Guild Renown Changes

[Thayion516]

So the new formula remained after U16? If so, that is encouraging!

[DocBenway]

So the new formula remained after U16? If so, that is encouraging!

I cannot confirm or deny. The test changes did not affect my guild's daily tax.

[theslimshady]

i was not insulting anyone i was pointing out that not many guilds put there own guilds daily or weekly numbers up on the posts they tend to use charts off somewhere else and not there own guilds real numbers

for loot and glory {my guild}
modified account size 202
renown total 21039842
renown gained from sunday morning 130363
under ole system would have decayed 7k with no gain

my point is it is a discussion on what it does to your guild and alot on these posts just speculate what it will or could do

so for my guild it has made the stagnant decay drain go away and a slow progress forward
i was mostly interested in all guilds total renown gains not speculation of doom or korthostylearmies and it seems to me that guilds are for some reason scared to post there daily or weekly numbers

[Tshober]

i was not insulting anyone i was pointing out that not many guilds put there own guilds daily or weekly numbers up on the posts they tend to use charts off somewhere else and not there own guilds real numbers


I figure the devs have access to far more detailed info about all guilds than I have about mine. So I have limited my description of the effects on my guild to general terms. The effects have been very positive. Instead of losing ground rapidly, as we usually do during Mabar, we actually gained ground slightly while Mabar was going. After Mabar ended, we started growing even more rapidly. We have gained a total of 3 levels since the change was initially made. Prior to the change, we would gain a level about once per every 2 or 3 months and during events like Mabar and CC we would lose levels.

[Thayion516]

Ok. We lost 7000ish on decay on a lv 66 guild, 201 active. That confirms that the new formula is still in place after the U16

We have been slowly climbing after Mbar is over. Maybe 1 level a week it looks like.

Slarden, based on your decay, i'm assuming your guild of 8 is lv 70? (10820/20=70) Thats the same decay you had before they changed the formula i'm also assuming?

[Thayion516]

Ok. So how many are actually active in game every day in ur guild? Hours per week? I assume u would know due to you saying u have a very tight group that know each other well.

I personally play about 12-15 hr a week. I prolly pull 40-50k+ renown a week as I play without trying (mainly just taking the 500 and 100 deeds) and no Bonus.

With a SGB would be 150,000+ a week if I was in a small guild.

[Thayion516]

Seems like to me u have 2 work horses and 6 that are casual and do not pull/play much? correct?

Hmm but even "Active" does not denote actual time. The 2 actives on every day? 2 times a week?

[theslimshady]

see now we are getting somewhere

i think renown decay if it stays this way should be tweeked where under 10 accounts get 0 decay so that small and casual guilds dont have to be burdened at all by this

[Thayion516]

Ok.. so u got 2 players staying a guild at Lv 70? Correct? and 6 casuals that contribute little.

So finding 2 more people that have similar good playtimes/gains and INCLUDING them into your guild would help, correct?

10 people still pull 240% additional Bonus. 4 people pulling base 10,000 each a week, quite easy, will equal with bonus will be (4x10,000) = 40,000 + (40,000 x 2.40) cuz this is a stacking bonus = 136,000 a week.

And you will decay at the same 10,805 per day = 7 x 10,805 = 75,635 weekly loss.

Per Week. 136,000(gained) - 75,635 (lost) = 60,365 Gain

The System now inclines you to be INCLUSIVE to 2 more like minded people. This is how a MMO should Work.

And .. I dont see the HUGE disparity you keep talking about. ^^^^ These numbers tell me you are gaining at almost twice the rate you are loosing IF u invited 2 more good players into your guild.

Personally, I would do it in a heart beat.

[Bronko]

That looks like a lot of work for the devs when the players are just going to maximize the gains of their best earners by kicking out the lower earners for a better bonus. The only system that will work for less active players is one where, no matter how little renown they earn, the guild is always better off having them than not having them. Guild leaders are not likely to feel they are better off by having to do a lot of micromanaging, though I'm sure most would be a big fan of the contribution tool to make it easy to calculate which members they would be numerically better off to get rid of.



The problem is that the idea around the renown/player function is what is bad. It would be fine if every player played with the same frequency as every other player, but they don't. This sort of system just makes it so guilds are best off down sizing to just their most active players in order to optimize their renown/player quotient. In other words, it makes it better to have a guild with 20 players in which all are on every day than a guild with 200 players in which 40 are on every day and the simple solution is simply to remove the 180 low earning casuals who lower your bonus and reap the rewards of high earnings with a high bonus with just the 20 actives.

It also stifles recruitment as adding anyone to the guild would likely, at best, just add less a smaller increase than the last than due to the decreased bonus and at worst lower your daily earnings if they didn't play as much as the rest.

Exactly this. +1 for your replies. Well put.

With the removal of the guild size modifier we are indeed seeing growth and I would hazard to guess that most large guilds who were struggling before are also seeing upward movement in their renown. But the issues with how renown/decay are calculated and applied beyond just growth. We are still suffering under an artificial measure imposed but the Devs on what they think a guild should be.

[OpallNotten]

These numbers tell me you are gaining at almost twice the rate you are loosing IF u invited 2 more good players into your guild.

Personally, I would do it in a heart beat.



An old argument was for large guilds to either:
1. suck it up and play like they always did without caring about Guild levels/decay
2. boot people because it would help the Guild. *nothing said they had to stop playing with people that were once guildies. Just make it easier on themselves to get Guild levels.

Now people are reversing that on small Guilds....

I have 6 accounts in my Guild. I never wanted a large guild and never will. I shouldn't have to recruit people into my Guild.

[slarden]

Ok.. so u got 2 players staying a guild at Lv 70? Correct? and 6 casuals that contribute little.

So finding 2 more people that have similar good playtimes/gains and INCLUDING them into your guild would help, correct?

10 people still pull 240% additional Bonus. 4 people pulling base 10,000 each a week, quite easy, will equal with bonus will be (4x10,000) = 40,000 + (40,000 x 2.40) cuz this is a stacking bonus = 136,000 a week.

And you will decay at the same 10,805 per day = 7 x 10,805 = 75,635 weekly loss.

Per Week. 136,000(gained) - 75,635 (lost) = 60,365 Gain

The System now inclines you to be INCLUSIVE to 2 more like minded people. This is how a MMO should Work.

And .. I dont see the HUGE disparity you keep talking about. ^^^^ These numbers tell me you are gaining at almost twice the rate you are loosing IF u invited 2 more good players into your guild.

Personally, I would do it in a heart beat.

I see. So all we have to do is build our guild the way you think it should be done and then our problem is solved. Thank you for your suggestion. I will give that the serious consideration it deserves.

Why is it that it is ok for large guilds to function the way they want, but it's not ok for small guilds to function the way they want without the guild members getting a massive decay tax each day?

Reducing guild renown was the solution for large guilds. Why wouldn't that work for small guilds as well?

[Tshober]

Ok.. so u got 2 players staying a guild at Lv 70? Correct? and 6 casuals that contribute little.

So finding 2 more people that have similar good playtimes/gains and INCLUDING them into your guild would help, correct?

10 people still pull 240% additional Bonus. 4 people pulling base 10,000 each a week, quite easy, will equal with bonus will be (4x10,000) = 40,000 + (40,000 x 2.40) cuz this is a stacking bonus = 136,000 a week.

And you will decay at the same 10,805 per day = 7 x 10,805 = 75,635 weekly loss.

Per Week. 136,000(gained) - 75,635 (lost) = 60,365 Gain

The System now inclines you to be INCLUSIVE to 2 more like minded people. This is how a MMO should Work.

And .. I dont see the HUGE disparity you keep talking about. ^^^^ These numbers tell me you are gaining at almost twice the rate you are loosing IF u invited 2 more good players into your guild.

Personally, I would do it in a heart beat.

Yeah, I have to agree. The way his guild is structured now, pretty much anytime you log on there would be no one else on and adding a couple more people would not really change that appreciably. Is the difference between 8 players and 10 players really enough that 8 is fun and 10 is intolerable?

[Tshober]

Of course you would agree, because you aren't interested in seeing decay reduced for all guilds, only guilds like your guild.

This statement is absurd. I have been advocating in these forums for the complete removal of renown decay from DDO for nearly as long as you have been a member here. Very few have worked harder toward that goal than I have. The complete removal of renown decay has always been and still is my preferred solution. To say that I am "not interested" in that goal is ridiculous. Go ahead. Do a forum search and try to find someone who has been a stronger advocate of eliminating renown decay than I have over the last few years. Good luck.

[Gremmlynn]

I talked to some folks in large guilds on Sarlona and none are aware of any effort to boot casuals, downsize or stifle recruitment that keeps getting mentioned here. I think people are blowing this out of proportion because they realize it resonated with the devs. While there is clearly some truth to, it's not nearly as widespread as some are making it out to be. The fact is guilds have no tools to measure these things.

While I don't agree with an approach that looks solely by # of accounts, I don't think the approach of the same decay for all guilds regardless of size is any better.

Decay is punitive and should have account size factored in. Guilds should get a break as they get bigger, but the curve is way to steep right now with a heavy punitive effect on small casual guilds. The best solution here is to reduce decay across the board rather than to only favor one guild size. I don't see punishing small guild members with decay as viable strategy. It's only going to discourage people from playing and cause them to find other forms of recreation.

I think the level up mechanism is fine the way it is with small guilds requiring significantly more work per member to level up. The guild bonus helps bring this to a realistic difference.Try talking to members of high level small guilds. Talking to the people who have already made the choice to act socially rather than in a manner conducive with maximum mechanical advantage isn't likely to get you an anti-social answer.

As for what guilds not having the tools to measure these things. Every qualified guild leader has the only tool needed nestled between their ears. If a guild's leadership doesn't play enough to know this, they really shouldn't expect their guild to get very far anyway.

[Tshober]

The best solution here is to reduce decay across the board rather than to only favor one guild size.

The "one guild size" that got a reduction in renown decay under the new decay system is every single guild with more than 10 players in it. Your argument is more convincing when you are more honest and say that the new decay system fails to help tiny guilds. That is true and it should be addressed.

[Faxe]

This statement is absurd. I have been advocating in these forums for the complete removal of renown decay from DDO for nearly as long as you have been a member here. Very few have worked harder toward that goal than I have. The complete removal of renown decay has always been and still is my preferred solution. To say that I am "not interested" in that goal is ridiculous. Go ahead. Do a forum search and try to find someone who has been a stronger advocate of eliminating renown decay than I have over the last few years. Good luck.

Hehe, no need to search. I recently wasted a day reading over old threads on renowns. Just for kicks, I ran a sample word count of 50 random threads (out of about 80+). The term 'tshober' was at #428 appearing 334 times beating everyone who had ever posted on renown. You can find some interesting terms from the renown threads here: http://pastebin.com/iLKU3aJQ

[Tshober]

Now people are reversing that on small Guilds....

I have 6 accounts in my Guild. I never wanted a large guild and never will. I shouldn't have to recruit people into my Guild.

Why would you have to recruit people if you don't want to? Decay has not changed at all for your guild. You can level up just as fast as you would have before without changing anything at all about your guild. Nothing has changed for you. All that has happened is guilds with more than 10 players have had their decay reduced and the incentives to shun casual/social players have been greatly reduced. Why should you be bothered by this change at all when your guild has not been affected by it?

A much better, and more honest, complaint for you would be to ask "why didn't guilds with less than 10 players also get a break from decay?" That is a good question and it does not begrudge those who have been helped by the new decay system. The devs have said this test is not the end of their review of the renown system. We should try to convince the devs that tiny guilds also deserve to get a break from decay. I would like to see decay removed entirely, so no guilds would be penalized by it.

[Tshober]

Hehe, no need to search. I recently wasted a day reading over old threads on renowns. Just for kicks, I ran a sample word count of 50 random threads (out of about 80+). The term 'tshober' was at #428 appearing 334 times beating everyone who had ever posted on renown. You can find some interesting terms from the renown threads here: http://pastebin.com/iLKU3aJQ

:)
I admit I am passionate about this particular subject. I think it comes from being the leader of a very large guild that has had to fight against decay and against all the pressures to shed our casual/social players for years. When I post on this subject, I feel like I am speaking for all of our members who have worked so hard for so long and gotten basically nowhere. Until very recently, that is. The devs finally agreeing to review the renown system has been a huge victory.

[Gremmlynn]

Why is it that it is ok for large guilds to function the way they want, but it's not ok for small guilds to function the way they want without the guild members getting a massive decay tax each day?

Actually, under the new system, most large guilds will likely not be acting the way they want. They will be acting in the way that is best for the game due to artificial incentives. Most would likely prefer to settle in at a size that allows for a much lower casual to active ratio than the games overall population represents.

From my personal experience, the vast majority of players in this game, and any other game I've played for that matter, simply don't play enough or seriously enough to really contribute more to guilds than they get from being members. That means those that do play enough and seriously enough tend to contribute much more than they get. Human nature being what it is, a good developer will find a way to inflate the value of the first group in order to give those in the second group a reason beyond altruism or the simple logic that keeping the population healthy is necessary for the game to remain up to include them and maximize everyone's satisfaction from the game.

[slarden]

Nothing has changed for you.

This argument doesn't really stand up. If we reverted to the old system we can argue it's fine for large guilds because nothing changed for those guilds.

The fact is that people in my guild now have a decay tax 8x greater than people in large guilds. That is a change. There is a severe inequity that exists now that didn't exist previously.

I don't have a problem with the inequity of the leveling system because there is not a daily activity requirement. Decay is a penalty for people that don't play enough. Only casual players in small guilds are punished under the new system.

I am 100% sure that if small guilds got a decay break and large guilds did not these same people that are saying "nothing has changed for you" would be complaining and much more strongly. Even when large guilds got this massive break we see these folks from large guilds calling for the elimination of the small guild bonus and getting rid of small guilds completely. We wouldn't be reading from people in large guilds that "nothing changed for our large guilds so it's fine" if the situation is reversed.

[Thayion516]

It depends. I was quite busy with work and only played 12 days in a 6 week period during the summer although I usually logged in a bit to chat. We lost 300k or so during that time. We play most days. 1-3 hours during the weeknights and maybe 5-6 during the weekend.

The other active person spends alot of time on beta so we often lose renown when he is testing out the new content on beta. He was in the first party to complete CITW with a severely short-manned team. I think he is going to stop doing that though so we don't lose renown.

Oh Wait. I think i misread this. 2 active people. 1rst part was YOU. and 2nd part was the OTHER player, that usually plays on Lamma beta testing.

So basicly, This guild only has ONE person keeping a lv 70 guild. You are a Soloing a lv 70 guild and u want a Break???

I would like to believe that Turbine would advocate getting more players involved then Soloing a high level guild.

[Tshober]

If the developers believe this they are really out of touch with how the game really functions. People help other players and not guilds. A guild is a chat room, a ship and buffs.

My large guild is very helpful to new players. We help them with advice, with gear, and with people their level to group with. If you really believe exclusive guilds that would never even consider inviting any new players to their guild are more helpful to new players than guilds that actually invite them to join and welcome them to the game, then you are delusional beyond help.

Yes, all guilds have a chat room. The difference between my guild and yours is when someone asks a question in my guild's chat, there are actually people logged on to read the question and answer it. One of the most frequent comments I hear from people who have just joined our guild is "Oh, great you have lots of people logged on. In my old guild no one was ever logged on but me." I can understand how someone who is used to a tiny guild with mostly casual players might view a guild as just "a chat room, a ship and buffs", since most of time when they log in there are no other guild members logged in at all. It is not like that at all in a large guild though. We are a big, crazy family. There are ALWAYS people asking for advice, sharing resources, forming partys or raids, and discussing all aspects of DDO life. That kind of social interaction isn't for everyone, but for many it is a vital part of MMO life.

[slarden]

Oh Wait. I think i misread this. 2 active people. 1rst part was YOU. and 2nd part was the OTHER player, that usually plays on Lamma beta testing.

So basicly, This guild only has ONE person keeping a lv 70 guild. You are a Soloing a lv 70 guild and u want a Break???

I would like to believe that Turbine would advocate getting more players involved then Soloing a high level guild.

No not soloing, when he is off testing beta I tend to play less. When I am busy at work he tends to play less. The only reason we are level 70 is because we focused on making it happen:

1) Almost always taking guild renown as an end reward
2) Taking renown elixirs
3) Making several renown runs each month to make an upward push

So when people in a small casual guild are inactive it's the problem of the other people in the guild, but when people are inactive in a large guild it make those in the large guild noble and helpful? I am sorry but you are wrong.

Perhaps if Turbine takes a look at the comments from the people in large guilds they wil understand why we want to be in a small guild.

If Turbine doesn't want to support a small group of friends playing the game that is their choice. I wanted to express my viewpoint which I did. I don't know if they will read or care about my comments.

[slarden]

My large guild is very helpful to new players. We help them with advice, with gear, and with people their level to group with. If you really believe exclusive guilds that would never even consider inviting any new players to their guild are more helpful to new players than guilds that actually invite them to join and welcome them to the game, then you are delusional beyond help.

Yes, all guilds have a chat room. The difference between my guild and yours is when someone asks a question in my guild's chat, there are actually people logged on to read the question and answer it. One of the most frequent comments I hear from people who have just joined our guild is "Oh, great you have lots of people logged on. In my old guild no one was ever logged on but me." I can understand how someone who is used to a tiny guild with mostly casual players might view a guild as just "a chat room, a ship and buffs", since most of time when they log in there are no other guild members logged in at all. It is not like that at all in a large guild though. We are a big, crazy family. There are ALWAYS people asking for advice, sharing resources, forming partys or raids, and discussing all aspects of DDO life. That kind of social interaction isn't for everyone, but for many it is a vital part of MMO life.


Again what you say about small guilds is absolutely incorrect. My point is that the "guild" is nothing more than a chat room, ship and buffs. The people in the guild are what benefits other people. And the notion that people in small guilds are not helpful is just flat out wrong.

The other point is that people have other better options besides guild chat to get answers to their questions. if someone uses /advice in the marketplace or harbor they will reach many more people than guild chat. If they don't know about /advice someone will explain it when they ask a question in general chat.

Your continued assertions and critisicms of small guilds are just flat-out wrong and ridiculous. So you think a small group of friends don't help each other and don't interact? Really? Really?

We do welcome others into our group but we try to find people that are are a good fit for the group so they feel at home and not out of place. Someone that wants to run in Korthos would be better off joining one of the many small guids or the large guilds where people are running that content. We TR and get to level 10 the same day. It isn't the right guild for someone that is on their first life and a lower level. But it would have been the right guild 2 years ago when that is where we were.

The fact is that almost all people we quest/raid with are already in a guild and there is no purpose in trying to convince someone else to leave their guild to join ours. We can quest with them just fine without anyone changing guilds.

We don't recruit but if someone is looking for a guild and a good fit we welcome them. If that approach doesn't work for you or Turbine that is fine with me. We are not forced to play this game if it doesn't work out for us.

Not everyone likes getting spam guild invites. I don't.

[Gremmlynn]

I am sorry but this is just completely ridiculous. We've taught alot of people in large guilds how to run quests and helped them farm for gear. I run with people from large guilds frequently. They don't know most of the people in their guild and they group with people they like to run with not people from their guild.

If the developers believe this they are really out of touch with how the game really functions. People help other players and not guilds. A guild is a chat room, a ship and buffs. "Solo" players also exist in large guilds. They want the the ship buffs and that is it .

Why is it I always seem people from large guilds asking for help in general chat if they get so much help from their guild? And they get answers from general chat.

/Advice is there for a reason and it has nothing to do with guild size.That's believable considering that for the last several years Turbine has been giving every GL the incentive to down size and even those that didn't do so tended to lose their most active and experienced members to those guilds that did.

Once this change gets confirmed as staying and it gets a chance to settle in, large guilds in general should start being less dysfunctional.

[Zeez]

We have over 600 active accounts. We are a very large guild and have many active members/accounts. We also invite strangers and help each other out. I cant tell you how many times ive gotten into a PuG just to find out some of them are in my guild. I wouldnt change that for anything. But because of cap and how guild renown was working our leader had to constantly kick out people who hadnt been on in a week or more because of the terrible decay we were experiencing. with this new change we can still invite new people and move up the ranks. I am very pleased with this change and I understand not everyone appreciates it but this i can tell you on behalf of our 600+ members we like it. We were stuck at 60 for over 2 months and are now slowly moving up. Thank you for the changes.

[Dhalgren]

I believe the change is permanent and final based on the original post. The test period is over.

Are you basing this assertion on this:


. . .
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.
. . .

. . . or maybe on this:


We're all for new ideas and brainstorming solutions (truly, really, not just tossing buzzwords). This particular idea is problematic, because it promotes kicking players from your guild to reduce decay, which is where we were before and a situation we want to avoid.

We are certainly still considering other changes and have never said that the current changes being tested were considered any kind of final solution. We'd love to have more ideas to consider.

Ideas that are more likely to work out are ones that feel fair, promote playing together with people you like and have fun with, and where the system itself isn't promoting who you play with. We don't want to promote any particular guild size. And we don't want incentives for kicking players you enjoy playing with, or for players who might like to come and hang out or play occasionally to feel like they are hurting their guild or harming their friends in any way. If these goals seem wrong, we're willing to hear ideas on that too. This isn't an exhaustive list, but current thinking is leaning us strongly towards including these goals.

. . .?

I agree that some kind of change should be made to help out small guilds, and to be frank, the guild-size-ism going on in this thread (on both sides) gets to be a little childish and ridiculous from time to time. There is nothing inherently superior about people in either kind of guild, and all the disparaging remarks as if there were just make the poster (on either side) look silly.

Big guilds got a break: yay!
Small guilds didn't: boo! But at least they didn't get nerfed: so mini-yay for that, anyway.

[Faxe]

My additional feedbacks after trying to come up with a fairer system:

1. Having any bonus based on size is unfair. I think the bonus is there to help small guilds level up faster initially. Yes, I know some guilds put in tremendous efforts to get to level 100. You can still find charts and data to minimize that effort. But when a tiny guild reaches level 70 and has access to LARGE augment slots, it is very unfair to STILL be getting the small bonuses.

2. Having any formula based on an artificial numbers of account is unfair. For example, modifying the account size to be actual account + 10 is unfair. The phantom 10 accounts is just an artificial number that is unfair to guild of certain sizes.

3. Having any hidden rules/mechanism/complicated formula leads to more unfairness. For example, a person be extremely active for 7 days out of a month always hitting the renown ransack and getting reduced renown without knowing it. While another person can play every four days almost never hitting the reduced renown rate.

4. Decay is just plain unfair to the player. The complicated rules already makes it harder to be fair. C'mon, it's easy to see the small guild bonus is not being applied in a fair way during decay. Players can grow old, develop arthritis/carpla tunnels, and play less for many reasons. :D That's enough decay in RL already.

My simple suggestions:
1. Apply the bonus based on the level of the guild - not on the account size. This will help both large/small guilds to level up. You can base this on the level when the guild gains access to the tiny, small, medium, and large slots.
I'd give guilds these bonuses:
Level 10 and under 700% bonus. Get’em excited about a new guild for once. Join up everyone, we're under level 10!!!
Level 25 and under gets 450%. Yay, airships and nice bonus still.
Level 45 and under gets 250%. Oh yeah, now we’ve more use out of the ship.
Level 70 and under gets 100% bonus. Lots of benefits and still getting a 100% bonus!
That should make everyone happy :D

2. Remove artificial numbers/hidden rules from the formula Drop unnecessary numbers that modifies the number of accounts. For example, the recent departure number is just to punish a guild for 14 extra days when an account leaves. Then we have an artificial rule that if a character leaves, some renown is lost unless the character is deleted. It makes no sense because the character left in both cases. It's okay to give us the renown formula, the worst that can happen is that players will test it out and help to improve the system.

3. Hidden. Sorry, I have to hide this awesome suggestion so players cannot explit the system.

4. Remove decay. I think 90% of the players support it. The other 10% will support it once the game designer improves the guild system with more features at even higher guild levels and higher decay.

[Dandonk]

So, any news? Is the test period over yet? Can we have any feedback at all about the concerns of small guilds?

[Naramsin]

I confess, I have not read the thread in its entirety but I pop in periodically to check up on the current state of affairs, as I am anxious to find out whether the present system will remain.

I thought I was up to speed until I read this:

My additional feedbacks after trying to come up with a fairer system:
3. Having any hidden rules/mechanism/complicated formula leads to more unfairness. For example, a person be extremely active for 7 days out of a month always hitting the renown ransack and getting reduced renown without knowing it. While another person can play every four days almost never hitting the reduced renown rate.

Wait, what? Is there a per-player ransack/max renown contribution? Or are you referencing the guild-wide ransack that occurs when the guild picks up a level, or ransack of the contents of individual chests? (Or am I just out of the loop and this is merely a response to suggestions made my others?)

As someone who makes a concerted effort to pick up the slack when guildmates take breaks from DDO, I'd like to know if I happen to be shooting myself in the foot or getting diminished returns.

[Faxe]

I confess, I have not read the thread in its entirety but I pop in periodically to check up on the current state of affairs, as I am anxious to find out whether the present system will remain.

I thought I was up to speed until I read this:


Wait, what? Is there a per-player ransack/max renown contribution? Or are you referencing the guild-wide ransack that occurs when the guild picks up a level, or ransack of the contents of individual chests? (Or am I just out of the loop and this is merely a response to suggestions made my others?)

As someone who makes a concerted effort to pick up the slack when guildmates take breaks from DDO, I'd like to know if I happen to be shooting myself in the foot or getting diminished returns.

As far as I can tell, you are unlikely to hit any limit or notice getting heroics instead of impressives.

It's not just when the guild levels up, ransacked of contents or chests. It is also based on your guild level plus some random limits. Is it really random? Or is it also account and character based?

but the hidden rules are there. It's not designed to reduce farming. I am sure of it. HEhe

[Cleazy]

It looks like im gonna have to make a new guild and invite every single toon i can have... Im gonna do my best to max it out to 1k members... I dont care if they play at all really... Ill take the same hit as guilds that actually work to get to lvl 100.. lol... Thanks for giving terrible guilds, like the one im making now, so much power and advantage... with 1k toons in this guild.. even if they get 100 renoun a day each.. thats 100k a day... awesome... Takes me a while to get that in my real guild ... Cant wait to exploit this... then when im done.. ill kick everyone little by little.. and itll just be me a few friends from my real guild... Thanks turbine.. Thats an awesome idea.. yes my small guild gets the small guild bonus.. but im not able to get like 100k to 1mill or more in renoun a day, even if they are playing 24/7 and opening chests every few seconds... I guess you should just get rid of guilds.. and guild ranks and give anyone who starts a new guild, lvl 100 buffs... Cause thats pretty much whats going to happen now.. Its a race now to suck up all the guildless toons people can, all day long.. ill be sitting in korthos begging for guildies for the next few weeks.. Then if i get enough ill only get 3 lvls a day.. oh well.. we wil be at lvl 100 in little over a month.. not bad... Actually im not gonna do that.. Cause thats pathetic... But I could and i know that im not the only one that thinks like that... lol... Good job breaking the guild system... The race is on... Got to max out your guilds asap.... Gratz to the noob guilds.. you deserve it... (well not really). . But you get it anyways.. lol

[Tshober]

It looks like im gonna have to make a new guild and invite every single toon i can have... Im gonna do my best to max it out to 1k members... I dont care if they play at all really... Ill take the same hit as guilds that actually work to get to lvl 100.. lol... Thanks for giving terrible guilds, like the one im making now, so much power and advantage... with 1k toons in this guild.. even if they get 100 renoun a day each.. thats 100k a day... awesome... Takes me a while to get that in my real guild ... Cant wait to exploit this... then when im done.. ill kick everyone little by little.. and itll just be me a few friends from my real guild... Thanks turbine.. Thats an awesome idea.. yes my small guild gets the small guild bonus.. but im not able to get like 100k to 1mill or more in renoun a day, even if they are playing 24/7 and opening chests every few seconds... I guess you should just get rid of guilds.. and guild ranks and give anyone who starts a new guild, lvl 100 buffs... Cause thats pretty much whats going to happen now.. Its a race now to suck up all the guildless toons people can, all day long.. ill be sitting in korthos begging for guildies for the next few weeks.. Then if i get enough ill only get 3 lvls a day.. oh well.. we wil be at lvl 100 in little over a month.. not bad... Actually im not gonna do that.. Cause thats pathetic... But I could and i know that im not the only one that thinks like that... lol... Good job breaking the guild system... The race is on... Got to max out your guilds asap.... Gratz to the noob guilds.. you deserve it... (well not really). . But you get it anyways.. lol

Good luck with that.

