Guild Renown Changes

[Tolero]

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!

[OpallNotten]

Reading that, I do not think I will even notice a change......I may be wrong.

Let me start by saying, the Guild system didn't bother me the way it was. I know it bothered LOTS of others though.

My Guild has 6 active accounts. Level 72
<o> On Argo.......Technically o.....but It was <o> before the brackets were removed from game.

How is this going to effect my Guild? Maybe it won't effect it at all?


~Opall~

[redspecter23]

A question. When does this guild renown ransack kick in? For very low level guilds, earning more than 3 levels a day is a possibility so ransack will have a greater effect, but for higher level guilds that earn only portions of a level each day, will the ransack effect them at all? Basically, is the ransack tied to the number of levels gained in a day? Or the amount of renown earned in a day? Will a high level guild start to face ransack on renown before they even gain 1/10th of a level?

Based on what I'm reading, most of the advantage that a small guild has now will be eliminated. It will be to a guild's advantage to have as many members as possible even if they aren't extremely active. A guild with 1000 semi active members now has the huge advantage that a 6 person guild had previously. Or perhaps I'm missing something.

[scoobmx]

What is the break-even point for your first change, Tolero, for a level 85 guild? That is, what account size corresponds to the decay of being level 85 now?

Depending on the answer this may be better or worse than the old system.

[whiteline]

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!

hope it helps will let you know soon

[Ivan_Milic]

Good to see you finally made this decision,but its a bit late,many guilds have kicked players.

[Krelar]

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:


I'm thinking that Mabar starting on the 25th may interfere with people being able to accurately judge the changes effects on their guild.

[Impaqt]

Can you please just tell us what the decay is rather than us having to figure it all out again?

[Vargouille]

We expect this specific change to have minimal direct impact on small, high level guilds.

Diminishing returns on Guild Renown is only affected by actual levels gained by the guild. High level small guilds who may take many days or weeks to gain a level should see very few changes. If your guild gained levels today, you'll see fewer renown drops.

This coming week all guilds should be seeing decay as if they guild were a size 6 guild from last week. Large guilds of all levels are expected to experience less decay than before (assuming they were high enough to have decay). No guild should see more decay than before, with these current changes we're looking at this week.

[jortann]

As a guild leader, seeing this news, makes me feel like I can be more open to recruiting new members.

[Krelar]

This coming week all guilds should be seeing decay as if they guild were a size 6 guild from last week. Large guilds of all levels are expected to experience less decay than before (assuming they were high enough to have decay). No guild should see more decay than before.

Dose that mean this formula (http://ddowiki.com/page/Guild_Renown#Guild_renown_decay_formula) is wrong? It indicates that 10 is the minimum guild size used in the calculations.

[MeliCat]

Crimson Eagles of Khyber has been on the tipping point of 80 to 81 for about 3 months now and will never kick anyone as that is not what is done. So I guess we should see something.

[Spoonwelder]

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.



Thanks for revisiting the guild renown system. I would like some clarity on point 1 as to how much the decay will be per guild size.....it sounds like a static number regardless of guild size so for a level 50/60/70 what is that decay amount. If it is a static amount it seems to stick it to the small/medium guilds as they only have X players to earn the same renown as a large guild. Without more detail, we can't really tell.

As to point 2 - honestly don't think this was ever an issue but you may be putting it in place so guilds don't race to 100 (not that I think that could/would happen as the amount of renown needed is insane). It seems totally disconnected from decay so I can't see that it is an offset to point 1.

I still think the better solution is to have the 'inactive' meter set to 1 day so that you only get decay on each account that is active for the day. Ie. if joeblow logs in even just to say 'hi' then he is going to add to decay but for the other casuals there is only decay if they log in. Fairer to me than a static decay figure which is going to promote massive guilds....maybe that is what you want but it may still not be what the players want.

[Vargouille]

Dose that mean this formula (http://ddowiki.com/page/Guild_Renown#Guild_renown_decay_formula) is wrong? It indicates that 10 is the minimum guild size used in the calculations.

My apologies. I just used 6 as an example size for a small guild.

[gemineye]

can you please just tell us what the decay is rather than us having to figure it all out again?

this^

[jortann]

My apologies. I just used 6 as an example size for a small guild.

So is it based on 10? 6? or 16? I'm confused.

Can you guys just share the new decay rate with us?

[Spoonwelder]

We expect this specific change to have minimal direct impact on small, high level guilds.

Diminishing returns on Guild Renown is only affected by actual levels gained by the guild. High level small guilds who may take many days or weeks to gain a level should see very few changes. If your guild gained levels today, you'll see fewer renown drops.

This coming week all guilds should be seeing decay as if they guild were a size 6 guild from last week. Large guilds of all levels are expected to experience less decay than before (assuming they were high enough to have decay). No guild should see more decay than before, with these current changes we're looking at this week.

I read this as meaning the decay numbers will be:
Level decay
26 44
27 49
28 55
29 61
30 68
31 149
32 164
33 180
34 197
35 214
36 350
37 380
38 412
39 445
40 480
41 827
42 889
43 954
44 1,022
45 1,094
46 1,460
47 1,557
48 1,659
49 1,765
50 1,875
51 2,388
52 2,531
53 2,680
54 2,834
55 2,995
56 3,688
57 3,889
58 4,097
59 4,313
60 4,536
61 6,355
62 6,673
63 7,001
64 7,340
65 7,690
66 9,056
67 9,474
68 9,905
69 10,348
70 10,805
71 12,527
72 13,064
73 13,616
74 14,183
75 14,766
76 16,901
77 17,577
78 18,270
79 18,982
80 19,712
81 25,509
82 26,466
83 27,446
84 28,450
85 29,478
86 33,075
87 34,242
88 35,437
89 36,658
90 37,908
91 42,200
92 43,607
93 45,044
94 46,513
95 48,013
96 53,084
97 54,760
98 56,472
99 58,218
100 67,500

Basically the current level multiplier x 20 (as in max(guildsize,10)+10 was changed to max(null,10)+10).

What it means to me is my guild (now 70) will be able to slowly build to about level 84 to 85 assuming no changes. And by slowly I mean over the next 2 years (we gain from 25k-40k per day so say we beat decay by 15k average and need 13M more to get to 85.....that's about 850days +/-)....

Now I understand part 2 - as it slows the growth but doesn't totally stop it. This seems to level the playing field a bit between small and large guilds. But really is primarily a benefit to Medium and Large guilds....small guilds aren't specifically shafted but they don't gain anything much from this either except they can now grow if they want to without fear that a new member may not pull their weight.

[amnota]

Back to Vast and Mysterious we go.

[Auran82]

Why does decay exist at all?

Is it only so the store can sell more amenities due to smaller guilds not being able to reach/maintain a high level?

[Spoonwelder]

Looking at the decay list - I think one thing you may want to do is smooth the curve a bit.....there was a reason before for the slight extra bump at the 6's and 1's as it made holding certain levels easier (ie. 69-70 decay was 517-540 where 70-71 was 540-626 or 23 vs. 86).

Not a big issue but it really stands out now when you lock in the guild decay at the lower figures and it is just.....not elegant.

[FranOhmsford]

So my Lvl 44 Guild on Cannith - 21 Active Players currently though only myself and perhaps two others truly active {play most days}.
Will see no real difference!

Whereas the Lvl 68 Guild my Characters on Sarlona are members of {74 Active Players Currently} will see a HUGE Difference.

I'm guessing I'm going to have to start recruiting again on Cannith {But not while this is a temporary change}!

[Ape_Man]

Why does decay exist at all?

To discourage "Korthos Army" guilds full of blind-invitors from gaining too high of a level.

[Hellllboy]

NM

Beat me to the question...

[BurnerD]

I like the idea of taking small steps on this issue.

Thank you for looking into this issue and making some tweaks :)

[gemineye]

Will this address the bug when there is downtime? Whenever you guys bounce the servers, it takes away decay twice that day, once in the early morning and again when the servers come up.

[MysticElaine]

It says this won't affect small guilds which worries me a bit, but we will see.

I am a 6 act guild with only 1-2 really active players, and we have been stuck at 59 for forever (at least 6 months). I would like to see how much renown we will lose now as we can only get 2-4k a day (if we are lucky) and more on the weekend (we need 4k a day not to move). But as others have stated, with Mabar starting, it might be a bit hard to really look at...I for one will be only doing Mabar when not working.

But I would like to say ty for thinking of and making steps to improve the system

[Grosbeak07]

I like this change, I think it will help a lot of "middle of the road guilds", guilds with not enough active players to overcome the loss of renown each day, but not small enough to get any bonus.

I think its a good step to get guilds to recruit players and evens out the advantages/disadvantages between small and large guilds.

Still my own guild really doesn't see much purpose beyond Guild Level 63. We have everything we really want and with all the issues earlier this year, have a stock of gold seal stuff to last quite awhile. So while our Guild Renown will likely start moving again, there really isn't much to shoot for. Hopefully there are plans to maybe add more stuff in future updates to make grinding for GR worth it again.

[Gkar]

It says this won't affect small guilds which worries me a bit, but we will see.

From the response earlier in this thread, they are now just treating large guilds the way small ones have always been treated, so you should be the same and everyone else will be better off.

[BurnerD]

I may be incorrect on this but my understanding is:

Decay for all guilds.. regardless of size will be the same for equivalent guild level...

Small and medium guilds will still get bonuses (which they should)

is this right?

[Vargouille]

Small and medium guilds will still get bonuses (which they should)

Small guild bonuses are unaffected and should continue to apply.

[BurnerD]

Small guild bonuses are unaffected and should continue to apply.


thanks for clarification.. this makes sense and is a step in the right direction :)

[Gkar]

BTW, Thank you for looking at this. It's nice to be heard :)

[Bogenbroom]

It says this won't affect small guilds which worries me a bit, but we will see.

I am a 6 act guild with only 1-2 really active players, and we have been stuck at 59 for forever (at least 6 months). I would like to see how much renown we will lose now as we can only get 2-4k a day (if we are lucky) and more on the weekend (we need 4k a day not to move). But as others have stated, with Mabar starting, it might be a bit hard to really look at...I for one will be only doing Mabar when not working.

But I would like to say ty for thinking of and making steps to improve the system

Yeah, I am unclear how, if renown decay is calculated regardless of guild size how small guilds would be unaffected unless what is meant is that the new renown decay settings will not apply to small guilds.

Personally, my guild has all but fizzled out. 4 "active" accounts, 3 of which are me and the forth is someone who plays once a week at most. I suppose I should think harder about moving on...

[TPICKRELL]

Sounds like a major improvement that addresses the biggest glaring weaknesses of the current system. From the player side, I can't see a downside.

I'd suggest continuing this experiment at least 1 full week after Mabar so we can see it under normal circumstances.

And thank you very much for doing this now before Mabar, I was dreading the thought of grinding Mabar then having o grind reknown to make up for the time I spent in Mabar.

[Postumus]

Sounds like a major improvement that addresses the biggest glaring weaknesses of the current system. From the player side, I can't see a downside.

I'd suggest continuing this experiment at least 1 full week after Mabar so we can see it under normal circumstances.

And thank you very much for doing this now before Mabar, I was dreading the thought of grinding Mabar then having o grind reknown to make up for the time I spent in Mabar.

I second these sentiments. I think this is a nice step in the right direction.

[PpalP]

+1

I have to "farm" 1k renown each day to prevent decay, this change will make me happy if comes solid.

[Double_O]

Can you confirm if there is still a penalty for removing inactive players?

THANK YOU for the Change...

[Xezrak]

Definately welcome this change, will be very helpful for casual players and more experienced players who don't mind running with casual players.

[Vargouille]

Can you confirm if there is still a penalty for removing inactive players?

Yes.

There were only two changes relating to Guilds and renown made at this time as mentioned in Tolero's post. Nothing else should be different, and we'd like to know if it is.

[Anthios888]

A tentative thank you for addressing this issue.

Have you considered promoting other ways to get renown? The idea would be that building effective characters and accomplishing some “renowned” signifies your guild’s success. Moreso than mindless chest farming.

For example, a varying amount for certain accomplishments like:


achieving level cap
completing an epic elite quest
completing a raid
finishing an epic destiny

Perhaps

Upgrading an epic item, a green steel, an alchemical, a dragonscale armor
Doing an area's "capstone" quest for the first time, e.g. Sor'jek, Cursed Crypt
Achieving a favor reward
A small amount for completing a quest first time with bravery bonus


Here's an old thread that has ideas along the same lines. 101 things that should be worth renown (http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=260379).

[ArkoHighStar]

So if its based on a guild of 6 then my guild of 4 with 2 inactive will have higher decay?

[DocBenway]

So if its based on a guild of 6 then my guild of 4 with 2 inactive will have higher decay?

No because your guild of 4 was decaying as a guild of 10 anyway. 10 was the minimum size used in decay math. (MAX(Modified Account Size,10) +10) * Levelmultiplier.

20 was the smallest number ever resulting from the outer bracket set. No one has ever said why.

[XavierElanor]

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

[madmaxhunter]

Thank you devs for hearing us. I don't know how much this will help, looks like it still heavily favors small guilds. Guild size was important back when the modern incarnation of guilds were introduced. Now days, with less players, less new players, I don't think it is as much.

My hope is that I can stop worrying about guild level. I don't care if it takes a month to go up a level. I don't want to micro-manage it anymore.

Back when there were many players, many guilds, we had 50 active members, we would amass outside the airship dock to all go on when we got a new ship. We ran around chatting about what should go where. I know those days will never be again, it saddens me that it is lost.

Some think the system should stay the way it is now. I disagree, all of my guildies have jobs, have families, decay has sucked the fun out of guilds.

Hopefully this will help, time will tell.

[bbqzor]

There were only two changes relating to Guilds and renown made at this time as mentioned in Tolero's post. Nothing else should be different, and we'd like to know if it is.

Let me begin by saying this is a positive direction... regardless of the impact this change has (which I think will be beneficial but even if not), simply working to come up with a better system is a good-faith decision.

Now my question: There are effectively two penalties for removing a player from a guild. One, you lose a percentage of their earned renown; and two, they count towards guild size for a month. As guild size is now no longer used to calculate decay (if I am reading Toleros post right), I presume your post refers solely to the first case, losing a percentage of their renown.

So basically, people who never log in, or log in once a year, who are removed in the current environment, can be done so safely? If they have a zero to nominal renown value, losing a percentage of it is very small, and the change in guild size will have no adverse effect? If so this would be quite a positive feature for many guilds looking to clean up inactive rosters but previously paralyzed to inaction from the potential size penalties.

Second question, any hints as to what sized decay we should be looking at by level? I ask because we had the old formula, and were able to go look and see if it was working correctly. As it stands now, with decay based solely on guild level, it would be a simple matter to verify it was working correctly if you gave us a chart/formula to reference. Perhaps just the 10 level benchmarks, like telling us its set to 5k/day at 30, 10k/day at 40 etc (those are totally made up values but you get the idea).

In other words, it would be helpful to know what we should be seeing, so we can offer feedback in regards to both what is actually happening, and how well balanced what should be happening feels. Obviously posters from all guild levels could compare renown values and decipher this, but providing it as is simply saves everyone a lot of time and results in more feedback, in a quicker timeframe. Thanks


Please consider other ways to get renown. For example, a varying amount for certain accomplishments like achieving level cap, completing an epic elite quest, completing a raid, or finishing an epic destiny. Perhaps upgrading an epic item, a green steel, an alchemical, a dragon armor. The idea would be that building effective characters and accomplishing some “renowned” signifies your guild’s success. Moreso than mindless chest farming.

I just wanted to say, I had never considered adding a "renown gain" to successful crafting recipes, experience totals, or (if I may suggest) favor totals. But thats a really good idea. Alchemical items, Epic items, perhaps every 1k favor, and Epic Elite raids are certainly good candidates for something like a free Impressive or free Legendary. I mean, they are the sorts of things that would either make you known to the in game npcs from a fluff point of view, or that spawns actual threads on the boards for essentially peer renown now... why not model that into the game? Props on the suggestion, its certainly a keeper in my book.

[HunkyDane]

So, a guild of level 55 with 6 players and a guild of 55 with 100 players both now have 3k renown decay?

If so, yea for big guilds, no need anymore to kick out players.

But for small guilds who as of current rules (old rules) who struggle to remain the same level or to advance, no ease for them?

[Vargouille]

But for small guilds who as of current rules (old rules) who struggle to remain the same level or to advance, no ease for them?

Nothing directly aimed at this situation at this time. We're still looking into possible future changes. Today's change was something we could feasibly try sooner rather than later, and potentially solve one Guild issue we perceived, which was the feeling that some Guild members would need to be kicked for the good of the guild as a whole in order to advance the guild.

[HunkyDane]

Nothing directly aimed at this situation at this time. We're still looking into possible future changes. Today's change was something we could feasibly try sooner rather than later.

Here is a suggestion me and a few friends where discussing the other day, this would be for guilds of all sizes

For every day a guild do not gain any renown, reduce the renown decay by 10% so that after 10 days of no renown gained, a guild would seize to lose renown untill a renown would increae by either kill bonus or loot bonus.

That would benefit guilds of all levels.

[Xezrak]

A tentative thank you for addressing this issue.

