example."

An incorrect example.

Whatever you do with the system, please document and publish it where folks can see and understand it. And make sure the public facing folks dealing with the changes know what's going on. Nothing shatters confidence in a product like a public statement from the manufacturer illustrating they do not actually understand their product.

[chrisdinus7]

Their test ran short due to Mabar, therefore there wasn't enough data to assess whether the impact it had. Therefore it hasn't had a chance to hit the 2nd implementation.

I don't believe the developer made any comments to the effect that they plan to do nothing to help small guilds. "Their actions prove my point" argument is a bit of a stretch.

By not counting guild size guess what? the casual members in a small guild are not penalized either. Whatever guild had the most casual members will benefit most by this change. The benefit? recruiting casual players is no longer undesirable.

This test needs to play out to determine if the numbers you proposed will play out in a game environment. I agree that a large guild can potentially produce a ridiculous amount of renown IF ALL the members were active and if you measure "per account" taking casual members out of the equation the individual members of the guild potentially have to do less work.

By taking the number of accounts out of the equation with this change, we'll be able to see how much of a bonus small guilds should be receiving for the same level of progression of an average large guild. But we need to see it play out for real numbers to work with.

Recruit casuals is now beneficial for large guilds, this is true. But even if they up the small guild bonus, it'd still be risky for a small guild to recruit a casual, since that will reduce their small guild bonus, and could net them a loss of renown production.

And while I agree that real numbers would help calibrate bonuses - there are two caveats. If you say you are testing, then you won't get real numbers - a well-known problem from psychology & sociology research, especially in the case of saying the changes are temporary but modifying your guild can have long term impacts that outlast the test. Secondly, if this isn't the final system, then the calibration would be at best a temporary measure.