Since what you describe was exactly the fastest way to get to level 100 under the old decay system, I guess nothing has changed for you. Only difference is you will have to wait until level 100 to start kicking them now. Pathetic is right. But at least when you kick them now, they will be able to join other guilds whose leaders are not abusive and pathetic, and still get to 100. I'm sure that takes most of the fun out of kicking them for you, so I can certainly understand why you are complaining.

[slarden]

Good luck with that.

Since what you describe was exactly the fastest way to get to level 100 under the old decay system, I guess nothing has changed for you. Only difference is you will have to wait until level 100 to start kicking them now. Pathetic is right. But at least when you kick them now, they will be able to join other guilds whose leaders are not abusive and pathetic, and still get to 100. I'm sure that takes most of the fun out of kicking them for you, so I can certainly understand why you are complaining.

I think you missed this part that he wrote:


Actually im not gonna do that.. Cause thats pathetic... But I could and i know that im not the only one that thinks like that... lol

His point is very valid that we are changing the system so that large gulds don't dump casual players and nothing changed- there is still an incentive to dump players - except a much larger incentive because the upward track is so easy now with a large number of members whether they are temporary or permanent.

I noticed you took a very harsh tone with this person that was joking but you didn't have any issue with all the people in large guilds that wanted to know whether the change was permanent to decide whether or not to dump casuals.

The only true way to resolve the issue is to lower decay across the board.

[Tshober]

His point is very valid that we are changing the system so that large gulds don't dump casual players and nothing changed- there is still an incentive to dump players - except a much larger incentive because the upward track is so easy now with a large number of members whether they are temporary or permanent.

There is NO INCENTIVE at all to kick out any players under the new system. NONE AT ALL. There is only incentive to invite them. Kicking them gets you nothing but renown loss. Under the new system, the ONLY reason to kick members after they have helped you gain levels is pure spite. Yes, I do treat people like that harshly.

Now, under the old, system there was incentive to kick out members after they had helped you level up to mid-levels because kicking them allowed you to continue on up to the higher levels. But there is no such incentive in the new system. If you kick them in the new system, it is for purely spiteful reasons. People who advocate such behavior richly deserve our scorn.

His point is only valid in the minds of people who are incredibly self-centered.

[Tshober]

There is no additional decay for adding players so when booting players under the new system you only lose a small fraction of the rewnown they earned. If you are forced to add people to grow and later want to remove those people, you still end up with a net gain vs. doing nothing.

So what? It would be a bigger net gain to keep them and not boot them. The system rewards doing the right thing more than it rewards doing the wrong thing. What more can you ask of it?

The bottom line is the old decay system encouraged and rewarded kicking out casual/social players. The new decay system eliminates that incentive for most players and guilds. Instead, the new system rewards inclusion and inviting people, and only punishes kicking them.

[Thayion516]

Slarden. Quite frankly you are wrong. You have posted MANY times and I assume read this whole thread 10 times.

There was a mathematical reason to KICK all 150 people we did in my guild. Period. To increase our level, the MATH (you know 2+2?=4?) said the casual players were detrimental to the actives. PERIOD.

Under the new system the members playtime is irreverent to Kick/Not Kick. It is Purely Level Based. The MATH does not place casual players in guilds at a disservice to themselves or the guild they are in.

If ANY Guild Leadership chooses to exclude players and level slower (but still leveling), that is there choice. Likewise, ANY Leadership that chooses to to get help leveling by including recruitment, that is soley their choice also. The Renown Needed/Decay per Level does not change either way. it is now a Constant.

You yourself said you never had to deal with this situation because your in a 2 active man guild, and your inexperience shows.

I have never met a guild leader with any guild in game that is spiteful enough to recruite/kick cycle to level a guild. I've heard of such, but then i hear it folded, they never last. I'm sure there is a VERY small % of people that would practice such bad leadership, however I trust that DDO would not make game mechanics based on less then 1% of the player base.

The new system is Inclusive and Builds Guilds. Good Guilds = a Better DDO.

[eris2323]

Dooooooooooooooooooooooom?

I dunno, I think not... sounds like a lot of johnny fearmongers

Devs.... thousands upon thousands of active AND casual players are thanking you right now...

Just one or two still complaining, on and on and on, a guild of 2...

But we'd all love to know if this is permanent now :)

[Tshober]

Adding a player and then removing under the new system always results in net renown gain.

Again, so what? Adding a player and NOT removing them always results in an even bigger net renown gain.

The new system has its rewards in the right place. The old system was the one that rewarded kicking. The new one only rewards inviting and only punishes kicking. You have made no logically valid argument to refute that. All you have done is argue that someone who wants to abuse people badly enough can do so, despite the punishement that the system inflicts on them for it. That is true under any system. Heck, under the old system they were actually rewarded for it.

[Thayion516]

The same exact situation still exists with casuals in small guilds that existed in the old system because the decay probelm was not addressed for small guilds.

You yourself said you booted people to gain levels. Like most large guilds you probably randomly recruited and then selectively dropped players. That same incentive still exists to randomly recruit and selectively dismiss people from guilds. However it will be for slightly different reasons.

You refer to my guild as a 2-person guild because we have 6 less active people. Why aren't people in a small guild allowed to be casual? We are not excluding anyone, we are including people that are a good fit for our guild. Guilds shouldn't be forced to grow artifically - this should not be a numbers game.

You have no facts to base any assumptions on the way we have recruited over the years. So don't assume.

And the Devs disagree with you on the system being the same. And yes, numbers optimization is important to many.


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!

[slarden]

You have no facts to base any assumptions on the way we have recruited over the years. So don't assume.

And the Devs disagree with you on the system being the same. And yes, numbers optimization is important to many.

No I don't know how you recruited, all I know if you dropped 150 people. That does tell me quite a bit.

Yes I understand that the developer comments show a belief that the proposed solution was the answer even as the testing was just beginning. I think they had an opportunity to turn this into a win for all guilds and Turbine instead of just promoting the "Bigger is better" approach.

It's ultimately Turbine's call and although I am expressing my opinions, this is only a game that I am not forced to play. They have been losing alot of customers. It's amazing to me that they would make a change here that was so one-sided when there were so many options to help out everyone without a downside.

And nobody still raised a single reason why reducing decay for small guilds would cause players to be booted. It's a non-sensical argument.

[Dallanin]

I play in a 2 player guild with modified guild size 6. We mostly TR together looting boxes and taking renown end rewards. I just made a quick calculation and noticed that at this pace we'll be at life 11 before reaching guild level 63. This was calculated without taking decay into account so it is possible that we'll get completionist before 3 % Experience Shrine.

Not that I'm complaining or anything. Quite a long road ahead but I still prefer to play in this guild. I just wanted to share this observation.
Right now we are at life 5, guild level 51, using greater tome of learning and cannith exp and renown potions.

[Tshober]

If you want a smaller group of compatible people, one viable option is to offer a test period. If it works out they stay - if not they get booted and you still gain renown. This is not abuse, it's a way for a small guild to grow without being forced to keep incompatible players. As long as it's clear up front, there is nothing wrong with this. It's the way fraternities, corporations and even social groups work.

Having a group of compatible players is important to many guilds.

Okay, fine. I don't see what point you are trying to make here. Are you saying that because you want to kick someone as part of a trial that your desire to kick them is somehow due to incentives in the decay system? Sorry, but your example here makes no sense at all to me.

This argument started when you claimed, incorrectly, that the new decay system still has "an incentive to dump players". What does this have to do with that? There is no incentive in the new decay system to kick members, ever. The new decay system will always punish kicking versus not kicking, and will always reward inviting versus kicking or not inviting. Nothing you can make up will change that. The situations you describe are irrelevent to what the incentives are in the decay system. You describe incentives to kick that do NOT come from the decay system but come purely from players' preferences. Those are irrelevlent to the subject of what the decay system rewards or does not reward.

If you want to convince me, or the devs, or anyone at all, then come up with an example where the new decay system actually rewards kicking someone versus not kicking them. Show a situation where you gain renown by kicking someone versus not kicking them. You can't, of course, because there are no such situations.

[eris2323]

I've shown many - others have also pointed it out. Taking on a player temporarily and then kicking them out under the test system will always result in a net renown gain for a guild. A guild at the 1000 character limit still has an incentive to boot less active players and replace those players with more active players.

You want this system "as is" with no accomodation made for small guilds, yet you and others are unable to show how lowering decay for small gulds will result in small guilds booting players. It won't. Lowering decay across the board will ease the pressure on guilds to worry about the play time of casual players.

The new system requires small guilds to have highly active players to cover the decay tax. Large guilds are free to operate as they wish and will eventually get to 100 with no effort, no need to take renown as an end reward and no need for guild elixirs. Large guilds can still get to 100 faster by replacing inactive players with more active players and I am sure some will do that. Small guilds can grow faster by adding players willing to join and then trimming the herd periodically. I am sure some small guilds will do that.

I believe Turbine looked at large guilds and the top tier small guilds when making this change. I wish they would look at metrics for all small guilds and not just those that are on the leader boards. My expectations are very low that any change will be made for smll guilds.

Turbine had an opportunity to implement a system with lowered decay for all guilds that would have greatly benefited all guilds.

Perhaps the devs are quite happy with the speed a guild of 2 is levelling, and there is no need for change.

Perhaps....

If a guild of 2 can keep up with my large guild, because Turbine artificially is helping them gain renown, I call shenanigans.

Unfair advantage, to anyone who simply wants to dual-box a 'guild'.

I would never reward such anti-social behaviour.

A kick in the face to all large guilds.

A personal insult, no less... especially after the YEARS large guilds had to suffer on the old system that favoured small guilds....

[Tshober]

You want this system "as is" with no accomodation made for small guilds, yet you and others are unable to show how lowering decay for small gulds will result in small guilds booting players. It won't. Lowering decay across the board will ease the pressure on guilds to worry about the play time of casual players.
.

I made no such claim. In fact, I am in favor of reducing the decay for all guilds, including tiny guilds like yours, and I have stated as much many times in this thread. The examples you gave were irrelevent to the decay systems under discussion. I think you are just confused. And I am beginning to doubt that there is any value in continuing this discussion with you. I hope that you and the other tiny guilds eventully get some decay relief.

[Thayion516]

As I've stated many times, decay is a penalty to each player in a small guild. There is no reason to penalize those in small guilds. It accomplishes absolutely nothing.

According to DDOwiki:

Very Small
Guild Renown Bonus Small

Modified Guild Size Multiplier
1 150%
2 180%
3 210%
4 240%
5 270%
6 300%
7 285%
8 270%
9 255%
10 240%


So unless your definition of penalty includes a very large Renown Bonus Multiplier.... I don't see it.

[Tshober]

There is no confusion, the math is very simple and straight forward. Under the new system, when you recruit a member and then later remove the member - the guild still gains net renown since there is no incremental increase in decay. Since there is no decay added when adding new members, the only #s that matter are the total renown earned and renown lost when the player was booted. Since the renown lost is a fraction of what was earned it's a net gain for the gulid. Sure you lose a little renown, but you still gained overall and that little renown lost is likely worth the exchange if you get someone that is more active (if you are trying to level faster) or a better fit for the guild (if you want the right people in your guild).
.

If there is no confusion then the only possible explaination is purposeful ignoring of the facts. You completely ignore the fact that if you don't remove the member you gain MORE renown than if you remove them. Anyone can "win" an argument if they ignore facts. The new system rewards you for keeping the member with more renown and punishes you for kicking them with loss of renown. Those are simple and obvious facts. If you choose to ignore them then there can be no useful discussion of this subject.

[slarden]

According to DDOwiki:

Very Small
Guild Renown Bonus Small

Modified Guild Size Multiplier
1 150%
2 180%
3 210%
4 240%
5 270%
6 300%
7 285%
8 270%
9 255%
10 240%


So unless your definition of penalty includes a very large Renown Bonus Multiplier.... I don't see it.

A guild of 8 gets 25x more decay / account and has to earn 25x more renown/account to level up compared to a guild of 200 . With the small guild bonus a guild of 8 still gets 9.25x more decay / account and has to earn 9.25x more renown/ account to level up. I don't mind the extra requirements to level up since there is no time variable there, but decay is a puntiive decay that is applied to members daily. That means casual players in a small guild of 8 are hurting their guild if they can't cover their decay tax. This is the same situation that occurred in large guilds.

The punitive decay tax should be modified for players in small guilds.

[Artos_Fabril]

A guild of 8 gets 25x more decay / account and has to earn 25x more renown/account to level up compared to a guild of 200 . With the small guild bonus a guild of 8 still gets 9.25x more decay / account and has to earn 9.25x more renown/ account to level up. I don't mind the extra requirements to level up since there is no time variable there, but decay is a puntiive decay that is applied to members daily. That means casual players in a small guild of 8 are hurting their guild if they can't cover their decay tax. This is the same situation that occurred in large guilds.

The punitive decay tax should be modified for players in small guilds.
Many hands make light the work.

If you're arguing that all guilds should progress at the same speed, why not remove renown altogether and just grant upgrades based on the number of days that the guild has existed?

Full disclosure: I play primarily in a large "family" guild on Khyber. It has ~100 "active" accounts, although there are rarely more than 25 people logged at a time on weekends or peak times, and usually 10 or fewer at any other time. Under the old system, this guild was pretty much stuck at 70. Since the test system was introduced, it has shot up to a whopping...72. I also play in a small guild of friends on another server. None of us log in there much, I rarely play there unless they're on, and they log in at most twice a week. That guild sits at 26, where there is no decay, and maybe hits 27 if we're all on for a weekend, before falling again during the week.

I have no illusions that these guilds should progress at the same rate. I don't think that's realistic, but it seems to be what you're advocating for in the "small casual guild that logs on more when more of them are around, and less when fewer of them are around" being able to advance to the upper guild tiers.

Much earlier in the thread, I proposed a system that would reward players for being active and taking renown, but not punish them for periods of inactivity, or for players who just log in to say hi and remind everyone they're still alive. Here it is again:

Calculate decay based on the old formula without the "min10+10" line. For this formula, count as "inactive" any player who did not earn at least 1 point of renown since renown decay was last calculated.

Now this would prevent double renown hits when servers come down, because only those people who were on and earning renown between when the servers came up and went back down would be active, and it seems like a much fairer system to me. It would also have the effect of makign it more difficult for a 1-2 person guild to log in "phantom" accounts to artificially raise their size to 6 to increase their renown gain by 120% they would have to, at a minimum, log those accounts in once a day and kill an orange named mob to get that bonus. It wouldn't affect the real optimizers anyway, since they built their small guilds around having 6 active people taking as much renown as possible every day.

[slarden]

Many hands make light the work.

If you're arguing that all guilds should progress at the same speed, why not remove renown altogether and just grant upgrades based on the number of days that the guild has existed?

Full disclosure: I play primarily in a large "family" guild on Khyber. It has ~100 "active" accounts, although there are rarely more than 25 people logged at a time on weekends or peak times, and usually 10 or fewer at any other time. Under the old system, this guild was pretty much stuck at 70. Since the test system was introduced, it has shot up to a whopping...72. I also play in a small guild of friends on another server. None of us log in there much, I rarely play there unless they're on, and they log in at most twice a week. That guild sits at 26, where there is no decay, and maybe hits 27 if we're all on for a weekend, before falling again during the week.

I have no illusions that these guilds should progress at the same rate. I don't think that's realistic, but it seems to be what you're advocating for in the "small casual guild that logs on more when more of them are around, and less when fewer of them are around" being able to advance to the upper guild tiers.

Much earlier in the thread, I proposed a system that would reward players for being active and taking renown, but not punish them for periods of inactivity, or for players who just log in to say hi and remind everyone they're still alive. Here it is again:

Calculate decay based on the old formula without the "min10+10" line. For this formula, count as "inactive" any player who did not earn at least 1 point of renown since renown decay was last calculated.

Now this would prevent double renown hits when servers come down, because only those people who were on and earning renown between when the servers came up and went back down would be active, and it seems like a much fairer system to me. It would also have the effect of makign it more difficult for a 1-2 person guild to log in "phantom" accounts to artificially raise their size to 6 to increase their renown gain by 120% they would have to, at a minimum, log those accounts in once a day and kill an orange named mob to get that bonus. It wouldn't affect the real optimizers anyway, since they built their small guilds around having 6 active people taking as much renown as possible every day.

As I said, I have no issue that small guilds require more renown/account to level up. The only issue I have is the punitive decay aspect of the system. I don't think it makes sense for a person in a small guild to get 9.25 more decay than a person in a large guild. I think decay should be lowered and the more difficult leveling requirements should remain as they are.

I think the notion that all small guilds are using phantom accounts is absurd. Our small guild originally consisted of 5 real life friends and a few others. We do have one person with 2 accounts in our guild but everyone else has one account / person. Whenever someone asks me to invite another character I check whether our account # goes up. There are many people that have multiple ftp accounts because of the character limit and to make it easier to trade to bank characters. The person I know the most accounts is in a mid-size guild and not a small guld.

The system certainly encouraged a guild to be at least 6 accounts, but all that really did for small guilds was to reduce the significant per account penalty it already had, it never gave a leveling advantage.

The biggest advantage a guild could have is to have all active players regardless of size. I realize this is definitely harder for large guilds to accomplish than small guilds, but it's not the reality for most small guilds either.

[Cernunan]

What I am seeing at this point is that people are all envisioning what they believe a guild should entail.

The major disconnect is the point Sirgog made. Until we absolutely understand exactly what Turbine is trying to define as what a guild is, it is going to be impossible to give objective discourse on what the system needs to be.

All the discussion is now is people with firm positions on one end or the other trying to make sure that their personal definition gets the attention which they want.

We REALLY do need for Turbine to finally stop dragging feet and tell us what it is that they think a guild system should entail. Then we can start a dialogue on how it can be achieved that is fair for everyone.

[Artos_Fabril]

I think the notion that all small guilds are using phantom accounts is absurd. Our small guild originally consisted of 5 real life friends and a few others. We do have one person with 2 accounts in our guild but everyone else has one account / person. Whenever someone asks me to invite another character I check whether our account # goes up. There are many people that have multiple ftp accounts because of the character limit and to make it easier to trade to bank characters. The person I know the most accounts is in a mid-size guild and not a small guld.
I don't think I ever indicated that I thought that all small guilds were logging in phantom account, or even necessarily that any were. You have either misunderstood my note that the system I proposed would discourage that, or latched onto it as a handy strawman. Why you would do so is beyond me, as it seems to me that the system I proposed would address your concerns with the decay system by removing the min guild size from the calculation all together and figuring activity based solely on people who are earning renown.

[DocBenway]

We REALLY do need for Turbine to finally stop dragging feet and tell us what it is that they think a guild system should entail. Then we can start a dialogue on how it can be achieved that is fair for everyone.

I want and have been asking for this but don't see us getting a full definition, at least not without it including things that marketing or management would get in trouble with public relations over. Just ask who would buy 100 packs of Astral Diamonds in the store for obscene TP plus a whole chicken to trade them for Lordsmarch Marks or Purified Eberron Shards?

That's the cynical problem with decay, the whole system is tied to the store and the best solution for players is never the best solution for accountants.

[Vanshilar]

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

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

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

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

Under the current (or old) system, the vast majority of guilds won't reach those levels. They simply die of old age before they get there because the pace is so slow. The vast majority of guilds are still plodding on, even after years in the game, at the lower levels where each additional level does bring good in-game benefits, such as +30 resist shrines and +2 stat shrines. But they're small.

However, the most prolific complainers about the renown system are people who have already reached those levels, because their guild size made the earlier levels a cakewalk. The pace of leveling up was short-circuited by simply having hundreds of players dump their renown into the same pot. That's why you see that this thread has been primarily about renown decay.

But this change only furthers the gap between the top 1-2% of guilds with the remaining playerbase -- those guilds that flew through the early levels can now continue flying through the later levels, while everybody else is still struggling to catch up. That's why Turbine's focus should have been on renown gain instead, because that's where the vast majority of guilds are still struggling. They should be looking at how to promote guilds of all sizes to be able to reach those levels that give meaningful in-game benefits, rather than catering to the small number of guilds that are already past those levels and are clammering for more.


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?

Uh huh. So pointing out with evidence that large guilds have already benefited the most from the previous system (and even more under the current system) is "guild wars". Pointing out (again, with evidence) that small guilds have it tougher is "guild wars". Pointing out that, contrary to Turbine's stated goal of not trying to force people into specific guild sizes, the number of characters or accounts in a guild is the strongest predictor of that guild's level is "guild wars". Being just about the only player bringing actual data to the table to support their position (how many people in this entire thread have ever put any actual evidence to back up what they say?) is called "guild wars".

The counter-question to this and related questions is "why shouldn't a guild reward system be based on active players and not active guilds?" Should my university's intramural basketball team be "worth" more (in terms of salary, reputation, etc.) than Michael Jordan simply because they collectively can put down more total free throws than him? Should a school's reputation or endowment or resources etc. be simply based on the number of students they have? (As a side note, then, the most well-known or recognized university in America should be City University of New York (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_colleges_and_universities_by _enrollment), and very, very few people would ever have heard of Caltech (http://admissions.caltech.edu/about/stats).) Why should simply having lots of people under the same banner be rewarded more than if those same people were under different banners? In fact, it's actually easier to argue that less people doing something -- slaying a dragon, making a number of free throws, etc. -- should be worth more.

Trying to make the distinction between active guilds and active players obscures that guilds are made up of players, that guild rewards are gained by players, and that guild rewards are ultimately used up (consumed) by those players.

This ignores an even more fundamental issue. Turbine is in the gaming business, and it is incumbent on their bottom line to create incentives (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanism_design) for players to play the game more. So the more active the players, the better. The guild system is no different. So the question then becomes "Why should each of 500 players who play 1 hour each week be given the same rewards as each of 50 players who play 10 hours each week, just for being under the same guild banner?"

So one of the reasons why my analysis is done assuming equal player activity (i.e. say each account making 500 renown per day) is to measure whether or not Turbine is fulfilling their goal that the system should not be encouraging a specific guild size. It is effectively asking "Should players be subdividing into size X or size Y guilds?" In other words, say Turbine has a playerbase of 10000 players. Under the guild system, should they subdivide into 10 guilds of 1000 players, 100 guilds of 100 players, or 1000 guilds of 10 players? According to Turbine, if the system does not encourage any particular guild size, it should make no difference -- that is, the players should receive the same rewards -- whether they've split up into 1000 guilds of 10 players each or 10 guilds of 1000 players each. But as I've repeatedly shown, not only does this system "in theory" favor guilds of large sizes because they level up far more quickly, but "in practice" (by analyzing all the guilds on MyDDO) large guilds are predominantly at the higher levels already, directly contradicting Turbine's stated goal for the system.

And it's not just Vargouille stating the goal as such in this thread. Fernando Paiz in his interview, in laying out the vision from Turbine for the guild renown system, explicitly said "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. (http://www.zam.com/story.html?story=22372&storypage=2)" He probably thought that 50 player guilds were considered large enough already, which makes sense considering they had said that 12 accounts was the average size of a guild (it's probably different now). He probably didn't consider guilds with over 600 accounts spamming the forums about how hard it is for them to level when the system is already extremely biased towards them.


Fair enough. and I agree they should raise the cap. I think there are lots of possibilities for marginal improvements for guild levels 101-200. My suggestion was simply to repeat all the 1-100 amenities except have buffs last for 2 hours. I think adding an extra 1% xp bonus every 20 levels is not game breaking. How about an extra 1% movement buff every 20 levels? With a little brainstorming, we could come up with a bunch of stuff.

You do realize that under the current system, a 3% XP shrine is at level 63, and a 5% XP shrine is at level 93, so it's not too far off from what you state, yet people complain that these "not game breaking" benefits are the reason why they are forced to kill their close, personal friends (http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=388555)? That is the level of discourse here on these forums for why renown decay should be removed and large guilds should be able to level unimpeded. I would suggest other minor improvements (such as, an additional minute on your guild buff for every level beyond 100) but when people already resort to such histrionics, I shudder at the consequences of adding any further improvements.


If we're talking "fair" the decay should be based on the percentage of *active* players...

Active would be determined by how much renown each player pulls in each day to determine if they are active that day or not.

This change would punish active players in large and small guilds equally (but not equally because smaller guilds would have a higher % of active players). Current system penalizes active players that choose to tolerate casual players in their guild.

How about a compromise? Decay being assessed by the level of guild takes casual players out of the equation as it should. Reduce that decay by 75% for small guilds and lock out guild size if it expands from small to any of the larger sizes.

It more or less already does that. The problem is that Turbine defined "active" as "if any characters from the account has logged into the guild within the past 30 days" which is entirely too long. However, to prevent certain exploits, the minimum time Turbine could (and probably should) redefine "active" is "within the past 7 days". Same goes for recent departures.


The origial system was complete nonsense.

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.

It means that each guild is given the same opportunity for advancement regardless of size, from a game mechanism (and game reward) perspective. At that point, what size guild people would join would boil down to which social aspects they prefer. The current system itself however highly encourages people to join large guilds, and even more under the recent change.


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.

The old system rewarded those who got more renown, i.e. more "active" (under the renown system). I don't see why it's unfair that those who spend more effort at something will be more rewarded by it. The old system's goal was to give most of the benefits for little effort, and then very few and small benefits for a great deal of effort beyond that. That's typical of many incentive systems.

The supposed "shunning of casual/social players" is basically for those guild leaders who saw the guild level as being more important than their guild culture and atmosphere, and who saw booting people for inactivity as a better mechanism for increasing guild level than encouraging players to be active by hosting guild runs and so forth. As I've already said, under the old system the key to leveling was to encourage activity among members, which is why Over Raided was able to hit level 100 even with a good number of casuals renown-wise. Booting casual players is a losing strategy because it encourage guild strife and finger-pointing, and the net benefit (in terms of increased levels) is very small compared with the potential increase from encouraging activity. Yet Turbine chose to acquiesce to guild leaders who have this type of mentality toward their guild and casual/social players, which is a pretty bad decision in my opinion.


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.

No, I knew as soon as the thread was made that it would be abused for this very purpose. For example, I have a mild dislike of the system; it encourages reliance on ship buffs rather than good play (i.e. people end up waiting too long for stragglers to get ship buffs), how long before an account is considered inactive is too long (I would say a week is a good amount of time), it focuses too much on chests as a metric for activity, and for the majority of players, the system encourages them to join a large guild as faceless character #573 rather than promote being a team player. But if I had posted in that thread I'd have been put down as a "dislike", only for my tally to be used for people to try to say "oh look at how much people don't like renown decay" which is an entirely different animal.

It also doesn't account for that for the past nearly half year or so, anybody who doesn't agree with a certain few posters about the renown system will immediately get spam jumped on by them until they give up and stop posting, which you can see in that thread and other related previous threads. That's argument by volume, rather than by reason, which Turbine should not encourage but by their recent changes, have completely validated this forum tactic as a means to get changes made to the game.


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.

That's a valid point, but then the fact is that many people will then use their in-game guild level as a measure of their meta-game renown. You can even see this in all the posts about how members leave for higher-level guilds -- in other words, the guild leader wants the higher guild level and the meta-game renown associated with it, not simply for the in-game benefits. In fact, if they were really looking purely for just the in-game benefits, then all the decay complaints would quickly dry up as having no basis, since there are very few of them beyond a certain level.


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.