Please consider other ways to get renown. For example, a varying amount for certain accomplishments like achieving level cap, completing an epic elite quest, completing a raid, or finishing an epic destiny. Perhaps upgrading an epic item, a green steel, an alchemical, a dragon armor. The idea would be that building effective characters and accomplishing some “renowned” signifies your guild’s success. Moreso than mindless chest farming.

Excellent idea I would love to see this, and I think higher level/difficulty quests should give more renown

[AZgreentea]

A tentative thank you for addressing this issue.

Please consider other ways to get renown. For example, a varying amount for certain accomplishments like achieving level cap, completing an epic elite quest, completing a raid, or finishing an epic destiny. Perhaps upgrading an epic item, a green steel, an alchemical, a dragon armor. The idea would be that building effective characters and accomplishing some “renowned” signifies your guild’s success. Moreso than mindless chest farming.
or Monster Manual achievements.

[djl]

These changes will open it up for a LOT of abuse...

For example, if all having a large guild does is reduce your bonuses there is no reason at all to not "mass invite" people and then boot them after a certain amount of time.

Assuming I am understanding everything correctly, the way things will work now:

In a six-man guild, each person gains the work of three people because you get 300% bonus to renown. So, with a large guild all you need are 18 people who pull their weight and the rest of the guild can be slackers who bring in very little each day and it will still come out way ahead of a small guild.

All this will do is change things where there is no benefit to having a small guild anymore, and you'll have a bunch of really large, really awful guilds.

[Postumus]

These changes will open it up for a LOT of abuse...

For example, if all having a large guild does is reduce your bonuses there is no reason at all to not "mass invite" people and then boot them after a certain amount of time.

Assuming I am understanding everything correctly, the way things will work now:

In a six-man guild, each person gains the work of three people because you get 300% bonus to renown. So, with a large guild all you need are 18 people who pull their weight and the rest of the guild can be slackers who bring in very little each day and it will still come out way ahead of a small guild.

All this will do is change things where there is no benefit to having a small guild anymore, and you'll have a bunch of really large, really awful guilds.

Why would they kick anyone if there is no benefit to do so? Just to be evil?

I honestly think that would be rare.

[LeoLionxxx]

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

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

[HunkyDane]

'after 2 monthes, removing the player will not cause additional decay of loss of earned renown'

/signed

[Anthios888]

'after 2 monthes, removing the player will not cause additional decay of loss of earned renown'

/signed

Great idea. As a leader of a large guild, it is important to maintain guild continuity.
If someone was not in the guild for a long time, and then takes a long break, and would not be a true "guildie" if they returned to the game, why leave them on the roster?

[FranOhmsford]

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

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

This ^

I'm sorry but people do leave the game - Why should we have to keep them in our guilds forever just so we don't lose what renown they did earn?
It all adds up.

As for the suggestion about other ways to earn renown - I notice it didn't mention explorers - I am one of those people who likes to max Slayer Zones {But I get virtually zero renown for doing this - WHY?}.

[djl]

Why would they kick anyone if there is no benefit to do so? Just to be evil?

I honestly think that would be rare.

There is no penalty for doing so now, so there is nothing in place to encourage people to get along. Someone ****es someone else off who is an officer or friends with an officer then BAM, that person is gone.

Also, in the process of mass-recruiting, you will pick up a lot of really bad, really annoying players. You leech their renown til 85 and get your big boat, and then send all of them packing so that you'll have your core of people you actually enjoy being around. You can have your cake and eat it too.

I know a lot of large "legitimate" guilds will greatly appreciate this change, but I think there would have been better ways to fix it that simply remove guild size from the formula.

[Xandrel]

Nice start... but it doenst even come close to clutting through the butter

Give us a way to distinguish characters!

Whos character belongs to what account, this in its self is a mess.

A gazelion characters without knowing who own which one. We have to keep a seperate webpage just for this and it is a pain, when it should be something we can see in-game.

[SirValentine]

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.


Wow, this change is huge.

You know, those same renown threads on the forums had prompted me, just last week, to run an exhaustive mathematical analysis of guild renown decay. I had reached my conclusions, and I had planned to clean up the presentation and post it this week. But plugging in this change for analysis was easy to do.

The old system, though primarily based on ACTIVITY (actually pulling renown from chests, end rewards, etc.), DID have a bias for and against certain sizes of guilds. It turns out the ideal guild size for reaching a high level was 11 accounts. Very tiny guilds (4 or fewer accounts) were worst off, and the worst possible size other than very tiny, was exactly 50 accounts. As you increased accounts from 4 to 11, your guild level potential rose rapidly, then decreases moderatly from 11 accounts up to 50, then increased again very slowly from 50 up to 1000. A guild size of 11 had about twice the anti-decay guild renown earning power of a size 50 guild.

This new system...well, I think if you leave it in place long, you will see many, many high-level, including level 100, guilds. The boost that large guilds get from this is incredible.

Here, let me give some concrete examples:

First...a guild of 10 or fewer accounts will see no change.

Next...consider a 50-account guild, previously the absolute worst off for decay. This change gives them 3 times the decay-fighting power. Here's some benchmarks on how the level decay would previously have stalled them at corresponds to their new such level:



Previous New
81 100 (max level)
76 93 (max ship amenities)
68 85 (largest ship)
62 80 (2nd largest ship)
56 70 (large augment slots)
51 63 (most good ship buffs)


And that's just for a 50-account guild. Larger guilds are even better off. A hypothetical 1000-account guild that could never hold on to level 47 before will easily hit level 100 now.

Someone mentioned in this thread that decay is supposed to fight the "Korthos Army"-invite-anyone guild. Well, with this change, it won't. There is now no reason not to fill your guild roles to the maximum they hold, from a renown point of view. Non-renown-productive players, while still not helping, no longer actively hurt AT ALL. If they earn even a tiny bit of renown, you're better off than without them.

If this change sticks, guilds won't need to at all to be selective on the basis of player activity. And I predict there will be many more very large and very high-level guilds.



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.


I have to say, except maybe adding a few extra days to a guild's initial climb, this change is pretty irrelevant. Large guilds WILL completely dominate under the first change you mentioned above.

[Nysrock]

I read this as meaning the decay numbers will be:
Level decay
26 44
27 49
28 55
29 61
30 68
31 149
32 164
33 180
34 197
35 214
36 350
37 380
38 412
39 445
40 480
41 827
42 889
43 954
44 1,022
45 1,094
46 1,460
47 1,557
48 1,659
49 1,765
50 1,875
51 2,388
52 2,531
53 2,680
54 2,834
55 2,995
56 3,688
57 3,889
58 4,097
59 4,313
60 4,536
61 6,355
62 6,673
63 7,001
64 7,340
65 7,690
66 9,056
67 9,474
68 9,905
69 10,348
70 10,805
71 12,527
72 13,064
73 13,616
74 14,183
75 14,766
76 16,901
77 17,577
78 18,270
79 18,982
80 19,712
81 25,509
82 26,466
83 27,446
84 28,450
85 29,478
86 33,075
87 34,242
88 35,437
89 36,658
90 37,908
91 42,200
92 43,607
93 45,044
94 46,513
95 48,013
96 53,084
97 54,760
98 56,472
99 58,218
100 67,500

.

These numbers still seem a bit high. According to the guild renown calculator, my level 64 guild of 6 should only have 5872 decay a day and not 7340. So which number is correct?

[Dawnsfire]

Nice start... but it doenst even come close to clutting through the butter

Give us a way to distinguish characters!

Whos character belongs to what account, this in its self is a mess.

A gazelion characters without knowing who own which one. We have to keep a seperate webpage just for this and it is a pain, when it should be something we can see in-game.

This:


Nothing directly aimed at this situation at this time. We're still looking into possible future changes. Today's change was something we could feasibly try sooner rather than later, and potentially solve one Guild issue we perceived, which was the feeling that some Guild members would need to be kicked for the good of the guild as a whole in order to advance the guild.

[SirValentine]

For example, if all having a large guild does is reduce your bonuses there is no reason at all to not "mass invite" people and then boot them after a certain amount of time.


Well, yes on the mass-invite, but no to the boot. There will be no reason to boot people unless your rooster is completely full and you need to make room. You still lose 25% of the renown they earned when you boot someone.



All this will do is change things where there is no benefit to having a small guild anymore, and you'll have a bunch of really large, really awful guilds.


No guarantee they will be awful, but, yup, that's the size of it. Small guild will have to claw just as hard as now to try to make levels, and large guilds will be able to waltz to high levels easily.

[HatsuharuZ]

Thanks!

[SirValentine]

But for small guilds who as of current rules (old rules) who struggle to remain the same level or to advance, no ease for them?

Recruit, I guess.

[QueenPennyThe1st]

It is so good to know that we have been heard and that you do care enough to try and fix this issue. As leader of Pay It Forward Sarlona, my Grand Officers and I have had many heart felt discussions about this matter and have tried several different ways to fix our problem without destroying the basis that our guild is based on. We have found that in doing so it has taken alot of the fun out of the game, people like to be rewarded for good play and not penalized for having a real life.
Thank you again for your attention in this matter, Hail Gygax!
Moonhair Guild Leader

[Shmuel]

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

There is just no good reason to keep this stuff black-boxed. Eventually people will figure it out and post the results. By then, useful constructive comments related to it may be too late to implement.

If you just say what it was, what it is now, and what you are thinking, you might discover that some forum-folk have actually useful suggestions, which are even better when they are based on reliable data. Some of us do understand calculus, and many more probably algebra, so its not like once you post it we are gonna be like "WHOA NERD!!!! YOU USED MATHS!!!! NEEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRD!!!"

[WanderingGrump]

To the Devs--Thank you for trying a change in a system that so many of us hate.

It will be interesting to see what the end result will be.

[Deadlock]

Nothing directly aimed at this situation at this time. We're still looking into possible future changes. Today's change was something we could feasibly try sooner rather than later, and potentially solve one Guild issue we perceived, which was the feeling that some Guild members would need to be kicked for the good of the guild as a whole in order to advance the guild.

This is exactly what has been happening, which has been actively discouraging the more casual and laid back guilds from recruiting.

If my calcs are correct, we'll see our renown decay drop from 20,020 per day to 3,337 per day. So it's a no-brainer. A step in the right direction and a tick in the box from everyone at FONAS on Ghallanda.

[Spoonwelder]

These numbers still seem a bit high. According to the guild renown calculator, my level 64 guild of 6 should only have 5872 decay a day and not 7340. So which number is correct?

My number should be correct - the formula is Max(guildsize,10)+10 x multiplier.

At 64 the multiplier is 367 .....ie. Max(6,10)+10=20x367=7340 you were using 16x367 which omits the effective minimum guild size of 10 in the formula.

The new formula just turns guildsize to zero thus all guilds have value of 20 and then apply the multiplier based upon level.

As noted this definitely skews things to the large guilds. Ie. the guilds who were previously punished for keeping casual players on board AND hit by not having a size bonus on renown pickup....now have an easier time of it.

I don't think this is the perfect/final solution and it doesn't seem like Turbine does either but at least it is a quick and dirty solution for now until a more complete overhaul can be programmed (read as Soon(tm)).

[Vargouille]

I know a lot of large "legitimate" guilds will greatly appreciate this change, but I think there would have been better ways to fix it that simply remove guild size from the formula.

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

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

[ArkoHighStar]

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

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


edited, as the extra stuff got edited

[Vyder]

Just get rid of decay. It feels like a second job.

[Ninety]

Instead of just posting that it's changing can you please just post what it's changing to with exact numbers

[djl]

Well, yes on the mass-invite, but no to the boot. There will be no reason to boot people unless your rooster is completely full and you need to make room. You still lose 25% of the renown they earned when you boot someone.



No guarantee they will be awful, but, yup, that's the size of it. Small guild will have to claw just as hard as now to try to make levels, and large guilds will be able to waltz to high levels easily.

But what is to keep people from doing that? Invite 50 random newbs to be renown vacuums, and then boot them all a week later. Even though you lose 25%, you still keep 75% of what they earned.

[djl]

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

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

Add additional penalties for booting people, or else the power-gamers will do exactly what I'm afraid of: mass recruit newer players to use them as renown vacuums to get up to level 100 and then kick them all once they reach their goals.

Perhaps, if you boot someone, you take a 10% penalty to your guild renown rate for 2 weeks? And the penalty would stack multiplicatively for each person you boot, resetting two weeks after the most recent person was booted?

[Kanuk]

Let me start by saying thank you for looking into guild renown as i think, in its current state, the system is flawed. However, the changes as presented so far would simply “flip the problem”. The current system (old), in my opinion favor small-medium guilds to get to high levels as the new system would favor big guilds. Sadly, i don’t have a simple answer!

As to the suggestions on the new system, recent departure can still stay in a different form. Say 5% penalty on (new) daily renown decay per departure for next 14 days. So if a guild boots say, 20 members after a mass Khortos invite, their decay doubles for next 2 weeks (in addition to 25% of each booted member renown).

Also, you may want to lower cap on guild size, if both level 55 guilds have the same renown decay, 6 member guild (all active), even with 300% bonus (which = 18 members) will not be able to hold up renown with 100 member guild (which will have 30-50 active members!). Now imagine with current cap of 1000 members, issue just gets bigger and bigger!

If you do continue with new system, you will probably need to increase by X% renown for small guilds, so they can keep up with what large guilds will now get, and small guild will probably become 1-20 members and medium 21-75. I would expect as tons of guilds with 100+ members will be the new norm, which i am not sure is better than the current norm (lots of small/medium guilds)...

Just my opinion and suggestions! Thanks again for looking into this, will try and come back next week with feedback from results!

[geoffhanna]

Nothing directly aimed at this situation at this time. We're still looking into possible future changes. Today's change was something we could feasibly try sooner rather than later, and potentially solve one Guild issue we perceived, which was the feeling that some Guild members would need to be kicked for the good of the guild as a whole in order to advance the guild.

This is a very important and welcome change. I hated - HATED - booting people.

[Tshober]

This is a very important and welcome change. I hated - HATED - booting people.

This!

So glad the devs have decided to explore other options and address the concerns many of us had about the old decay system.

Excellent news!

[Perryc]

A tentative thank you for addressing this issue.

Please consider other ways to get renown. For example, a varying amount for certain accomplishments like achieving level cap, completing an epic elite quest, completing a raid, or finishing an epic destiny. Perhaps upgrading an epic item, a green steel, an alchemical, a dragon armor. The idea would be that building effective characters and accomplishing some “renowned” signifies your guild’s success. Moreso than mindless chest farming.

Not a bad idea ... To propose a way to implement this:


Reduce or eliminate Renown drops from chests and end rewards.
Increase probability of Renown for each mob killed, say 10% chance*.
Add Renown for each quest completion, say 3% of base XP*.
Add Renown for each quest optional, say 5% of base XP*.

*The actual amount of Renown can be increased based on a handful of factors including guild size, number of completions (more is less), first time difficulty or bravery bonus, quest length, Renown bonus weekends, etc. This would have the added benefit of addressing the issue of Renown loss during events like the Cove that award XP.

Other sources of Renown, such as those Anthios888 propsed could be included as one time bonuses.

To address the idea of Renown Ransack (e.g. a guild that gains Renown too quickly), a modifier could be introduced that reduces the amount of Renown earned by a proportional percentage amount. The higher the amount of ransack, the higher the modifier. As ransack diminishes over time, the modifier reduces as well.

Bottom line: there would be more incentive to run more/different quests, do more in each quest, and complete quests on harder difficulties.

[Bronko]

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


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

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

I will reserve judgment until I see the medium and long-term effects, but I cannot thank you enough for addressing the issue. The renown system has been a real sore point for me over the past several months.

And I will certainly post any constructive feedback (positive or negative) once a bit of time has lapsed and I've had a chance to evaluate the effect these changes are having on my guild.

[Dethpayne]

It is so good to know that we have been heard and that you do care enough to try and fix this issue. As leader of Pay It Forward Sarlona, my Grand Officers and I have had many heart felt discussions about this matter and have tried several different ways to fix our problem without destroying the basis that our guild is based on. We have found that in doing so it has taken alot of the fun out of the game, people like to be rewarded for good play and not penalized for having a real life.
Thank you again for your attention in this matter, Hail Gygax!
Moonhair Guild Leader

It is gratifying to know that the Dev's are actually listening to us. I look forward to seeing if the changes work or not.

PIF Officer

[wax_on_wax_off]

Great change! I think the most important thing that needed to be done has been done - no incentive to kick players who don't "pull their weight".

Moving on from here I wonder what sort of guild level system do we want? Personally I'd like there always to be different levels, I want guild level 100 to be an accomplishment worthy of respect and I don't think that "Korthos Army" style guilds should be able to hit 100.

Perhaps a simple approach would be to increase the small and medium renown bonuses but also increase renown decay by a comparative amount.

To clarify I'm not in a level 100 guild nor is it likely that I ever will be as our guild policy doesnt prioritise renown. I'm okay with this though, I don't see any reason to hit 100, I'm perfectly happy to cheer and congratulate my friends who strive for guild level 100 and do so, it's an accomplishment and should remain so.

[Bronko]

A tentative thank you for addressing this issue.