So in your mind it should cost the same to pay 1000 employees as it does to pay 10 employees? As already pointed out elsewhere, the renown system actually penalizes small guilds more than large guilds (because of the additional 10 accounts that get added) so they had a higher rate (cost per player), and that was even before the recent changes. It's just that large guilds had a higher total amount because they had more players, just like how a company with 1000 employees will naturally have a higher total salary cost than a company of 10 employees.


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.

So it's unacceptable for large guilds to encourage their members to play more to level up, but it's perfectly acceptable for small guilds to have to either mass induct and destroy their guild identity to level (or be among the top 1% of small guilds in terms of renown activity), or not get to those levels that large guilds take for granted within any acceptable time (i.e. not decades)? Turbine, is this the type of argument that you find reasonable and persuasive?


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.

No, that actually is an example of confusion of the inverse (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confusion_of_the_inverse). If you look at the number of different-size guilds near max level, there's more small guilds, but that's because there's more small guilds at all levels. However, if you take any random large guild, you will extremely likely find that they are at a high level already (last I checked, which admittedly was in October, it was at 44/52 = 85% of large (501 or more characters) guilds were level 61 or higher). If you take any random small guild, it is extremely unlikely that they are at high level (671/17155 = 4% of small (150 or less characters) guilds were level 61 or higher). It's just that large guilds like to focus on the extreme minority of small guilds that are able to make up for their huge disadvantage in manpower by being very active in playing the game, to make the claim that the system benefits small guilds.

So there is very much a correlation between the number of characters in the guild and its guild level. If you're in a large guild, there's a very good chance that your guild is at a fairly mid-high level already. If you're in a small guild, there's a pretty good chance that you're nowhere near those levels yet.


We have no goal or agenda to promote specific guild sizes.

So from Turbine's perspective, how well has the system achieved its goal? Is the system actually agnostic (from a game mechanics perspective) to guild size and give equal benefits for equal effort to guilds of all sizes?


This happened quite a bit to my guild when we stopped gaining levels. About half of those who left due to decay went to smaller guilds and half went to other large guilds. In all cases they went to guilds that were already higher level and had made it clear they would not take any casual players or new players. Those who left would tell me that they loved the guild and would like to stay but they just could not stand the decay. Some had been with the guild for years. We dropped down 3 levels and stagnated again at the lower level (60). A few of those who left eventually came back to us after finding they did not like the higher level guild. We still have a great guild, we are just lower level and more casual than I wanted us to be.

I find it humorous that even in these examples it supports my position. Under the old system, since you're in a large guild, if the other guild was at a higher level that means they were more active, whether large or small (this is not true for if you were in a small guild). In other words, they left because they wanted a higher-activity guild. I don't see why booting casuals is a good response compared with encouraging guild members to be more active.

But this illuminates a deeper point. These large guilds complained that the renown system was unfair because other guilds were able to level past their equilibrium level by being more active (i.e. higher level), in other words, complain that they lost players to other guilds who were higher level. But now they are telling everybody that the change where they'll be able to outlevel everybody else does not hurt any other guilds at all in any way, shape, or form, and that you should be happy that at least one tiny subset of guilds will be able to advance much more quickly than anybody else again, going so far as to directly confront anybody who disagrees with "why do you care if other guilds get to level faster? You can just recruit a bunch of people and level as fast as them too!"

So I have an easy and simple counterproposal: Any guilds with 49 or less accounts should get a guild renown bonus, effectively immediately, of 100x. If these guilds are true to their word, that we shouldn't care about how quickly guilds of other sizes level, they should be absolutely ecstatic that other guilds are finally able to match the rates of renown gain that they get to take for granted. Any questions about "but that's unfair" can be met with "well you can always just get rid of a bunch of people if you want to level this fast", more or less the same thing that they've been saying to other guilds (just in reverse). Why 49 accounts or less? It's because that's how high the size bonus goes up to (i.e. the bonus is for level 1 to 49 accounts currently), and as a bonus, my understanding (though I may be wrong on this) is that the size bonus can be adjusted on the fly just like renown decay. (I remember once when it was adjusted without any downtime when it was first implemented, but the system may have changed since then.)

I am being somewhat facetious about this, of course, but it illustrates the contortions that people go through in their arguments to simply try to benefit whatever their personal status is rather than what is good for the game.


Large guilds that do keep recruiting have a different problem. They are more likely to split because of the diverse interests of all of their members. But splits do not threaten the survival of the guild as long as the splits are handled without massive drama. As long as they keep recruiting they can easily replace those who split off. Often, those who split off will even come back if their new guild does not go so well. At least that is how it works for my very large and very open guild. We have been going for 3 years now, open recruiting all the way. Not even a hint of a collapse.

We may be a product of the old decay system though. Practically no established guild on my server, other than mine, will accept a casual/social player so those that don't leave DDO entirely often find a home in my guild.

I keep seeing these claims made. Once again I have to decide whether or let falsehoods go by unremarked due to space and time, or to take the time gathering the evidence to point them out.

Orien has just passed its three-year anniversary on November 4th (http://www.ddo.com/news/729-new-server-opening-wednesday). Guilds that were claiming to have been around for 3 years on Orien would belong to that august group of guilds that were around before their server opened.

But even beyond that, from archival guild renown data, the renown and size of your guild was:

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

Unless you're claiming your guild "laid low" when the server opened and after the renown system was released, but then suddenly decided to open its doors sometime in early 2011, it's highly unlikely that your guild has been around for 2 years, let alone 3.

I kind of take a personal affront to this because back then I was in one of the "big tent" guilds when the server opened up (Epic Fail, which is still around), and now we have other revisionist guilds trying to claim they've been around all this time or in any way influenced the early development of the server, to try to inflate their standing on the forums.

This isn't the first time that I've had to point out that people can't even get the basic facts about their own guild straight, yet go out and make those claims repeatedly in different threads. And of course, many guilds on the server are happy to take in casuals.

It also shows how large guilds can take the progress through lower levels for granted. When you go from 500 to 1000 characters and level 30 to level 40 in less than a month, it's easy to forget about just how hard it is for everybody else to level. Most small guilds will need more than a year just to reach level 40. Saying "oh but it's okay because you'll eventually reach level 60 too" after a decade of continuous effort is little comfort to the vast majority of guilds.


Part of this is because so much new content has been introduced that gives little or no renown rewards. DDO events like Mabar and CC give virtually no renown. Challenges give almost no renown. Epic Eberron quests don't give renown end-rewards. Renown is optimal when you run +2 level quests. But they have raised the level cap to 25. How many level 25, 26, and 27 quests have been added?

I agree with this but the proper course of action is to add renown to those events. As I keep mentioning, what Turbine needs to look at is their system for renown gain. Capped characters back then (level 20) could still get renown from running Shroud. Capped characters now (level 25) won't get much if any renown from Shroud, nor anybody else in their group (unless this has changed recently). Since guild renown is an incentive system like many other systems in the game, unless Turbine wants to encourage high level characters to run other content instead, it makes more sense for them to look at adding renown to the things that they want players to do.


I agree with most of what you said. But I am uncertain as to how many very small guilds are under level 60 and why. How many of them are that size because they just started up and would like to grow in membership but have not had time to yet? How many tried to expand their membership and could not find players? How many even have any active players at all? How many are pure solo players? How many are that size specifically because that is the optimal size for reaching level 100 under the old decay system? I just don't know. I just don't know how many players are in the catagory of very small guilds under level 60 because they really want to be in a very small guild. It could be a "multitude", as you say, but it could be that there really are not that many. I just don't know.

Even if it is a small number though, I do feel that they should be able to advance and level up and should not be held down in levels forever by renown decay, as larger guilds were under the old decay system.

Small guilds are basically held down by the renown gain system. Only a small minority of small guilds will ever get the 6,250,000 renown it takes to get to level 50. Large guilds can blithely blow through level 50 since for a 600-account guild, it only represents a bit more than 10.4 legendary victories for each player in the guild on average while it would mean about 31 legendary victories for each player in a 200-account guild. In the meantime, level 50 means 156 legendary victories per player for a 16-account guild, and 260 legendary victories per player for a 6-account guild. And this factors in the small size guild bonus. That Turbine decided on using the sum total of renown gained by players in a guild to determine guild level inherently encourages large guilds -- and it's almost an order of magnitude difference, even with the current small guild size bonus. As pointed out previously, the small guild bonus does little to offset this. A 6-account guild will gain renown equivalent to a 24-account guild due to the bonus, and a 16-account guild will gain renown equivalent to a 40-account guild due to the bonus, but a 200-account guild will gain renown equivalent to a 200-account guild, and a 600-account guild will gain renown equivalent to a 600-account guild. There is little comparison between the leveling speed of 24-account equivalent versus 600-account equivalent guilds.

Yet all guilds must pass through this renown gain wall before they get to the renown decay wall -- renown decay doesn't impact guilds significantly until the mid-high levels. Large guilds will not really "feel" the impact of this renown gain wall. But it's what keeps the vast majority of small guilds from ever seeing the levels that large guilds take for granted. They never even see the impact from decay because they'll have given up long before it's a significant factor in their progress.

It's somewhat difficult, but doable, to take a look at guilds of all sizes from two years ago when the renown system was released, and compare them at the present day. Difficult, though, because it takes a lot of computation time to compare and match those data sets (there are over 100k guilds currently). The last time I did this was in July 2012. What I did was to use datasets that were from August 6 and August 27, 2010, and filter out the inactive guilds (i.e. any guilds whose renown didn't change within that time). So basically this set of guilds was active back in August 2010. I then looked at them again in July 2012, again doing the same thing with the July datasets (using June 30 and July 31, 2012). In other words, guilds which were active soon after the renown system was released, and were also active almost two years later in July 2012.

The results weren't pretty. Of the 45 guilds that had 501 or more characters, 22 (49%) were level 72 or above, so that's roughly the midpoint of large guilds after about 2 years. By contrast, 2193 out of the 4372 guilds (50.2%) that had 150 or less characters were still level 29 or below. In other words, just slightly over half of the small guilds had not yet even hit level 30, and this was after two years. By contrast, the lowest level large guild was level 49. Although I'm being slightly sloppy in stating things, in effect if any guild had just inducted 501 or more characters, they were "guaranteed" to be at level 49 or higher after two years. Whereas only 785 out of those 4372 (18%) small guilds were level 49 or higher.

Any way you look at the data, the conclusion is inescapable: the renown system has largely rewarded large guilds, where by simply getting as many people under your roof as possible pretty much "guaranteed" that you'll get to the mid-high levels. Only the most active of small guilds have any chance of getting to the levels that large guilds take for granted. This is also backed up by modeling and simulations as I've already given elsewhere.


We're all for new ideas and brainstorming solutions (truly, really, not just tossing buzzwords). This particular idea is problematic, because it promotes kicking players from your guild to reduce decay, which is where we were before and a situation we want to avoid.

We are certainly still considering other changes and have never said that the current changes being tested were considered any kind of final solution. We'd love to have more ideas to consider.

Ideas that are more likely to work out are ones that feel fair, promote playing together with people you like and have fun with, and where the system itself isn't promoting who you play with. We don't want to promote any particular guild size. And we don't want incentives for kicking players you enjoy playing with, or for players who might like to come and hang out or play occasionally to feel like they are hurting their guild or harming their friends in any way. If these goals seem wrong, we're willing to hear ideas on that too. This isn't an exhaustive list, but current thinking is leaning us strongly towards including these goals.

I think before you get to ideas you should first discuss or figure out how guilds are supposed to encourage people to play the game, and the ideas should be discussed around that.

I'm sure there will be people who will chime in to say that large guilds are what drives players to DDO so I'll take the opposite tack -- that it's small guilds (beyond a very tiny size) that collectively encourage players who log in to log in again. We already have a system that is dedicated to anonymous players all playing together. That's a server. The guild system should complement that by being a system where players are directly encouraging each other on an individual basis to continue playing the game.

People keep talking about how it's the fellow players that they form friendships with that keep them logging into the game, long after the game loses its freshness. As a social system, I would argue that it's small guilds that encourages the forming of such bonds more than large guilds, although I know that bonds can form in any size guild. The reason is simple: In a small guild, with a limited number of players, the leader and anyone else in the guild gets to know you as an individual person. In a large guild, unless you are part of the the inner "core" or inner "clique" of the guild, it is less likely that random members of the guild will take the initiative to get you involved in the game individually, other than to say the obligatory "welcome" when you are inducted. So it is up to the player to seek out his own friendships and make his own bonds in a large guild. Not so with a small guild.

In a small guild, when I log on half the guild will say "hi" to me and ask what's up. In a large guild I can log on or off or sit around all day and nobody will notice me or bother to engage me in anything.

Of course, the usual suspects will say "but that's not fair, there's too many players in my guild to keep track of them all individually" but that's exactly my point. A lot of the renown discussion has revolved around the guild system and how it benefits guilds from the vantage point of guild leadership, which is why a lot of the complaints are about how guild leaders have to decide whether or not to boot casuals or whatnot. Very little has been about the average player who is just getting into the game, and what keeps him interested in the game, and I think you can probably see the different guild leaders' attitudes toward them. It is hard to convince me that someone who simply sorts the members by last logged in status and then boots characters who have not logged in for X days while blaming "the system" for "forcing" them to do that would have much empathy towards the average player in the guild that isn't in the inner clique. Whereas a guild leader in a guild with a limited number of players has more of a vested interest into looking at the welfare of individual players.

For me personally, I can list the individual players that introduced me to the game, got me "hooked", and got me to continue playing to interact with the next generation of players. They were looking at me as an individual person and knew my individual strengths and weaknesses, and looked at how to tailor my personal gaming experience around my interests.

I know that sounds very abstract, so let me make it a bit more concrete: the guild Over Raided has a pretty eclectic mix of players. Some are more into just simply playing the game (I guess the "stereotypical" gamer), some are more social, some are more explorer-type, and so forth. I fall into the latter category -- in any game I play, I invariably go into the game mechanics and look at how things really work. So the challenges that the guild leadership gives me to engage my interest in the game are more about figuring out stuff: figuring out how the renown system works (and in return the guild can devise better leveling strategies), figuring how the various components of DPS such as attack speed works (and in return the guild can build better characters), figuring out how the raids work (and in return the guild can have more efficient strategies for doing each raid) and so forth. I'm not simply "just another player" but a lot of the discussions with me revolve around my particular interests, and the guild will also entertain my needs as well, such as being the only person to attack Horoth for the first minute or so of the fight to measure his HP. Consider how many guilds in the game would be willing to all just stand around in something like elite ToD, buffs ticking, damages being taken (and heals tossed out), just because some random player says he wants to "collect data" -- and if anybody else attacks then the whole dataset is invalid. Believe me, I've tried it in PUGs. It rarely works out.

Would I have been similarly interested in doing "out there" things like accurately measuring a monster's HP through video recording the fight (http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p=2970590&postcount=3) if I weren't in such a guild? Probably, but it's highly unlikely that I would have been able to carry it out on my own. All of that would have just been untested hypotheses had there not been a guild to support it and get me to where I need to be -- and of course, the hypotheses to doing that itself would unlikely have been made in the first place had there not been a guild that taught me individually how the game works.

I'm not a particularly active player -- if I remember right, I haven't even broken 1000 total raids in the over 3 years that I've been playing this game; I've only ever done 1 TR in all my time of playing, and that was just because I didn't want to re-acquire the gear on the character. This is far from the stereotypical profile that you hear from the forums about level 100 guilds -- all this talk about how supposedly it's only for those with no lives and 15 TRs or whatever. Yet the guild knows how to engage me because they have an individual interest in me as a player and have taken the time to talk to me individually.

I doubt this happens to this extent in guilds beyond a certain size. Obviously in a guild that is too small, the members might not even log on at the same time, making it hard to engage fellow players. But once a guild gets too large, the "in" crowd within the guild simply starts seeing the "out" crowd as random players to pick-up for raids or something rather than as individual players. Sure, they might feel as if they're engaging everybody because they'll ask in guild chat "hey does anyone want to do this quest?" and people in the guild will join, but that is distinctly different from looking at a given player and asking "hmm how can I engage this player" and keep him interested in continuing to log in.

Instead, the average player will have to find his own group of friends, whether inside the guild or outside the guild. So there will be a significant number of members who are effectively "lone wolves" within the guild, not really interacting with the guild much except for the ship buffs, but otherwise effectively unguilded (joining their own PUGs, etc.). Maybe posting the occasional renown token or two in the guild chat so that the leader doesn't boot them, but that's about it. There is very little leadership support for such players to encourage them to continue playing.

Yet the renown system in its current form has strongly encouraged such guilds. The high amounts of renown required to reach the mid-levels in the first place has ensured that guilds must be very active or very large to get most of the benefits of the system. This means that casuals are effectively driven to large guilds where by their own admission, the leaders just see them as characters to boot once they get low enough on the roster when sorted by "last logged in". The alternative is to be shut out from those guild benefits if they elect to join a small guild (since small casual guilds won't get to those levels in any reasonable length of time). So the system not only encourages one type of guild, it also encourages casuals to join the type of guild where the leaders openly state that they are not interested in providing support for them.

So what can the guild system do to give more support to such players? Presumably Turbine wants a system that encourages casual players to become frequent players, frequent players to become even more frequent players, etc. Admittedly it's somewhat difficult to say; as I continue to mention, the key to success (before the change to renown decay) was always to encourage guild members to be more active. Buying into the argument that the original system makes people boot casual players just displays how misplaced the guild leaders' priorities are. Over Raided and my membership in it is living proof of my stance, that a guild can have a sizable number of casual (renown-wise) players and still be level 100, yet as you can see in this very thread, people use my membership in Over Raided to conduct ad hominem attacks without bothering to discuss the validity of my points. With the changes, the key to success now is simply to get as many people into the guild as possible.

The original system at least encouraged players to be more active if they wanted to move from the mid-levels to the high-levels (for the marginal benefits), although mass recruiting was still the best strategy to go from the low-levels to the mid-levels. Decay, by being on a per-account basis (although small guilds were penalized more by decay), was the mechanism for that. I'm not sure if there's a better mechanism out there. A never-ending system, perhaps, where guild levels are basically infinite? Then you would still have the renown gain issue -- that the gain system encourages large guilds at the expense of everybody else.

I think this is the fundamental issue to be resolved, although I don't know if there's a good solution to it. The renown gain system, by making the guild level dependent on the sum total of renown gained by each member of the guild, effectively incentivizes guilds to simply induct as many people as possible without regard to engaging them in the game. After all, any random additional player can only contribute (not take away) renown from the guild, so you might as well as take him in, without regard to how much he may contribute, i.e. encouraging members to be active. The only limit to this is that guilds have a 1000-member cap, so that eventually they'd have to choose among the best 1000 characters they can find, but as you can already see in this thread, people are already clamoring for that to be removed. What's left unstated in this is that although the random player will benefit the guild, there's little to be said for whether or not the guild will benefit the random player, beyond providing ship buffs. There's little incentive for the guild to interact with the player, since it's much easier to just induct a new person than to spend time encouraging existing players to play more (get them more interested in the game).

The flip side is the case where an additional player may be a contributor, but he also has the potential to be a net taker (i.e. causes the guild to have less renown than if they didn't take the player in). In that case, then there may be an incentive for the guild leader to boot the player from the guild if the leader feels like the guild may get more renown if he did. This occurred not only with renown decay, but also with the small guild size bonus -- an additional member can decrease a small guild's overall renown by decreasing the bonus that everybody else gets. I mysteriously don't see as many complaints about this as I see about renown decay, despite the fact that it affects a great deal more guilds (there are far more guilds with less than 50 accounts and impacted by the small guild bonus than there are above level 25 and impacted by renown decay). I wonder why.

Fundamentally though, this represents your two options. If an additional player will always be a contributor, then the system converges on simply getting as many people as possible into the guild -- there's no drawback to that. If an additional player can potentially be a taker, then at some point there will be an incentive for him to be removed. The goals are in opposition to each other.

The only alternative that I can see is to be able to mark some players as not contributing nor detracting from the guild in terms of renown -- in other words, their account doesn't count in terms of renown points, so they are neither a net contributor nor a net taker. This may have some promise in allowing guilds to have casual players without having to boot them (although undoubtedly they'll get booted anyway if the guild leader finds other players that will contribute positively to renown), but the devil's in the details on it.


The big question remains - what is guild level meant to measure?

Persistance? Activity? Prestigious in-game achievements?

Answer that question and we can make suggestions as to how to get those goals met. The old system was a measure of activity per member.

I don't have much to add here, but I do think that yes, this is a fundamental question that Turbine should consider. The original system measured guild activity, guild size, and guild longevity -- if you were high level, you were either a large guild (of any level of activity) or a very active small guild, and you had been around a while to accumulate those renown (although large guilds could shoot up within months). The current system after the decay change basically measures size and longevity. I think ideally it should measure activity, but it depends on what Turbine decides. Player skill (i.e. achievements) could certainly factor into it, but with the level of forum discussion about guild renown, any suggestion along the lines of giving more rewards to doing harder things (soloing raids etc.) would probably be met with the usual sort of demagoguery.


The best idea I have seen regarding decay is to base daily decay on the number of accounts that have actually logged on that day. Even better, to base it on the number of characters in the guild that actually logged in that day. Thus characters in another guild don't matter (so no encouragement/discouragement to have all characters in one guild), players that could not log on that particular day do not matter, etc.

As far as small and very small guilds go, I think the small guild/very small guild bonuses should be tweaked upward, with the cap on how many levels can be gained per day. As it stands it just takes WAY to long to level a small/very small guild.

It already does this. It's just that rather than the current day, it's based on the past 30 days. Characters in other guilds already don't affect your activeness status in a guild. You can be active in other guilds and still be considered inactive in a guild, if you haven't logged on with any characters in that guild recently.


I wish the devs would consider a 'minimum guild size' - below that level, you get no decay, and no renown bonus for size of guild... I'd choose a level of around 10 characters - because to me, that's not a guild, that's a pug... with a couple of backups.

My reasoning? Guilds of one shouldn't exist without massive amounts of work. Massive amounts of work. Events like build-your-guild are exploited to end up with level 100 guilds (with 1 person), how is that fair to the rest of us working hard?

And this brings up a good example. The poor guy leveled up 150 characters from level 1 to level 8 during the Build your Guild event (http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=373276) to get his guild up to level 100. We have guilds with over 600 accounts who spammed complaints about renown decay leading to the change, including in this very thread. If each of the players in their guild had leveled up a single character from level 1 to level 8 just like this guy did, they would've been at level 100 too. Yet these guilds and many others claim that they are "incredibly active" and work "very hard" as much as small guilds near their level. Whenever you try to quantify what is meant by those terms, it just about always ends up being no contest: to get to those levels, each member in those small guilds has had to work much harder than each member in those large guilds at a similar guild level. And that ultimately is why those small guilds at the higher levels continue leveling when the large guilds stall. Because those players are putting in more effort.


How are you being forced to play any way? Given incentives to, sure. But guild leveling has always been and, until guilds start earning renown simply by existing, will always be that way.

The whole guild leveling system is such a small part of what guilds are, I can't see how anyone can feel forced to play in any way by it. On the other hand, it does give incentives to those willing to bring all the things a guild provides to those who don't have them.

Would you care to explain that to the people who were claiming ad nauseum that the original system was forcing, just absolutely forcing them to kill their dear, close, personal friends (http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=388555)? Because that's what was being bandied about on the forums as being a justifiable reason to remove renown decay prior to this change. Certainly you'd take the same stance with those people, right?


According to DDOwiki:

Very Small
Guild Renown Bonus Small

Modified Guild Size Multiplier
1 150%
2 180%
3 210%
4 240%
5 270%
6 300%
7 285%
8 270%
9 255%
10 240%


So unless your definition of penalty includes a very large Renown Bonus Multiplier.... I don't see it.

Easy enough. Legendaries per player to reach guild level 50 by size (assuming guild size):



1 2500
2 1116
3 672.0
4 459.6
5 337.8
6 260.4
7 231.9
8 211.1
9 195.6
10 183.8
11 174.8
12 168.0
13 163.0
14 159.4
15 157.2
16 156.2
17 155.1
18 154.0
19 152.9
20 151.8
50 125
100 62.5
200 31.2
600 10.4


Renown decay for each player at level 50 under the current system:



1 750
2 334.8
3 201.6
4 137.9
5 101.4
6 78.1
7 69.6
8 63.3
9 58.7
10 55.1
11 52.4
12 50.4
13 48.9
14 47.8
15 47.2
16 46.9
17 46.5
18 46.2
19 45.9
20 45.5
50 37.5
100 18.8
200 9.4
600 3.1


Regardless of looking at renown gain (getting to a certain level) or renown decay (being able to maintain a certain level), both parts of the renown system are monotonically more expensive for a smaller guild and less expensive for a larger guild. In other words, this system encourages any size group of players to divide into the largest guild size possible, to 1) level the fastest and 2) maintain any level with the least effort. In other words, this current system encourages players to form large guilds instead of small guilds. Currently, the only incentive to form small guilds are social -- everything about the game mechanics encourages large guilds.


What I am seeing at this point is that people are all envisioning what they believe a guild should entail.

The major disconnect is the point Sirgog made. Until we absolutely understand exactly what Turbine is trying to define as what a guild is, it is going to be impossible to give objective discourse on what the system needs to be.

All the discussion is now is people with firm positions on one end or the other trying to make sure that their personal definition gets the attention which they want.

We REALLY do need for Turbine to finally stop dragging feet and tell us what it is that they think a guild system should entail. Then we can start a dialogue on how it can be achieved that is fair for everyone.

Yes. However, this dialogue (or some of it) already occurred over two years ago, when the system was first introduced. I even said that what type of guild Turbine should reward should be discussed (http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p=3143155&postcount=238). I talked about the reason for renown decay (http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p=3144614&postcount=271). I even gave predictions on the system at that time, and you can read them and consider how well my predictions based on my understanding of the system at the time have come to pass -- even though the details weren't fully known yet at the time (I didn't figure out the renown decay formula until several weeks later here (http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p=3175327&postcount=3)). I even had to dispel misunderstandings and rumors about the system such as here (http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p=3171243&postcount=447) and here (http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p=3180196&postcount=80), including someone claiming hey you better avoid high-renown small guilds, they're gold spammers so you'll be banned if you play with them (so high-renown large guilds must be hunky-dory, right?) to try to suppress what they considered to be competition, but apparently anybody having misgivings about the recent changes are called "fear-mongers".

I understand that players will make stupid arguments for any position. The forums are a marketplace for ideas, to see what sticks. I am disappointed however that Turbine chose to make such a knee-jerk reaction to ideas which have repeatedly been discredited and shown to be false, when the facts and analyses of the system continually point in the opposite direction. I could have played the same game and written a bunch of sob stories about how I couldn't find any friends in large guilds even though I'd really like some people to play with but the system was just forcing me to join large guilds to get the ship buffs even though small guilds are where the friendships happen and how small guilds are continually losing players to large guilds because of the easy buffs blah blah blah, but I would have expected Turbine to see through that and ignore such caterwauling. I would have expected Turbine to prefer forum posters who are able to make well-reasoned justification for their arguments, who can provide data to back up their claims and evidence to support their position.

Turbine is quickly disabusing me of this notion.

[Dandonk]

I wish I was Vanshilar. But I fall so far short I'm only Va.

/sigh

Poor me.

But well written, documented, backed up by facts and thought-through. Thank you for contributing meaningfully and intelligently to this discussion.

[Tshober]

Unless you're claiming your guild "laid low" when the server opened and after the renown system was released, but then suddenly decided to open its doors sometime in early 2011, it's highly unlikely that your guild has been around for 2 years, let alone 3.

I kind of take a personal affront to this because back then I was in one of the "big tent" guilds when the server opened up (Epic Fail, which is still around), and now we have other revisionist guilds trying to claim they've been around all this time or in any way influenced the early development of the server, to try to inflate their standing on the forums.


I am pleased that you took such a keen interest in the history of my guild. Let me fill in some of the gaps for you.