Please consider other ways to get renown. For example, a varying amount for certain accomplishments like achieving level cap, completing an epic elite quest, completing a raid, or finishing an epic destiny. Perhaps upgrading an epic item, a green steel, an alchemical, a dragon armor. The idea would be that building effective characters and accomplishing some “renowned” signifies your guild’s success. Moreso than mindless chest farming.

Me likey. +1 for that one my dear.

[apocaladle]

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

We know there's some players who have likely spent as much or more time thinking about these things as we have individually. Feel free to discuss pros and cons, such as whether or not 1000 player guilds reaching and staying at level 100 is a problem that needs solving.
you have no idea how much i love you right now (is in a 1000 player guild stuck at low 80s)

[Bronko]

Nothing directly aimed at this situation at this time. We're still looking into possible future changes. Today's change was something we could feasibly try sooner rather than later, and potentially solve one Guild issue we perceived, which was the feeling that some Guild members would need to be kicked for the good of the guild as a whole in order to advance the guild.

Exactly this. Thank you again to you and the rest of the Dev Team for addressing this issue. By itself I don't think it will completely fix the issue with renown but it goes a long way.

[lordpummel1-1]

Im sooo excited about this! About time! Im so glad the devs heard our pleas. Thank you. ~Starlissa~ Leader of For Loot and Glory/Orien

[LordPiglet]

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

[wax_on_wax_off]

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

Not true, small guilds still get their bonus renown for size.

[9Crows]

yay for turbine


no more punishment for liking people and giving them a chance to be in your guild... large guilds are great for having alot of people online to group with at any given time

to all the people who say this rewards mass recruiting ... what this rewards is players who want lots of guild members to potentialy group with

[LordPiglet]

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

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

How many of those guilds are going to be at 100, with more then enough renown to beat decay before you decide this is a problem?

[SirValentine]

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

Well, now it rewards TOTAL activity, rather than AVERAGE activity. Recruiting more active players will still result in faster level gain and/or higher equilibrium level than an equal number of less active players. But, yes, no there's no incentive to have anything other than a completely full guild roster.

Small guilds are not actually punished, they are objectively no worse off than before... They appear worse off RELATIVE to the big guilds, which get a huge boost.

[Susalona]

Not true, small guilds still get their bonus renown for size.

You and nearly everyone in this thread are completely missing the point. Yes, small guilds get to keep their bonus when earning renown. HOWEVER, the mathematics of this change mean the the enormous renown earning potential of large guilds has NO offset to balance them with small guilds. As of today, small guilds are in exactly the same position large, casual guilds were in yesterday.

All the devs did today was flip the inequality in guild leveling potential from large guilds to small ones. I appreciate that the devs are trying to please a very vocal portion of the player base, but this was not the way to do it. Small guilds are being punished because it will now be laughably easy for large guilds to outlevel small ones, no matter how active the small ones are. The playing field is not even now, the inequality has just been shifted.

And to answer the question Varguille posed in his post, yes I do think that large, casual guilds rocketing to 100 in a matter of weeks/months (as they are guaranteed to do, that 3 levels/day is a joke) is a problem when small active guilds will still plod along at the same glacial pace. it devalues the achievement and does not address the base issue of inequality among various guild sizes.

[CaptainSpacePony]

These changes will open it up for a LOT of abuse...

All this will do is change things where there is no benefit to having a small guild anymore, and you'll have a bunch of really large, really awful guilds.

I agree, BUT do appreciate the attempt to address a concern regarding guild management. Please continue to evaluate the system... oh and let's have Mabar and Crystal Cove generate some reknown (from the kills at least since there are no chests or end rewards).

[Susalona]

Small guilds are not actually punished, they are objectively no worse off than before... They appear worse off RELATIVE to the big guilds, which get a huge boost.

They do not appear worse off that large guilds, they ARE worse off. The difference in renown earning potential between my 16 account guild and the 100+ account guilds is staggering and the small guild bonus on renown earned is not even a drop in the bucket in comparison.

[djl]

Great change! I think the most important thing that needed to be done has been done - no incentive to kick players who don't "pull their weight".

Moving on from here I wonder what sort of guild level system do we want? Personally I'd like there always to be different levels, I want guild level 100 to be an accomplishment worthy of respect and I don't think that "Korthos Army" style guilds should be able to hit 100.

Perhaps a simple approach would be to increase the small and medium renown bonuses but also increase renown decay by a comparative amount.

To clarify I'm not in a level 100 guild nor is it likely that I ever will be as our guild policy doesnt prioritise renown. I'm okay with this though, I don't see any reason to hit 100, I'm perfectly happy to cheer and congratulate my friends who strive for guild level 100 and do so, it's an accomplishment and should remain so.

No need to increase renown decay, just further increase small bonuses. Currently, a 6 man guild functions as a 24 man guild because they get 4x the renown (300% bonus plus the base renown). That means any guild with 19 or more people will have an advantage. If, say, a 6 man guild received a 1200% bonus to renown, so that they would be functionally equivalent to a 96 person guild (which is about what most large guilds sit at currently) things would be considerably more balanced.

[Postumus]

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

I am in a small guild. How does this 'punish' me? How does a larger guild having an advantage in the speed of leveling 'punish' my guild?

I could be mistaken, so please explain how my guild is worse off today than it was yesterday? Because giving a break to someone else <> punishing me.

[9Crows]

alot of the responces in thread appear to be focused on large guilds abusing changes to power lvl ...


What if guilds want lots of members simply because more members is more fun ..before change they were punished for this thinking

not everyone who plays the game is in min/max mode some just play for fun

[Postumus]

How many of those guilds are going to be at 100, with more then enough renown to beat decay before you decide this is a problem?

This sounds more like envy than identifying an actual problem for small guilds. There is nothing preventing small guilds from recruiting more people if what you want to do is race up to 100.

Put your cards on the table. Are you in a guild? How large is it? What level? Now how does this changes negatively affect YOUR guild? How is YOUR guild worse off today than it was a week ago?

[sirgog]

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

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

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

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

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

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


My suggestion:

- Levels 1-85 measure persistence and activity. Set up renown so that every guild, with persistence, can get to 85. (Most consider 60 or so about as high as you can get with persistance now. 85 is a good cutoff as it unlocks all the airships, all the 30 resist shrines so people don't feel behind in low level content, and all the +2 stat shrines so they don't feel behind in high level content).
- Levels 86-100 are rewards for prestigious in-game accomplishments. Has your guild completed Epic Elite Battle for Eveningstar? If so, that's the sort of achievement that should push you up from the 85 level towards the 100 level.

- Level 1-85 guilds receive the present renown amounts per renown token (50 for Heroic Deeds, 1000 for Legendary Victory). Renown decay should be reduced to an amount that is manageable at these levels or conceivably even removed entirely here.
- Level 86+ guilds then get a flat reduction in per-token renown (e.g. if the reduction at 86 is 25, then a Heroic Deeds awards 25 renown and a Legendary Victory 975. At 92 it might be 600, so all renown tokens under Legendary Victory status award no renown but a Legendary awards 400). This would kick in before % multipliers.
- Then add in guaranteed drops of renown to quests and optionals you consider prestigious. These much larger renown tokens might be 5000 or even 10000+ points of renown.
- For 1-85 those bonus 'prestige tokens' would be a nice bonus but nothing more. From maybe 90 up they would be the way to get renown.


Under this system guild level would have the following meaning:
- 1-60: Newly established guild.
- 61-88: Been around a while, no real prestige as yet.
- 89-95: This guild has proven that it is active and can run a variety of challenging end-game content.
- 96-99: This guild has proven over a sustained time that it frequently runs very difficult content.
- 100: Over an extended timeframe this guild's membership has proven itself capable of beating everything DDO can throw at it.

[CaptainSpacePony]

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

This was a wonderful reason to implement this (IMO) bad fix. Hopefully a better fix can be decided upon a executed down the line.


...whether or not 1000 player guilds reaching and staying at level 100 is a problem that needs solving.

I very strongly feel that is a problem. What is the point of a server with a handful of 1k player lvl 100 guilds and a spattering of others? I think it would completely reducing the role of guilds to ship buffs. Why not just make airship buffs publicly available to all characters?

[Postumus]

They do not appear worse off that large guilds, they ARE worse off. The difference in renown earning potential between my 16 account guild and the 100+ account guilds is staggering and the small guild bonus on renown earned is not even a drop in the bucket in comparison.

Did your guild lose a level? Does your guild need to earn more renown than before? Did anything change for your guild?

Answers: No. No. No.

It sounds like you are upset that larger guilds can now get to 100 faster than your guild. Why would that bother you? How does that affect your guild in any way?

[FranOhmsford]

I appreciate that the devs are trying to please a very vocal portion of the player base, but this was not the way to do it.


OK I admit I've been vocal about the guild renown problems HOWEVER:

My Guild on Cannith has NEVER had more than 40 members {accounts} at one time - We went over 30 only recently just for a bunch of the new recruits to disappear as always {Meaning that I've had to boot inactives and we're back down to 21}.

This is NOT the change I was looking for - This change does absolutely nothing to help my small guild - We're not under 11 accounts so don't get massive bonuses to renown earned either!
We're in exactly the same position we were in before ONLY now it's the Large {well known} guilds that will take all the new players {with no penalty}.
The tiny guilds will carry on as before - We all know they have no issues with levelling anyway.
It's the Small Guilds that are still in the brown stuff.

There's a number of changes the devs could make:

1. Small Guild Max Size upped to 50 {or even 100}.
2. Renown Drops {Realistic ones} added to Slayers, Crafting, Overlevelling etc.
3. Increased Drops of Impressive Trophies and Leg Vics on Elite at Level Content.
4. Remove Renown Penalty for booting Inactives {2 or Even 3 Months required rather than 1 to become Inactive}.
ETC.

But they instead go for the quick fix - This is gonna end in tears!

[Susalona]

This sounds more like envy than identifying an actual problem for small guilds. There is nothing preventing small guilds from recruiting more people if what you want to do is race up to 100.



This is the exact same thing people were saying to members of large, struggling guilds a week ago. Telling them to change their playstyle to suit the guild system, which rewarded smaller guilds. Lots of people hated that idea, so the system got changed to this. Now I am getting told the exact same thing and I am just about as happy about it as those people were last week. I hate it, and if you don't see the inequality of this system then it is because you don't want to.

My guild will NEVER be significantly larger that it is now, no matter the the guild system, because we are a group of friends that know each other well and that is something you just can't get with a larger guild. I don't think we should be punished for that any more that people last week thought they should be punished for having many casual members.

[susiedupfer]

Fot listening, for trying something fast.

[Bart_D]

Looking at post #17 on page 1... does this mean that in a 1000-account guild, each account will only have to earn 68 renown per day to maintain level 100? It will be enough to get there too, though it will obviously be much faster if they earn more.

If that's what it means, guild level will become just as much a function of size as of activity. If you want a higher guild level, just recruit someone anyone. How lame is that?

I might be misunderstanding something obvious, but making decay independent of guild size does not seem like a good change. Then I think it might be better to look at the way guild size is calculated. I don't think i have a perfect solution, but it should be possile to do in a way that does not require people who play little to earn as much favor as those playing a lot. I'm not sure 'renown per hour per account' should replace 'renown per account' but it might be possible to consider the amount of time online in a sensible way. Maybe let an account's contribution to guild size be a sum of Sqr(Hours Logged In) for a number of days, maybe with most recent days weighing more than previous days? There are lots of ways to do this.

[Psyker]

I love the idea of making decay not be affected by the number of players in a guild. The next move I would like to see is inactive players being kicked from a guild not costing the guild renown. Maybe make a mechanic that checks to see the players last log in, and if they had not logged in for however many days is considered to be inactive (maybe 60) then the guild does not lose renown for removing the player. Or maybe they don't lose the renown at first but that player will have an option to "leave on bad terms" when they next login (maybe have that option expire after a month or two after they have been removed).

The big key is I hate to see guilds trying to make decisions about whether or not to remove inactive players based on the effect it will have on their renown.

[rdasca]

Obviously this is only the first step in fixing an ongoing problem, intentionally or not, when airships where introduced it changed how guilds where formed and maintained.

The old style of renown decay is without a doubt unfair to causal guilds, this is a fact that one can argue if they choose to do so; however, calling the sun the moon does not change the fact it is still the sun.

Reducing the decay factor is fine in and by itself does not do enough to address the underlying problem, people are people and base human nature people want to feel like they are progressing, in fact that is the sole reason Turbine has a product to sell, if people did not progress in this game, i.e. levels, loot, better toons, then there would be zero players. So people want their guild level to move forward, at a rate comparable to others putting in similar effort.

If this is the only change that is made (permanent or not) then it is a very bad idea and one that will lead to a lot more hard feelings then there already was over this issue. All it will do is create mass recruiting guilds much worse than anything we have seen before now. Look at the numbers, the number of people in small to medium guild is far greater than those in large guilds.

Some will say “well large guilds work at it to” or “so what small guilds will get there sooner or later” while this is true would you play a game that you leveled your toons 2 times or 10 times faster only if you where in a guild of 100 people or more and if you where in a guild of 5 you never leveled past 12? Not the same? Maybe not but the sentiment is the same.

Bottom line, this is a right first step, next step either do away with decay and only penalize for kicking people out of guilds, say 100% or come up with a way to level the playing field completely.

[Silverleafeon]

Interesting.
Don't quite understand the numbers but overall this looks like a good thing.
Looks like there were two multipliers and now there is just one.

Hmm...have to ask Thalzur to figure this out for me.

Just wondering, our very small guild has 6 accounts, 3 with members that bring in renown,
and 3 accounts just designed to bring our rooster up to 6, since the renown was much better
with 6 activate accounts instead of 3 or 4.

With this possibly new system, can we drop those 3 blank accounts?

http://ddowiki.com/page/Guild_Renown#Guild_renown_decay_formula

Edit, looks like this is a decay adjustment, and the six account is done for
the Guild renown bonus which is entirely separate.
So we stick with our 6 accounts.

[mondo]

Is bringing up a guilds name not against the rules, why is ok to keep bringing up this guild without worry of repercusion?

Just wondering I know I would be offended if someone said "we dont want Fine Antique Leg Wear style of guild advancing to level 100" just saying.

[Tshober]

They do not appear worse off that large guilds, they ARE worse off. The difference in renown earning potential between my 16 account guild and the 100+ account guilds is staggering and the small guild bonus on renown earned is not even a drop in the bucket in comparison.

I don't see how you can say you are any worse off than you were before. You are still working your way steadily toward level 100 and now, with this change, you will get there a bit faster than you would have before.

To be all distraught over the possibility that someone else might get there first because they have more members is, well, I am trying to think of a nice term for it. If it truly bothers you that much that you might not get to the top level as fast as a bigger guild, then you could always recruit more members. You know, join the inclusive crowd. If you don't want to be more inclusive and you prefer a small guild then, again, you have nothing to complain about because you still get to enjoy the benefit of not having to have all those unwanted guild mates and the small guild renown bonus benefit and you still get to level 100 eventually as well. I don't see what you could possibly complain about.

[Silverleafeon]

Oh, by the way, I have friends in large guilds although I am in a very small guild.
I am happy for them.

Let us see what will happen...

[Tshober]

My guild will NEVER be significantly larger that it is now, no matter the the guild system, because we are a group of friends that know each other well and that is something you just can't get with a larger guild. I don't think we should be punished for that any more that people last week thought they should be punished for having many casual members.

No, there is a big difference. The people who were complaining about the system before this change were complaining that their guild could NEVER get to the higher levels. There is a huge, gigantic difference between leveling up slowly and never leveling up at all. Also, the old system strongly encouraged all guilds to exclude casual/social players so that DDO's social environment as a whole was harmed. That has been greatly reduced with this change. Now guilds are no longer rewarded for excluding casual/social players and for not inviting new players into their membership and the overall social environment should benefit from that. So, in summary, the two complaints are not at all equivalent.

[theslimshady]

To all whom have not suffered the pain a large guild has suffered for the past 2 years of decay and the idea of large korthos style army taken over you really dont know what you are talking about .
First off the most common mistake is that the cap is 1000 toons not accounts and i know few to no people who play only one toon.
Second i am co leader of the largest highest level guild across the servers as far as i know and i have never recruitted in korthos or even asked people to join my guild ever .
Third being called lazy non raiding spammer and the 1000s of names we have been called in a almost daily bulling {and from the same people that pillfer my players when they need to fill there ranks} is like stuff wars start over.
This change for my guild will mean a daily net gain of renown earned instead of bleeding certain days of the week and having to endoar any more of this little uber guilds ridicule

so in closing thank you ddo it is like a early christmas present that now me and my guild can look forward to the mabar and winterfest this year instead of dreading the decay ---------- leader For loot and Glory

[chrisdinus7]

If this is the solution, they might as well remove guild levels altogether. Decay will now only be significant for small guilds or extremely casual guilds. What is the point? Just make everyone guild level 100 and be done with it. Don't make us spam invites to random people we have no intention of playing with to level a guild.

[Talonaise]

I will add my thanks to the devs for exploring this issue. As a member of a large guild who has a mix of hard core and casual players, it seems this will help us.

I look forward to seeing how it goes this week.

I am not sure what the issue is if 1 guild reaches 100 or 1000. Honestly, the advantages are not that great to hit the top. But it will be nice to see forward progress again. The system as it was just did not work.

[Tshober]

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

First, thanks so much for making this change!