I joined Orien in December 2009. I started our guild in either late Jan or early Feb, 2010, I can't remember the exact date. Initially it was not an open guild, it was a 2-man guild run by myself and my nephew. But within about 2 or 3 months we opened up the guild for all players to join. However, we had a very hard time getting members to join because there were so many other guilds that were mass-inviting and were already higher level than us. So our membership remained fairly low for a good while. After many of the other guilds eventualy got all the players they wanted, and in some cases started mass booting casual/social players, we started to grow rapidly. Today we are the most active guild on the server, when measured by number of players logged in playing 24/7, and we have been for a long time.

Why did you cut off your graph a year ago? It is Nov 2012 now, but you stopped your graph in Nov 2011. I could see why you might cut the early history our guild, if the data that far back were unavailable. But surely the more recent data was available so why cut it off a year ago? Could it be that the data for 2012 does not fit well with your assertion that even the most casual large guild can get to the 70's in level? Or that it supports my assertions about what happens when a guild hits the wall and opts not to kick casual/social players? Nah, couldn't be.

In any case, our guild has been active for roughly 2.8 years and we have been the most active guild on Orien for a good while, when measured by the number of players logged in and playing. We have had the same leadership during that whole time. As far as I can see, we are just about the only established guild (those that have been around for more than a year and have had stable leadership) that will accept casual/social players or new players on our server.

[katz]

if i may ask... i missed it because i havn't read the whole thread, but which guild are we discussing?

[jhadden30]

Well played Vanshilar. I'm in a small guild on Orien (10 accounts) of which most of us are pretty active. Now, we are advancing renown wise however its at a terribly slow pace. Meanwhile, I have watched a large guild, also on Orien, gain five levels in thirteen days. Prior to this (temporary?) renown change, the same said guild was hovering back and forth between two levels for most of this year. If this system was fair to all guild sizes and does not promote large guilds than shouldn't my guild be advancing at the same rate?

Egit, Barnabys and Maschine
Members of Mistshadow Mercenaries

[Tshober]

Fundamentally though, this represents your two options. If an additional player will always be a contributor, then the system converges on simply getting as many people as possible into the guild -- there's no drawback to that. If an additional player can potentially be a taker, then at some point there will be an incentive for him to be removed. The goals are in opposition to each other.


Wow, out of that whole long mess, a paragraph I actually agree with in its entirety.

That is the fundamental issue. Do we want a guild leveling system that divides the DDO playerbase into two classes of players, those that add to renown and those that subtract from renown, those that are desirable and those that are undesirable? For my money, such a system is detremental to the game's overall social structure and offers really nothing to offset that damage. The best way to get more people to play the game is to make all of them feel welcome and give them the freedom to play the game they way they want to play it. If you try to force them to play the game in a way that they do not wish to play it, that only encourages them to leave the game for another gaming environment that is more tolerant of their preferred playstyle.

On the other hand, if you make everyone have a positive contribution, then almost all of that prejudice and contention disappear. People are free to make their guild membership decisions based on who they want to hang out with, rather than having to consider the effects on their guild's level. This is in no way charity. The more active players will still earn more renown and in roughly the same proportion as their activity level versus the less active players. The less active players are not being given anything they did not earn, they (and everyone else) are only being allowed to keep what they have earned.

Some will argue that if you don't have guild competition, then the game is less fun for many players. That may be true and I would not be opposed having guild competitions in DDO to fill that need. But such competitions should be seprate from leveling up and should have "bragging rights" only type rewards, and participation should be completely voluntary, much like PvP.

[Viisari]

We REALLY do need for Turbine to finally stop dragging feet and tell us what it is that they think a guild system should entail. Then we can start a dialogue on how it can be achieved that is fair for everyone.

Turbine seems to have little interest in doing so.

Defining what renown is about and what it represents is the first thing they should've figured out and messaged to us before messing with anything.

[Cyr]

While I agree with much of what Vanshilar posted I disagree with one of his basic premises, that discussions about booting members were not also shared by some mid sized and small guilds.

I agree that the guild renown bonus played as large (or larger) a factor in these decisions then guild decay for the smaller guild sizes.

I appreciate Vanshilar's personal guild story.

Let me state my own guild's story. Roving Guns is a small to mid sized guild (depending upon the current level of activity). We have casual to power gaming members and ones who change this activity level based upon interest in the game or life events. We hit a platuea in guild renown basically treading water at one point before being able to get the top tier airship. We used Van's formulas to understand the ins and outs of guild renown, but really it told most of us what we already knew just in more detail for the fringe cases... Players logging in once a week to run a single quest and say hi were extremely detrimental to our guild renown. That was a frustrating thing for our guild, because our guild very much is a guild where players can and do go from just stopping in to say hi to full scale power gaming activity based upon work/personal life stuff/interest in the game. Those members are good friends and most of us have been there more then once ourselves.

So our guild asked for people to volunteer to drop guild tag and join a sub-guild made so everyone was still around (we use TS so everyone would still be in TS of course) in a place we could find each easily ingame until we got the highest tier ship. We lost some of those members as they felt farther away from the guild (and not to other guilds, but from the game entirely) . I myself did the math and showed people how to do it if they were interested. I was a fringe case easily beating out decay on average (play time was down due to non-interest in the game), but with guild size bonus considered it made sense. A month or two later I rejoined the guild after we got the new airship.

So in our mid/small sized guild's case the math did encourage us to drop players to reach our goals. It certainly was not a pleasant thing for our guild to do. It was inconvient and lost us some players from the game. That is a bad result for Turbine.

If guild renown decay was not ingame our guild would have never bothered to drop people because we would have been perfectly happy to plod along at the high levels to reach our goal, but falling backwards or making no progress was frustrating and annoying. Sure I left guild because of the renown size bonus, but that and others like me did so to hasten the return of our other members who were at that point earning enough renown to beat out decay.

The other alternative (which we tried first) was to encourage non-active players to not log into the game once a week and just stop into TS to say hi and chat with us until they were ready to come back and play. That was also a bad result for Turbine, because players who do not play at all for an extended period are also less likely to come back to the game.

So while large guilds most loudly beat the drum on guild decay they were not alone by any means in this complaint.

I also agree with Van's primary (in my view) suggestion to improve the system which focuses upon putting the emphasis on guild renown earned (away from decay based to even out guild sizes). That type of a system without decay, but with bonuses/penalties to earned renown which scales for all sizes of guilds (and not just upto midsized) would make for a much better system. I care little if every guild can reach and gets to keep level 100 just like I care little if every player can reach and keep level 25. It is the feeling of losing something that I dislike.

[Cyr]

Turbine seems to have little interest in doing so.

Defining what renown is about and what it represents is the first thing they should've figured out and messaged to us before messing with anything.

I agree. Turbine has been unclear about their goals with the guild renown system.

I think that has been a problem when it comes to most new systems and system changes in that game though and a primary issue with game development for a very long time. Essentially it is unclear that Turbine even has clear and well defined goals for most changes they make.

[Gunga]

tl;dr

I'm interested in smaller-medium guilds who can obtain level 100. Still possible? Maybe with a couple more build your guild events?

[Laurinia]

okay so maybe im a noob but im the leader of Hand of Retribution on Khyber server...right now there are 10 active accts with 2 recent departures....ive been noticing we've been losing a few thousand renown per day....i had never noticed any decay really before this lil change....we're level 51 and i ask that people don't go inactive over a week........basically im just not exactly sure how this decay is working but im not really a fan especially when im grinding my ass off just to get a few thousand renown..........could someone pleaseeee enlighten me! ty ty

[Arnez]

tl;dr

What I got out of that post was something about basketball... If I knew *anything* enough to even care about basketball- I wouldn't be spending real $ into DDO.

Now- about the "small guilds getting to 100" bit. There's an assumption that we (Small Guilds) want big empty ships.
Not that it matters to other guilds what my 6 Very Active accounts are doing- but our main goal is to get to 55 so we can (get this Turbine) SPEND REAL MONEY on the Medium Airship. Then we don't have to consider getting those Legendary Victories over good loot.

The more important question is- WHY does it matter what one guild gets over another? If a small guild wants to work towards something- let them. If a Large Guild wants to maintain drama & cliques- by all means, let them.
Edit- just to clarify: I'm all for complete removal of the Decay system. So what if many guilds (S,M.L) hit 100? Why does that part matter?

[Gunga]

tl;dr

What I got out of that post was something about basketball... If I knew *anything* enough to even care about basketball- I wouldn't be spending real $ into DDO.

Now- about the "small guilds getting to 100" bit. There's an assumption that we (Small Guilds) want big empty ships.
Not that it matters to other guilds what my 6 Very Active accounts are doing- but our main goal is to get to 55 so we can (get this Turbine) SPEND REAL MONEY on the Medium Airship. Then we don't have to consider getting those Legendary Victories over good loot.

The more important question is- WHY does it matter what one guild gets over another? If a small guild wants to work towards something- let them. If a Large Guild wants to maintain drama & cliques- by all means, let them.

I think a guild of 10 or 15 great players who don't want 100 noobs running around should be able to get to and stay at 100. Even if the guild were 2 or 3 people. It should obviously take longer, but it would be cool if it were possible.

[Mistindantacles]

Seriously.

Running one of the largest guilds on Cannith, with some 800 characters spread over ~ 250 accounts we were certianly butting our heads up against a ceiling. Since the recent renown change we are steadily gaining GLs once again. Our members are encouraged to pick up renown again knowing that in doing so they are not just "maintaining the status quo" ... which is something I believe has been lost in this thread. (Maybe it was discussed at some point, but at 200+ posts, I honestly have not read every word.)

Doing something to just keep from falling behind and doing something to further oneself, or in this case - the group you belong to - plays a part in how much renown is picked up. I am sure Turbine could provide a statistical analysis of how much more renown rewards are chosen during renown boost weekends / events that otherwise, just because the renown is worth SO much more.

So I want to thank you, Turbine, and as its spokesman in this matter, Tolero, for listening to your players and tweaking the system.

Now, I did mention "tentaively" in my post title here ... and I mean "tenatively" since this large guild I belong to will removing 6 month+ inactives on the first day of next month. I anticipate absolutely no change to our GL based on what we've been told here. Rest assured though, if something drastically negative happens, I'll be posting here.

[Tshober]

okay so maybe im a noob but im the leader of Hand of Retribution on Khyber server...right now there are 10 active accts with 2 recent departures....ive been noticing we've been losing a few thousand renown per day....i had never noticed any decay really before this lil change....we're level 51 and i ask that people don't go inactive over a week........basically im just not exactly sure how this decay is working but im not really a fan especially when im grinding my ass off just to get a few thousand renown..........could someone pleaseeee enlighten me! ty ty

Under the old your guild would have decayed at size factor 22. Under the new you will decay at size factor 20. All guilds now decay at size factor 20. Under the old it was 10 + max(10,size). Since your size is 12 (10 active + 2 recent departures), the old would have been 10 + 12 or 22 for your guild. So the new should have given you a very small decrease in decay versus the old.

[jhadden30]

Seriously.

Running one of the largest guilds on Cannith, with some 800 characters spread over ~ 250 accounts we were certianly butting our heads up against a ceiling. Since the recent renown change we are steadily gaining GLs once again.

So I want to thank you, Turbine, and as its spokesman in this matter, Tolero, for listening to your players and tweaking the system.

.

Well, if that's the case, than it would appear to me that Turbine is only listening to their players that belong to large guilds.

[Tshober]

Well, if that's the case, than it would appear to me that Turbine is only listening to their players that belong to large guilds.

Tiny guilds with less than 10 players, got no change in decay versus the old system. All other guilds with more than 10 players got a decrease in decay with the change. There are more than just large guilds in that range.

[jhadden30]

I'm in a small guild on Orien (10 accounts) of which most of us are pretty active. Now, we are advancing renown wise however its at a terribly slow pace. Meanwhile, I have watched a large guild, also on Orien, gain five levels in thirteen days. Prior to this (temporary?) renown change, the same said guild was hovering back and forth between two levels for most of this year. If this system was fair to all guild sizes and does not promote large guilds than shouldn't my guild be advancing at the same rate?

Egit, Barnabys and Maschine
Members of Mistshadow Mercenaries

Seems like this highly favors large guilds.

[eris2323]

Seems like this highly favors large guilds.

Actually according to the distinctions set by http://ddowiki.com/page/Guild_Renown for guild size, this new system highly favors small guilds, medium guilds, and large guilds, and has no change for what is termed 'very small' guilds.

Devs have announced this is the START of the changes - more will likely come with time...

but please. it's not favoring just large guilds. It's favoring everyone who doesn't limit themselves to a 'very small' guilds - including 'small guillds', 'medium guilds', and 'large guilds'

[Tictman]

OK so my guild has 10 players 5 who play together almost daily. Another group of 5 who all play together from time to time, varies 1 to 2 weeks between playing. This works out well for us so we want to keep this way. But and it's a big BUT, we are looking at only gaining about 1 guild lvl a month. Right now we are lvl 46 so it's going to take us 4 months to get a lvl 50 ship. Our goal isn't 100, but we'd like to spend some of our hard earned cash on that lvl 55 ship. At this rate looks like Turbine is gonna have to wait like 7 or 8 months to get that money from us. ( CASH TURBINE CASH LOOK CASH ) The change in renown decay did help it seemed to lower our daily decay about 1k. Any help is good, but (yep another but), watching one of the blind recruit guilds that was stuck going up and down a lvl for most of a year gain 4 lvls in a couple weeks makes us want go out and blind recruit everyone in sight also. We don't want to do that, if the changes to renown decay stay as they are we will do just that. You can say whatever you want about doing that. Seems to me it's the only to advance your guild under this system.

[yawumpus]

Forgotten in all of this is that many lower level elites have become little more than guild reknown checks. The most painfully obvious are kobold shamans. There are two ways to handle elite kobold shamans:

1. Carefully obtain resist electrical pots and/or resist element wands from vendors. Start dodging every time you see the shaman's hands go up (and don't you dare take your eyes off any of them). Make sure you have effective healing on hand (a hireling doesn't cut it) for the inevitable failures. Be in a group that understands the +10% survival bonus isn't a given.

2. Be guild level 59 (or even 29 for resist electrical 20) and faceroll my pwny kobold.

While we are discussing if guild reknown should be based on getting newbies to accept spam offers in the harbor, we should also ask why the quests are built around the assumption that accepting said spam makes the newbie far more powerful, and can now begin to run elites with the same lack of skill that older accounts have been using for quite some time. Note that after level 11, most of this huge gap ends, and much of the bonuses can be had by other means (although as a stacking effect the "other means" get harder and harder to get). The kobolds are just an extreme example as the amount of damage they can do doubled (but since it is forked, both forks get resisted) against those without the guild levels. This was put in place presumably because the high level guilds were already too effectively facerolling the kobolds.

[jhadden30]

Actually according to the distinctions set by http://ddowiki.com/page/Guild_Renown for guild size, this new system highly favors small guilds, medium guilds, and large guilds, and has no change for what is termed 'very small' guilds.

Devs have announced this is the START of the changes - more will likely come with time...

but please. it's not favoring just large guilds. It's favoring everyone who doesn't limit themselves to a 'very small' guilds - including 'small guillds', 'medium guilds', and 'large guilds'

What I'm getting at is small, medium and large guilds are still required to get the exact same amount of renown to gain a level. Having more people in a guild means you get more renown. So, a guild with 1000 accounts has to earn the same amount of renown as a guild with 10 accounts. Even if you factor in a small or medium guild bonus, small and medium guilds are still required to get 3-4 times as much renown per day to keep on par with a large guild. If 100 people get 1000 renown per day that equals 100000 renown for that day. Now if 10 people go out and get 1000 renown with a small guild bonus, 1000×2.5= 2500. 2500×10= 25000 renown for that day. Therefore, small guilds still have to gain 4 times as much renown per day to keep up with large guilds. So the reward is greater for. large guilds

[moops]

( reposted from my post thanking turbine that will prob get ignored because it is a possitive post)

We are a guild that goes between small and medium, with a mix of once a week players and powergamers, and a couple who can only sign on once a month. Right now we have 18 active accounts as a few returned to game and we recruited a player. Our guild which had been stuck in the middle of 88 for months, is now about 1/4 thru lvl 89.

We didn't set out to get reknown, we just played the game, at all levels, and have been progressing under the new system.

[Tshober]

What I'm getting at is small, medium and large guilds are still required to get the exact same amount of renown to gain a level. Having more people in a guild means you get more renown. So, a guild with 1000 accounts has to earn the same amount of renown as a guild with 10 accounts. Even if you factor in a small or medium guild bonus, small and medium guilds are still required to get 3-4 times as much renown per day to keep on par with a large guild. If 100 people get 1000 renown per day that equals 100000 renown for that day. Now if 10 people go out and get 1000 renown with a small guild bonus, 1000×2.5= 2500. 2500×10= 25000 renown for that day. Therefore, small guilds still have to gain 4 times as much renown per day to keep up with large guilds. So the reward is greater for. large guilds

So essentially what you are saying if a guild A is capable of earning far more renown per day than guild B is capable of, then guild A must be crippled/penalized/taxed/etc. until it can no longer earn more than guild B. Nevermind that guild A may have spent far more total man-hours gaining all that extra renown, they still must be held back to gaining at the rate of the smaller guild so all that additional work they did must go for nought. Taken to the logical extreme of that policy, all guilds must advance at the same rate and that rate is the rate of a 1-man solo guild because anything else would be "unfair" to Joe Solo in his one-man guild.

I am sorry but I just can't buy into that kind of policy. Having all guilds level at the same speed sounds fair on the surface. But when you think about what is really happening, it really is not fair. That kind of policy says that the work Joe Solo in his one-man guild does is exactly equal to all the work that 100 players do together in a large guild. It's obviously not equal. Not even close. Why should Joe Solo's work count 100 times more than Sally Social's work does in her 100-woman guild? It shouldn't and that is the real problem with saying all guilds should level at the same speed.

Now if Joe Solo is an incredibly smart and hard worker, he might be able to out-earn all of the players in an 8-man guild. And if he does he should level up faster than the 8-man guild. But it does not matter how awesome Joe is, he is not going to be able to out-earn a 100-man guild all working together. Joe chose to go it solo. The players in the 100-man guild all chose to band together to contribute to a greater whole. What does it say if you make that greater whole exactly the same as Joe Solo's one-man guild?

[Tictman]

So essentially what you are saying if a guild A is capable of earning far more renown per day than guild B is capable of, then guild A must be crippled/penalized/taxed/etc. until it can no longer earn more than guild B. Nevermind that guild A may have spent far more total man-hours gaining all that extra renown, they still must be held back to gaining at the rate of the smaller guild so all that additional work they did must go for nought. Taken to the logical extreme of that policy, all guilds must advance at the same rate and that rate is the rate of a 1-man solo guild because anything else would be "unfair" to Joe Solo in his one-man guild.

I am sorry but I just can't buy into that kind of policy. Having all guilds level at the same speed sounds fair on the surface. But when you think about what is really happening, it really is not fair. That kind of policy says that the work Joe Solo in his one-man guild does is exactly equal to all the work that 100 players do together in a large guild. It's obviously not equal. Not even close. Why should Joe Solo's work count 100 times more than Sally Social's work does in her 100-woman guild? It shouldn't and that is the real problem with saying all guilds should level at the same speed.

Now if Joe Solo is an incredibly smart and hard worker, he might be able to out-earn all of the players in an 8-man guild. And if he does he should level up faster than the 8-man guild. But it does not matter how awesome Joe is, he is not going to be able to out-earn a 100-man guild all working together. Joe chose to go it solo. The players in the 100-man guild all chose to band together to contribute to a greater whole. What does it say if you make that greater whole exactly the same as Joe Solo's one-man guild?

First point out to me where he says that a guild should be penalized for earning more renown than another? Second point out to me where he says that all guilds should level at the same speed? Come on now point it out or are you just making that up?

[Tshober]

First point out to me where he says that a guild should be penalized for earning more renown than another? Second point out to me where he says that all guilds should level at the same speed? Come on now point it out or are you just making that up?

On the previous page of this thread.

Here it is so you don't have to scroll up:

Well played Vanshilar. I'm in a small guild on Orien (10 accounts) of which most of us are pretty active. Now, we are advancing renown wise however its at a terribly slow pace. Meanwhile, I have watched a large guild, also on Orien, gain five levels in thirteen days. Prior to this (temporary?) renown change, the same said guild was hovering back and forth between two levels for most of this year. If this system was fair to all guild sizes and does not promote large guilds than shouldn't my guild be advancing at the same rate?

Egit, Barnabys and Maschine
Members of Mistshadow Mercenaries

[jhadden30]

So essentially what you are saying if a guild A is capable of earning far more renown per day than guild B is capable of, then guild A must be crippled/penalized/taxed/etc. until it can no longer earn more than guild B. Nevermind that guild A may have spent far more total man-hours gaining all that extra renown, they still must be held back to gaining at the rate of the smaller guild so all that additional work they did must go for nought.

Nope, i'm not saying that anybody has to be penalized for anything, However, it seems that you are perfectly fine with a small guild getting shafted through the current guild renown system. I'm going to say this again, the more accounts per guild, the less renown that guild is required to get per account VS. Less accounts per guild, the more renown that guild is required to get per account. How does that make since? Shouldn't that be the other way around? Less accounts=less renown per account?

[jhadden30]

You are correct. A guild of 200 received a 90% reduction in decay. A guild of 10 or less received no reduction in decay.

Thanks Slarden for agreeing with me. I knew I wasn't just making stuff up off the top of my head.

[Tshober]

However, it seems that you are perfectly fine with a small guild getting shafted through the current guild renown system.

I am not quite fine with it. I wish they had gone further and eliminated decay entirely, which would benefit all guilds. But even though it did not go as far as I would have liked, it is still a huge, giant leap in the right direction.




I'm going to say this again, the more accounts per guild, the less renown that guild is required to get per account VS. Less accounts per guild, the more renown that guild is required to get per account. How does that make since? Shouldn't that be the other way around? Less accounts=less renown per account?

When you start dividing by number of players, you are no longer comparing guilds, you are comparing players, and averaged out players at that. A guild leveling system should be comparing guilds, not comparing players. If you were going to rank countries by economic power, would you first divide GDP by population and then rank them? Of course not, you would just use plain old GDP to compare them. That is because you are ranking the countires, not the people in the countires. It is exactly the same when you want to compare guilds by renown earned. The proper way to compare them is by total renown earned by each guild.

[jhadden30]

I am not quite fine with it. I wish they had gone further and eliminated decay entirely, which would benefit all guilds. But even though it did not go as far as I would have liked, it is still a huge, giant leap in the right direction.

Sure you're fine with it or you wouldn't be trying to convince me that i am wrong in the first place.


When you start dividing by number of players, you are no longer comparing guilds, you are comparing players, and averaged out players at that. A guild leveling system should be comparing guilds, not comparing players. If you were going to rank countries by economic power, would you first divide GDP by population and then rank them? Of course not, you would just use plain old GDP to compare them. That is because you are ranking the countires, not the people in the countires. It is exactly the same when you want to compare guilds by renown earned. The proper way to compare them is by total renown earned by each guild.

Comparing guilds in fantasy world is absolutely nothing like comparing GDP's in the real world.

[Tshober]

Comparing guilds in fantasy world is absolutely nothing like comparing GDP's in the real world.

Only if you don't care about math and logic.

[Artos_Fabril]

Nope, i'm not saying that anybody has to be penalized for anything, However, it seems that you are perfectly fine with a small guild getting shafted through the current guild renown system. I'm going to say this again, the more accounts per guild, the less renown that guild is required to get per account VS. Less accounts per guild, the more renown that guild is required to get per account. How does that make since? Shouldn't that be the other way around? Less accounts=less renown per account?
No, that doesn't make sense either. A fair system would require the same amount of renown per account.

The question that has been asked several times now, By Sirgog, and Vanshalar most notably, is what Turbine is trying to accomplish with the renown system. If fairness isn't their goal, then all arguments for change to promote fairness are non-productive.

The primary problem with the old system, was that it penalized large guilds more than small guilds for having semi-active members, or members not earning as much renown as they cost. (because small guilds did not see an increase in decay until they passed size 10, but larger guilds increased decay for every member added)

The problem Vanshalar points out with both systems is that small guilds take longer to level up, depending on activity levels, they take orders of magnitude longer to level up. Under the old system, the theoretical trade-off was that they would top-out higher... but might take a decade or more to reach that equilibrium point. Most large guilds had already reached equilibrium, and so they were complaining about decay. Small guilds were rarely significantly impacted in their progress by decay, so they saw slow progress, even though they require far more renown per player to level up.

[slarden]

No, that doesn't make sense either. A fair system would require the same amount of renown per account.

The question that has been asked several times now, By Sirgog, and Vanshalar most notably, is what Turbine is trying to accomplish with the renown system. If fairness isn't their goal, then all arguments for change to promote fairness are non-productive.

The primary problem with the old system, was that it penalized large guilds more than small guilds for having semi-active members, or members not earning as much renown as they cost. (because small guilds did not see an increase in decay until they passed size 10, but larger guilds increased decay for every member added)

The problem Vanshalar points out with both systems is that small guilds take longer to level up, depending on activity levels, they take orders of magnitude longer to level up. Under the old system, the theoretical trade-off was that they would top-out higher... but might take a decade or more to reach that equilibrium point. Most large guilds had already reached equilibrium, and so they were complaining about decay. Small guilds were rarely significantly impacted in their progress by decay, so they saw slow progress, even though they require far more renown per player to level up.

Regardless of what the goals are, fairness should be a factor and is certainly achievable. I don't think the new system is any fairer quite frankly - it is as flawed as the orginal system.

The fact is even under the old system most small guilds were far below the level of a typical large guild. We can't use the highest achieving small guilds as an example of what all small guilds are.

[Tictman]

On the previous page of this thread.

Here it is so you don't have to scroll up:

Well played Vanshilar. I'm in a small guild on Orien (10 accounts) of which most of us are pretty active. Now, we are advancing renown wise however its at a terribly slow pace. Meanwhile, I have watched a large guild, also on Orien, gain five levels in thirteen days. Prior to this (temporary?) renown change, the same said guild was hovering back and forth between two levels for most of this year. If this system was fair to all guild sizes and does not promote large guilds than shouldn't my guild be advancing at the same rate?

Egit, Barnabys and Maschine
Members of Mistshadow Mercenaries

OK so you still cannot point it out in the quote that you had posted prompting my reply. I should have known that you where not referring to the quote you had posted but a different post?

[jhadden30]

Only if you don't care about math and logic.

I see now that you have nothing else to on here you have gone and dropped this award winning line on me. What do you know about math and logic? Larger guilds are highly favored over smaller guilds in every sense and you know it.

[Gremmlynn]

I've shown many - others have also pointed it out. Taking on a player temporarily and then kicking them out under the test system will always result in a net renown gain for a guild. A guild at the 1000 character limit still has an incentive to boot less active players and replace those players with more active players.With less active, in this case most likely meaning someone who moved on to something else months before.


You want this system "as is" with no accomodation made for small guilds, yet you and others are unable to show how lowering decay for small gulds will result in small guilds booting players. It won't. Lowering decay across the board will ease the pressure on guilds to worry about the play time of casual players.Because lowering decay for smaller guilds would most likely result in large guilds booting players to take advantage of it. Which is bad for casual players in general.


The new system requires small guilds to have highly active players to cover the decay tax. Large guilds are free to operate as they wish and will eventually get to 100 with no effort, no need to take renown as an end reward and no need for guild elixirs. Large guilds can still get to 100 faster by replacing inactive players with more active players and I am sure some will do that. Small guilds can grow faster by adding players willing to join and then trimming the herd periodically. I am sure some small guilds will do that.Really? Actually, it will result in my large guild that was stuck at level 46 to eventually get to about level 70 before stalling out again. Of course, with less incentive to move on to guilds that exclude casual players, any active players we pick up might stay with us long enough to boost this now.


I believe Turbine looked at large guilds and the top tier small guilds when making this change. I wish they would look at metrics for all small guilds and not just those that are on the leader boards. My expectations are very low that any change will be made for smll guilds. Actually, I don't think they looked at any size guild and just looked at the very obvious flaw in their system that gave guilds incentives to exclude a large portion of they player base.