With all due respect, there are no 1000 player guilds. The current guild cap is a 1000 member or 1000 character cap, not an account or player cap. Few players have just one character. Many have lots of alts. So in reality the larger guilds are typically a few hundred players/accounts.

I don't like having all guilds sitting at 100 eventually with nothing else to accomplish. I would like see the guild levels extended so all guilds will be able to continually progress. I made such a suggestion here: http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?t=385226 a few months ago.

[t0r012]

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

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

As to the Red section above

I'm curious as to the phrasing of this statement.
To me this indicates that you are attempting to use renown as a means of "managing" guild sizes.
Yet that stated purpose does/has not been apparent to me as the actual goal of renown decay.

I had been going under the assumption, deduced from the way renown decay is implemented, that decay was provided as an incentive for guilds to keep majority and or large portions of their members active, engaged and playing. Just as the ships and amenities were rewards for accomplishing those goals.
This seemed logical to me as it is in turbines best interest to have in place a system where guilds are rewarded for promoting activity within their guild as it generates more screen time and thus more possible revenue opportunities.

---
as for the second part about feedback on level 100 guilds of 1000 players I am all in favor of it, IF and only if it is handled in such a way that encourages more active players to generate more revenue for turbine keep this game that I love running.

-----

I am sorry but I see these changes as a loss of focus of the original goal of the renown decay system. Yes this is still based on an assumption I have made about the decay system which may be completely inaccurate.

--------

"I feel I have to kick my friends from the guild because they don't play enough" should not really factor near as much in to the decision to change the decay formula as many think it should.

first - it is a choice of the guild leader to prioritize benefits of guild size over friendship. If a 30 sonic resist shrine is more important than having your buddy in the guild well how much of a friend are they really?

which leads me to point two

if said friend is not active and playing enough for a guilds liking , is not the guild at least partially responsible for not engaging said player?

on to point 3
is it really the end of the world if a semi active or low activity player does get removed from a their friends guild? it is not as if removing said player from the guild will prevent them from playing with their friend in the future. It is not as if that friend is banished from DDO or even prevented from running with their former guild mates. How does turbine gain from a semi active friend not getting removed from a guild anymore than if the player is removed.
++
Side note
the "i don't want to have to kick my friends" has to me always sounded as a means of someone justifying their decision to remove people from a guild to assuage their guilt.
+++

Wow this post has gotten larger than I anticipated so let me see if I can summarize my thoughts.
I don't mind seeing renown decay changes IF it means a stronger game with a larger more active playerbase.
please do not just capitulate to the vocal forum-goers who just want moar without the sacrifice and or effort to earn the rewards.

lastly if I am completely off base with my assumption about the renown decay systems original intention of being a means to motivate guilds to keep their players active , dear silver flame, please let me know now so I don't make anymore of a fool of myself.

[Jay203]

please leave us solo guilds out of this :(:(:(

[Beethoven]

They do not appear worse off that large guilds, they ARE worse off. The difference in renown earning potential between my 16 account guild and the 100+ account guilds is staggering and the small guild bonus on renown earned is not even a drop in the bucket in comparison.

That's assuming DDO's playerbase consists almost exclusively of automatons devoid of an own personality, who habitually make their homes among hundreds and thousands of strangers instead of preferring a privacy of being with only family and friends (or like-minded individuals).

Blind inviting guilds have sprung up ever since DDO exists and they all fallen apart within months; not because they were killed by any system but because you cannot simply through several hundred strangers into one community and expect they will life happily ever after.

Vets frequently fled those guilds within a couple months because the whole guild started feel like a pug. New(er) players often complained about the lack of support from their guild (beyond ship buffs) and when making own connections and friends among other players they too drifted away.

Those large guilds that persisted usually grew large over time. Those large(-ish) guilds that actually lasted were those guilds who gradually gave the one or other new member a try, kept their doors open for (casual) family members such as the wife/hubby/cousin/sister or even children of existing members and those friends who only wanted to give DDO a try every now and then. All large guilds I know have a significantly higher turn-around in members then their smaller counterparts.

Small guilds still can achieve and maintain high levels and frequently enjoy the advantage of being more tight knit and thus also have less turn around. Guilds who grew large through blind invites are going to fall apart within months like they always did. No one is getting punished. The only ones to ever got punished were those who allowed their spouses who only played twice a week to join their guild or who allowed their kids to join but then only let them play a couple hours a week.

[Tshober]

As to the Red on to point 3
is it really the end of the world if a semi active or low activity player does get removed from a their friends guild? it is not as if removing said player from the guild will prevent them from playing with their friend in the future. It is not as if that friend is banished from DDO or even prevented from running with their former guild mates.

If casual/social players are made to feel unwelcome in DDO's guilds, it just makes it more likely they will leave DDO for a gaming environment that is more tolerant of their chosen playstyle. Virtually no other MMO has a guild decay system like DDO had before this recent change.



lastly if I am completely off base with my assumption about the renown decay systems original intention of being a means to motivate guilds to keep their players active , dear silver flame, please let me know now so I don't make anymore of a fool of myself.

The best way to get people to play more is to make them feel welcome in the game and give them the freedom to play the game the way they want to play it. The guild decay system failed miserably on both of those counts.

[chrisdinus7]

If casual/social players are made to feel unwelcome in DDO's guilds, it just makes it more likely they will leave DDO for a gaming environment that is more tolerant of their chosen playstyle. Virtually no other MMO has a guild decay system like DDO had before this recent change.




The best way to get people to play more is to make them feel welcome in the game and give them the freedom to play the game the way they want to play it. The guild decay system failed miserably on both of those counts.

This just changes who no longer feels that the game supports their play style. Now, you are being told to join a large guild or be doomed to slowly level (if at all) to get the benefits. It may change up some who is in the hot seat, but it is still the same problem.

[Tshober]

This just changes who no longer feels that the game supports their play style. Now, you are being told to join a large guild or be doomed to slowly level (if at all) to get the benefits. It may change up some who is in the hot seat, but it is still the same problem.

No guild of any size or of any playstyle is leveling any slower than they were before this change. I don't see how anyone has been harmed by this change in any way whatsoever. I do see a lot of gnashing of teeth about how large guilds might be able to level up faster. So what? How does that affect you or your guild in any way?

[chrisdinus7]

No guild of any size or of any playstyle is leveling any slower than they were before this change. I don't see how anyone has been harmed by this change in any way whatsoever. I do see a lot of gnashing of teeth about how large guilds might be able to level up faster. So what? How does that affect you or your guild in any way?

Meh - directly? I still have all the buffs just like before. Your point would be equally true if they just set every guild to level 100 and removed decay (effectively just removing guild levels). The problem with this is that it just like the old system encouraged kicking casual players, this system encourages creating horde guilds like I have seen other in MMOs. And since, IMO, those suck and are bad for the game, I'd rather not see that. So, I'd rather they just remove guild levels altogether over doing this.

[t0r012]

If casual/social players are made to feel unwelcome in DDO's guilds, it just makes it more likely they will leave DDO for a gaming environment that is more tolerant of their chosen playstyle. Virtually no other MMO has a guild decay system like DDO had before this recent change.




The best way to get people to play more is to make them feel welcome in the game and give them the freedom to play the game the way they want to play it. The guild decay system failed miserably on both of those counts.

Decay doesn't make casual players feel unwelcomed in DDO, only other players can make someone feel unwelcomed.
Sure yes having conflicting goals of a casual player and a guild that prioritizes activity over companionship is a problem but that would be a issue for that match regardless of decay, would it not?
Isn't that more a failure of a guilds recruiting practice than the decay system?

Are there not a lot of guilds in DDO as well as other games that prioritize activity and a level of achievement over social engagement?

I believe there are many casual guilds in DDO that do not place onus on activity that the casual player would be much better match for and would be plenty likely to find.

[t0r012]

No guild of any size or of any playstyle is leveling any slower than they were before this change. I don't see how anyone has been harmed by this change in any way whatsoever. I do see a lot of gnashing of teeth about how large guilds might be able to level up faster. So what? How does that affect you or your guild in any way?


This discussion shouldn't be about anyone's guild benefiting or being penalized directly but about the effect on the game as a whole.

Let me point something out here before I go any further no one will in anyway be "harmed" by any change to the guild system. No one will take physical injury no matter what happens.

yes large guilds might be able to level faster but, that isn't what the priority should be here, nor should it be about slowing down small guilds or any of that. it should be about what would be best for the game as a whole.
What IU see as best for the game as a whole is getting more people active, engaged and playing.
Simply changing a formula to benefit large guilds to make it easier on them may , or may not accomplish that goal.
I am more inclined to believe that simply changing the formula so that it is easier for large guilds to level a bit faster will be counter productive to that goal.
To my mind that will allow large guilds to reduce their efforts to engage their current membership and still gain more rewards at the same pace or better than they had previously.
That doesn't seem to help at all with the idea that we want a more active player base and just give guilds more for less.
==========================

I should say here I am in a small friends/family guild that is in the low 40s so I have zero experience with what the decay is like in a large guild.

Our goals are simple , play to have fun, renown and buffs are just a token favor of our accomplishments. We would play just the same without them.

I understand that many feel differently and to them having the biggest ship with the best buffs is just how they wish to play. I see that as perfectly legitimate goal in someways even enviable to the part of me that is a powergamer.
to that I say if your current guild is not accomplishing that goal perhaps instead of just asking for a change to the renown system start or join a guild, or adjust your own so that those goals can be accomplished.

[EllisDee37]

We're still looking into possible future changes. Today's change was something we could feasibly try sooner rather than later, and potentially solve one Guild issue we perceived, which was the feeling that some Guild members would need to be kicked for the good of the guild as a whole in order to advance the guild.This is a great change for Mabar, at very least.

It's fine to base renown decay on account size in principle; the problem was that everyone counted every day. You could return to a size-based decay if you moved it from guild level to account level.

As in, each day, the first time I log in on one of my alts, I incur decay. This decay is told to me in a (Guild) or (Standard) message, whichever makes the most sense. For example: "(Guild) Your renown decay today is 1,671." Now I know that I need 1671 renown this session to hold my own.

The key is that it only happens on login. So if I go on vacation for a week, I incur no decay at all. Or if I'm just a casual player who only logs in on weekends, the guild has no incentive to boot me for hurting them during the week.

This would take actual development time, as opposed to flipping a switch, but maybe it would help address some of the concerns people have. In any case, your quickie band-aid approach to get something started immediately is aces in my book. Kudos.

[moops]

Small and medium guilds will still exist, because we like playing with our friends, and no drama. Mass recruit guilds will get a rep, elitists will still be elitists and not want to group with guilds like that.

I hold the star in a medium sized lvl 88 guild, and I have never kicked anyone at all. I have people who leave the game for 6+ months at a time, a few who only sign in a couple times a month-- people with F2p mules. We have friends who haven't logged on in 2 years that we haven't kicked...I personally like to see their name on the roster to remember old times.

It's strange how differently I look at what a guild should be compared to others.

I don't think that any of us in guild have ever really given a lot of thought to reknown...we just play. This change won't affect us at all, because we don't think about it, and really there is no point to being in a high level guild. For those super dependent on ship buffs, lvl 60 is all you will ever need.

Sure we do have some top notch really good players, but we all play for fun. And even tho many of us have reduced our playtime greatly/ or farm non reknown things, we still do OK with reknown because of the way we use our time.

I have to leave pugs because the want to go and get ship buffs after every single quest...this takes them longer than most quests take to do--as well as for 99% of content buffs just don't matter, esp with the way the game is now--3- 5% xp shrine is nice, but not if you could've finished 2 quests in the time it took for you to recall to get it. If I only have an hour or so to play, I want to play the game not sit there while it takes people 20 mins to d*ck around and get buffs.

I do applaud the devs for addressing an issue that upset so many forumites.

[Tshober]

Decay doesn't make casual players feel unwelcomed in DDO, only other players can make someone feel unwelcomed.
Sure yes having conflicting goals of a casual player and a guild that prioritizes activity over companionship is a problem but that would be a issue for that match regardless of decay, would it not?
Isn't that more a failure of a guilds recruiting practice than the decay system?


Yes, people made those anti-social decisions. But the decay system encouraged and rewarded that behavior and it should not have.




Are there not a lot of guilds in DDO as well as other games that prioritize activity and a level of achievement over social engagement?


Sure there are. But those guilds that choose to prioritize social engagement should not be prohibited from advancing. And that is what the decay system did. No other part of DDO prohibits casual/social players from advancing and for good reason.




I believe there are many casual guilds in DDO that do not place onus on activity that the casual player would be much better match for and would be plenty likely to find.

Not nearly as many as there should be and all of them were prohibited from advancing for no good reason. Again, no other part of DDO prevents casual/social players from advancing and this change in decay policy brings guild leveling into line with all other parts of DDO.

[Deathdefy]

I can't really speak to big guild experiences, being that my guild has 3 accounts in it; 1 of which is very casual.

We're ever-so-slowly creeping up to 66, but I don't think it's remotely possible that we'll ever hit 70 much less 80 due to the minimum guild size for decay being set to 10 in the formula.

Since it's being discussed, I'd like to submit that the minimum guild size for decay be flat out removed.

While guilds with 6 - 9 accounts can just power through the 'guild size = 10' decay, the really small real-life-friends only guilds with 1 - 5 accounts struggle to even offset decay.

The formula already has a hard "+ 10" modifier on the end which seems a sufficient insurance against exploitation.
Account Multiplier = (Max(Modified Guild Size,10) + 10 )

Whilst I'd like it removed entirely, even tiering the system such that
1 - 4 accounts has modified guild size = 4
5 - 8 accounts has modified guild size = 8
9 - 10 accounts has modified guild size = 10
or something would be great.

I appreciate the counter argument is something about enforcing sociability if you want the best buffs, but these tiny guilds are primarily people who simply aren't going to join a large guild anyway. It will also still take a much, much longer time to reach the levels of the top airships.

While smaller guilds get guild bonuses over renown (with 3 people, we have +210% which is the same as a 12 person guild. We could artificially inflate our guild with dummy accounts to 6 people for a maximum bonus of 300% but that's disingenous and unfun meta-gaming that doesn't to appeal me, and I suspect most people in these sorts of guilds).

The overnight downer of seeing ~10 000 renown lost just isn't fun - especially when it represents the majority, or more than the entire sum of a day's earned renown.

There would be a much greater sense of progress and enjoyment for tiny guild players with lessened bonuses for being small and no disappointment when renown drops massively overnight.

[t0r012]

This is a great change for Mabar, at very least.

It's fine to base renown decay on account size in principle; the problem was that everyone counted every day. You could return to a size-based decay if you moved it from guild level to account level.

As in, each day, the first time I log in on one of my alts, I incur decay. This decay is told to me in a (Guild) or (Standard) message, whichever makes the most sense. For example: "(Guild) Your renown decay today is 1,671." Now I know that I need 1671 renown this session to hold my own.

The key is that it only happens on login. So if I go on vacation for a week, I incur no decay at all. Or if I'm just a casual player who only logs in on weekends, the guild has no incentive to boot me for hurting them during the week.

This would take actual development time, as opposed to flipping a switch, but maybe it would help address some of the concerns people have. In any case, your quickie band-aid approach to get something started immediately is aces in my book. Kudos.

I like your idea about the guild message giving your renown decay total for the day. that maybe just enough incentive for some to do that one extra dungeon.

I can't agree with the idea of only having decay on days when a player logs in. What incentive does the guild have then to engage you and to get you to play more frequently for longer, thus benefiting the game as a whole?
That is all carrot and no stick for the guild to do their part.

==========

Yes the current system might be a bit too much stick and not enough carrot.

What do we think the best middle ground would be for a system to be a bit less harsh while still encouraging guilds to do their part to earn their rewards?

Should the decay system get a modifier to lessen the decay based on consistency over time. Something that doesn't sting quite as much for the guilds that invite weekend warriors who only play on weekends or a few sporadically over weeks but usually for a roughly equal amount of time?

maybe give lapsed players a small incentive to their renown gathering if after a moderately extended absence if their activity returns to normal or increases compared to their average pre absence?

I would fear going too far but something to reduce the possible guilt someone would feel if they stayed away a while too long and feared the guild would blame them. this would also give the guild some incentive to keep the player longer and perhaps even attempt to entice them back before too much time has elapsed.

[Tshober]

So, I'd rather they just remove guild levels altogether over doing this.

I would actually be okay with no levels too. Not because I have an aversion to really large guilds but because it would make guild membership decisions be about how you want to play and who you want to play with, not about guild leveling. Even with no guild levels, I would still be the leader of a very large, pretty casual/social guild, just like those you hate so much, because that is the way I like to play.

[t0r012]

Yes, people made those anti-social decisions. But the decay system encouraged and rewarded that behavior and it should not have.





Sure there are. But those guilds that choose to prioritize social engagement should not be prohibited from advancing. And that is what the decay system did. No other part of DDO prohibits casual/social players from advancing and for good reason.





Not nearly as many as there should be and all of them were prohibited from advancing for no good reason. Again, no other part of DDO prevents casual/social players from advancing and this change in decay policy brings guild leveling into line with all other parts of DDO.