Turbine had an opportunity to implement a system with lowered decay for all guilds that would have greatly benefited all guilds.I doubt benefiting guilds was really what they were trying to do here anyway. From what changes were made, a better title for this thread would have been "Casual Player Guild Participation Changes" since that was the issue they seem to have been trying to correct.

[Tshober]

OK so you still cannot point it out in the quote that you had posted prompting my reply. I should have known that you where not referring to the quote you had posted but a different post?

Sorry, he continued the argument in a separate post. Anyone who followed the thread from even a few pages back would have seen it though. If you jump in at the end of the thread and don't do any reading, that's the risk you take.

[Tictman]

Sorry, he continued the argument in a separate post. Anyone who followed the thread from even a few pages back would have seen it though. If you jump in at the end of the thread and don't do any reading, that's the risk you take.

Just for your info I've been following this thread from the beginning. Just admit that what you posted was misleading!

[Tictman]

What amazes me most about this thread is how people from large and small guilds support large guilds getting a reduction in decay. What amazes me even more is that people from large guilds are against giving decay reductions to small guilds unless there are other penalties applies to small guilds.

Yes you've hit the nail on the head!

[Tshober]

Just for your info I've been following this thread from the beginning. Just admit that what you posted was misleading!

There was nothing remotely misleading about it. I'm sure the devs, and everyone else who cared at all about what I was saying, followed it with no problems.

Do we really need to have the discussion side-tracked by the forum quoting etiquette police? I think not so I will refrain from commenting further on this stuff that is not relevent at all to the thread subject.

[Gremmlynn]

Would you care to explain that to the people who were claiming ad nauseum that the original system was forcing, just absolutely forcing them to kill their dear, close, personal friends (http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=388555)? Because that's what was being bandied about on the forums as being a justifiable reason to remove renown decay prior to this change. Certainly you'd take the same stance with those people, right?Yes I would have the same stance. That doesn't mean I like the system Turbine gave us that gave them an incentive to do so.

[jhadden30]

Most everyone on here are still beating around the bush about the fact that these (temporary?) renown changes are heavily favoring larger guilds. Turbine asked for feedback on this and they are getting it. What this change is implying is that the hard work of 10 people is not nearly as important or rewarding as the hard work of 100 or 200 or 1000 people. It is also implying that everybody should just go out, heavily recruit and swell guild numbers so that they can reap the maximum benefits of the renown system, since guild size is (temporarily?) no longer a factor. Here's an idea for all the skeptics:

Drop guild renown decay AND guild renown bonuses

Adjust the amount of renown needed to advance in guild levels based on number of accounts in a guild.

The more accounts a guild has, the more renown they should be required to gain a level.

Mathematically, EVERY guild would need the same amount of renown per account to advance in levels.

It's that simple and this way, everyone's hard work is rewarded equally.

[theslimshady]

lol thanks for derailing this topic again notice how this is nothing but old charts and arguments about what was and what coulds and nothing about anyones internal guilds or gains its almost become silly

so to sum it up small guilds get a little xtra decay that they should not have and this should be corrected as soon as possible large guilds are slowly gaining and the only really mad people are the ones who needed guild level for prestige correct

[Gremmlynn]

I agree. Turbine has been unclear about their goals with the guild renown system.

I think that has been a problem when it comes to most new systems and system changes in that game though and a primary issue with game development for a very long time. Essentially it is unclear that Turbine even has clear and well defined goals for most changes they make.I've noticed this too.

[slarden]

lol thanks for derailing this topic again notice how this is nothing but old charts and arguments about what was and what coulds and nothing about anyones internal guilds or gains its almost become silly

so to sum it up small guilds get a little xtra decay that they should not have and this should be corrected as soon as possible large guilds are slowly gaining and the only really mad people are the ones who needed guild level for prestige correct

Nope it appears you missed the point entirely. A guild of 10 has significantly more decay/acct than a guild of 200. Many in small guilds would like to see decay reduced fairly for all gulids. It's a quite reasonable and achievable goal. Several small tweaks to the old and new system were suggested.

Turbine continues to be silent on what their goals and plans are.

[theslimshady]

Nope it appears you missed the point entirely. A guild of 10 has significantly more decay than a guild of 200. Many in small guilds would like to see decay reduced fairly for all gulids. It's a quite reasonable and achievable goal. Several small tweaks to the old and new system were suggested.

Turbine continues to be silent on what their goals and plans are.

no it does not matter to me at all about any other guilds and it should not matter to you either you are either bleeding renown or not
you are making this far more complex then it should be how fast you are going to level is and will never be the issue it is only about being able to level or hitting a wall and not and my guess is you are still climbing correct

[Gremmlynn]

I think a guild of 10 or 15 great players who don't want 100 noobs running around should be able to get to and stay at 100. Even if the guild were 2 or 3 people. It should obviously take longer, but it would be cool if it were possible.This sounds great, unless you are one of those 100 "noobs". Which is where the old system failed as I'm of the belief that for every 10-15 great players that bring activity and structure to a guild there are about 100 "noobs" who just play games for fun and are more likely to play this game if the guild system encourages those 10-15 serious players to include them in their guilds.

[Gremmlynn]

Well, if that's the case, than it would appear to me that Turbine is only listening to their players that belong to large guilds.Or maybe they are listening to their players who can't seem to stay in any guild.

[Tshober]

This sounds great, unless you are one of those 100 "noobs". Which is where the old system failed as I'm of the belief that for every 10-15 great players that bring activity and structure to a guild there are about 100 "noobs" who just play games for fun and are more likely to play this game if the guild system encourages those 10-15 serious players to include them in their guilds.


This. Excellent point! +1

[slarden]

This sounds great, unless you are one of those 100 "noobs". Which is where the old system failed as I'm of the belief that for every 10-15 great players that bring activity and structure to a guild there are about 100 "noobs" who just play games for fun and are more likely to play this game if the guild system encourages those 10-15 serious players to include them in their guilds.

You continue to ignore the fact that new players also exist in small guilds. Instead the folks refer to my 8 person guild as a "2 person" guild because 6 of the people are less active and/or casual. Why is that casual and new players don't count unless they are in a big guild?

Why the double standard? Why must the system only help those casual and new players in large guilds and not those casual and new players in small guilds?

The argument continues to make no sense. I think supporting new and casual players is a good goal, but it should do so regardless of guild size. Why must casual players in a small guild of 10 be saddled with 20x more decay than a casual player in a large guild of 200? Even with the small guild bonus that is still a staggeringly high amount of decay the person a small guild is getting compared to the person in a large guild.

[jhadden30]

lol thanks for derailing this topic again notice how this is nothing but old charts and arguments about what was and what coulds and nothing about anyones internal guilds or gains its almost become silly

so to sum it up small guilds get a little xtra decay that they should not have and this should be corrected as soon as possible large guilds are slowly gaining and the only really mad people are the ones who needed guild level for prestige correct

Your welcome and how exactly does this derail the topic? The topic is the guild renown system is it not?

[jhadden30]

no it does not matter to me at all about any other guilds and it should not matter to you either you are either bleeding renown or not
you are making this far more complex then it should be how fast you are going to level is and will never be the issue it is only about being able to level or hitting a wall and not and my guess is you are still climbing correct

If it doesn't matter to you than why comment at all on the subject?

[Gremmlynn]

Nope, i'm not saying that anybody has to be penalized for anything, However, it seems that you are perfectly fine with a small guild getting shafted through the current guild renown system. I'm going to say this again, the more accounts per guild, the less renown that guild is required to get per account VS. Less accounts per guild, the more renown that guild is required to get per account. How does that make since? Shouldn't that be the other way around? Less accounts=less renown per account?It makes perfect sense to me considering it is applied to a decay system that is very flawed to begin with.

We have a choice of using your kind of system that encourages the active players who are the glue that holds a guild together to exclude the casual players who, truthfully, bring the least to a guild because the system makes them a liability.

Or what is currently being used that encourages those active players to include the others because, not only are not a liability, but actually add to the guild on the occasions they log in. It also encourages them to recruit new players who, in my experience, are more likely than not to simply fade away never to be seen again when the newness wears off and maybe cause a few more to stay with the game.

What it doesn't encourage is for me a my handful of friends to pretend we are actually a guild, which is where most of the static seems to be coming from.

[slarden]

It makes perfect sense to me considering it is applied to a decay system that is very flawed to begin with.

We have a choice of using your kind of system that encourages the active players who are the glue that holds a guild together to exclude the casual players who, truthfully, bring the least to a guild because the system makes them a liability.

Or what is currently being used that encourages those active players to include the others because, not only are not a liability, but actually add to the guild on the occasions they log in. It also encourages them to recruit new players who, in my experience, are more likely than not to simply fade away never to be seen again when the newness wears off and maybe cause a few more to stay with the game.

What it doesn't encourage is for me a my handful of friends to pretend we are actually a guild, which is where most of the static seems to be coming from.

That doesn't explain why you are against lowering decay for small guilds. Your argument applies to small guilds as much as it does to large guilds.

This is where there is a big difference. Your post shows a disdain for small guilds by using phrases like "pretend we are actually a guild". I really hope Turbine reads these kind of negative comments and understands why some of us don't want to be in guilds that behave like this. You pretend to be helping players but all I've seen is attacks. If you were interested in helping players you wouldn't care what size guild they are in. Your only interest appears to be in helping large guilds like yours.

Again I have to ask. Why are the casual and newer players in my guild not given the same sort of benefits they could get in a large guild? What is the point of trying to force all players in a large guild?

[theslimshady]

If it doesn't matter to you than why comment at all on the subject?

because i was bleeding renown and now i am not so the wall is no longer there and ignoring the devs ? about how it impacts your guild should never have a compare to other guilds in it its about your guild and i still am not clear if you are gaining or losing renown

[jhadden30]

It makes perfect sense to me considering it is applied to a decay system that is very flawed to begin with.

We have a choice of using your kind of system that encourages the active players who are the glue that holds a guild together to exclude the casual players who, truthfully, bring the least to a guild because the system makes them a liability .

But I never said that I wanted to exclude casual players.

[Tictman]

Or maybe they are listening to their players who can't seem to stay in any guild.

Now there's something I don't think anyone here has considered. After all it is hard for casual players to stay in any guild. Lets face it under the old system you pretty much had to boot them no matter what size your guild was. Now you can keep the casual player at little or no loss.

I guess what would put this whole issue to bed would be for Turbine to answer this question. Is this going to be permanent? If so small guilds can go ahead and add members. I think they would if they didn't have to worry about the old system coming back and bit them big time.

I'm not favoring small guilds over large guilds or the other way around here. I'm in a small guild and the change did help us somewhat. At least we don't lose as much as we did daily under the old system. We would gladly add members if we had a definite answer to this question.

Then we could all happily be large guilds with nothing to argue about. LOL

And yes for what it's worth small guilds do have to work much harder for any gain.

[theslimshady]

i wish the real question the devs would had asked was are you gaining renown or bleeding out like under the ole system that whould have made this whole thing less froggy

[Gremmlynn]

No, that doesn't make sense either. A fair system would require the same amount of renown per account.

By that definition, fairness isn't their goal, since that wasn't working for a lot of players. The new definition of fairness seems to not consider guild size at all. Every guild of the same level has the same decay regardless of how many players that guild has. In the interests of fairness, they even pinned the amount to be the same as the absolutely best case in the old system.

This system seems a lot more fair to all the players who were being kicked out of every guild they joined and every guild that refused to kick players due to the fairness of a system that required the same amount of renown per account, regardless of how much time one is willing or able to commit to the game.

Really, neither system is fair to everyone (I doubt such a thing is possible), but I'm a much bigger fan of the one that doesn't leave a large portion of the player base out.

[theslimshady]

If you are saying that you are a casual player than it's players like you that I am standing up for.

what so you are gaining renown

[jhadden30]

what so you are gaining renown

Yes slightly more than we were before.

[theslimshady]

Yes slightly more than we were before.

grats and good for you imagine there was a time that certain guilds no matter what they did did not go forward at all

[jhadden30]

grats and good for you imagine there was a time that certain guilds no matter what they did did not go forward at all

I know, we were one of those guilds along with a lot of other guilds. I'm just saying that small guilds still have to grind out more renown to gain levels compared to larger guilds. So its more beneficial to larger guilds. That's all. I just feel that its promoting everyone to become a large guild even if you would rather just be a smaller group.

[Gremmlynn]

What amazes me most about this thread is how people from large and small guilds support large guilds getting a reduction in decay. What amazes me even more is that people from large guilds are against giving decay reductions to small guilds unless there are other penalties applies to small guilds.

The argument that people in large guilds will start booting members if small guilds get a reduction in decay has to be one of the most ridiculous arguments I've ever heard. Lowering decay is good for all guilds because it removes the pressure caused when casual players aren't active enough to cover their decay tax.

If Turbine wants to change the guild system from an activity-based system to a purely social system - I am fine with that. But it makes no sense for it remain an activity-based system for guilds of 10 and under while it's a purely social system for guilds of 200. Why should people in small guilds be burdened with this this massive decay tax?Actually, some of us large guild fanbois have also advocated for the complete removal of decay.

[Gremmlynn]

Most everyone on here are still beating around the bush about the fact that these (temporary?) renown changes are heavily favoring larger guilds. Turbine asked for feedback on this and they are getting it. What this change is implying is that the hard work of 10 people is not nearly as important or rewarding as the hard work of 100 or 200 or 1000 people. It is also implying that everybody should just go out, heavily recruit and swell guild numbers so that they can reap the maximum benefits of the renown system, since guild size is (temporarily?) no longer a factor. Here's an idea for all the skeptics:

Drop guild renown decay AND guild renown bonuses

Adjust the amount of renown needed to advance in guild levels based on number of accounts in a guild.

The more accounts a guild has, the more renown they should be required to gain a level.

Mathematically, EVERY guild would need the same amount of renown per account to advance in levels.

It's that simple and this way, everyone's hard work is rewarded equally.How is that different from what this change was made to get rid of? Why would any guild leader wanting to gain levels ever invite a casual player into their guild? Why would any active player ever join or stay with a guild that willfully increases the renown they need by having low earning casual members.

I suppose those casual players could form their own guilds, though it would take an awful lot of them for enough of their erratic play schedules to coincide on a regular enough basis to actually play with each other.

[theslimshady]

I know, we were one of those guilds along with a lot of other guilds. I'm just saying that small guilds still have to grind out more renown to gain levels compared to larger guilds. So its more beneficial to larger guilds. That's all. I just feel that its promoting everyone to become a large guild even if you would rather just be a smaller group. and i agree that small guilds need more attention but by removing the wall of decay bleeding was a brillant first step now at least all can move forward and it becomes about pace of moving forward not going backwards

[Gremmlynn]

You continue to ignore the fact that new players also exist in small guilds. Instead the folks refer to my 8 person guild as a "2 person" guild because 6 of the people are less active and/or casual. Why is that casual and new players don't count unless they are in a big guild?

Why the double standard? Why must the system only help those casual and new players in large guilds and not those casual and new players in small guilds?

The argument continues to make no sense. I think supporting new and casual players is a good goal, but it should do so regardless of guild size. Why must casual players in a small guild of 10 be saddled with 20x more decay than a casual player in a large guild of 200? Even with the small guild bonus that is still a staggeringly high amount of decay the person a small guild is getting compared to the person in a large guild.You continue to ignore the fact that I'm an advocate for the elimination of decay entirely. Cool idea, but it only works for a fraction of the games player base.

[Gremmlynn]

That doesn't explain why you are against lowering decay for small guilds. Your argument applies to small guilds as much as it does to large guilds.

This is where there is a big difference. Your post shows a disdain for small guilds by using phrases like "pretend we are actually a guild". I really hope Turbine reads these kind of negative comments and understands why some of us don't want to be in guilds that behave like this. You pretend to be helping players but all I've seen is attacks. If you were interested in helping players you wouldn't care what size guild they are in. Your only interest appears to be in helping large guilds like yours.

Again I have to ask. Why are the casual and newer players in my guild not given the same sort of benefits they could get in a large guild? What is the point of trying to force all players in a large guild?I'm not against lowering decay for small guilds, as long as it is equally lowered for everyone. What I am against is giving the members who count any reason what so ever to kick the members who really don't count. why should a 20 man guild with a few hundred casuals using their pool have a tougher time than one without? All that does is insure casuals don't get to use a pool.

Which is why I think small guilds are pretending to be guilds. To me it's like someone driving around an empty bus, they are just pretending to be a bus driver.

As for where my interests lie. It's in helping guilds that actually have the critical mass to be useful to their membership. So, in a way I am mostly for helping large guilds and those trying to become large.

As to why casual members in your guild don't have the same benefits they could get in a large guild. There simply isn't enough of you to provide them. the two of you, even with the 6 other casuals are not likely to provide a viable number of people to reliably play with for anyone who you let join. I'd think you'd have figured that out on your own by now.

[Gremmlynn]

But I never said that I wanted to exclude casual players.No, you just wants a system that encourages everyone to do so.

[slarden]

I'm not against lowering decay for small guilds, as long as it is equally lowered for everyone. What I am against is giving the members who count any reason what so ever to kick the members who really don't count. why should a 20 man guild with a few hundred casuals using their pool have a tougher time than one without? All that does is insure casuals don't get to use a pool.

Which is why I think small guilds are pretending to be guilds. To me it's like someone driving around an empty bus, they are just pretending to be a bus driver.

As for where my interests lie. It's in helping guilds that actually have the critical mass to be useful to their membership. So, in a way I am mostly for helping large guilds and those trying to become large.

As to why casual members in your guild don't have the same benefits they could get in a large guild. There simply isn't enough of you to provide them. the two of you, even with the 6 other casuals are not likely to provide a viable number of people to reliably play with for anyone who you let join. I'd think you'd have figured that out on your own by now.

Your argument just continues to show that you are against small guilds like the other people from large guilds that are posting alot. Many people prefer to be in a small group of friends rather than a mega guld of people they don't know. I group with many people from large guilds. There are lfms for quests and raids. There are channels and there is general chat. I like a small guild because I don't like a large group and the drama that comes with it. There is absolutely no reason why I have to be in a large gulid to be social. If Turbine keeps track of these things they can see just how many times I group with people from outside the guild, just as people from large guilds do.

I find this thread very discouraging for several reasons:

1) Turbine is discouraging small guilds after many of us played by the rules and focused on renown - always taking renown as an end reward, taking guild elixirs and at many times choosing quests that give high renown over activities like challenges, festivals or loot runs that drop less renown.
2) Turbine implemented this system without fully communicating it to all players. Turbine knows full well that most people don't use the forums. So rather than posting this change in the release bulletin and inviting people to comment, they just made the change and small gulids would only notice the difference when they see large gulids leveling faster while they are not. Since most of the test period was during Mabar, this wouldn't even be obvious.
3) Turbine said they would keep the changes after the test period if people liked the change. The test period is gone, the changes remain and Turbine just stopped commenting on the issue completely. It confuses me how they will get adequate feedback given how this test was conducted. A handful of people attacking those from small guilds that comment is not evidence that people like the system or that the system is fair.
4) I am happy to see renown lowered for large guilds and believe the same should be done for small guilds. The main folks on this thread from large gulds are advocating against giving small guilds any kind of break and against making any changes at all to the test system. The reasons given are very misleading and flat out wrong. They act like if small guilds get the same decay break - casual players will get booted from guilds left and right. Nonsense.
5) The fact that casual and new players are members of small guilds and even start small guilds has been completely ignored.

The other highly active person in my guild is frustrated and doesn't see a point to commenting. He is just off playing Star Wars and looking into Guild Wars. My expectations are fairly low, but I am hoping that Turbine will at least state what they intend to do so I can decide what to do.

Turbine had a chance to turn this into a win for all guilds and Turbine. It didn't happen. They said other changes may be coming, but the silence after the test period ended doesn't give any indication that will happen.

[Gremmlynn]

Your argument just continues to show that you are against small guilds like the other people from large guilds that are posting alot. Many people prefer to be in a small group of friends rather than a mega guld of people they don't know. I group with many people from large guilds. There are lfms for quests and raids. There are channels and there is general chat. I like a small guild because I don't like a large group and the drama that comes with it. There is absolutely no reason why I have to be in a large gulid to be social. If Turbine keeps track of these things they can see just how many times I group with people from outside the guild, just as people from large guilds do.

I agree with you, there is absolutely no reason you should have to be in a large guild to be social. That said there is absolutely no reason you should have to step outside the Rusty Nail or Wayward Lobster (depending on tastes) to play DDO. It's just that doing any of those things will likely limit what you can accomplish in the game.

I have nothing against small guilds really. I just don't think those who run small guilds are doing what it takes to earn high guild levels. Just as those who RP in the Nail or PvP in the Lobster aren't doing what it takes to earn character levels.

As far as drama goes. Any guild has only as much drama as those who make and enforce the rules are willing to tolerate. What's so hard to figure out there. Make a scene and you get tossed out.

I'm sorry, but you just come off to me as not wanting to actually have to lead, administer or even just be a rank and file member of a guild that operates at a high level, yet you want all the benefits of a high level guild.

Want that big ship? Go out and convince some people to join your guild, help them when necessary and motivate them to play. Then you will be earning that high level ship IMO.

[eris2323]

I agree with you, there is absolutely no reason you should have to be in a large guild to be social. That said there is absolutely no reason you should have to step outside the Rusty Nail or Wayward Lobster (depending on tastes) to play DDO. It's just that doing any of those things will likely limit what you can accomplish in the game.

I have nothing against small guilds really. I just don't think those who run small guilds are doing what it takes to earn high guild levels. Just as those who RP in the Nail or PvP in the Lobster aren't doing what it takes to earn character levels.

As far as drama goes. Any guild has only as much drama as those who make and enforce the rules are willing to tolerate. What's so hard to figure out there. Make a scene and you get tossed out.

I'm sorry, but you just come off to me as not wanting to actually have to lead, administer or even just be a rank and file member of a guild that operates at a high level, yet you want all the benefits of a high level guild.

Want that big ship? Go out and convince some people to join your guild, help them when necessary and motivate them to play. Then you will be earning that high level ship IMO.

Pretty much agree with all of this.... kind of sick of hearing the same 1 person continuously complaining that his small guild of 2 active players is getting a raw deal.

Go recruit. Get some people active. Help your game; instead of continuously whining about how you are getting a raw deal, while the rest of your friends convince you to go play other games.... or just go play those other games, since you refuse to make new friends here...

Why should DDO pander to your 'guild' of 2 active players?

[Tshober]

As to why casual members in your guild don't have the same benefits they could get in a large guild. There simply isn't enough of you to provide them. the two of you, even with the 6 other casuals are not likely to provide a viable number of people to reliably play with for anyone who you let join. I'd think you'd have figured that out on your own by now.

The guild he describes has to be one of the most dysfunctional guilds I can imagine. He has 1 active member, and another member he claims is active, but he also claims is mostly off playing Star Wars. All the rest, 6 of them, are either very casual or inactive and are also preparing to head off to Star Wars. Think about it. When someone logs on in a guild like that, the odds of even one other person being logged on has to be very small. And yet this tiny, totally dysfuncional, guild is level 70 and still advancing! My guild has probably 30 times as many active members that are dedicated to DDO and we could not get past level 61 in the old decay system. Just goes to show you what was being favored in the old decay system.

This has been an eye-opening thread for me. I fully expected to see the power gamer crowd be opposed to the decay change, and they have made a few posts, but by far the most vocal opponents of it have been tiny guilds that were unaffected by it. The most disappointing thing about that is, the most vocal of them have attacked everyone who defends the decay change, even when most of us have stated clearly that we would like to see decay reduced for all guilds, including tiny guilds. Some of us have been advocating for that for many, many months and still we are attacked because we defend the decay change. I'm not sure what to make of that.

I wish I had better data about the make-up of these tiny guilds. How many of them are recent start-ups? How many are really just 1-man guilds with secondary accounts? How many even have 1 active player? How many are power gamers taking advantage of the optimal guild size for reaching level 100 under the old decay system? How many are failed larger guilds that are being maintained by a few surviving members? How many are simply unable to hold on to members, even though they try? Hopefully the devs do have such data and can give their arguments the appropriate weight.

[theslimshady]

again i feel the idea that whats right or the wrong guild really isnt a issue nor is the idea of how much renown was a positive gain but more so about if guilds are climbing and not being walled to a point of only breaking even or backwards

[eris2323]

On a totally unrelated note, I feel that I should be able to become a casual player, and yet still pack on the past lives.

Turbine, please consider making it so casual players gain 10x the exp if they only log in once a week.

I feel this will allow me, as a casual player, to compete against the power gamers.

Oh, also, I want 10x the chance of rare treasure, since I can only play once a week.

Okay.. it's not so unrelated... but this is what you sound like to me.

[Tshober]

On a totally unrelated note, I feel that I should be able to become a casual player, and yet still pack on the past lives.

Turbine, please consider making it so casual players gain 10x the exp if they only log in once a week.

I feel this will allow me, as a casual player, to compete against the power gamers.

Oh, also, I want 10x the chance of rare treasure, since I can only play once a week.

Okay.. it's not so unrelated... but this is what you sound like to me.

LOL. Be careful. Some people have a hard time recognizing sarcasm when they read it.

[jhadden30]

How is that different from what this change was made to get rid of? Why would any guild leader wanting to gain levels ever invite a casual player into their guild? Why would any active player ever join or stay with a guild that willfully increases the renown they need by having low earning casual members.

I suppose those casual players could form their own guilds, though it would take an awful lot of them for enough of their erratic play schedules to coincide on a regular enough basis to actually play with each other.

Your right, my idea probably is no different. I just figured that I would attempt to come up with an idea instead of just constantly complaining but it still leaves out the casual folk which I wasn't trying to do.

[jhadden30]

No, you just wants a system that encourages everyone to do so.

No I don't, small guilds are still in the same boat as they were before. Or an empty bus or however you want to describe it. Even with this change, smalls guilds still have to be careful with who they let in and who they don't because small guilds are exactly the same as before. Now, large guilds, can invite whoever they want because it doesn't effect their numbers anymore. So in order to advance at more than a snails pace, you are suggesting that I just mass invite anybody regardless of play style hoping that they will just go out and get renown for my benefit? If so than that's the same problem DDO had when they first implemented the guild renown system in the first place. And even now, what exactly is keeping any guild of any size from just mass recruiting and than kicking the majority of those people out if they don't feel they are pulling their weight? Losing 25% and retaining 75% of the renown they gained is still in place here.

[jhadden30]

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.

Thanks for your participation as we work to improve our guild leveling system!

This should prevent large guilds from completely dominating the field in terms of levels per day? If anyone on here can find me 10 people that can gain 3 guild levels in a day with a guild that is past level 40 or 50 than I will stop complaining and cancel my subscription tomorrow.

MAJOR Advantage: Large guilds

Laughing stock of the DDO world: Small Guilds

[Thayion516]

Honestly guys after 1400 posts, This thread has had all it has to offer. Now we are just recycling the same arguments for the last 10 pages.

The OP from Telaro asked for feedback on 10-22-12.

Last post from a Dev was Vargouille responding to Slarden about reducing Decay on small guilds on 11-07-12.


We're all for new ideas and brainstorming solutions (truly, really, not just tossing buzzwords). This particular idea is problematic, because it promotes kicking players from your guild to reduce decay, which is where we were before and a situation we want to avoid.

We are certainly still considering other changes and have never said that the current changes being tested were considered any kind of final solution. We'd love to have more ideas to consider.

Ideas that are more likely to work out are ones that feel fair, promote playing together with people you like and have fun with, and where the system itself isn't promoting who you play with. We don't want to promote any particular guild size. And we don't want incentives for kicking players you enjoy playing with, or for players who might like to come and hang out or play occasionally to feel like they are hurting their guild or harming their friends in any way. If these goals seem wrong, we're willing to hear ideas on that too. This isn't an exhaustive list, but current thinking is leaning us strongly towards including these goals.

With this post it is all about the mathmatical motivation to kick casual players/friends from a guild. Asking to explain IF this idea is wrong, BUT this is the Devs lean on thinking. It talked primarily on casual players/friends being in a position to hurt the guild they are in. And that is incorrect.