They have the freedom to join another guild if they wish more advancement, or choose to become more active.
they are not prohibited from advancing.
Only their lack of activity is the limiting factor, which is the whole point of having a renown system as a mechanic to encourage activity.

just giving free benefits to every guild does not benefit the playerbase as a whole , the game itself or turbine in anyway.

[chrisdinus7]

I would actually be okay with no levels too. Not because I have an aversion to really large guilds but because it would make guild membership decisions be about how you want to play and who you want to play with, not about guild leveling. Even with no guild levels, I would still be the leader of a very large, pretty casual/social guild, just like those you hate so much, because that is the way I like to play.

I don't hate them in the slightest. And we both agree that no levels would be good. It *feels* like they are trying to social engineer us with this change, and that is what is irking me. I completely agree that guild membership should be about social relations and not leveling. My guild is also about social relations (we all know each other in real life), and we have some very casual players and people who have to go inactive for long stretches of time due to military service. My problem isn't the affect on already existing large guilds.

I dislike the proposal because instead of making it about supporting casual players or removing the social engineering aspect - they are instead reversing the problem and rewarding us for playing in large guilds. I'd rather they removed levels altogether, and just let us playing the guild sizes we like. You can have your large guild, I can have small guild, and neither of us would have to worry about getting pressure to improve advancement by changing membership policies - either kicking casuals under the old system, or recruiting randoms under the new system.

Basically, just like large guilds didn't like to feel pressure to kick people to generate advancement, I don't want pressure to grab more people just for the purpose of generating advancement. I had previously assumed that the devs wanted a limited number of level 100 guilds. But since they are now saying that they don't really see an issue with it, just remove the levels and give everyone the buffs. We can all be on equal footing then and create the guilds that match our styles.

[Deathdefy]

They have the freedom to join another guild if they wish more advancement, or choose to become more active.
they are not prohibited from advancing.
Only their lack of activity is the limiting factor, which is the whole point of having a renown system as a mechanic to encourage activity.

just giving free benefits to every guild does not benefit the playerbase as a whole , the game itself or turbine in anyway.

I don't think the whole point of having a renown system is to be 'a mechanic to encourage activity'.

The renown system's main goal, I'm very confident in asserting, is to fulfill the MMO staple of creating another 'feeling of progression'.

Giving away free benefits to every guild would indeed benefit the playerbase as a whole provided they felt they had 'earned them' since it would make the game more enjoyable for everyone to play.

The question that I'm guessing is facing the devs is if that 'feeling of progression' is not happening under the current model.

You don't want everyone to be 100, since:
- then no one's progressing, and
- there's no satisfaction in being comparatively better than anyone else (which is probably also essential)
but you also don't want the current stagnation.

Being satisfied with a solution that forces people into 'active guilds' and 'non-advancing guilds' would be acknowledging partial defeat on an winnable issue.

[Virella]

seems to be a move in the wrong direction of handling this, now making guilds that want to level be forced to recruit people to get numbers up, rather than getting rid of the dead wood that was clogging their guilds up. maybe renown decay of a set amount maybe half what you have it set at now+ an amount per person capped at the full amount that person earned that day. that way you don't have to kick the casuals, your keeping the balance between small and large guilds without two heavily favoring massive guild size to level your guild, this seems to be the best of both worlds, the casuals wont hurt their guilds and may help them, if they play enough in a day to offset that days renown decay.

[9Crows]

this thread is dominated by people stateng large guilds are all about lvling or reaching 100 and that this change promotes that..

there is a small group that state the real reason for large guilds... its about meeting alot of new people and having a varied pool of players to play with at all times .. without thier being negative repercusions for being this way ..


some people think this game is abouit fun not gear not guild lvls but fun the previos system punished that type of thinking

[Virella]

the point i think most are trying to make is that this system they just implemented is going to heavily favor large or very large guilds, when the current average guild size is from what i have seen around 10-30 people at least on cannith. it was a competition atleast to some of us to rise to the top of the list, with this change the only ones going to be there are going to be massive and no one will be able to keep up with them

[Cyiwin]

It's a complex problem. We need to first understand what the goals are before we can zero in on helpful suggestions. Otherwise we're just spitballing.

[jejeba86]

According to what has been said, and the wiki, renown decay will be ten times the guild level multiplier.
As of now, a booted player can take 25% of gained renown. Maybe up that percentage to 75%? Or something that decreases over time.

[Scrootaype]

I lead a level 71, nearly 72 guild on Argo.

We've been around for almost two years and have always kept "effective" membership to 30 or fewer players/accounts. The purpose has been so that we can play and advance as a guild steadily without having to grind for renown or worry about decay.

I have to say that if decay is going to continue to be a mechanism, now having it without respect to guild membership size is a mistake and will punish smaller-sized but advanced-level guilds because of per-player decay. It now clearly will favor large-sized guilds of any level frankly unless renown bonuses can be scaled commensurately.

We've been deliberate in how we've run our guild, and to be honest this change is discouraging as it will in some measure enable or reward the "Korthos Army" approach already mentioned.

Decay, if it is kept, should reflect what the word truly means: to break down or decompose. I personally think decay should be calculated largely in terms of the number of inactive or 3 week+ absent members a guild has, reflecting the fact that the guild has declined or ..ahem.. decayed from its past, active state.

So perhaps decay is defined as inactive accounts or 3 weeks+ inactive as a percentage of total account membership at any particular time. And then perhaps renown bonuses can be based on the % of membership that plays daily or weekly.

So large guilds aren't punished if they keep their inactive roster clean, small guilds aren't punished likewise. And the more people play, the faster a guild can get bonuses to growth.

[lumpilein1973]

After countless requests to change the way decay of guild renown is calculated in the game, we finally have an implementation. Many new suggestions have already been posted in this thread, in addition to previous suggestions, and in response to a temporary change that may very well be coined "The Great Equalizer". I am thrilled for our many friends in larger guilds, who now may have the opportunity to also rise to level 100 as we did in April 2012. However, as much as the "old" system was penalizing larger guilds, making it near impossible to venture beyond the point of equilibrium--on Argo we saw that point reached by CK, IA, and other large guilds, in the level 80-85 range, at which they have been hovering for what seems an eternity--the temporary change now favors larger guilds, and potential recruitment in large numbers.

Despite the rejoicing among many community members who belong to medium or large guilds, I sense that this feels like a slap in the face for small guilds, even though the renown BONUS still applies, continuing to give small guilds a benefit of sorts that larger guilds are missing out on. Yet, if the idea was to make the renown system fair, and keep it simple, the temporary change may not be the way to go.

In many discussion with friends, and other guild leaders on Argo, the main concern hasn't really been decay due to guild size, which may have been what people superficially have perceived as the main issue. The main concern is what we term REAL LIFE, and the fact that it doesn't support being in the game every day, all day, for most of us. Many players are CASUAL players, who wouldn't even WANT to log into the game every day, even if they could--DDO is a pastime for a couple of evenings a week for them. In translation, this means the issue lies with characters/accounts who do not log in for a day, or two, or five, or 30 days, because they have other things to tend to--but still factor into the decay calculations until the end of day 31 (or something similar) of inactivity.

Should this assessment be correct, one of the simplest and fairest ways I can think of to address renown decay is to make accounts go inactive (i.e. NOT contribute to decay calculations, and increase the potential small/medium guild renown bonus) much faster than they do now. Make accounts go inactive within a short period of time, a day, or two, or maybe three, for all guilds, of any size. Maintain a decay per ACTIVE account calculation (for in any guild, no one logs on EVERY DAY), and I bet you larger guilds will still see a benefit, without smaller guilds being put at a disadvantage--which seems to be the case with the temporary change currently active. The benefits of this seem immediate and apparent. This change would make DDO more casual player friendly (personal attitude problems towards casual players aside), and it would forgive the fact that people have jobs, families, get sick, go on vacation, have other hobbies. No one would feel pressured to kick people as they do not log on during a week of vacationing on the Bahamas, no one would have to grind more renown to cover decay for a guildie who had to take a second job during the week and now only plays weekends, and small guilds wouldn't see part of the rationale for maintaining small guild size disappear overnight. The list of benefits goes on......

Yummimummi
Proud Founder, Leader, and Die-A-Lot-Mascot of Single Malt Addicts

[GLand_Clickyclack]

Thank You devs for a step in the right direction. I hope there will be more quality of guild life changes in the near future.

[SirValentine]

All the devs did today was flip the inequality in guild leveling potential from large guilds to small ones.


Actually, flipped, yes, but not JUST flipped. Though there was some guild-size-inequality before, it wasn't like this.

Before, an ideally small (size 11) guild was ahead of a medium-large (size 50) by a factor of 2.04, or a factor of 1.72 ahead of a huge (size 1000) guild.

Now, the medium-large is ahead of the small by a factor of 1.4. OK, that's not bad, right?

But the huge guild is ahead of the medium large by a factor of 20, and ahead of the small by a factor of 28. That is a very big separation. The same activity level that gets the huge guild to level 100 would only get the medium-large to level 55, and the small to level 51.

[ninjadwarf_uk]

According to what has been said, and the wiki, renown decay will be ten times the guild level multiplier.
As of now, a booted player can take 25% of gained renown. Maybe up that percentage to 75%? Or something that decreases over time.

This, but make it 100% for the first two months then reduce by 10% a month down to a minimum of 20%.

That way there is no benefit to mass invite and boot after gaining level tactics, unless you keep them on gulf for a good few months, by which time they're far more likely to be a relevant part of the guild anyway

[Cyiwin]

Without knowing the goal, I'm going to assume we want the option of having a guild of any size and be able to allow others access without the concern of how often they play. This may not be Turbines goal but it sounds good to me. :)

Why do we need decay at all when people aren't in the game world? Since it is a game and not a career, only decay while we are logged in. Use a formula something like:

Decay = (number of guildies currently logged in)(X amount of decay) / minute

This takes guild size and time off of DDO out of the equation. And bonus! It would would make people like me think twice about going afk for an extended amount of time instead of logging off.

[Don1966]

i applaud the Devs for finally taking a look at the flawed renown decay that we have had for so long. i call it flawed in that the way it was implemented it really discouraged guilds from taking in casual players, i.e. players that do not log in every day for two or more hours of questing. making the change they did removes that flaw.
however, a better way to remove the flaw would be to come up with a new formula to calculate decay. base daily decay on the amount of renown gained the previous day and factor in the number of accounts that logged in on that day and actually earned renown. also factor in how much renown a given account earned that day, i.e. an account can not ever cost a guild more renown than it earned. this method does not discourage casual players, nor does it discourage people from logging in just to say hi. it will also smooth out any major dips from events that do not generate renown, crystal cove and mabar. this would also let smaller guilds keep part of their advantage of very little decay without overly penalizing large guilds.

under the old system an account could be created, join a guild, play for one day and gain 500 renown for the day then never logged in again. if the guild was level 70, and was holding there, that account would cost the guild 16206 renown in decay until it was considered inactive. if at a later point that account was booted from the guild, it would cost another 7563 renown plus 125 of the renown it did gain. grand total of 23894 renown taken from a guild for an account that earned just 500. please don't ever go back to that system.

[.Revenga.]

If this stays i'd like either:

- An increase in small/medium guild bonuses

- Guaranteed or much higher chances of high renown rewards in epic elite content

And this coupled with an increase in base decay.

[DocBenway]

It is good you are at least looking at it.

This change, while making me feel somewhat like Turbine no longer wants me to boot my friends who happen to have not logged on in a bit, it also makes me feel that they want me to spam invites in the harbor to everyone and their iron defender if I ever want push that digital boulder any higher up the pixelated hill.

My guild will still decay at the same artificial guild size 10 rate, while anyone I'd "get to know" before recruiting is spammed with invites from lvl100-in-two-weeks conglomerations of players with no association but a name in brackets they are tagged with and a common spot to buff.

As far as Ransack goes. Back when U5 introduced guild levels, small had no bonus so there was no way we'd level anywhere near ransack rate. Then there was that whole "log in all your alts or they'll each count as another account for bonus/decay" time. /wipesawaytear Good Times. This change doesn't help my guild.

While it is good you are looking at the system, these changes (except the no longer encouraging booting bit) seem to remove the only saving grace of the Renown system, which was deterring mass-invite guilds from being the "easiest road to 100." This change sets up neon traffic arrows directing all onto the the on ramp for the mass-invite-impersonal-feeway.

[Daemoneyes]

Excellent Changes,
all i would like to see now is some minor tweaking for the Guild Size Bonus

maybe make it a linear progression
from Guild size 12 with 300% to Guild size 75+ with -25%.

[SirValentine]

Oh, BTW Turbine...every huge guild that hits level 93+, or small guild that folds and merges into another guild, are guilds that will NOT be buying +5% XP shrines from The DDO Store.

[Levonestral]

I'm going to start off saying that I really like the recent changes you've made to the decay system and think it's certainly a step in the right direction. Thank you.

My guild has been around since almost the beginning of the game itself. We've gone from as many as 50 active accounts down to as low as 15, but usually sit around 20-25 accounts at any given time.

When the renown system was first introduced, we decided that we'd never concern ourselves with decay and just enjoy the benefits that came with what we could manage.

We have a lot of friends who from time to time drop by just to say hello and then leave again. We love to hear from them and have never been concerned about any losses from their visits. We also have a lot of long-time players who play heavy and hard for a few weeks once new content comes out, then take breaks from the game for weeks/months at a time to avoid burnout.

Despite the varying amount of activity level, to our surprise, we've been able to reach level 84 with only a few minor bumps along the way. However, we've been stuck at 84 for a while and that has been having a slight affect on morale lately by being so close to but not being able to reach 85 because of decay.

This change, though not being a huge difference for us, will give us just enough decay reduction that we'll be able to make 85 now and possibly even continue pushing on even a bit further !

As far as the 1000 player guilds reaching level 100? Who cares. Putting in the effort to get renown is a task in and of itself. The renown system is not any reflection on the internal workings of the guild itself; in-game reputation and earning the respect of peers goes a lot further than a guild level alone.

This change actually levels the playing field a bit by making it possible for any guild to now reach 100 and reducing more the improperly perceived "value" to having a high level guild number. Everyone deserves the benefits, nobody likes being "stuck".

Is the decay perfect ? No, but it's certainly better than before. Personally, I'm leaning toward the removal of decay entirely, but, if we do need to keep it, the recent changes are much better.

The original intent behind decay was to stop people from making a high level guild, then booting everyone and keeping it without any further effort needed. The plan was with good intentions, but in retrospect, what does that matter really? Why not let everyone earn it and keep it? Most people did earn it honestly, why make them pay for the actions of a few ? Grinding renown, just to keep a level, isn't much "fun" for anyone.

I think the manner in which renown is gained is just fine, the system for determining guild size bonus is just fine, but I think there should still be some effort put into reducing the exploiting of the system and players within a guild. To discourage the "Recruit, bleed and boot" actions that has been a concern, and to keep things from being overly complicated, how about this:

Setting a higher penalty for removing players from a guild early on, then have that amount reduced as time passes. For example, have the amount reduce by 10% for every 2 weeks the player is inactive:

100% loss - Active
90% loss - 2 weeks
80% - 1 month
70% - 1 month, 2 weeks
60% - 2 months
50% - 2 months, 2 weeks
40% - 3 months
30% - 3 months, 2 weeks
20% - 4 months
10% - 4 months, 2 weeks
0% - 5 months.

At this point you should be able to remove the player without any losses at all. The current losses from a player that chooses to leave should be kept as is.

With this, we could possibly remove decay entirely, as booting people early on would have a huge effect on those types of guilds.

If dropping decay entirely isn't an option, a guild member of mine suggested that you could tie decay directly to the items on your boat instead of a daily loss. This way you could actually control how much decay you have by controlling what you place on your boat.

For example (purely made up numbers!)

1%xp shrine - 100 renown loss / day
2%xp shrine - 200 renown loss / day
3%xp shrine - 400 renown loss / day
4%xp shrine - 500 renown loss / day
5%xp shrine - 1000 renown loss / day

So say you don't want the extra 1000 decay / day for the 5% shrine, you could chose to go with the slightly cheaper 4% version.

This way a guild can control their own losses.

[eris2323]

From the leader of a large guild with many casual players, I truly thank you and hope this is permanent.

Please ignore the naysayers; if they are not happy keeping up with the joneses with their 12 person powerguild, they can always recruit, too.

Thank you from those of us who have had more than 300 people in our guilds, giving homes to them all.

[DocBenway]

This change actually levels the playing field a bit by making it possible for any guild to now reach 100 and reducing more the improperly perceived "value" to having a high level guild number. Everyone deserves the benefits, nobody likes being "stuck".

The thing is that it doesn't. Any guild with 1-9 members before is still decaying at the artificial 10 member rate and still hits that "wall". No bonus whatsoever and folks who remained small due to being a group of like minded individuals with similar play styles, have less time to "get to know" a potential member since they will be inundated with invites from mass recruit to 100 guilds. They may have an infinitely better time with the people in the tight knit lvl50 guild, but don't get a chance to find out. Someone "new" is going to assume the number after guild name implies some sort of quality value, rather than a spot on an artificial treadmill, now made easier to walk when you walk it in a mass of strangers.

[Hendrik]

It is gratifying to know that the Dev's are actually listening to us. I look forward to seeing if the changes work or not.

PIF Officer

It may not be as obvious as we want, but they are always listening.