Vargouille is correct in his thinking of course. More inclusion breeds a healthier gaming experiance for the majority of players, as the large majority of people who play DDO are Casual Bob and his son Mike.

This post had hardly indicated anything to do with Size, Decay, Advancement, or Levels. Its primary focus was Positive Social Inclusion.

Given the length of time iv played DDO. I've noticed extended silence on a subject indicates one of 2 things:

1) The item in question/change is WAI, and doing as the devs see fit for the overall good of DDO.

or

2) A decision has been made and they are moving forward with implementation. Coding, QC, Structure, Ect

SO i think we are locked into what is to come either way and further arguments are a waste of energy.

Just for the record, I personally am in favor of Deleting the decay system all together and using renown as a form of currency on ships and amimities so that Guild Leadership can control their own limits of a natural form of decay.

Give us the control of our own decay, and we will decide what is best for us.

But given that .. a Guild with 240 players SHOULD level faster then a guild of 6. Thats just common sense. 40 of ones players do not equal 1 of the others players. 40 = 40 and 1=1... Just the way it is.

[theslimshady]

Completely agree. Here is the irony. My small guild leveled and then we weren't getting any guild renown from chests or end rewardrs. We had to ensure we got over 10k renown so we didn't drop a level the next day and get caught in a circular loop. We had to grind untli 2am to get a 12k cushion so wouldn't drop the next day (we only needed like 10 but we always get a little extra since we sometimes seem to take bigger decay hits than others). We didn't even know about this change until we asked around to find out why we weren't getting any renown.

So things did get slightly worse for small gulds because the ransack occurs after gaining 1 level - even if that one level took 60 days to get to. so this is worse then lots of guilds bleeding out multiple levels or getting stuck without any chance of advancing because no matter what even if its slow either way your guild keeps progressing forward

[Gremmlynn]

No I don't, small guilds are still in the same boat as they were before. Or an empty bus or however you want to describe it. Even with this change, smalls guilds still have to be careful with who they let in and who they don't because small guilds are exactly the same as before. Now, large guilds, can invite whoever they want because it doesn't effect their numbers anymore. So in order to advance at more than a snails pace, you are suggesting that I just mass invite anybody regardless of play style hoping that they will just go out and get renown for my benefit? If so than that's the same problem DDO had when they first implemented the guild renown system in the first place. And even now, what exactly is keeping any guild of any size from just mass recruiting and than kicking the majority of those people out if they don't feel they are pulling their weight? Losing 25% and retaining 75% of the renown they gained is still in place here.Losing 100% as long as they are logging in once a month or so would go a long ways towards stopping this sort of exploitation. It still allows a guild to kick those who give them a reason to, as with the new system they don't actually lose anything, they just don't gain anything for the time that person was a member, which is reasonable IMO.

But yes, if a guild wants to reach the highest levels quickly I see no reason why they shouldn't have to go all in and earn it by keeping a large group of players contented and motivated.

[jhadden30]

But yes, if a guild wants to reach the highest levels quickly I see no reason why they shouldn't have to go all in and earn it by keeping a large group of players contented and motivated.

How is spamming general chat with recruit offers "keeping a large group of players contented and motivated"? Isn't that just blindly throwing bodies at the problem for an easy solution?

[jhadden30]

Just for the record, I personally am in favor of Deleting the decay system all together and using renown as a form of currency on ships and amimities so that Guild Leadership can control their own limits of a natural form of decay.

Give us the control of our own decay, and we will decide what is best for us.


That doesn't sound like a bad idea at all but the renown cost for these things should not be an impossible dream to acheive like how it is now.

[Thayion516]

The premise that lowering decay for small guilds will cause people to boot players is just flat out wrong.

If that is the way Turbine wants it is fine with me - but I will spend my money elsewhere. I am not going to pay money for a game that puts me at a disadvantage because I want to be in a guild with my friends.

Can i have your stuff?

[slarden]

Can i have your stuff?

I didn't say I would quit, just that I wouldn't spend any money on the game - and likely will play less.

[jhadden30]

On a totally unrelated note, I feel that I should be able to become a casual player, and yet still pack on the past lives.

Turbine, please consider making it so casual players gain 10x the exp if they only log in once a week.

I feel this will allow me, as a casual player, to compete against the power gamers.

Oh, also, I want 10x the chance of rare treasure, since I can only play once a week.

Okay.. it's not so unrelated... but this is what you sound like to me.

Nobody is implying anything of the sort.

[Gremmlynn]

How is spamming general chat with recruit offers "keeping a large group of players contented and motivated"? Isn't that just blindly throwing bodies at the problem for an easy solution?Not really, as they tend to leave before they accomplish much if they don't find what they are looking for. Though all it really takes to keep the newest one's contented is a suggestion here and there along the lines of "well there's 3 others on also level 6, why don't you grab a couple hires and head into house P, there are 3 quest givers in the tavern just off the airship". Not a lot of work and it gets to be less as other start following the example.

[Thayion516]

I didn't say I would quit, just that I wouldn't spend any money on the game - and likely will play less.

I have not spent more then 100 bucks on this game in 3 years and own every pack. You don't have to pay money to send me your lootz through u the mail!

Hmm .. all content thru points specials and grinding TP... Maybe i play too much?

Maybe I can join your guild Slarden! I'll be your 3rd wheel and keep u afloat during this hurricane!

[theslimshady]

I have not spent more then 100 bucks on this game in 3 years and own every pack. You don't have to pay money to send me your lootz through u the mail!

Hmm .. all content thru points specials and grinding TP... Maybe i play too much?

Maybe I can join your guild Slarden! I'll be your 3rd wheel and keep u afloat during this hurricane!

from what i gathered i dont beleave he is losing renown he is just not getting as much as a large guild so he feels at a disadvantage not many understand this debate from the large guild point based on hitting a wall then going backwards and they debate based on what in the best interest of there guild which is understandable but i beleave this new system had addressed the first issue of that all guilds are going forward now they can start evening up the way guilds level up

[Gremmlynn]

The premise that lowering decay for small guilds will cause people to boot players is just flat out wrong.

If that is the way Turbine wants it is fine with me - but I will spend my money elsewhere. I am not going to pay money for a game that puts me at a disadvantage because I want to be in a guild with my friends.I'm in a guild with my friends, actually that's where I made them, and that doesn't put me at a disadvantage.

[Gremmlynn]

I didn't say I would quit, just that I wouldn't spend any money on the game - and likely will play less.Join the club. After 3+ years still haven't gotten around to upgrade to premium.

[Impaqt]

Gotta say I'm feeling the irony... Over the past 2 years, the consensus was that the renown system was heavily skewed towards small highly active guilds.

I'm not saying its right or wrong. but as the leader of a "Large" guild (Just over 50 accounts), my Comments and concerns regarding the system were constantly belittled by members of these small guilds.

"get rid of your casual players" they would say...

"no one has a right to earn renown" they would say....

"We work harder at it so we deserve it" they would say.......

I must say I'm rather enjoying the reversal of roles right now.....

That being said, the system is still broken. Turbine has been clear that this is a "Test" and nothing is final.

I'm not sure it really matters though because I dont know that turbine cares to correct the huge glaring flaw in the system.

That being you simply cannot base Renown accumulation of random drops and luck and have decay based on any sort of hard formula.

Thats where the system went wrong on day one. that is what is still wrong with the system. Until that is fixed, any form of "balance" is impossible to achieve.

[Missing_Minds]

That being you simply cannot base Renown accumulation of random drops and luck and have decay based on any sort of hard formula.

Agreed. That is like working on commission. No guarantee of progress.

A person going to work every day (aka running quests) is going to be known and gain enough renown to stave off decay to keep status quo. Aka "meets expectations".
A person who does brilliant work (aka gets renown drops) will "exceed expectations" to further advance.

Quite frankly, drop decay all together, and amplify up the amount of renown required dramatically.
If you have a store bought ship, you keep it. If it is a plat bought ship, you get downgraded.
If you have timed up store bought hooks? You keep that ship until the the hooks have all timed out at which point you back to your actual ship you are at.
Guild doesn't do anything for X years and then you come back? You are right where you left off.

Small guilds will always be able to advance just like large guilds. All it would do is favor faster growth with large guilds, even with a limit of maxed out levels per day.

[Gremmlynn]

Agreed. That is like working on commission. No guarantee of progress.

A person going to work every day (aka running quests) is going to be known and gain enough renown to stave off decay to keep status quo. Aka "meets expectations".
A person who does brilliant work (aka gets renown drops) will "exceed expectations" to further advance.

Quite frankly, drop decay all together, and amplify up the amount of renown required dramatically.
If you have a store bought ship, you keep it. If it is a plat bought ship, you get downgraded.
If you have timed up store bought hooks? You keep that ship until the the hooks have all timed out at which point you back to your actual ship you are at.
Guild doesn't do anything for X years and then you come back? You are right where you left off.

Small guilds will always be able to advance just like large guilds. All it would do is favor faster growth with large guilds, even with a limit of maxed out levels per day.Sounds good to me.

[Tshober]

Agreed. That is like working on commission. No guarantee of progress.

A person going to work every day (aka running quests) is going to be known and gain enough renown to stave off decay to keep status quo. Aka "meets expectations".
A person who does brilliant work (aka gets renown drops) will "exceed expectations" to further advance.

Quite frankly, drop decay all together, and amplify up the amount of renown required dramatically.
If you have a store bought ship, you keep it. If it is a plat bought ship, you get downgraded.
If you have timed up store bought hooks? You keep that ship until the the hooks have all timed out at which point you back to your actual ship you are at.
Guild doesn't do anything for X years and then you come back? You are right where you left off.

Small guilds will always be able to advance just like large guilds. All it would do is favor faster growth with large guilds, even with a limit of maxed out levels per day.

And don't forget small guild bonuses! With that alone, Turbine has done more for small guilds than most MMO's do.

I could get behind that plan. As I have said probably a hundred times in this thread, eliminating decay entirely is my preferred solution. What I can't condone, and will argue vigorously against, is going back to the old decay system.

[slarden]

Agreed. That is like working on commission. No guarantee of progress.

A person going to work every day (aka running quests) is going to be known and gain enough renown to stave off decay to keep status quo. Aka "meets expectations".
A person who does brilliant work (aka gets renown drops) will "exceed expectations" to further advance.

Quite frankly, drop decay all together, and amplify up the amount of renown required dramatically.
If you have a store bought ship, you keep it. If it is a plat bought ship, you get downgraded.
If you have timed up store bought hooks? You keep that ship until the the hooks have all timed out at which point you back to your actual ship you are at.
Guild doesn't do anything for X years and then you come back? You are right where you left off.

Small guilds will always be able to advance just like large guilds. All it would do is favor faster growth with large guilds, even with a limit of maxed out levels per day.

This is effectively the same approach I've been advocating which is that small gulids would need more renown / account to level up but would be on equal footing with regard to decay which is punitive. If decay is eliminated completely that is fine with me. Even an 80% reduction in decay would be enough to prevent most guilds from stalling before they hit level 85.

[Tshober]

Quite frankly, drop decay all together, and amplify up the amount of renown required dramatically.
If you have a store bought ship, you keep it. If it is a plat bought ship, you get downgraded.
If you have timed up store bought hooks? You keep that ship until the the hooks have all timed out at which point you back to your actual ship you are at.
Guild doesn't do anything for X years and then you come back? You are right where you left off.

Small guilds will always be able to advance just like large guilds. All it would do is favor faster growth with large guilds, even with a limit of maxed out levels per day.

I proposed a very similar plan here: http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=385226

My plan also addressed the issue of mass inviting and then later mass kicking to get a high level guild all to yourself. And it also included stuff for guilds to do after they hit 100.

Please keep in mind that the plan was posted before the recent change. So the changes proposed are versus the old decay system.

[slarden]

I proposed a very similar plan here: http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=385226

My plan also addressed the issue of mass inviting and then later mass kicking to get a high level guild all to yourself. And it also included stuff for guilds to do after they hit 100.

Please keep in mind that the plan was posted before the recent change. So the changes proposed are versus the old decay system.

This is not a bad plan either. It's interesting how in this thread you pushed for the removal of the small guild bonus if decay is removed, but you did not do so in your other thread.

Many of the plans in this thread have proposed the same thing:

1) remove decay
2) leave the system much as it is now

I am not sure why Turbine thinks removing decay is a bad thing.

[jhadden30]

Not really, as they tend to leave before they accomplish much if they don't find what they are looking for. Though all it really takes to keep the newest one's contented is a suggestion here and there along the lines of "well there's 3 others on also level 6, why don't you grab a couple hires and head into house P, there are 3 quest givers in the tavern just off the airship". Not a lot of work and it gets to be less as other start following the example.

Sure it is because guilds that do this are thinking the exact same thing that I was talking about it my previous post. If they stay and get renown than great, if not than oh well, we'll just keep recruiting to make up for the people that don't stay. How does this system not promote and favor large guilds. Nobody can give a straight answer because the only answer their is is that it does promote and favor large guilds. Its just killing the naysayers to admit it. Thanks for the advice on how to keep people in my guild, I'll consider your advice when people are leaving my guild to join a large guild because its more attractive to some people to be in a large high level guild knowing full well that they did nothing to contribute to the success of said guild, only for the sole benefit of having a bigger ship, better buffs and a larger pool of people to quest with.

[Tshober]

It's interesting how in this thread you pushed for the removal of the small guild bonus if decay is removed, but you did not do so in your other thread.


I think you have me confused with another poster. I did not push for removing small guild bonuses in this thread or anywhere. In fact, I stated that I was good with INCREASING the small guild bonuses, if that was needed to keep small and tiny guilds viable.

[Tshober]

How does this system not promote and favor large guilds. Nobody can give a straight answer because the only answer their is is that it does promote and favor large guilds. Its just killing the naysayers to admit it.

LOL. I have been very clear about this. I stated several times that the new decay system always rewards inviting, and never rewards (only punishes) kicking. And a member of a tiny guild argued for page after page that I was wrong about that!

[Impaqt]

Sure it is because guilds that do this are thinking the exact same thing that I was talking about it my previous post. If they stay and get renown than great, if not than oh well, we'll just keep recruiting to make up for the people that don't stay. How does this system not promote and favor large guilds. Nobody can give a straight answer because the only answer their is is that it does promote and favor large guilds. Its just killing the naysayers to admit it. Thanks for the advice on how to keep people in my guild, I'll consider your advice when people are leaving my guild to join a large guild because its more attractive to some people to be in a large high level guild knowing full well that they did nothing to contribute to the success of said guild, only for the sole benefit of having a bigger ship, better buffs and a larger pool of people to quest with.

I dont see anyone claiming the system currently being tested doesnt favor large guilds. Its blatantly clear that it does....

It was also blatant that the previous system favored small guilds.

It also SHOULD be clear than theres a LOT more to being in a guild than its level and ship.

a guild that recruits like crazy, hits 100, then boots everyone is NOT going to be very popular.....

if you have guildies leaving your "Small" guild because large guilds can level faster right now, they were not very good guildies to begin with..

[slarden]

LOL. I have been very clear about this. I stated several times that the new decay system always rewards inviting, and never rewards (only punishes) kicking. And a member of a tiny guild argued for page after page that I was wrong about that!

I completely agree it favors large guilds. I just acknowledged the obvious which is that if a large guild at the 1000 character limited wanted to level faster, they will continue to remove less active people and replace those folks with more active people. The test system still rewards that behavior and as a side benefit, the large guild gained net renown for the time the kicked member was actually in the guild.

A guild of 200 accounts at the 1000 character limit that was previously stalled at 60 will now stall at 93. If that guild wants to level beyond 93 they will need to boot less active people and replace those folks with more active people.

I never disagreed that the new system is highly advantageous to large guilds.

[TrinityTurtle]

I dont see anyone claiming the system currently being tested doesnt favor large guilds. Its blatantly clear that it does....

It was also blatant that the previous system favored small guilds.

It also SHOULD be clear than theres a LOT more to being in a guild than its level and ship.

a guild that recruits like crazy, hits 100, then boots everyone is NOT going to be very popular.....

if you have guildies leaving your "Small" guild because large guilds can level faster right now, they were not very good guildies to begin with..

I completely agree with you about their being more to guilds than the numbers. Also, if a large guild recruits like crazy to get to 100, under the current system, there is no reason to boot anyone. I don't see them dumping thier player base under this new renown system, but so many people seem to be sure it will happen. The reason it happened before was the levels were unsustainable under the old renown system, but now they will be. So the mega guilds where there are always players on and plenty of people to group with will be able to do their thing, and the small guilds will be able to continue on as before. I'm in a small, 9 person guild, and it hasn't changed anything for us, other than we are able to accept people if we choose without penalty. Same for large guilds

If your guildies were only in your small guild to max out the numbers and get the rewards asap vs. being in a small guild where they all know each others names and want to play together, they weren't good guildmates. You aren't losing anything when they leave for the bigger guilds, and have room to find people who are actually worth having as freinds and keep your small guild culture. It's all in how you look at it really.

I think the guild change is great personally, and would love to see people settle down and do their own thing, whether it's big or small, and quit worrying so much what the other players have versus just working on their own things.

[slarden]

I dont see anyone claiming the system currently being tested doesnt favor large guilds. Its blatantly clear that it does....

It was also blatant that the previous system favored small guilds.

It also SHOULD be clear than theres a LOT more to being in a guild than its level and ship.

a guild that recruits like crazy, hits 100, then boots everyone is NOT going to be very popular.....

if you have guildies leaving your "Small" guild because large guilds can level faster right now, they were not very good guildies to begin with..

That's all easy to say, but the large guilds that felt disadvantaged didn't see it that way until the system was changed to it's current state.

When you spend two years buliding up a guild by always taking guild renown instead of a vendor item, taking guild elixirs and choosing high renown options over lower renown options - a few things come to mind immediately:

1) I played by the rules and always focused on renown and now the rules were changed on me
2) It's not worth the grind being in a small guild because I am spending real life $ for elixirs, give up 2k plat per quest by taking renown instead of vendor trash and the system is now rigged against small guilds

For a small guild that already made 85 or higher - this is not as big of deal because they accomplished their goal. But for those of that were working towards that and playing by Turbine's rules, it's hard to see the benefit of trying to buld a small guild when I can simply join a large guild 10 levels below me and get there much easier without buying elxirs and without choosing renown as an end reward.

For me, I never played any MMO except DDO and only started because my friends played. Now I am being told that if I want to be in a small guild with my friends, that is fine, but the price I pay is a daily decay tax 9x more than I would be if I was in a large guild. That is a penalty, not an additional leveling requirement. That is also true for the guilds I know of that consist of husband/wife/1+ teen kids. There are safety reasons why the may want to be in a small guild and now they have to pay a higher decay tax/account to do that.

Of course people are going to leave small guilds because they don't want to be the only one that has to grind, and it won't be a positive experience for many people.

[Impaqt]

That's all easy to say, but the large guilds that felt disadvantaged didn't see it that way until the system was changed to it's current state.

That makes absolutely no sense. I've read and participated in many threads over the past 2 years to the contrary.

[slarden]

That makes absolutely no sense. I've read and participated in many threads over the past 2 years to the contrary.

I was responding to this


It also SHOULD be clear than theres a LOT more to being in a guild than its level and ship.

Large guilds were booting people because they wanted a higher guild level and the ship, ameneties that come with it. All of a sudden this should be a non-issue for small guilds?

The issue I always heard from large guilds is that they were stuck at a level. That basically means getting a higher level and thus a bigger ship was always an important factor.

So this comment should make more sense now: That's all easy to say, but the large guilds that felt disadvantaged didn't see it that way until the system was changed to it's current state.

As for poularity I didn't see booting members making any of the large guilds unpopular. The main reputation issue that some large guilds struggle with on Sarlona has to do more with bad experiences with other people from the guild. I always think it is unfair when I hear the party leader say - "someone wants to get in from guild "X" does anyone know the person?" If nobody gives a thumbs up it is an auto-reject. I would never do this myself, but it happens. I never heard anyone say Guild X dumped over 200 players last year - don't let them in.

I would never grow a guild and boot because I think it's selfish and wrong,. Character > Achievements

[Tshober]

Also, if a large guild recruits like crazy to get to 100, under the current system, there is no reason to boot anyone. I don't see them dumping thier player base under this new renown system, but so many people seem to be sure it will happen. The reason it happened before was the levels were unsustainable under the old renown system, but now they will be.

It may happen, some people are just spiteful and mean, but if it does happen it will NOT be because the new decay system rewarded it or did not punish it. The opponents of the new system claim that it so overwhemingly rewards large guilds that no small guild will survive. And then they also claim that guild leaders will kick all their members when they get to 100. Hello? If the system overwhelmingly favors large guilds, where does the incentive come from to kick all your members? Hint: not from the system!

The old decay system did actually reward such behaviors though. That is one of the reasons it was changed, IMO.

[Tshober]

For me, I never played any MMO except DDO and only started because my friends played. Now I am being told that if I want to be in a small guild with my friends, that is fine, but the price I pay is a daily decay tax 9x more than I would be if I was in a large guild. That is a penalty, not an additional leveling requirement. That is also true for the guilds I know of that consist of husband/wife/1+ teen kids. There are safety reasons why the may want to be in a small guild and now they have to pay a higher decay tax/account to do that.

Of course people are going to leave small guilds because they don't want to be the only one that has to grind, and it won't be a positive experience for many people.


Maybe you should try playing some more MMO's. Turbine has done more for small guilds than most MMO's do, just with the small guild bonuses alone. Your guild is thinking about Star Wars you said. Does SW have guild levels? If so, how does leveling up work there? Are small guilds able to level up just as fast as large guilds in Star Wars? I have never played that game myself but I have played enough MMO's to know that the odds are your small guild will be worse off in SW than they are DDO, relative to large guilds. But surely you have already researched that, it is such an important subject for you after all.

[Impaqt]

I was responding to this



Large guilds were booting people because they wanted a higher guild level and the ship, ameneties that come with it. All of a sudden this should be a non-issue for small guilds?

The issue I always heard from large guilds is that they were stuck at a level. That basically means getting a higher level and thus a bigger ship was always an important factor.

So this comment should make more sense now: That's all easy to say, but the large guilds that felt disadvantaged didn't see it that way until the system was changed to it's current state.

while I'm sure there were some "large" guilds out there that did indeed start booting people because of renown, I know for a fact that most simply conceded defeat and accepted the fact that they would not level past a certain plateau in the old system. This was certainly the case on Thelanis. My guild is a perfect example and I know several others that were in my exact same shoes. We refused for boot friends because of a poorly conceived system.

the "fact" that many "large guilds" were booting people for renown is simply not true. So no, it doesnt Make sense now..... So please try again to explain to me how I run my large guild.

[smatt]

My guild also didnt' boot people due to the guild level "Plateau" situation. We discussed various possible solutions, but we pretty much came to the conclusion to just ignore it. Without a major influx of very active players, or the very small chance of many of our mamembers again becoming very active we were stuck. Our decay was sittign at about 155K a day, and there simply wasn't a way for us to increase in level.

Now then, the current system has allowed us to start gaining again. The problem with the new system is it removes the check on large guilds over small ones, by removing the per account factor in the decay. That was part of the balancing to keep there from being a very large advantage in having a large membership. The problem is, finding a way to comphensate small and medium guilds, without proving yet another incentive for guilds to become smaller to take advantage of an easier leveling up situation.

[Enoach]

I think if we remove all of the SIZE issues out of the discussion we can boil it down to this:


The change of decay amounts did help guilds, some more than others and admittedly not guilds under the 20 size limit
The enhanced renown scaling that occurs when a guild levels, to artificially slow down guilds to a max of 3 levels per day Hurt. Especially with the size of the hit for just gaining a single level - putting some guilds into perpetual loops of gaining and losing a level for days until they could get enough renown to get over that hump.
The current change is but a single step and more are still needed. Many options for changing how renown decays has been given, including tying it to ship buffs or even just removing decay all together in which case a guild loses renown only when a person leaves


In all honesty debating on what a guild is or what size makes you a guild etc. is just a bunch of spitting into the wind. What we need to hear is what is Turbines next thought on helping Guilds be what they want to be, and not be making decisions on guild make up based on a System which is ancillary to the Game itself.

[Gremmlynn]

I was responding to this



Large guilds were booting people because they wanted a higher guild level and the ship, ameneties that come with it. All of a sudden this should be a non-issue for small guilds?

The issue I always heard from large guilds is that they were stuck at a level. That basically means getting a higher level and thus a bigger ship was always an important factor.

So this comment should make more sense now: That's all easy to say, but the large guilds that felt disadvantaged didn't see it that way until the system was changed to it's current state.

As for poularity I didn't see booting members making any of the large guilds unpopular. The main reputation issue that some large guilds struggle with on Sarlona has to do more with bad experiences with other people from the guild. I always think it is unfair when I hear the party leader say - "someone wants to get in from guild "X" does anyone know the person?" If nobody gives a thumbs up it is an auto-reject. I would never do this myself, but it happens. I never heard anyone say Guild X dumped over 200 players last year - don't let them in.

I would never grow a guild and boot because I think it's selfish and wrong,. Character > AchievementsFor the record, I quit more than one guild when it decided levels were worth more than integrity. When I finally found a guild that didn't kick players most of the ever so precious active players would quit soon after finding out how the guild level system worked. Frankly, I was never keen on the idea of adding a guild level system to begin with as I figured it would just add drama to the game. I woefully underestimated the amount of trouble it would cause. IMO the whole system undermines the original function of guilds.

[soulaeon]

deleted

[slarden]

while I'm sure there were some "large" guilds out there that did indeed start booting people because of renown, I know for a fact that most simply conceded defeat and accepted the fact that they would not level past a certain plateau in the old system. This was certainly the case on Thelanis. My guild is a perfect example and I know several others that were in my exact same shoes. We refused for boot friends because of a poorly conceived system.

the "fact" that many "large guilds" were booting people for renown is simply not true. So no, it doesnt Make sense now..... So please try again to explain to me how I run my large guild.

My understanding is the entire reason for this change was so that large guilds would not boot casuals. Many on this thread said they booted casuals to gain levels. One person said they booted 150 and showed the math of how it benefited his guild.

So it did happen. I argued that I Believe they were booting inactives and not casual players, but others said large guilds were booting casuals. I never did so you will have to take it up with the people on this thread that said this. Others said they would boot casuals if Turbine didn't make this change permanent.

I never for one minute believed that people had the tools to know who was casual and who wasn't, but other people from large guilds disagree with that.

I believe the premise that people will start booting casuals if small guilds a reduction in decay is a severely flawed idea. It's interesting how when I concede the point that large guilds were booting casuals, there is still an argument lol.

[jhadden30]

For the record, I quit more than one guild when it decided levels were worth more than integrity.

Isn't that all that matters? Guilds of all sizes weren't progressing at the desired rate so they changed it so mostly larger guilds have the advantage of gaining as many levels as they can in as short amount of time as possible. Meanwhile my make believe guild is hoping to gain another level by 2013.

[Impaqt]

My understanding is the entire reason for this change was so that large guilds would not boot casuals. Many on this thread said they booted casuals to gain levels. One person said they booted 150 and showed the math of how it benefited his guild.

So it did happen. I argued that I Believe they were booting inactives and not casual players, but others said large guilds were booting casuals. I never did so you will have to take it up with the people on this thread that said this. Others said they would boot casuals if Turbine didn't make this change permanent.

I never for one minute believed that people had the tools to know who was casual and who wasn't, but other people from large guilds disagree with that.

I believe the premise that people will start booting casuals if small guilds a reduction in decay is a severely flawed idea. It's interesting how when I concede the point that large guilds were booting casuals, there is still an argument lol.

whats worse for the game?

Large guilds booting people because they dont contribute enough to the renown gain


or

large guilds giving up on renown because its a broken system.


personally, I think they BOTH contributed to the current experiment.

[Gremmlynn]

My understanding is the entire reason for this change was so that large guilds would not boot casuals. Many on this thread said they booted casuals to gain levels. One person said they booted 150 and showed the math of how it benefited his guild.