This thread is just a good example of how we can bring issues up that are important to us, deliver them in a meaningful manner, keep trolling and hate down, and get action taken.


I am just very glad that the planets aligned, proper intern sacrifices were made, and many dead kobolds later, we are on the path to a more casual friendly environment for guilds.

Thank you DEVs!

[Levonestral]

Someone "new" is going to assume the number after guild name implies some sort of quality value, rather than a spot on an artificial treadmill, now made easier to walk when you walk it in a mass of strangers.

That's my entire point. Make the guild level mean nothing. They'll see everyone being high level and then make their choices based on how much they like the people in the guild instead of just seeing the number.

Back before renown even existed, there was no way to "measure up" a guild before you joined it. You only had in-game reputation and the knowledge you gained from actually RUNNING with members of that guild. You joined a guild, got a "feel" for it and determined if it was the right fit for you personally.

It's time we headed back to that era instead of using the guild number as the sole basis of choosing one's guild. This has never been the best path to take, and something that needs to change.

Those "treadmill" guilds will continue to exist, nothing stopping them. You however, as a player, have the choice not to stay in those guilds. There will be even more options for you to choose from, all at higher levels now.


The thing is that it doesn't. Any guild with 1-9 members before is still decaying at the artificial 10 member rate and still hits that "wall".

You are right there, which is why I suggested the removal of decay entirely later on in my post. I also just added a suggestion from a guild member for allowing a guild to control their decay through their ship items instead of a blanket daily decay.


No bonus whatsoever and folks who remained small due to being a group of like minded individuals with similar play styles, have less time to "get to know" a potential member since they will be inundated with invites from mass recruit to 100 guilds

This goes exactly with what I said above also. While "pugging", you will met those people in the "treadmill" groups, and will have the opportunity to show them they have better choices. Also, most players will eventually realize they want more from the game and their guild and will seek out new one's.

[DocBenway]

Back before renown even existed, there was no way to "measure up" a guild before you joined it. You only had in-game reputation and the knowledge you gained from actually RUNNING with members of that guild. You joined a guild, got a "feel" for it and determined if it was the right fit for you personally.

It's time we headed back to that era instead of using the guild number as the sole basis of choosing one's guild. This has never been the best path to take, and something that needs to change.

My guild, that just had its 3rd anniversary, ALWAYS recruited by player personality/play style. That will not change no matter how much Turbine wants me to mass invite. But until Buff X is untied from Level Y, a new player will go where they perceive the most advantage, which is Higher level because that means more/better buffs.


Those "treadmill" guilds will continue to exist, nothing stopping them. You however, as a player, have the choice not to stay in those guilds. There will be even more options for you to choose from, all at higher levels now.
So my option is to leave the guild I've been building for 3 years and hop into a barrel unfamiliar faces because I don't like the coded bias against tight knit small family groups? That does not, to me, sound like something I want to do.

Edit since I replied while the post was being added to:



You are right there, which is why I suggested the removal of decay entirely later on in my post. I also just added a suggestion from a guild member for allowing a guild to control their decay through their ship items instead of a blanket daily decay.

I am all for the removal of decay, but as long as Renown boost exist in store, I do not see it happening. That's the horrible cynic in me again, same one that ties shadow gargoyle play dead tricks to changes in shadow creature death animation in game.


This goes exactly with what I said above also. While "pugging", you will met those people in the "treadmill" groups, and will have the opportunity to show them they have better choices. Also, most players will eventually realize they want more from the game and their guild and will seek out new one's.
Which gives me another sad since BB obsession effectively ended any enjoyment I had in pugging and run 95% guild, guild allied and friend/channel groups.

[Loromir]

Looking at post #17 on page 1... does this mean that in a 1000-account guild, each account will only have to earn 68 renown per day to maintain level 100? It will be enough to get there too, though it will obviously be much faster if they earn more.

If that's what it means, guild level will become just as much a function of size as of activity. If you want a higher guild level, just recruit someone anyone. How lame is that?

I might be misunderstanding something obvious, but making decay independent of guild size does not seem like a good change. Then I think it might be better to look at the way guild size is calculated. I don't think i have a perfect solution, but it should be possile to do in a way that does not require people who play little to earn as much favor as those playing a lot. I'm not sure 'renown per hour per account' should replace 'renown per account' but it might be possible to consider the amount of time online in a sensible way. Maybe let an account's contribution to guild size be a sum of Sqr(Hours Logged In) for a number of days, maybe with most recent days weighing more than previous days? There are lots of ways to do this.

You have to get 1,000 people who actually play. As a guild leader, my biggest challenge was not recruiting people, that is easy. My biggest challenge is recruiting people who play on a consistent basis. All too often, I have recruited people who seem all gung ho about the game only to disappear after a few weeks.

If you can find 1,000 active players to join your guild, you deserve to level up fast.

[Hendrik]

That's my entire point. Make the guild level mean nothing. They'll see everyone being high level and then make their choices based on how much they like the people in the guild instead of just seeing the number.

Back before renown even existed, there was no way to "measure up" a guild before you joined it. You only had in-game reputation and the knowledge you gained from actually RUNNING with members of that guild. You joined a guild, got a "feel" for it and determined if it was the right fit for you personally.

It's time we headed back to that era instead of using the guild number as the sole basis of choosing one's guild. This has never been the best path to take, and something that needs to change.

Those "treadmill" guilds will continue to exist, nothing stopping them. You however, as a player, have the choice not to stay in those guilds. There will be even more options for you to choose from, all at higher levels now.

That has been going on since Guildships were introduced and will not stop after this weeks renown test is finished.

If you have X Guild Level, you were asked if Y could join the Guild, based ONLY on the Guilds Level. That is not going to stop.

If you were a Korthos Army type, they were accepted. If you had more stringent membership, you tested members out - made sure they fit. None of that will change. People will still avoid the former over the latter after some PUG experience. Evolution will work itself out again.

Guilds that stagnate, of any level, with advancement in levels have a chance to move without mass kickings or invitings.

Turbine has a week of this to gather numbers and read feedback, we should give them a few days at least to do that while they tweak the system...


I look forward to next weeks DEV postings on it.

[Ivan_Milic]

Did I understand it good,you already made this change live?

[Aons]

You and nearly everyone in this thread are completely missing the point. Yes, small guilds get to keep their bonus when earning renown. HOWEVER, the mathematics of this change mean the the enormous renown earning potential of large guilds has NO offset to balance them with small guilds. As of today, small guilds are in exactly the same position large, casual guilds were in yesterday.

All the devs did today was flip the inequality in guild leveling potential from large guilds to small ones. I appreciate that the devs are trying to please a very vocal portion of the player base, but this was not the way to do it. Small guilds are being punished because it will now be laughably easy for large guilds to outlevel small ones, no matter how active the small ones are. The playing field is not even now, the inequality has just been shifted.

And to answer the question Varguille posed in his post, yes I do think that large, casual guilds rocketing to 100 in a matter of weeks/months (as they are guaranteed to do, that 3 levels/day is a joke) is a problem when small active guilds will still plod along at the same glacial pace. it devalues the achievement and does not address the base issue of inequality among various guild sizes.

Definitely this.

[Hendrik]

Did I understand it good,you already made this change live?

Yes


"Flipped the switch" meaning there was not any need for downtime.

This is a week long test of the change. I'm sure they will be monitoring data while in effect and our feedback as week progresses.

[Levonestral]

My guild, that just had its 3rd anniversary, ALWAYS recruited by player personality/play style. That will not change no matter how much Turbine wants me to mass invite. But until Buff X is untied from Level Y, a new player will go where they perceive the most advantage, which is Higher level because that means more/better buffs.


So my option is to leave the guild I've been building for 3 years and hop into a barrel unfamiliar faces because I don't like the coded bias against tight knit small family groups? That does not, to me, sound like something I want to do.

Edit since I replied while the post was being added to:


I am all for the removal of decay, but as long as Renown boost exist in store, I do not see it happening. That's the horrible cynic in me again, same one that ties shadow gargoyle play dead tricks to changes in shadow creature death animation in game.

Which gives me another sad since BB obsession effectively ended any enjoyment I had in pugging and run 95% guild, guild allied and friend/channel groups.


Let's be clear first, never did I suggest you drop your guild and join a "Treadmill" guild, or suggest that you become one yourself.

My guild is a very small tight-knit guild, just like yours. It takes us months to get around to recruiting new players, we take our time. We recruit carefully, just like you. Over a long period of time (since the renown was first introduced) we've been able to get to a decent high level and we've enjoyed the entire trip.

Based on your comment about not pugging, that's fine, it's also what we do; but you can't say that, then complain about the "treadmill" guilds getting all the "new" players.

[Ivan_Milic]

So you have a problem with 1000 acc guild getting to 100 faster than 30 acc guild?
For me it makes sense that guild with more people will gain lvls faster than smaller guild,but here you want them to gain lvls at the same rate?

[Ivan_Milic]

Yes


"Flipped the switch" meaning there was not any need for downtime.

This is a week long test of the change. I'm sure they will be monitoring data while in effect and our feedback as week progresses.

Something that caused problems for years was solved just like that.

[Levonestral]

That has been going on since Guildships were introduced and will not stop after this weeks renown test is finished.

If you have X Guild Level, you were asked if Y could join the Guild, based ONLY on the Guilds Level. That is not going to stop.

If you were a Korthos Army type, they were accepted. If you had more stringent membership, you tested members out - made sure they fit. None of that will change. People will still avoid the former over the latter after some PUG experience. Evolution will work itself out again.

Guilds that stagnate, of any level, with advancement in levels have a chance to move without mass kickings or invitings.

Turbine has a week of this to gather numbers and read feedback, we should give them a few days at least to do that while they tweak the system...


I look forward to next weeks DEV postings on it.

Fully agreed here. It's the "perception" of a high level guild being "better" I'm hoping these changes will help reduce. Not likely, but hopeful.

My recruitment plans never changed, and never will. Most "good" guilds out there didn't change their plans either.

It's the perception of that silly guild number that keeps throwing people off and heading the wrong direction. Remove that perception and things might balance for the better for everyone.

[Hendrik]

Definitely this.

And in the 'old' system it is the large guilds that were 'harmed'. They would plateau and stop, never to advance again. Funny how the tables have turned and all the nerdrage now...


Hence all the threads about renown and decay culminating in a very productive thread last week.

This weeks TEST is a step to address a system that harms ALL Guilded players, of all sizes and levels.

[Chai]

Those "treadmill" guilds will continue to exist, nothing stopping them. You however, as a player, have the choice not to stay in those guilds. There will be even more options for you to choose from, all at higher levels now.



The entire point of the discussion is to make the guild system more like a sidewalk and less like a treadmill. People dont seem to care that it takes longer for them to level, what they care about is they get to keep their progress, however large or small that may be, similar to the XP system.

[DocBenway]

The entire point of the discussion is to make the guild system more like a sidewalk and less like a treadmill. People dont seem to care that it takes longer for them to level, what they care about is they get to keep their progress, however large or small that may be, similar to the XP system.

Yeah. I meant treadmill is where I am when I'd rather be walking, even up a steep hill.

[Levonestral]

Yeah. I meant treadmill is where I am when I'd rather be walking, even up a steep hill.


The entire point of the discussion is to make the guild system more like a sidewalk and less like a treadmill. People dont seem to care that it takes longer for them to level, what they care about is they get to keep their progress, however large or small that may be, similar to the XP system.

Sorry everyone, my perception of "Treadmill" was one of "slaves doing work for our gain regardless of who they are" (Korthos Army style). I think we're actually all on the same page, I just misunderstood the phrase.

I fully agree with you. Everyone would be far happier seeing a gain constantly, regardless of how slow or fast. Which is why I liked this change (we've been stuck at 84 for 4 weeks now with little gains).

Personally I'd like to see decay removed entirely and let everyone just gain and enjoy what they get without the backlash and worries of decay.

[theslimshady]

The same activity level that gets the huge guild to level 100 would only get the medium-large to level 55, and the small to level 51.

right thats realistic a large army will get things done far faster then tiny extra renown boosted tiny unit seems logical in ever way to me

meaning that the best guild would be the best large built guilds instead of small tightly nit units of elitist because the social factor becomes what it should be not that of a videogame but that of a ddo king or queen that someone who controls 100s should be more reveared then someone who controls 12 because the job of getting lots of peeps to play together in peace is harder then getting 12 to play nice together

[Aons]

And in the 'old' system it is the large guilds that were 'harmed'. They would plateau and stop, never to advance again. Funny how the tables have turned and all the nerdrage now...


Hence all the threads about renown and decay culminating in a very productive thread last week.

This weeks TEST is a step to address a system that harms ALL Guilded players, of all sizes and levels.

I fully understand what you say, but removing 100% of the penalty from the number of guilded is just going from a side to the other side. I will never call it a solution and maintain that the large guilds will pop to 100 very fast. That will be funny to see how many level 90-100 guilds will take place in a year, not helped by the fact that the guilded played better but because the officers have recruited more :) To my point of view, thats the point to consider.

Btw, i know most of those threads, the problem is real. But again, not the right move. If it's a single TEST, let's see what it brings.

Cheers

[Tshober]

So my option is to leave the guild I've been building for 3 years and hop into a barrel unfamiliar faces because I don't like the coded bias against tight knit small family groups? That does not, to me, sound like something I want to do.

Your guild is still leveling just as fast or faster than it was before this change. You will eventually be able to reach level 100 and you will get there at least as fast as you would have before the change. If you really prefer a small guild and so do your other members, then how has anything changed for you? What is different for your guild now? Why does how fast someone else's guild might level up make any difference to you or to your guild?

The only way small guilds can possibly be affected by this change is if their members jump to higher level guilds. And if that is the case, then those members really did not prefer smaller guilds to leveling up fast after all. All of this talk about "like-minded people" and close knit "family" guilds is just a lot of baloney, if people are willing to jump ship to a faster leveling guild. But if they really do prefer a smaller guild and they don't jump to another guild, then nothing has changed for your guild and you can keep working toward level 100 like you were before and you will get there a little bit faster now.

[RangerOps]

We needed this change and I thank you for the lowering of stress on guild members and leaders by acting upon this request from larger guilds. I hope this does enough to sustain the larger guilds thru events like Mabar and Cove. These are the things that paying for VIP is all about. Keep up the good work in this direction!! It is greatly appreciated to be heard and worked with.

[DocBenway]

right thats realistic a large army will get things done far faster then tiny extra renown boosted tiny unit seems logical in ever way to me

Just playing devils advocate to lighten the mood, but what would scare you more coming after you, 30 Private First Class infantry, or 3 Special Ops Green Berrets
:p

[Levonestral]

I fully understand what you say, but removing 100% of the penalty from the number of guilded is just going from a side to the other side. I will never call it a solution and maintain that the large guilds will pop to 100 very fast. That will be funny to see how many level 90-100 guilds will take place in a year, not helped by the fact that the guilded played better but because the officers have recruited more :) To my point of view, thats the point to consider.

What does it matter how many level 100 guilds are out there? It doesn't actually mean anything.

Allowing anyone to reach a high level, easily, will help that. As Hendrik and I both said earlier, a guilds reputation, recruiting methods etc all play a much bigger factor in a guilds "status" rather than just some fabricated number.

Let everyone gain levels, without decay, enjoy their guild, enjoy their gains, enjoy their game.

The perception that a high-level guild number actually means something needs to die and be buried forever.

[Thayion516]

First off, THANK YOU!!!! for looking into updateing the guild renown system! Its MUCH needed.

Im not a GL but my friend is, he dont post on forums much but over lunch we heavily discussed this yesterday.

Static Accord, G-Land, 6 accounts/18 toons. 3 active accounts, Lv 34.

Also a member character in Knights of the Old School, G-land, 300ish accounts, 180 Active (but many casual), 120 Departed. that GL just kicked many dead accounts, 3 months + = Dead. SO we have been loosing levels over the last month or so as he is kicking peeps .. think we have lost 3 levels so far trying to manage the roster. We were stuck at 66 for more then a year. He got tired of Fearing the Decay.

To us 3 things need to happen to the Guild System in DDO for it to be effective.

1. Membership Formula Decay must be done away with in its Size/Level/departed/active/inactive/bonus/no bonus pile of mess it previously was. We Like the Guild Amenities costing renown up-keeps for a natural controllable source of decay. It places Control into the GL Hands instead of being prisoner of the system.

Players have a sense of ownership .. "I helped buy that 5% XP shrine"
Guilds can control "Decay/Costs" by making choices on amenities. .. " Lets Level faster this month. I will just buy the +1 shrines this month."

2. There must be a cut off point for dead accounts counting against the guild total renown. I like 60 days logged off is flat 10% penalty of that toons contribution at kick. If they have not graced my guild in 2 months.. i dont care to play with them. Before 60 days is a flat 75% penalty of contribution. The Kick penalty must be Steep to defend against mass kicks.

3. The Guild Size bonuses need to be widened based on accounts. 1-29 small @300% bonus, 30-79 med @ 150% bonus, 80-139+ large @80% bonus, 140+ huge 0%.

Those 3 things would vastly improve the DDO Guild system.

PS.. oh ya .. finish the guild upper tiers aminities OR redistribute them better.

PPS .. and 1 more thing .. Add a instanced Apartment on the top end ship for me to have additional storage! Hell, I'll buy a Weapons Rack from the DDO store for 995 TP to go in it!

[DocBenway]

Your guild is still leveling just as fast or faster than it was before this change. You will eventually be able to reach level 100 and you will get there at least as fast as you would have before the change. If you really prefer a small guild and so do your other members, then how has anything changed for you? What is different for your guild now? Why does how fast someone else's guild might level up make any difference to you or to your guild?

As I have posted before, no, it won't get to 100. The same artificial roadblock level plateau still exists for any guild with 1-9 members. Decay, as implemented by the switch flip, is based on the same hard coded 10 account minimum decay math. The quote is a reply to my perception of a statement that Levonestral had made.

What has changed for me? Nothing decay wise, same rate and same wall blocking 100.

What is different now? I don't feel pressure from a system to do what I never would and boot friends for math. This is good There is less deterrent to recruit. This is good. Mass inviting will have a near 30fold advantage in renown gain causing shipbuff co-ops to become the sole perceived purpose of guilds. This is bad as my guild recruits by player and not number and any potential will have gottten 600 invites by the time we know they might fit in with us.

How fast anyone else levels doesn't matter to me one bit, it that these changes do nothing to remove artificial roadblocks to guilds like mine. These roadblocks were the real issue I've had with it. Anywhere else in the game you do not lose what you have gained because you went to the beach instead that day.

[Aons]

What does it matter how many level 100 guilds are out there? It doesn't actually mean anything.

Allowing anyone to reach a high level, easily, will help that. As Hendrik and I both said earlier, a guilds reputation, recruiting methods etc all play a much bigger factor in a guilds "status" rather than just some fabricated number.

Let everyone gain levels, without decay, enjoy their guild, enjoy their gains, enjoy their game.

The perception that a high-level guild number actually means something needs to die and be buried forever.

Nah, there must be a reason to grow up. Once at 100, what happens in that case? World is fixed. 100 is 100 forever? And Newbies joining this eternal level 100 guild will have the best offered service from beginning? Too strange for me to be understood and accepted.
It is obviously natural for me that renown can be earned and lost. High level guild should not be easy to reach, whatever is the size of the guild. It must be some decay, the process sounds logical. It sounds excessive too regarding the current mathematics.

[Tshober]

How fast anyone else levels doesn't matter to me one bit, it that these changes do nothing to remove artificial roadblocks to guilds like mine. These roadblocks were the real issue I've had with it. Anywhere else in the game you do not lose what you have gained because you went to the beach instead that day.

I agree with this statement. In fact, I have made very similar statements myself while advocating for eliminating renown decay. You seem to be in the worst possible position that a player in DDO can be. A very casual player who wants to be in a very small guild. My main reason for advocating for a change, like the change the devs recently made, is so that casual/social players would not be shunned by quite so many of the established guilds. I view greatly reducing renown decay as a huge step in the right direction. It seems to me that the only thing that would help players in your situation would be to go even further and eliminate decay entirely.

[Levonestral]

Nah, there must be a reason to grow up. Once at 100, what happens in that case? World is fixed. 100 is 100 forever? And Newbies joining this eternal level 100 guild will have the best offered service from beginning? Too strange for me to be understood and accepted.
It is obviously natural for me that renown can be earned and lost. High level guild should not be easy to reach, whatever is the size of the guild. It must be some decay, the process sounds logical. It sounds excessive too regarding the current mathematics.

I fully understand that view also, and somewhat agree.

The easiest path is to remove decay entirely which will remove a lot of other issues. Keeping decay is likely going to be the final solution from Turbine.

As a variation of decay however, a guild member of mine suggested using the ship items themselves as a version of decay. See the bottom of my original post here: http://forums.ddo.com/showpost.php?p=4738119&postcount=151

That might be an option also, keeps decay, but allows guilds to choose (to a point) how much they wish to handle.

[Zlingerdark]

Looks like a step in the right direction. :cool:

[DocBenway]

I agree with this statement. In fact, I have made very similar statements myself while advocating for eliminating renown decay. You seem to be in the worst possible position that a player in DDO can be. A very casual player who wants to be in a very small guild. My main reason for advocating for a change, like the change the devs recently made, is so that casual/social players would not be shunned by quite so many of the established guilds. I view greatly reducing renown decay as a huge step in the right direction. It seems to me that the only thing that would help players in your situation would be to go even further and eliminate decay entirely.

I may have a casual playstyle in that I'm not always grinding and I socialize, but put in enough hours to likely qualify for some sort of compulsion counseling. My friends try other games, take vacations, don't log near the hours I do, but I do not begrudge them that as our guild was formed because, given the option, we'd group together anytime.
These are people I will not boot or leave for any in game advantage/buff. I really would like to steadily progress toward getting these rewards for my friends to share.

There are 21 of us, since U9, no more than 1-9 active at a time. Currently had a bonus drop a few stages due to it being a month since GW2 was released. If decay is to be kept, then the math should factor only for sizes below 10, rather than decaying them at hard minimum of 10 like it has and continues to.

[FranOhmsford]

Your guild is still leveling just as fast or faster than it was before this change. You will eventually be able to reach level 100 and you will get there at least as fast as you would have before the change. If you really prefer a small guild and so do your other members, then how has anything changed for you? What is different for your guild now? Why does how fast someone else's guild might level up make any difference to you or to your guild?

The only way small guilds can possibly be affected by this change is if their members jump to higher level guilds. And if that is the case, then those members really did not prefer smaller guilds to leveling up fast after all. All of this talk about "like-minded people" and close knit "family" guilds is just a lot of baloney, if people are willing to jump ship to a faster leveling guild. But if they really do prefer a smaller guild and they don't jump to another guild, then nothing has changed for your guild and you can keep working toward level 100 like you were before and you will get there a little bit faster now.

OK:

1. Guild of 20-30 players currently at Lvl 27-44
2. Guild of 20-30 players currently at Lvl 60-70

With these changes both of these ^ guilds will want more players {probably not 100s more - Just enough to keep from falling apart}.
I wonder which of these small guilds will have an easier time recruiting?

The fact is that these changes are going to see a lot of small {20-30 Member} Lvl 27-44 guilds folding.Maybe even some in the 45-59 range will fold too - BUT those small guilds {20-30 Member}currently at 60+ are going to bulk up to say 50-75 Members.
This will still be considered Small with no Guild Size Penalties to Decay - I'm pretty certain the people in those guilds will still happily claim to be family oriented Guilds {and why not - There were 200 thereabouts people in my year at school and I knew the name of every single one - Not any more it was 15+ years ago but back then yeah}.
Oh and yes I was the unpopular kid no-one liked {no surprises there eh?} But even so I still knew them all by name.

I've actually always been annoyed with the artificially low max sizes for Tiny, Small and Medium Guilds in DDO - Yes this change will help here BUT at the expense of a lot of Small mid range guilds - This is the issue.

[Hendrik]

I fully understand what you say, but removing 100% of the penalty from the number of guilded is just going from a side to the other side. I will never call it a solution and maintain that the large guilds will pop to 100 very fast. That will be funny to see how many level 90-100 guilds will take place in a year, not helped by the fact that the guilded played better but because the officers have recruited more :) To my point of view, thats the point to consider.

Btw, i know most of those threads, the problem is real. But again, not the right move. If it's a single TEST, let's see what it brings.

Cheers

Yes, it is. You go from one end of the spectrum to another. You find out what is wrong at both ends, and then find your solution somewhere in the middle.

We are only in day two of seven - it is not the end of the world. Members from small guilds have not all jumped ship en mass and joined large guilds. Large guilds have not gone all Korthos Army and maxed out membership overnight.

We have five more days of Turbine reviewing numbers, meetings, and whatever else goes along with system changes that impact just about everyone.

We are finally taking the right path to our destination and have a long way to go yet. Let's all work together to make sure we like what we see when we get there.

;)

[moiinwar]

For me the most important reason to be a guild member is to be part of social community. That being said, I also want to get guild bonuses. As a member of very small guild, this new system forces me to choose between joining to a very large guild that gets high levels almost effortlessly and staying in my small guild with just my friends but without ingame bonuses.

I have some ideas about how renown system could work:
Boost the amount of renown that small guilds get so that it would be very easy to gain levels for both small and large guilds. In this system all guilds would gain guild bonuses quickly.

Another idea is to stay in the old system but make a few modifications. In the old system decay vs guild size looked like this:
http://i1285.photobucket.com/albums/a596/moiinwar/Decayperson_zpsf02469c1.jpg
Calculated with this formula:
(S+10)/(S*G)
S = guild size, G = guild size multiplier (e.g. for size 10 G = 3.4)
Problem is that when the decay/person rises in the area between sizes 11-50 there is extra pressure to kick members to decrease decay for others.
Solution is to make decay / person constant. So that decay function would be changed from A*(S+10) (where A = decay multiplier) to A*S*G. This system would make decay/ person = 1.0 in all guild sizes. This increases the decay in many guilds so decay could be lessened to X*A*S*G (where X<1).

Another way of preventing members from being kicked would be creation of non-contributing member slots to guilds. These members wouldn't increase guild size but wouldn't gain renown. This would mean that guild leaders wouldn't have to kick their friends out of the guild if they are not gaining enough renown.

[Chaos000]

I've actually always been annoyed with the artificially low max sizes for Tiny, Small and Medium Guilds in DDO - Yes this change will help here BUT at the expense of a lot of Small mid range guilds - This is the issue.

Small and mid range guild will still exist. In fact, it will be more of an accomplishment to be in a high lvl small range guild.

I am assuming of course the renown decay of small guilds are not changing. It will benefit current guilds that hit the decay ceiling and had to *work* to maintain their current level without seeing any progression despite the effort put in.

My suggestion would be for small and mid range guilds get a moderate bump to the renown bonus they receive. It would be nice if renown decay didn't exist at all but the reason behind having it (on turbine's standpoint) hasn't become invalidated overnight.

[DocBenway]

We are only in day two of seven - it is not the end of the world. Members from small guilds have not all jumped ship en mass and joined large guilds. Large guilds have not gone all Korthos Army and maxed out membership overnight.

A thought on this. This thread should be linked in the launcher, or at least advertised more as, so far, any guild leader I've talked to in game (admittedly only 3) did not yet know about the changes and don't usually go to the Official Discussions forum unless linked there from a class, server or general thread.

[Sonofmoradin]

If this change stays, then equal the ground to everybody. Large and Small guilds alike.

Introduce a penalty to renown for large guilds respective to the bonus small guilds have, problem solved. Now you only need to find the *golden* line for that.

The golden line should be based on average renown gain compared to the daily decay. That is, a large guild with penalty should have same problems maintaining level 100 with a 15 acc small guild.

Also, 67.500 decay for level 100 is way to less.

[Chaos000]

I have some ideas about how renown system could work:
Boost the amount of renown that small guilds get so that it would be very easy to gain levels for both small and large guilds. In this system all guilds would gain guild bonuses quickly.

Nice. You beat me to it

[Deadlock]

So just to confirm, old renown decay was 20,020 which used current modified account size of 50, new decay was 6,674 which is correct for modified guild size of 10.

This is using calculated using Vanshilar's formula:

=CEILING(TRUNC((guildlevel-21)/5;0)*TRUNC((guildlevel+79)/20;0)/2*(50*guildlevel*guildlevel*guildlevel)/1000000*(guildsize + 10);1)

So I'm guessing that when we say that guild size is no longer part of the equation, what we means is that it's now based on a maximum guild size of 10?

[karpedieme]

Previously to this "Switch Flipping Renown Fix"

Guildies on TR's would gather a lot more rennown while running ELite BB 2 levels above quite a bit of renown.
Yesterday guildies noted barely getting any renown drops per quest and notably in chests as well.

This can be indicated by the

--- Guilds will not be able to gain more than 3 levels per day mechanic.

Only way to justify this is that indeed renown drops have been lowered significantly in-game.

Yes our guild has not decayed as much as the day before in the new system ( lvl 94-95 for 1 month+).

Yes a fix was needed to prevent mass kicks etc..... But to lessen available renown in-game as i suspect will most definitely penalize active players / guilds. Lower decay but lower renown is not a good compromise...

If people are looting less renown will some still even bother with Guild renown elixirs? :)

With larger guilds comes player activity its inevitable....

---Decay should be more influenced by size and active roster cross-referenced by an active server population modifier.

--- Hence when the game does go in a slump decay gets curbed also not just by guild size and activity.

---- Not just making decay static vs lowering in-game renown...

Mostly I think the renown vs decay issue has a lot to do with large guilds and non end-game players running a lot of stuff over level.

-- Run a quest on tr / lowbie more than 2 levels above and get close to no renown in end chests or end rewards.

-- Players / Guilds @ lvl 25 running mass shrouds + other lvl 17 raids do gather significantly less renown than players who spend most of their time in eveningstar or lvl 22+ eberron epics.

Just chiming in here... Its nice that this issue was acknowledged and possibly addressed.... I just think there needs to be a formula revision to take into account how the game has evolved also from lvl 20 cap to 25 and how renown drops vs being over quest levels too.

I think the solution lies in more discussion than a flip of the switch if it works... Cool beans... if it dont we will go back to the old system..... We getting new and revised formulas for challenges apparently to take into account better xp.... I think a new formula should be written for renown vs lvl 25 and over level modifiers to drops to better match the new environment.

Laters

[patang01]

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

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

Just get rid of decay. Our levels don't decay. Experience don't decay. Do my items I have decay?

I understand the philosophy behind it but it doesn't serve a useful function. Kind of like 1 hour countdown on the key to Eveningstar. Why? The tele clickie from Gohlan Fang (or whatever) doesn't have a timer on it.

Sometimes 'ideas' and 'philosophies' are interesting but serves little else in a thing like a game.

How broken will this game be if there is no more decay but instead a slightly steeper road to the highest level?

[Auralana7214]

Just wanted to add my thanks to the devs for taking some action on this issue!!

I don't understand all of the small guilds now complaining. You have (and had all along) to with some strategy level up your guild. Large guilds had no feasible way to do this.

The whole point of a guild should be fun and social. Putting restrictions that make small guilds more viable is not the way to do that.

I think this change or any change in this direction is positive for the social aspect of DDO and will keep more people in the game.

This post is pink for emphasis.

[theslimshady]

Just playing devils advocate to lighten the mood, but what would scare you more coming after you, 30 Private First Class infantry, or 3 Special Ops Green Berrets
:p

but then you asuming my peeps are not tr ubers or real players and the numbers would be like 200 marines vrs 12 special ops and yes i would take my 200 everytime just because we are large does not mean we are not good .

[DocBenway]

...
I don't understand all of the small guilds now complaining. You have (and had all along) to with some strategy level up your guild. Large guilds had no feasible way to do this...

Actually, all guilds, up to a certain size, had roadblocks where regular activity would mean just keeping up with decay and no longer progressing. The removal of the roadblock for large guilds is not the main issue that small-tiny guilds have with it. I have very good friends in a medium size 23 lvl61 guild that this will definitely help progress. I am happy for them.

The main issue is that the roadblock still exists for any guild size 1-9 as they are decaying as a size 10 and the roadblock has not been removed or moved any further down the road.

I don't mean to sound doom & gloom or anything, text is a hard medium to convey tone. I am, however, passionate about my guild and that may drop some filters or cause me to misread posts like Levonestral's before.

I like some of this, but my particular situation as outlined in posts in this thread, does not benefit progression-wise from them. A good start that it's being looked at.

[karpedieme]

Just wanted to add my thanks to the devs for taking some action on this issue!!

I don't understand all of the small guilds now complaining. You have (and had all along) to with some strategy level up your guild. Large guilds had no feasible way to do this.

The whole point of a guild should be fun and social. Putting restrictions that make small guilds more viable is not the way to do that.

I think this change or any change in this direction is positive for the social aspect of DDO and will keep more people in the game.

This post is pink for emphasis.

Its not about small vs large guilds in the end.....

Its about making a system forumulated properly that works for all guilds no matter size.

Fact is lowering available in-game renown is not the key to success vs making decay static.

Point is now larger guilds get a breather while smaller guilds might complain.

Lets not pin one vs the other.... It reallly up to Turbine to acknowledge and make it a level playing field for any type of guild.

The new flip of the switch makes it easier to just open the floodgate and mass recruit off korthos with little penalty and much renown to gain. Quality of life guilds may get inflated quite easily with this static decay its alittle deeper than small or large now....

As you said the whole point of guilds is for the social aspect... How do you have a quality social aspect when you dont know anyone. Quality comes to a guild when people know each other if not many frictions arise...

Its all about keeping it balanced for all guild sizes.

As of now there is a lot less renown available in-game an that is fact.

[Therigar]

IMO it is reasonable to have a decay mechanism for guild renown. Without it guilds just advance inexorably towards the maximum guild level and there is no motivation for people to band together -- something that guilds encourage.

Because D&D was initially a group oriented game, it seems good to me that DDO works to maintain that as a significant feature. Consequently, guilds that provide a meaningful community for players seem to help perpetuate this D&D heritage.

The changes seem geared towards removing membership size from the equation and this will be a boon to guilds that have relatively inactive members. IMO that is a positive thing.

I am sure that there are different approaches that could be used. And, I recognize that people naturally favor their ideas over those of others. So, it seems to be a given that there will be posters who think something different should have been done.