So it did happen. I argued that I Believe they were booting inactives and not casual players, but others said large guilds were booting casuals. I never did so you will have to take it up with the people on this thread that said this. Others said they would boot casuals if Turbine didn't make this change permanent.

I never for one minute believed that people had the tools to know who was casual and who wasn't, but other people from large guilds disagree with that.

I believe the premise that people will start booting casuals if small guilds a reduction in decay is a severely flawed idea. It's interesting how when I concede the point that large guilds were booting casuals, there is still an argument lol.No, booting inactives would be mostly pointless.

As for having the tools, just set a target-say one week for the first cut, 5 days for the second-3 days for the third. Require all characters to be logged in within that time period and boot any that exceed it. One couldn't determine exactly how much renown was earned by whom. But once a guild got small enough it wasn't tough to figure out who was joining groups for quests and who might be spending all their time in the PvP pits or whatever as most guilds with enough members to do so tend to group together. Avoiding the unreliable PuG scene one of the main reasons to be in a guild after all.

[jhadden30]

Here's a solution: why not just dissolve guild levels and sizes and just let everyone pay for ships and buffs with turbine points or platinum or even favor for the matter? That would stop making it a gigantic competition and bragging rights showdown. This way we could all get back to playing and having fun which is what we're supposed to be doing in the first place.

[Gremmlynn]

Isn't that all that matters? Guilds of all sizes weren't progressing at the desired rate so they changed it so mostly larger guilds have the advantage of gaining as many levels as they can in as short amount of time as possible. Meanwhile my make believe guild is hoping to gain another level by 2013.No they changed it so that for those guilds in which guild levels were all that mattered the solution was more positive to the player base overall than it had been. While feeling "forced" to recruit may not be any better than feeling "forced" to kick, I can assure you being invited to a guild is generally superior to being kicked from one.

As for your guild, when did you hope to gain a level by before this change?

[jhadden30]

No, booting inactives would be mostly pointless.

As for having the tools, just set a target-say one week for the first cut, 5 days for the second-3 days for the third. Require all characters to be logged in within that time period and boot any that exceed it. One couldn't determine exactly how much renown was earned by whom. But once a guild got small enough it wasn't tough to figure out who was joining groups for quests and who might be spending all their time in the PvP pits or whatever as most guilds with enough members to do so tend to group together. Avoiding the unreliable PuG scene one of the main reasons to be in a guild after all.

But doesn't this logic still stiff the casual players that everyone is trying to convince me that I am so much against?

[Gremmlynn]

Here's a solution: why not just dissolve guild levels and sizes and just let everyone pay for ships and buffs with turbine points or platinum or even favor for the matter? That would stop making it a gigantic competition and bragging rights showdown. This way we could all get back to playing and having fun which is what we're supposed to be doing in the first place.Works for me.

[jhadden30]

No they changed it so that for those guilds in which guild levels were all that mattered the solution was more positive to the player base overall than it had been. While feeling "forced" to recruit may not be any better than feeling "forced" to kick, I can assure you being invited to a guild is generally superior to being kicked from one.

As for your guild, when did you hope to gain a level by before this change?

At the exact same rate that we now. Decay is still a factor in small guilds but is virtually meaningless to larger groups.

[jhadden30]

Works for me.

Good, we've reached a point of agreement. Now all we have to do is convince others.

[yawumpus]

I dont see anyone claiming the system currently being tested doesnt favor large guilds. Its blatantly clear that it does....

It was also blatant that the previous system favored small guilds.

It also SHOULD be clear than theres a LOT more to being in a guild than its level and ship.

a guild that recruits like crazy, hits 100, then boots everyone is NOT going to be very popular.....

if you have guildies leaving your "Small" guild because large guilds can level faster right now, they were not very good guildies to begin with..

It was hardly "blatant" that the old system favored small guilds. It certainly blatantly favored guilds [much] larger than 50. Using 50 as your example "large guild" ignores some curious effects about "blatantly favoring large guilds".

Under the old system, after 50 members you would always gain reknown faster with a larger guild all the way up to 1000 members (assuming all guildies are equal). The catch was finding guildies who at least maintain the guild's average reknown income. Large guilds would often whine that they added a ton of pikers and that it impossible for them to collect reknown; the smaller guilds should just spam the harbor if they wanted guild levels. Using a 50 member guild as "large" is hiding the obvious advantage 100-1000 member guilds had.

Under the old system, large guilds would shoot up to until decay got somewhat large. Guilds smaller than 50 members slowly get a slight advantage after relentless scrounging reknown just to get to levels handed to spamming guilds on a silver platter. Even then, smaller guilds were facing higher decay per member (remember that bit about "total members + 10" when total members isn't all that much larger than 10 it really starts to hurt).

The old system favored huge guilds (casual or not) and reknown-obsessed guilds of size around 12. The fact that a huge guild need not care what its members are doing and still maintain its ranking on the first page of the guild ranking is not "blatant favoring". Somehow 10k+ small guilds have been "blatantly favored" for years and not made it to those levels.

[Gremmlynn]

But doesn't this logic still stiff the casual players that everyone is trying to convince me that I am so much against?That was the old system. Under the new system, even if a casual logs in just once to earn 5 kill renown that's 5 more renown than the guild had previously as it no longer costs more to keep that player on the roster. Under the old, every account on the roster added to the daily decay and any who didn't play enough to earn more than what they added was a liability.

[jhadden30]

Here's a solution: why not just dissolve guild levels and sizes and just let everyone pay for ships and buffs with turbine points or platinum or even favor for the matter? That would stop making it a gigantic competition and bragging rights showdown. This way we could all get back to playing and having fun which is what we're supposed to be doing in the first place.

Just to add to this, why are we able to buy a larger ship with platinum before we are even at a required level to use it. That's like telling a child they can hold a present on Christmas morning but they can't open it until you reach a certain age.

[theslimshady]

At the exact same rate that we now. Decay is still a factor in small guilds but is virtually meaningless to larger groups. so this perplexed me you have no renown gaining issues outside of how fast you gained vrs other guilds

[Gremmlynn]

Just to add to this, why are we able to buy a larger ship with platinum before we are even at a required level to use it. That's like telling a child they can hold a present on Christmas morning but they can't open it until you reach a certain age.Likely because that was the easiest way to code a "guild ship bank" that allows members to make a contribution.

[jhadden30]

so this perplexed me you have no renown gaining issues outside of how fast you gained vrs other guilds

My biggest complaint is that a small guild still has a higher amount of decay per account than a larger guild, plain and simple. Making it a calk walk for larger guilds. As I've stated earlier, this favors large guilds and says "too bad" to small groups.

[slarden]

It was hardly "blatant" that the old system favored small guilds. It certainly blatantly favored guilds [much] larger than 50. Using 50 as your example "large guild" ignores some curious effects about "blatantly favoring large guilds".

Under the old system, after 50 members you would always gain reknown faster with a larger guild all the way up to 1000 members (assuming all guildies are equal). The catch was finding guildies who at least maintain the guild's average reknown income. Large guilds would often whine that they added a ton of pikers and that it impossible for them to collect reknown; the smaller guilds should just spam the harbor if they wanted guild levels. Using a 50 member guild as "large" is hiding the obvious advantage 100-1000 member guilds had.

Under the old system, large guilds would shoot up to until decay got somewhat large. Guilds smaller than 50 members slowly get a slight advantage after relentless scrounging reknown just to get to levels handed to spamming guilds on a silver platter. Even then, smaller guilds were facing higher decay per member (remember that bit about "total members + 10" when total members isn't all that much larger than 10 it really starts to hurt).

The old system favored huge guilds (casual or not) and reknown-obsessed guilds of size around 12. The fact that a huge guild need not care what its members are doing and still maintain its ranking on the first page of the guild ranking is not "blatant favoring". Somehow 10k+ small guilds have been "blatantly favored" for years and not made it to those levels.

The argument that the system favored small guilds is based on the fact that the leader board predominantly consists of small guilds. Although this represents well under 1% of all small guilds.

The logic has the same flaw as saying that since most major league baseaball players are over 6 feet, it's easy to make it to the major leagues if you are over 6 feet. The logic doesn't work - just like it doesn't work when you use high achieving small guilds as the example of what all small guilds should be able to do easily.

The system always favored large guilds as you said, but it's not possible to get a guild of 200 active enough to cover their daily decay. Nor is it easy to motivate a large guild of 200 to take elixirs or take renown as an end reward. Nor is it easy to recruit 200 people that are highly active. That is the one common factor of all gulids on the leader board, a high level of activity/member. Why all small gulids are being penalized for this... I have no idea.

There was actually a flaw in the old system where small guilds did get less decay/account due to the way the min (acct +10) and guild renown bonus played together. I had that info in what I proposed as a solution and will try to find that and repost it. It is actually quite easy to fix that problem.

I think it's fine to lower decay, but many small guilds also get stuck at a level and somehow the casual people from those guilds have been completely ignored.

Based on comments, it appears Turbine focused on high achieving small guilds and large guilds when making this change.

[Impaqt]

It was hardly "blatant" that the old system favored small guilds. It certainly blatantly favored guilds [much] larger than 50. Using 50 as your example "large guild" ignores some curious effects about "blatantly favoring large guilds".


Under the old system, after 50 members you would always gain reknown faster with a larger guild all the way up to 1000 members (assuming all guildies are equal). The catch was finding guildies who at least maintain the guild's average reknown income. Large guilds would often whine that they added a ton of pikers and that it impossible for them to collect reknown; the smaller guilds should just spam the harbor if they wanted guild levels. Using a 50 member guild as "large" is hiding the obvious advantage 100-1000 member guilds had.

Under the old system, large guilds would shoot up to until decay got somewhat large. Guilds smaller than 50 members slowly get a slight advantage after relentless scrounging reknown just to get to levels handed to spamming guilds on a silver platter. Even then, smaller guilds were facing higher decay per member (remember that bit about "total members + 10" when total members isn't all that much larger than 10 it really starts to hurt).

The old system favored huge guilds (casual or not) and reknown-obsessed guilds of size around 12. The fact that a huge guild need not care what its members are doing and still maintain its ranking on the first page of the guild ranking is not "blatant favoring". Somehow 10k+ small guilds have been "blatantly favored" for years and not made it to those levels.


because there were so many 100+ account guilds at the top of the renown charts?

How many of your 10k+ small guilds are innactive?

[Chaos000]

if a large guild recruits like crazy to get to 100, under the current system, there is no reason to boot anyone. I don't see them dumping their player base under this new renown system, but so many people seem to be sure it will happen. The reason it happened before was the levels were unsustainable under the old renown system, but now they will be.

In order to make the system equitable there really needs to be a more non-luck-based method to gain renown in-game (just thinking out loud here… renown given as a possible end reward at quest completion? Normal: 50, Hard: 150, Elite: 500, Epic Elite: 1000)

The other item to address is that the guild size bonus should be calculated “per rate of decay” as opposed to “per month.” Raising the *sweet spot* from 6 to any other arbitrary number will not fix the issue as there is nothing preventing the creation of extra f2p accounts as placeholders (for example 2 players + 4 “fake” accounts that log in at least once a month for maximum 6 player bonus)

The more I think about it, eliminating the renown bonus based on size and replacing it for an equitable reduction of decay makes more sense. The incentive of having “placeholder” accounts to guarantee maximum renown bonus remains in the current system. (A player quad boxing I find justified… a player who has a single character on a dummy account for the sole purpose of counting as an “active” player subverts the intention of the renown bonus)

Here is another proposal: 50+ player guilds get 0 renown bonus currently so… each player = 2% of the total decay. (for example guild of a single person = 2% total decay (i.e. -98% = virtually no loss at low levels), guild of 6 = 12% total decay, guild of 25 = 50%... capping out at 100%) The benefit of recruiting more than 50 players will be the potential of a higher rate of total renown gain (in-theory) and no disincentive to stop recruiting past 50 players.

Under this proposed system... small guilds will no longer have any issue progressing to the next level and decay will only be an issue for guilds with long periods of inactivity. Yes guilds that have numbers significantly larger than 50 will *still*be favored under this system (theoretical potential will indicate that they would pump out seemingly ridiculous numbers). HOWEVER. The argument will no longer be about whether or not small guilds can progress without adding additional members. It will be whether or not guilds larger than 50 could reasonably suffer a higher decay tax without needing to boot casual players in order to progress.

[theslimshady]

My biggest complaint is that a small guild still has a higher amount of decay per account than a larger guild, plain and simple. Making it a calk walk for larger guilds. As I've stated earlier, this favors large guilds and says "too bad" to small groups.
so it has nothing to do with hitting renown walls or decaying levels or kicking inactive accounts only about how you fair against every one else and if you cant level as fast as everyone else its a doomed system seems a bit biased to me as a large guild we have never advocated fast leveling only the abilty to do so period

[slarden]

Enoach's point is valid that the small guld bonus should be part of the equation. If you multiply # of players * guild bonus it gets you to the effective renown earning power of a guild

Here is a slight tweak that takes this into account. This is based on the old system. In all cases the decay is less than or equal to what is proposed in the test system:

http://i1281.photobucket.com/albums/a519/slarden/PROPOSEDGUILD.jpg

For guilds with 90 or more accounts this would match the test method
For guilds with <90 accounts, they would see a reduction in decay such that decay is reduced by ~ 80% for all guilds. In all cases they would get less decay than the test method.

Here is the impact for some various guild sizes. The # in parenthes takes into account the guild bonus and the reduction in renown required by the guild. The proposed system column is what I am proposing as an alternative to the test system. The test system based benefits solely on size - bigger is better.

http://i1281.photobucket.com/albums/a519/slarden/PROPGUILDMATH2.jpg

If the guild bonus curve is flattened so that all guilds size 1-12 get a 200% bonus rather than bell curve centered around 6 members, the decay chart would like this:

http://i1281.photobucket.com/albums/a519/slarden/PROPGUILDMATH3.jpg

Again the goal of this would be to help out small casual guilds that stand in place get the same type of benefit large casual guilds received, but all guilds would benefit relative to the old system. The key is evening out the punitive decay aspect of the guild system and not the leveling aspect.

I am not sure if the devs will even see this, but if they do I hope they consider this system or something similar as an alternative that recognizes that small casual guilds also need some help. I believe small guilds have a place in ddo and am hopeful Turbine believes that also.

It would be great if they lowered ship and amenity requirements by 15-20 levels as well since that is what most people care about more than the level itself.

Yawumpus, as promised here is the chart that shows small guilds did actually get a benefit on decay/account under the old system because the math was oversimplified. This is a very simple proposal that fixes the old system with a slight change in formula and lowers decay by 80% for most guilds. For gulids 90 and above it matches the test model. For guilds below level 90 they get some benefit so the decay differences aren't so outrageous. You can see the unfair advantage small gulids got regarding decay in the first column (parentheses). The # in parentheses shows the renown required to cover decay when factoring in the small guild bonus. Large guilds were correct that decay was unfair to large guilds - nobody ever bothered to do the math to prove it.

It also recognizes that large guilds do have a harder time with renown and thus does favor those guilds slightly as it should.

[jhadden30]

so it has nothing to do with hitting renown walls or decaying levels or kicking inactive accounts only about how you fair against every one else and if you cant level as fast as everyone else its a doomed system seems a bit biased to me as a large guild we have never advocated fast leveling only the abilty to do so period

Nope, I have already stated that this system is ridiculous and needs to be scrapped completely. Why favor one group over another? I posted a solution on the last page, you are welcome to read it and speak your opinion on the matter.

[jhadden30]

Here's a solution: why not just dissolve guild levels and sizes and just let everyone pay for ships and buffs with turbine points or platinum or even favor for the matter? That would stop making it a gigantic competition and bragging rights showdown. This way we could all get back to playing and having fun which is what we're supposed to be doing in the first place.

Here's my idea again. This game needs to be fun, much like the book version was and still is. It shouldn't be a contest over who's is bigger and better.

[theslimshady]

Yawumpus, as promised here is the chart that shows small guilds did actually get a benefit on decay/account under the old system because the math was oversimplified. This is a very simple proposal that fixes the old system with a slight change in formula and lowers decay by 80% for most guilds. For gulids 90 and above it matches the test model. For guilds below level 90 they get some benefit so the decay differences aren't so outrageous. You can see the unfair advantage small gulids got regarding decay in the first column (parentheses). The # in parentheses shows the renown required to cover decay when factoring in the small guild bonus. Large guilds were correct that decay was unfair to large guilds - nobody ever bothered to do the math to prove it.

we decided most of us hated the old system and needed a change and so anything with the base format of the ole renown system should be scrapped the idea that guilds should hit any kinda renown wall is the real issue and everything proposed off that should be disregarded the graphs and charts all thou impressive does not add in humanity to the math if you have a baby get sick have to go away to jail whatever you or your guild under any system should not be bleed out to death and preposing anything with a system based on activity does that

[Gremmlynn]

Here is another proposal: 50+ player guilds get 0 renown bonus currently so… each player = 2% of the total decay. (for example guild of a single person = 2% total decay (i.e. -98% = virtually no loss at low levels), guild of 6 = 12% total decay, guild of 25 = 50%... capping out at 100%) The benefit of recruiting more than 50 players will be the potential of a higher rate of total renown gain (in-theory) and no disincentive to stop recruiting past 50 players.

Under this proposed system... small guilds will no longer have any issue progressing to the next level and decay will only be an issue for guilds with long periods of inactivity. Yes guilds that have numbers significantly larger than 50 will *still*be favored under this system (theoretical potential will indicate that they would pump out seemingly ridiculous numbers). HOWEVER. The argument will no longer be about whether or not small guilds can progress without adding additional members. It will be whether or not guilds larger than 50 could reasonably suffer a higher decay tax without needing to boot casual players in order to progress.No guilds wouldn't have a disincentive to stop recruiting past 50. They would just have a disincentive to recruit casual players at all. As long as there is any cost, be it an actual cost or the loss of a bonus, for adding players it will always cause guilds to make a judgment call as to whether it is a net gain to add or kick a player. This is the whole reason the change was made and the whole reason it is well worth putting guilds that choose not to be part of the solution at a relative disadvantage to those that don't.

[theslimshady]

Did you even read it? Large guilds get the same exact decay reduction under the proposed system as they do under the test system. The only difference is that guild below 90 also get a benfit that more closely matches the large guild benefit - but it is not as good.

The bottom line is that you don't want small guilds to get any sort of decay reduction.

not true i want no decay for guilds under 12 members the horserace was over along time ago the prestige was already rewarded the leaderboards dont matter small guilds should have no decay based on humanity issue and having to not play the game therefor they should be able to pick up where they left off when they return to the game and not feel burden by some tax of renown
the seperate issue of should small guilds get as much renown as a large guild is a entire different aurgument imo and should be addressed as such this change was about large mega guilds having real issues with bleeding out levels and going backwards people quitting game or guilds over it kicking inactives to fill spots to try and keep up with that same renown tax

[Gremmlynn]

so it has nothing to do with hitting renown walls or decaying levels or kicking inactive accounts only about how you fair against every one else and if you cant level as fast as everyone else its a doomed system seems a bit biased to me as a large guild we have never advocated fast leveling only the abilty to do so periodHell I've never even worried about hitting that wall except that it causes the members that log in to play to seek greener pastures rather than be there to keep the members that log in to see if there is anyone to play with from turning around and logging back off...until they give up on even doing that.

[Gremmlynn]

Yawumpus, as promised here is the chart that shows small guilds did actually get a benefit on decay/account under the old system because the math was oversimplified. This is a very simple proposal that fixes the old system with a slight change in formula and lowers decay by 80% for most guilds. For gulids 90 and above it matches the test model. For guilds below level 90 they get some benefit so the decay differences aren't so outrageous. You can see the unfair advantage small gulids got regarding decay in the first column (parentheses). The # in parentheses shows the renown required to cover decay when factoring in the small guild bonus. Large guilds were correct that decay was unfair to large guilds - nobody ever bothered to do the math to prove it.

It also recognizes that large guilds do have a harder time with renown and thus does favor those guilds slightly as it should.The problem is that it still favors a guild with 10 players earning X renown over a guild with 10 players earning X renown and 50 others averaging X/10 renown. So it will still be better to be small and extremely active. Slightly favoring large guilds just helps those players that are slightly less active to a smaller degree than what their guild is favored.

[Tshober]

The bottom line is that you don't want small guilds to get any sort of decay reduction.

No, as I have said too freaking many times, I support removing decay entirely.

I do no want to go back to the old decay system.

I do no want to go back to the old decay system and make minor adjustments.

I am okay with making minor adjustments, just not with going back to the old system first.

The old decay system sucked way too much for me to ever support going back to it.

If the devs elect to go back to the old decay system, I will consider it a defeat for me, my guild, and DDO.

[jhadden30]

No, as I have said too freaking many times, I support removing decay entirely.

The old decay system sucked way too much for me to ever support going back to it.

If the devs elect to go back to the old decay system, I will consider it a defeat for me, my guild, and DDO.

You are absolutely correct on this one. How would you feel if the entire system was scrapped? Guilds would still exist just without all the fuss.

[slarden]

The problem is that it still favors a guild with 10 players earning X renown over a guild with 10 players earning X renown and 50 others averaging X/10 renown. So it will still be better to be small and extremely active. Slightly favoring large guilds just helps those players that are slightly less active to a smaller degree than what their guild is favored.

Under the old system small guilds had less decay/renown when factoring in the guild bonus. What I suggested gives small guilds 3x more decay than large gulds instead of 9x more decay when factoring in the gulid bonus. So large guilds are still getting a signficant benefit relative to small guilds compared to the old system.

I don't think leveling should be based on account, but decay should factor in the # of accounts since it is punitive. I just think decay should be much less than it was for all guilds.

[Tshober]

You are absolutely correct on this one. How would you feel if the entire system was scrapped? Guilds would still exist just without all the fuss.

That would be preferable to going back to the old decay system for me, although I am uncertain a majority of my guild members would agree with me on that one. However, I am still hopeful we can reach an acceptable system that will allow people to keep the ships and buffs they now enjoy.

[theslimshady]

The test system was based on the old system with a change to the formula. The change I proposed was based on the old system with a change to the formula.

The only difference between the two is that gulds below 90 people get reduced renown, but not as much as large guilds. Removing decay entirely would certainly be great, but I am not sure why you opposed to a system that would reduce decay for small guilds also if Turbine is unwilling to eliminate decay.

because everything that includes any kind of activity limits or account size based decay is unexceptable to much stuff happens in real life to take away the fun of this game when we can play and the ole system did that daily for a huge number of players
so proposing to go back to any form of it is well just not going to get good reactions nothing i am saying is against or for your guild personally

i again beleave the base system is great the way it is currently that small guilds under 12 should see 0 decay rate at all levels with there current small bonus and from 13-50 should get better bonuses so all guilds can progress forward

[Gremmlynn]

No, as I have said too freaking many times, I support removing decay entirely.

I do no want to go back to the old decay system.

I do no want to go back to the old decay system and make minor adjustments.

I am okay with making minor adjustments, just not with going back to the old system first.

The old decay system sucked way too much for me to ever support going back to it.

If the devs elect to go back to the old decay system, I will consider it a defeat for me, my guild, and DDO.People just can't seem to understand that as long as there is a cost assigned to having a player in a guild that some players will come out in the red on a cost to benefit analysis and thus be a liability to have in one's guild. Turbine might as well send those players promos of other games as the less a player plays the more important it is for them to have a network of people in place to play with. Even if the core members of the guild mostly ignore them, at least the other "noobs" they are using to gain easy renown should provide a better environment than the LFM panel and some "kindly" guild vet might even point out which quests are likely to be the best, if for no other reason that to increase their renown drops. So even in the worst case the would seem to be better off.

[Tshober]

The test system was based on the old system with a change to the formula. The change I proposed was based on the old system with a change to the formula.

You make a good point there, I admit. But the change they have made has done so much good that I am just unwilling to risk undoing it to try going in a different direction.

[Chaos000]

No guilds wouldn't have a disincentive to stop recruiting past 50. They would just have a disincentive to recruit casual players at all. As long as there is any cost, be it an actual cost or the loss of a bonus, for adding players it will always cause guilds to make a judgment call as to whether it is a net gain to add or kick a player.

The disincentive to recruit casual players is more apparent for guilds that have always relied heavily on the mechanics of the guild renown size bonus. Remove the size bonus and reducing the decay makes sense. 2% of total renown for each player levels the playing field for guilds between the sizes of 1-50. If the renown caps out at 100%, 51+ guilds actually can reduce the 2% to a lower percentage per player they add. I believe inherent diminishing returns you get with added numbers (higher theoretical potential, lower probability to meet that potential) will prevent abuse, personally I believe that until the numbers swell enough that the decay percentage per player becomes less than 0.09%... the decay “tax” should not increase.

Once a guild gets their recruitment up to 50, the incentive is to continue recruiting players be it casual or active. I would be nice if guilds no longer required you to pull all your characters out of your current guild to join them.

Kicking players still nets loss renown. I feel it should be double the amount lost when the player makes the decision to quit the guild. Assign a multiplier if multiple players are booted within a 24 hour period? I don’t know… balancing is kind of tricky I don’t envy the developer that makes these calls. I’m trying to keep the suggestions simple so that it would be less difficult to implement.

[slarden]

The disincentive to recruit casual players is more apparent for guilds that have always relied heavily on the mechanics of the guild renown size bonus. Remove the size bonus and reducing the decay makes sense. 2% of total renown for each player levels the playing field for guilds between the sizes of 1-50. If the renown caps out at 100%, 51+ guilds actually can reduce the 2% to a lower percentage per player they add. I believe inherent diminishing returns you get with added numbers (higher theoretical potential, lower probability to meet that potential) will prevent abuse, personally I believe that until the numbers swell enough that the decay percentage per player becomes less than 0.09%... the decay “tax” should not increase.

Once a guild gets their recruitment up to 50, the incentive is to continue recruiting players be it casual or active. I would be nice if guilds no longer required you to pull all your characters out of your current guild to join them.

Kicking players still nets loss renown. I feel it should be double the amount lost when the player makes the decision to quit the guild. Assign a multiplier if multiple players are booted within a 24 hour period? I don’t know… balancing is kind of tricky I don’t envy the developer that makes these calls. I’m trying to keep the suggestions simple so that it would be less difficult to implement.

Even with the guild renown size bonus we are still required to generate 9x more renown/account than a guild of 200. This bonus only partially reduced the disadvantage we already had. In the case of our small guild we made up for this by always taking renown as an end reward, using guild elixirs and focusing on renown.

We never had an advantage other than focusing on renown for leveling. There as a flaw in the decay system that gave small guilds a benefit that I never realized until I did the math.

Under the test system since addding a new player doesn't add decay, you actually gain renown when bringing someone on and then later booting them.

I think booted active players should result in 100% loss of renown if we want to remove the incentive to boot players. Why put a punitive decay tax on small guilds when it is far easier to put a puntive measure that prevents booting.

If large guilds won't be booting players any more, they should be behind this. If a guild really wants to get rid of a player, they should get no benefit from having had this person in the guild in the first place.

[theslimshady]

It's funny, because you just got this massive benefit as a large guild and argue that I should be happy because nothing changed for me.

But if I propose a plan that gives you the same exact benefit as the test system while giving a partial benefit to guilds of less than 90 you are against it even though it does nothing to hurt you. That is the case even when under the old system small guilds have less decay and other the proposed system they would have 3x more decay.

I am not sure how it's possible to conclude anything other than you don't want small gulds to get any benefit at all.

If you think small guilds should get a benefit, what would you propose? Obviously all seem fine with removing decay entirely, but we all know Turbine is not ok with that idea. What would be your plan for giving small gulids a reasonable amount of decay relative to large gulds? Or do you really just want the system exactly the way it is now so that only small gulds suffer with this massive decay tax?

0-12 accounts 0 decay none at all at any level all renown gained is kept and small guild bonus applied
13-50 same as new system except raise bonus to renown gained
51-+ nothing change nothing
i beleave this with the current system makes small guilds under 12 cas player friendly
meduim and small guilds can still be uber and large guilds can be large casual guilds without having to bleed out or hit renown walls forcing to restructure

[theslimshady]

I like the idea of going off of a size schedule. That is almost too generous to give small guilds no decay at all. I would be happy with just a smaller number. I do like the concept of measuring decay by guild size range.

well my reason behind that is i dont think its fair even to tight small guilds that have real life issues that come up that when they come back to game they would have to restructure or have to bleed out

and imo over 12 accounts can recruit or plan ahead and large can just overwhelm this issue making it safe for all if they cant be active to feel like its okay to come back and play without any burden this imo goes with the same type of spirit used across dnd tables across the world where if you couldnt attend that week it wasnt like you became a worthless player and hope you get back soon

[Artos_Fabril]

well my reason behind that is i dont think its fair even to tight small guilds that have real life issues that come up that when they come back to game they would have to restructure or have to bleed out

and imo over 12 accounts can recruit or plan ahead and large can just overwhelm this issue making it safe for all if they cant be active to feel like its okay to come back and play without any burden this imo goes with the same type of spirit used across dnd tables across the world where if you couldnt attend that week it wasnt like you became a worthless player and hope you get back soon
If your concern is people problems caused to the guild by people being away for real-life issues, why not just have all decay based on the number of active accounts.

This is where I again plug my idea of basing decay solely off the number of active accounts (with no min guild size or addition), and calculating active accounts based on whether any renown was earned, rather than whether a character was logged in.

[yawumpus]

Yawumpus, as promised here is the chart that shows small guilds did actually get a benefit on decay/account under the old system because the math was oversimplified. This is a very simple proposal that fixes the old system with a slight change in formula and lowers decay by 80% for most guilds. For gulids 90 and above it matches the test model. For guilds below level 90 they get some benefit so the decay differences aren't so outrageous. You can see the unfair advantage small gulids got regarding decay in the first column (parentheses). The # in parentheses shows the renown required to cover decay when factoring in the small guild bonus. Large guilds were correct that decay was unfair to large guilds - nobody ever bothered to do the math to prove it.

It also recognizes that large guilds do have a harder time with renown and thus does favor those guilds slightly as it should.

Read my post. My claim was that increasing membership over 50 (the number Impact used for his example "large guild") favored the guild renown increase in every way. Your graph shows exactly that.

I did admit that once a small guild worked five to ten times as hard just to get to the upper levels, they finally had a chance to get higher levels without being hit as much. The old rules benefited large guilds (both casual and otherwise) and reknown obsessed small guilds. Just having less decay/account is one thing, once you cover the decay you still have to pull millions of reknown with fewer members.

Right now, I'm in a 6 man guild that finally got a chance to start getting more rewards, but we are being creamed by decay that larger guilds no longer worry about at all (we aren't dedicated reknown farmers). Once upon a time, it was a relatively large and active guild, then it imploded in a burst of drama shortly after the guild levels started. We've probably added half the reknown since the implosion, but who knows if we qualify as an "active guild" by our high reknown overlords.

[slarden]

Read my post. My claim was that increasing membership over 50 (the number Impact used for his example "large guild") favored the guild renown increase in every way. Your graph shows exactly that.

I did admit that once a small guild worked five to ten times as hard just to get to the upper levels, they finally had a chance to get higher levels without being hit as much. The old rules benefited large guilds (both casual and otherwise) and reknown obsessed small guilds. Just having less decay/account is one thing, once you cover the decay you still have to pull millions of reknown with fewer members.

Right now, I'm in a 6 man guild that finally got a chance to start getting more rewards, but we are being creamed by decay that larger guilds no longer worry about at all (we aren't dedicated reknown farmers). Once upon a time, it was a relatively large and active guild, then it imploded in a burst of drama shortly after the guild levels started. We've probably added half the reknown since the implosion, but who knows if we qualify as an "active guild" by our high reknown overlords.

oh I completely agree with every point you have. I was only acknowledging that the old system also had flaws. But I don't think the new system is right either.

[slarden]

If your concern is people problems caused to the guild by people being away for real-life issues, why not just have all decay based on the number of active accounts.

This is where I again plug my idea of basing decay solely off the number of active accounts (with no min guild size or addition), and calculating active accounts based on whether any renown was earned, rather than whether a character was logged in.

Based on the way you described it - it sounded like the main intent was for small guilds to get a lower renown bonus on days when some didn't log in.

It seems like this system can only hurt a small guild and only help a large guild. Seems like just another way to stick it to those of us in small guilds even more unless there is more to your methodology that I am missing.

[eris2323]

Even with the guild renown size bonus we are still required to generate 9x more renown/account than a guild of 200. This bonus only partially reduced the disadvantage we already had. In the case of our small guild we made up for this by always taking renown as an end reward, using guild elixirs and focusing on renown.

We never had an advantage other than focusing on renown for leveling. There as a flaw in the decay system that gave small guilds a benefit that I never realized until I did the math.

Under the test system since addding a new player doesn't add decay, you actually gain renown when bringing someone on and then later booting them.

I think booted active players should result in 100% loss of renown if we want to remove the incentive to boot players. Why put a punitive decay tax on small guilds when it is far easier to put a puntive measure that prevents booting.

If large guilds won't be booting players any more, they should be behind this. If a guild really wants to get rid of a player, they should get no benefit from having had this person in the guild in the first place.

I wish you'd stop calling your guild a small guild - by definition of players, you have a 'very small guild'.

Small guilds, by Turbines definition, have 10+ players, and you do not qualify for that.

For me, I dunno, 9 times the work, when you have only 2 active players, versus 200 active players of a large guild?

Seems like you're getting off easy.

[jhadden30]

That would be preferable to going back to the old decay system for me, although I am uncertain a majority of my guild members would agree with me on that one. However, I am still hopeful we can reach an acceptable system that will allow people to keep the ships and buffs they now enjoy.

I agree plus scrapping it would probably get the same reaction from the majority of other guilds as well. Maybe, maybe not I guess.

[Chaos000]

Even with the guild renown size bonus we are still required to generate 9x more renown/account than a guild of 200. This bonus only partially reduced the disadvantage we already had. In the case of our small guild we made up for this by always taking renown as an end reward, using guild elixirs and focusing on renown

What would be your issue with reducing decay tax by 2% per player less than 50? (50 = 100%, 25 = 50%, 5 = 10% of the decay tax) larger guilds will not experience the reduction AND there would no longer need to be a renown bonus as the decay tax will no longer be an inhibiting factor for smaller guilds? Progression for all guilds will now be possible as decay now becomes nonexistent in smaller numbers without penalizing large guilds either.

[theslimshady]

If your concern is people problems caused to the guild by people being away for real-life issues, why not just have all decay based on the number of active accounts.

This is where I again plug my idea of basing decay solely off the number of active accounts (with no min guild size or addition), and calculating active accounts based on whether any renown was earned, rather than whether a character was logged in.

because we are looking for easy button fixes to already wrote code not into rewritting the entire guild leveling system

because as leader of one of the largest most active highest level guilds across the servers i am fine with the new system thumbs up

because tring to find any common ground between small and large guilds is silly and not really even needed

because the leveling speed of renown gain was never a issue the horserace to first was over a year ago i beleave everyone else will always be 2nd best

because alot and i mean alot of players are okay with being in large casual guilds and the old renown system made all of them feel bad

because no where else is there a example of smaller amounts of people being equal to a larger amount of the same kind of people {game players } anywhere i mean 200-2 i dont care what 2 they are they have no chance of success in a head to head period

because when we tried to open debates to address the issues we all were having we were abused by a minorty of people calling us lazy and inactive and all kinda other names my favorite is korthos style army

because when we are finally feeling good about renown we have to hear about the reason it sucks from small guilds isnt they cant gain renown and move forward but solely on that they cant keep up with the largest examples and we was only asking for forward moving not really even once tring to compare ourselves with the small guilds

[theslimshady]

Nope, I have already stated that this system is ridiculous and needs to be scrapped completely. Why favor one group over another? I posted a solution on the last page, you are welcome to read it and speak your opinion on the matter.

well from a buisness standpoint a larger body of customers is always the smartest bet i mean there are guilds on my server with 600 modified account sizes seems to me making them feel better playing the game in anyway would be a smart approach

[Tshober]

What would be your issue with reducing decay tax by 2% per player less than 50? (50 = 100%, 25 = 50%, 5 = 10% of the decay tax) larger guilds will not experience the reduction AND there would no longer need to be a renown bonus as the decay tax will no longer be an inhibiting factor for smaller guilds? Progression for all guilds will now be possible as decay now becomes nonexistent in smaller numbers without penalizing large guilds either.


Here are my criteria for any plan that I will support, listed in order of highest to lowest priority:

Mandatory:

1. There should never be an incentive to kick a player because of the renown they earn.


Not absolutely mandatory but very desirable:

2. There should always be a renown incentive to invite a player to your guild.

3. All guilds should be able to advance and not hit a wall that totally stops them from advancing.

4. Guilds that earn the most renown should level up the fastest.

5. The speed with which guilds level up should be roughly proportional to the amount of renown they earn.


The current test system satisfies all except #3. I believe it could be made to satisfy #3 as well with some tweaking. If I understand your plan correctly, it gains #3 for some guilds but loses #2 for some guilds and so I would reject it and say the current test plan is superior. By the way, the old decay system failed all 5 criteria.

[Artos_Fabril]

Based on the way you described it - it sounded like the main intent was for small guilds to get a lower renown bonus on days when some didn't log in.

It seems like this system can only hurt a small guild and only help a large guild. Seems like just another way to stick it to those of us in small guilds even more unless there is more to your methodology that I am missing.
Decay being based on a per-active-account basis, without a minimum number, means 0 people active = 0 decay. 1 person active = 1/20th of current minimum decay, 50 people active = 2.5 times the current decay. I would also tie the guild size bonus to the number of active people, because if you aren't getting a penalty, there's no justification for a bonus either, and even someone who's passively earning renown and not actively looking for it will provide positive movement.

The key to that system, though, is the way you calculate "activity". I propose that someone is not marked as active until they earn at least one point of renown, and when decay is calculated, the activity flag is reset for every character, so that a player only counts for decay if they have been active since the last decay calc.

[theslimshady]

Decay being based on a per-active-account basis, without a minimum number, means 0 people active = 0 decay. 1 person active = 1/20th of current minimum decay, 50 people active = 2.5 times the current decay. I would also tie the guild size bonus to the number of active people, because if you aren't getting a penalty, there's no justification for a bonus either, and even someone who's passively earning renown and not actively looking for it will provide positive movement.

The key to that system, though, is the way you calculate "activity". I propose that someone is not marked as active until they earn at least one point of renown, and when decay is calculated, the activity flag is reset for every character, so that a player only counts for decay if they have been active since the last decay calc. this would imo require a new coded system which seems really really unrealistic plus maybe a restart of guild levels to begin with and i just dont see how that is even remotely possible or exceptable
i mean understand outside of small guilds not gaining on even ground almost all examples of guilds can forward progress currently withuout having to change but one number

[Tshober]

Decay being based on a per-active-account basis, without a minimum number, means 0 people active = 0 decay. 1 person active = 1/20th of current minimum decay, 50 people active = 2.5 times the current decay. I would also tie the guild size bonus to the number of active people, because if you aren't getting a penalty, there's no justification for a bonus either, and even someone who's passively earning renown and not actively looking for it will provide positive movement.

The key to that system, though, is the way you calculate "activity". I propose that someone is not marked as active until they earn at least one point of renown, and when decay is calculated, the activity flag is reset for every character, so that a player only counts for decay if they have been active since the last decay calc.

I'm sorry, but are you proposing that this change be added to the current test decay system? I tried to follow back on your posts in the thread but it was not clear to me.

[jhadden30]

well from a buisness standpoint a larger body of customers is always the smartest bet i mean there are guilds on my server with 600 modified account sizes seems to me making them feel better playing the game in anyway would be a smart approach

How did these more important customers get themselves out of bed in the morning before this guild system was implemented? Something else must have been keeping their attention.

[theslimshady]

How did these more important customers get themselves out of bed in the morning before this guild system was implemented? Something else must have been keeping their attention.

well as a leader of a large guild before and after the renown system was invented it took a lot of charm and wit

when the bleeding started it took alot of posting in guild to make people understand a system that was too complex in nature

and when the renown started flowing in again nothing but cheers and funny mabar memories that in all the prior years sucked cause having fun watching your guild bleed out just dosent feel right

[Artos_Fabril]

I'm sorry, but are you proposing that this change be added to the current test decay system? I tried to follow back on your posts in the thread but it was not clear to me.
No, this would use the old numbers for decay, but change the calculation from ((active, min10) +10)*decay to active* decay, and calculate activity based on the number of players who earned renown since the last decay period.

[theslimshady]

No, this would use the old numbers for decay, but change the calculation from ((active, min10) +10)*decay to active* decay, and calculate activity based on the number of players who earned renown since the last decay period. do size bonues apply to all exsample a large guild of 51 members and only 10 log on and small guild of 10and all 10 log on do they pull the same amount of renown? cause if not this system would be biased

[Tshober]

No, this would use the old numbers for decay, but change the calculation from ((active, min10) +10)*decay to active* decay, and calculate activity based on the number of players who earned renown since the last decay period.

Ah, then in that case I must point out that your plan would still have players who were net negative renown earners and for that reason I can't recommend it. Any plan that makes some players undesirable in guilds is just not a good idea. The old decay system was rejected for that reason. Your plan would reduce their negative impact but not eliminate it.

[Chaos000]

If I understand your plan correctly, it gains #3 for some guilds but loses #2 for some guilds and so I would reject it and say the current test plan is superior. By the way, the old decay system failed all 5 criteria.

I agree with your criteria.

I think the mechanics of the guild renown size bonus decreasing as you add members is in direct conflict to item #2. Tweaking the current implementation by increasing the bonus to renown received does the opposite of giving an incentive to adding another player to the guild.

Adjusting the decay for guilds that currently recieve a bonus and eliminating the bonus deals with #3 quite effectively because current guilds 24 or less will see 50% or more reduction on the current rate of decay they are facing. Between 1-50 player guilds the system will be equitable. Guilds of 51+ will continue unaffected by these changes and continue to enjoy the current system.

[Artos_Fabril]

Ah, then in that case I must point out that your plan would still have players who were net negative renown earners and for that reason I can't recommend it. Any plan that makes some players undesirable in guilds is just not a good idea. The old decay system was rejected for that reason. Your plan would reduce their negative impact but not eliminate it.
Only players who earned between 1 and and the size modifier would be net negative earners. I'll admit that is potentially a non-zero number, but it's pretty insignificant below level 80, and it doesn't favor small guilds over large ones, or vice-versa.

[Faxe]

Wow, I think we may have a new DDO record for the longest post here. Thanks Vanshilar for all your data collection effort on guilds and other effects. Amazing works!

I think I'll just agree on most points except maybe this example below:

Under the current (or old) system, the vast majority of guilds won't reach those levels.
...<snip>...
And this brings up a good example. The poor guy leveled up 150 characters from level 1 to level 8 during the Build your Guild event (http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=373276) to get his guild up to level 100. We have guilds with over 600 accounts who spammed complaints about renown decay leading to the change, including in this very thread. If each of the players in their guild had leveled up a single character from level 1 to level 8 just like this guy did, they would've been at level 100 too. Yet these guilds and many others claim that they are "incredibly active" and work "very hard" as much as small guilds near their level. Whenever you try to quantify what is meant by those terms, it just about always ends up being no contest: to get to those levels, each member in those small guilds has had to work much harder than each member in those large guilds at a similar guild level. And that ultimately is why those small guilds at the higher levels continue leveling when the large guilds stall. Because those players are putting in more effort.
...<snip>...


True, but that's not all. This example only works during the build your guild event. Each member would have to create a NEW account and farmed TP/paid for the high xp quests. With inspirations from Zonixx & Gondore, I was able to get five level 8s in only 2-3 hours from challenges and necro2. That level of effort is a fraction of what it takes to organize 600 new accounts without the small guild bonus. Can you imagine the logistics of it? Under the previous system, they would certainly decay back to their equilibrium in almost no time after the event too. For large guilds, it may be more efficient to organize a new guild like what Gondore did, but then it would be back to square one once the 600 accounts joined up.

I actually just wanted a level 70 guild, but I could not resist the easy renown. :D But it felt terribly unfair to still be receiving the small guild bonus after level 70 while casual large guilds were struggling at level 70.

[Faxe]

Here are my criteria for any plan that I will support, listed in order of highest to lowest priority:

Mandatory:

1. There should never be an incentive to kick a player because of the renown they earn.


Not absolutely mandatory but very desirable:

2. There should always be a renown incentive to invite a player to your guild.

3. All guilds should be able to advance and not hit a wall that totally stops them from advancing.

4. Guilds that earn the most renown should level up the fastest.

5. The speed with which guilds level up should be roughly proportional to the amount of renown they earn.


The current test system satisfies all except #3. I believe it could be made to satisfy #3 as well with some tweaking. If I understand your plan correctly, it gains #3 for some guilds but loses #2 for some guilds and so I would reject it and say the current test plan is superior. By the way, the old decay system failed all 5 criteria.

Nice and simple. If the devs gave a list like this, we'd have figured out a much better system by now. I'd just add another mandatory to help the devs out here:D
0. There should always be an incentive to buy even more renown potions and airship amenities.

Item #0 could be resolved with longer lasting/better amenities at the higher levels that many others had proposed. Or something like an antique airship token exchange for renown to buy the amenities as suggested by others too.

I think you've satisfied #3 with the system that you proposed here already:
http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=385226
There was some disagreements with item #5 in the proposed system that may be resolved if you can combine it with the personal renown idea.

[Tshober]

0. There should always be an incentive to buy even more renown potions and airship amenities..

Yeah, that is probably at least somewhat realistic.

[jhadden30]

[QUOTE=theslimshady;4777769]well as a leader of a large guild before and after the renown system was invented it took a lot of charm and wit

when the bleeding started it took alot of posting in guild to make people understand a system that was too complex in nature

and when the renown started flowing in again nothing but cheers and funny mabar memories that in all the prior years sucked cause having fun watching your guild bleed out just dosent feel right[/QUOTE

I agree it is no fun however, other guilds found a way to flourish under the old system so maybe all these gigantic guilds running around got entirely to big to manage themselves properly and when the renown flow stopped that's when everybody began to complain about it. But now some people on here are up in arms because small guilds still have the same amount renown decay but it seems to be ok to cater to larger guilds when they have a problem. Which in turn defeats the purpose of having a guild in the first place. Now everyone can argue this point six ways to sunday but that's pretty much the long and short of it.

[Tshober]

I agree it is no fun however, other guilds found a way to flourish under the old system so maybe all these gigantic guilds running around got entirely to big to manage themselves properly and when the renown flow stopped that's when everybody began to complain about it. But now some people on here are up in arms because small guilds still have the same amount renown decay but it seems to be ok to cater to larger guilds when they have a problem. Which in turn defeats the purpose of having a guild in the first place.

Ask 10 random players what the purpose of a guild is and you will likely get 10 different answers. Ask 100 and you will start to get some repeats but you will also get some answers that are vastly different from the typical answer. The purpose of a guild is different for different players. What makes for an excellent guild for you might suck mightily for someone else.

Large guilds have to appeal to all of those differing guild purposes, to some degree, which means they have a hard time focusing on a single one. Small guilds can focus better but they have to limit themselves to only those players that share the same vision of guild purpose.

So I find it hard to understand your comment because it is not only unclear what purpose is being defeated, it is also equally unclear what is defeating it.

[jhadden30]

Ask 10 random players what the purpose of a guild is and you will likely get 10 different answers. Ask 100 and you will start to get some repeats but you will also get some answers that are vastly different from the typical answer. The purpose of a guild is different for different players. What makes for an excellent guild for you might suck mightily for someone else.

Large guilds have to appeal to all of those differing guild purposes, to some degree, which means they have a hard time focusing on a single one. Small guilds can focus better but they have to limit themselves to only those players that share the same vision of guild purpose.

So I find it hard to understand your comment because it is not only unclear what purpose is being defeated, it is also equally unclear what is defeating it.

Biting off more than you can chew and not being able to manage it properly. That's what is defeating the purpose of a guild.

[slarden]

Decay being based on a per-active-account basis, without a minimum number, means 0 people active = 0 decay. 1 person active = 1/20th of current minimum decay, 50 people active = 2.5 times the current decay. I would also tie the guild size bonus to the number of active people, because if you aren't getting a penalty, there's no justification for a bonus either, and even someone who's passively earning renown and not actively looking for it will provide positive movement.

The key to that system, though, is the way you calculate "activity". I propose that someone is not marked as active until they earn at least one point of renown, and when decay is calculated, the activity flag is reset for every character, so that a player only counts for decay if they have been active since the last decay calc.

Ah,that makes more sense. Thank you for the explanation.

[Gremmlynn]

I agree it is no fun however, other guilds found a way to flourish under the old system so maybe all these gigantic guilds running around got entirely to big to manage themselves properly and when the renown flow stopped that's when everybody began to complain about it. But now some people on here are up in arms because small guilds still have the same amount renown decay but it seems to be ok to cater to larger guilds when they have a problem. Which in turn defeats the purpose of having a guild in the first place. Now everyone can argue this point six ways to sunday but that's pretty much the long and short of it.Big, large and huge guilds are not really all that much harder to manage than small guilds. Because really all you try to "manage" is your regular active core of players who pretty much manage themselves. The rest are just whatever casual players who happen to log on to play with your regular active core of players, or each other if a guild achieves enough size for that to be viable.

The problem with not catering to large guilds is that these guilds can easily just lose those casual players that make up a much bigger part of their size on paper than they do in-game (my guild could shed 90% of our players and see less than a 50% loss in peak on-line numbers) without much change to those that remain. So, the only real losers are those players who simply don't play enough to matter.

[theslimshady]

Biting off more than you can chew and not being able to manage it properly. That's what is defeating the purpose of a guild.

lol so you now decide what a guild is and how to manage it i mean 200 active accounts 155k a day in decay .babies born ,deployments .holidays .any reallife issues and you still got it in your mind that the word guild means activity based i am so glad the devs have made this change from that old busted system -------------u16 has come and passed i really hope this is the system we all have for the next 2 years so we can return this game back to dnd based and away from the videogamer ubers that have to maximize everything and try and belittle and force complex activity rules on a cas mmo where alot of the fun comes from player interaction not accomplishments or prestige

[jhadden30]

lol so you now decide what a guild is and how to manage it i mean 200 active accounts 155k a day in decay .babies born ,deployments .holidays .any reallife issues and you still got it in your mind that the word guild means activity based i am so glad the devs have made this change from that old busted system -------------u16 has come and passed i really hope this is the system we all have for the next 2 years so we can return this game back to dnd based and away from the videogamer ubers that have to maximize everything and try and belittle and force complex activity rules on a cas mmo where alot of the fun comes from player interaction not accomplishments or prestige

Nope, thats why I am suggesting dropping the whole system that's causing the headache to begin with. This way you can be as big, medium or as small as you want.

[Gremmlynn]

Biting off more than you can chew and not being able to manage it properly. That's what is defeating the purpose of a guild.What's to manage, outside of keeping guild chat civilized and settling the rare dispute?

[Dandonk]

What's to manage, outside of keeping guild chat civilized and settling the rare dispute?

Obviously, some large guilds have issues getting people to play. Otherwise we wouldn't hear the large guilds being so upset about the decay they were having.

[Tshober]

Obviously, some large guilds have issues getting people to play. Otherwise we wouldn't hear the large guilds being so upset about the decay they were having.

Obviously tiny guilds have the same problem, judging from the last 30 or so pages of this thread.

[Dandonk]

Obviously tiny guilds have the same problem, judging from the last 30 or so pages of this thread.

Indeed, some of us have the same problem. But then the large guilds with casuals got a huge boost, while the rest of us got left behind.

[theslimshady]

Obviously, some large guilds have issues getting people to play. Otherwise we wouldn't hear the large guilds being so upset about the decay they were having.

no the problem is about managing and keeping your large tribe happy

if a guild of 12 has 4 peeps have to go out of town that weekend its 25 percent of the entire guild

if a guild of 200 has 25 percent go away for the weekend thats 50 people

if mabar like last year goes off and 90 percent of a small guild go enjoy festival thats 10ish
if 90 percent of 200 go to enjoy festival thats 180 which equals huge renown decay bleed in a week of more then a million renown
this goes on over and over and over with everything from unexceptable members to guild flippers to boots to game quitters so please stop tringin to explain how in anyway activity based renown system is better in anyway cause its just a fairytale

[Tshober]

Indeed, some of us have the same problem. But then the large guilds with casuals got a huge boost, while the rest of us got left behind.

I support eliminating decay entirely, which would benefit all guilds. Every propopsal I have made in this thread has benefited all guilds. Instead of bashing large guilds and trying to undo the good that has been done, why not try to convince the devs that tiny guilds need some relief from decay too? If you would try that, you might find that many large guild posters would be quite supportive of your efforts.

[Dandonk]

I support eliminating decay entirely, which would benefit all guilds. Every propopsal I have made in this thread has benefited all guilds. Instead of bashing large guilds and trying to undo the good that has been done, why not try to convince the devs that tiny guilds need some relief from decay too? If you would try that, you might find that many large guild posters would be quite supportive of your efforts.

I have posted several times that I do not want large guilds punished. I still don't.

What I am trying to argue against is the posters from large guilds that say (censored) to small guilds, since we have what we want, so go take a hike you small guilds.

I want a fair system: one that does not promote one size of guild over another. That's all. I'm trying to keep this point alive and kicking until Turbine does something to help ALL guilds, not just large ones.

[theslimshady]

I have posted several times that I do not want large guilds punished. I still don't.

What I am trying to argue against is the posters from large guilds that say (censored) to small guilds, since we have what we want, so go take a hike you small guilds.

I want a fair system: one that does not promote one size of guild over another. That's all. I'm trying to keep this point alive and kicking until Turbine does something to help ALL guilds, not just large ones.
so where was this honor and gusto when we was bleeding out and hitting level walls and such all of last year seems to me its only a piggyback now that we got some of our issues addressed and all based on no change for most small guilds not that things got worse there was no change i mean come on

[jhadden30]

What's to manage, outside of keeping guild chat civilized and settling the rare dispute?

Well from the previous posts, keeping everyone interested in playing for one thing and striving towards a goal for another. Isn't it the guild leaders (manager's) job to keep a guild functioning and moving forward? Or is just a gigantic free for all?

[Dandonk]

so where was this honor and gusto when we was bleeding out and hitting level walls and such all of last year seems to me its only a piggyback now that we got some of our issues addressed and all based on no change for most small guilds not that things got worse there was no change i mean come on

Things do not exist in a vacuum. Changes to one set of guilds DO, in fact, change things for the others - in relative values, if not in absolute.

It's a good thing that large guilds are helped. I just want the same help for small guilds.

[slarden]

so where was this honor and gusto when we was bleeding out and hitting level walls and such all of last year seems to me its only a piggyback now that we got some of our issues addressed and all based on no change for most small guilds not that things got worse there was no change i mean come on

Were the poeple on this post stating things like:

1) Large guilds shouldn't even exist
2) We should do more to penalize large guilds
3) Don't complain because nothing changed for you. The old system was fine.

Because that is what we are hearing on this thread. I have no idea why you would blame us for a system that wasn't designed, implemented or created by us. I never once lobbied against helping large guilds and many times on this thread stated I was happy for large guilds. I never proposed anything that would hurt a large guild or negatively impact the decay break you received. I merely requested the same break for small guilds that struggle from the same type of issues.

Keep in mind that under the old system nobody struggled more than small casual guilds. Whatever level you are at, I am sure you run across people in small gulids every day that are at a much lower level.

I never lobbied against helping large guilds and supported the reduction and removal of decay.

[theslimshady]

Things do not exist in a vacuum. Changes to one set of guilds DO, in fact, change things for the others - in relative values, if not in absolute.

It's a good thing that large guilds are helped. I just want the same help for small guilds.

how? how does what my guild does have anything to do with your guild i dont understand