To me, that is not really the issue. The question, in my mind, is whether the changes that have been made actually work to decrease guild decay to a manageable level. Since the biggest factor seems to have been membership size, eliminating that should address the greatest problem with the existing system.

Lastly, IMO too much is made over the "roughly 3" levels per day limit. A guild starting today can reach L60 in 20 days and L120 in 40 days presuming it can maintain a 3 levels per day pace. Naturally it isn't so easy to earn renown at those speeds, especially at the higher levels, but 3 levels per day seems more than adequate as a heuristic.

[theslimshady]

Just to post feedback my guild at 200 modified account size went from about 145k a day renown decay to about 14k so even with these same gains it would still take weeks to see even the levels we have bleed out over the last year we was at one time at 76 and are now currently at 73 most bleeds where experienced by festivals and pillfering of players and inactive so on and so on and it finnally feels great to look forward to the festivals this year for once thank you ddo for taking this stress away

ps the modified account size of 200 is at toon cap as well so no mass recruitting the cap is 1000 toons so even a large guild like mine is only 200 active players which is just 5 toons per account and i personally have 30 so for those of you with your fears of 1000 accounts armys i would shake that persons hand if they could mange 1000 different people it would be a incredible accomplishment imo

[Kmnh]

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

I think guilds should be useful from level 1. Make the cheapest guild ship and the lowest tier resist shrines available to level 1 guilds. If possible, change the guild xp curve so that reaching useful levels is easier.

Can we get a way to reward activity? A renown or xp bonus for grouping with guildies or something like that? That would be very useful for new, small guilds and help avoid the big scary monster of 1000-player level 100 guilds where no one talks to each other.

[theslimshady]

i can see it now a mass influx of new guilds that say sorry no alts allowed one toon one player one account army yes we spam but we only spam one toon from korthos that guild has no chance to survive face it this aurgument is dumb at best

[Beethoven]

With these changes both of these ^ guilds will want more players {probably not 100s more - Just enough to keep from falling apart}.

Yes, because everyone will gladly cope with a bunch of strangers trampling all over their lawn and establishing a guild rep of being a bunch of noobs just so they can have a large number next to their guild name a little faster.

All the number games assume Korthos Island is full hundreds of capable and mature players who will happily get along with everyone, cause no drama and be a shinning example to showcase the guilds quality. It's not going to happen because the drawbacks of blind inviting everyone are significantly more severe than the benefit of reaching guild level 80 maybe a month or two early.

[Vanshilar]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If Turbine were interested in getting players "hooked" on the game and wanting to play it more (and spend money on the game as a corollary), incentive systems such as the guild renown system should be designed around benefiting guilds that are successful at encouraging members to log in and play, that spends the time to invest in each player in the guild. The change to renown decay instead encourages guilds to simply induct as many members as possible and treat players as faceless drones in the hive for renown, without regard to the individual player. Many players say the reason why they stick with the game is because of the people they meet and the relationships that they form, and this change discourages this time investment to the detriment of the gaming community.

[karpedieme]

Lastly, IMO too much is made over the "roughly 3" levels per day limit. A guild starting today can reach L60 in 20 days and L120 in 40 days presuming it can maintain a 3 levels per day pace. Naturally it isn't so easy to earn renown at those speeds, especially at the higher levels, but 3 levels per day seems more than adequate as a heuristic.

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

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

If decay becomes static the only way to curb gaining levels is to lower in-game renown or how it drops.

This is the problem most medium and small guild members are trying to make heard i believe. Its fine to address decay to better serve larger guild activity vs inactivty.

If there is notably less renown dropping in-game then who wins even if there is a bonus for small and medium... The numbers speak on their own and if there is less renown to be gained then the smaller guild face thew same decay rate as the medium and larger guilds... But with a lot less members to gain it. Here again its a matter of balance.

Yes small and medium guilds had it easier than large guilds.... Why invert the system and make it the same for all.... We had a formula in place previous to the flip switch.... The formula should be reviewed and updated more properly to take into account all guillds and their respective sizes.

Making decay the same for all no matter size is only a temporary fix that results from feeling out a forum thread.... Revising a formula similar to the challenge XP forumula takes man hours that possibly Turbine does not want to allocate at this time..... I fear more a Quick Flip Switch fix rather then addressing the more fundamental issues of the Renown issues that we have had since the systems inception.

We are paying for ship buffs, the top ship does not have sufficient slots to accomodate all possible amenities...... Amenities that still do not stack with most in-game items....There is a lot that could of been worked on since inception have not. The Guild and Renown system was a cool idea form the start but has not had proper polish passes pretty much. We still have the system we pay for but does not favor the guilds in general its still about subsets.


Laters

[Aons]

Yes, because everyone will gladly cope with a bunch of strangers trampling all over their lawn and establishing a guild rep of being a bunch of noobs just so they can have a large number next to their guild name a little faster.

All the number games assume Korthos Island is full hundreds of capable and mature players who will happily get along with everyone, cause no drama and be a shinning example to showcase the guilds quality. It's not going to happen because the drawbacks of blind inviting everyone are significantly more severe than the benefit of reaching guild level 80 maybe a month or two early.

Just to mention i had the ninth symphony in mind when i have been reading this. Splendid :)

[Deadlock]

Oh man, just caught up with the posts on this thread.

I think a few people out there need to loosen their tinfoil helmets.

http://itchmo.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/06/catintinfoil.jpg

From what I see this pretty much addresses the renown decay issue. The idea that the large guilds will simply throw their doors open to get an influx of korthosites ..... someone else said it better than I ever could:



One does not simply walk into Ravensguard...

http://memeorama.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/one-does-not-siply-walk-in-to-mordor-meme-template-blank.jpg


Lets give the devs some credit for doing something right for a change and encourage them to move onto other things that we've been asking for to make guilds a more significant part of the game .... like guild portraits on your airship, guild-definable member ranks instead of just a simple Member/Officer, guild members list grouped by account, option to add comments next to guild member names, guild trophies earned by completing certain achievements (Velah's head on a plaque anyone?), guild leaders able to see current renown contribution for members, colour coding on members list to let you see who is inactive and who has recently returned from being inactive .... and the list continues. For now I'd be happy to say renown decay problem solved.

[TPICKRELL]

Yes, because everyone will gladly cope with a bunch of strangers trampling all over their lawn and establishing a guild rep of being a bunch of noobs just so they can have a large number next to their guild name a little faster.

All the number games assume Korthos Island is full hundreds of capable and mature players who will happily get along with everyone, cause no drama and be a shinning example to showcase the guilds quality. It's not going to happen because the drawbacks of blind inviting everyone are significantly more severe than the benefit of reaching guild level 80 maybe a month or two early.

This. ^^

My guild's recruiting policies won't change, we will still only be looking for people who are a fit into our guild and will still vet new members.

The only difference is if they say they are casual we will no longer have to say no. We can now accept like minded casuals. We will no longer have to cringe when a guildie gets his or her spouse to play and they want them in the guild. We will no longer have to consider booting the founder of our guild who ran into financial issues and can't play at the moment, or the handful of guildies who are on military service assignments and can only sign in occassionally.

Scaling reknown decay was a bad mechanism for controlling Korthos army style recruitment, and it needs/needed to go away. If another mechanism is needed it should be implemented to have less undesirable side effects. Perhaps delays before new reecruits can start earning reknown, or higher penalties when a member is kicked (versus leaves) or....

Any reknown mechanism that makes it painful to NOT kick our members who are on militiary service, or who have any other real life issues that curtail their play time, is a bad mechanism. Since I took the guild star, we have not kicked anyone for reknown reasons and we have no intentions of doing so, but the outrageous reknown decay number every day is a reminder of the penalty that I impose on my guild members for that policy.

I agree that the 10 minimum guild level is an issue for the smallest guilds, and it should be removed. I suspect that number was hard coded into the reknown formula and can't be changed without a new build.

[Zenako]

A number of interesting ideas. What I like from them all so far can be summarized below and I'll toss in a couple of mine as well.

Lets do away with the guild renown decay mechanic. IT was the source of much of the angst over guild size and booting. Leave the guild size bonuses for renown they help level the playing field slightly.

Instead of having decay based on guild size or activity, lets use the idea of "renown loss" based on Ship amenities instead. Multiply the "cost" by the daily list of active members. So for example a Fire Resist Shrine might cost 10 pts/day/active member. A full ship of buffs might costs a few thousand per active member/day. Easy to figure out a whole scale of costs for each buff. Have trivial costs for things like Mailboxes and Banks 1/day/active member that are just convenience items and not quest buffs. At the end of the accounting, the game looks at what the daily costs of the buff potential was and how many accounts logged into the game and debits the renown credit that amount.

This serves to remove the whole issue of active/inactive booting players issues with respect to guild size. Players only incur a cost to the guild renown on days they log in. Guild renown bonuses are still inversely based on size and thus earning potential.

A fully loaded "deathstar" with all the bells and whistles might exact a nice daily cost, but an active guild should be able to offset it.

All guilds would eventually hit a high level this way, and this would also provide that DDO store incentive for renown boosts as well, as a way to help pay for buffs.

With the introduction of EPIC character levels, how about considering EPIC Guild Levels for guilds once they hit cap (i.e. 100). Since hitting 100 will no longer be out of the question for guilds, offering some way to continue on in a meaningful way would be a neat idea. Once would now be able to get EPIC RENOWN in EPIC quests that could either add to Heroic Guild renown if guild is under level 100, or would be able to add to EPIC renown. Heroic renown could only offset normal costs for ship buffs against heroic renown. EPIC levels could open up a variety of incrementally more powerful buffs. Perhaps just make them last longer (2 hours instead of 1 for example. That alone would be a nice incentive.)

mmm - lunchtime...

[StrixAluco]

It looks like my (guilds) style of play is not the common one nor the one raising its' voice on the forums so I'll try to share my perspective as a causal player and member of a very small, casual guild.

As a casual player the freedom to take a break from the game for up to months when RL demands it is invaluable. Because of that I've never dared to try to join an active guild as I wouldn't like to let them down by taking a break as needed. The game is next to unknown in my country and I got no RL friends playing, so I was happy to find a national, very casual guild to join when I started playing. My guild has a modified account size of 5, and being casually playing I most often find that I'm the only one online. Nobody remember being more than three toons online at a time (which made for the online guild run I remember). I like getting renown to contribute to my guild and to get the fast transportation of a ship. We are now a guild lvl 52 slowly increasing, but we have no ambitions of ever getting great buffs as we are too casual to grind renown and it is too expensive to keep a ship equipped. I PUG a lot, always asking nicely for buffs. At times I wonder if I could ever join one of the nice guilds I visit and run with, but the need for freedom to stay casual holds me back. I stay faithful to my little guild.

Factually speaking this change seems to have no influence on my guild at all, as we have no issues with being too big a guild or recruitment and booting. Relatively speaking I'm afraid this may cause the death of my guild. As I read it we will get the same decay as a large and active guild, effectively making it very unattractive to be small and casual as we won't be able to keep up. It seems like an improvement to larger guilds which make them a relative better choice. This first step is favoring the larger guilds with no direct harm to us small ones, but I'm afraid a later change to adjust the improvement of the larger guilds will be directly harmful if it still doesn't take small and steady guilds into account. Another danger is people leaving the guild for larger and now more favorable guilds. So I'm scared, not that much on my own behalf as this might also be a step towards joining a more active guild, but on my guilds behalf as I see no benefits only dangers in this change. I would love to see an improvement not making the small and casual guilds relatively less attractive than we already are.

That being said I really love that an issue many people care a lot about is being addressed. It seems like an improvement also for players like myself even though I consider it a relative and great nerf of a guild like mine.

[mikarddo]

Nice of you to try to address the issue - but the approach is all wrong and promotes the Korthos Army syndrome. Please reconsider.

Instead you should count decay based on how many accounts were logged in during the last 24 hours with no lower limit.

Thus, if someone only plays two days a week they only contribute to decay on those two days - and if noone at all from a particular guild logs in during a 24 hour frame then no decay is accrued.

Thats a fix that addresses the issue across the board for small, medium and large guilds alike - and does not specifically award super huge guilds (Korthos Army style).

[TrinityTurtle]

From what I see this pretty much addresses the renown decay issue. The idea that the large guilds will simply throw their doors open to get an influx of korthosites ..... someone else said it better than I ever could:



Lets give the devs some credit for doing something right for a change and encourage them to move onto other things that we've been asking for to make guilds a more significant part of the game .... like guild portraits on your airship, guild-definable member ranks instead of just a simple Member/Officer, guild members list grouped by account, option to add comments next to guild member names, guild trophies earned by completing certain achievements (Velah's head on a plaque anyone?), guild leaders able to see current renown contribution for members, colour coding on members list to let you see who is inactive and who has recently returned from being inactive .... and the list continues. For now I'd be happy to say renown decay problem solved.

I agree with Deadlock, and I do think the people who are worried about abuse by numbers are discounting a huge factor of guilds - the human social equation that can't be plugged into a formula for review. There will still be small guilds of tight knit freinds that don't want a huge group, and there will still be giant guilds whose main purpose is a pool of players at all times.

Small guilds are still getting their huge bonuses to help them remain competetive. But the mid and large guilds who are happy with thier sizes and would like to have room for more it seems will not be forced between renown and friends anymore, and this to me is a positive change.

[Tshober]

If Turbine were interested in getting players "hooked" on the game and wanting to play it more (and spend money on the game as a corollary), incentive systems such as the guild renown system should be designed around benefiting guilds that are successful at encouraging members to log in and play, that spends the time to invest in each player in the guild. The change to renown decay instead encourages guilds to simply induct as many members as possible and treat players as faceless drones in the hive for renown, without regard to the individual player. Many players say the reason why they stick with the game is because of the people they meet and the relationships that they form, and this change discourages this time investment to the detriment of the gaming community.

The best way to get people to play the game more is to make all of them feel welcome in the game and give them the freedom to play the game the way they want to play it. The guild decay system we had before this change failed miserably on both of those counts.

[Drakesan]

The best way to get people to play the game more is to make all of them feel welcome in the game and give them the freedom to play the game the way they want to play it. The guild decay system we had before this change failed miserably on both of those counts.

Eloquently stated, thank you. This is a big reason I was hoping for a change, and I hope that this temporary test gives good results towards that.

[Sonofmoradin]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If Turbine were interested in getting players "hooked" on the game and wanting to play it more (and spend money on the game as a corollary), incentive systems such as the guild renown system should be designed around benefiting guilds that are successful at encouraging members to log in and play, that spends the time to invest in each player in the guild. The change to renown decay instead encourages guilds to simply induct as many members as possible and treat players as faceless drones in the hive for renown, without regard to the individual player. Many players say the reason why they stick with the game is because of the people they meet and the relationships that they form, and this change discourages this time investment to the detriment of the gaming community.

I agree with that post, however I proposed above that if decay is a fixed number that is only affected by guild level, then there should be a large guild penalty on renown which should be the equivelant of the small guild bonus. Is it possible mathematically to find a golden line of bonuses/penalties that could even the ground for all guilds regardless of their size? Also, it seems to me that decay now is a lot less than it should be, in order to make the system challenging enough or even to be able to find a golden line.

Just thoughts.

[Vargouille]

Thank you to those who have chimed in. It's gratifying to hear from many different players with a wide variety of viewpoints.


Did I understand it good,you already made this change live?

Yes. Decay seen this past day was affected.

[karpedieme]

Thank you to those who have chimed in. It's gratifying to hear from many different players with a wide variety of viewpoints.



Yes. Decay seen this past day was affected.

Hey Vargouille thanks for chiming in as well.

Can you confirm that if Decay has been made static, in-game Renown drops have been curbed also.

Only way to possibly explain the whole 3 level per day max scenario......

Our guild TR's are noticing coincidently very poor renown tokens and drops while leveling up since yesterday....

Yeah I know its the question that might sting a bit :)

Cheers

[DogMania]

Ok Here I go

We have a level 63 Guild that is Medium sized (45) now as I have been booting players, Booting player?, oh Gosh!. But I think there has to be a limit of when a player is inactive and Over 1 year to me is ample time so all non actives 1 year + are going.
Now you say what about the 25% loss of Renown and I say what about the extra guild renown I now get after 14 days when my medium size drops from 45 to 35 (and yes I know if I hadnt booted them I could have been at 35 right now but NOW I can recruit 10 more active players to make 45 again without worrying that the 10 I booted could possibly pop on so say hello and make me a 55 thus taking away my Medium guild size)
So as far as im concerned this move is a GOOD one as it save me having to just send a toon out to farm renown to keep the guild at the same level.
I would also point out that our guild was originaly orientated at the casual player so that they could have the same facilities as other guilds but as it grew it became harder and harder to keep up the guild level.
I personaly would like to go back to the time before we had airships anyway as how many times do you hear "Just buffing then OMW" and it would also solve everyones problem in one go.
NO AIRSHIP=NO RENOWN=NO MOANS=NO HEADACHES
Oh and those that dont know how to get to Merdia when in a raid group with no airship YOU USE A TAXI from The Sub

[Tshober]

I've actually always been annoyed with the artificially low max sizes for Tiny, Small and Medium Guilds in DDO - Yes this change will help here BUT at the expense of a lot of Small mid range guilds - This is the issue.

Yes, I agree that these size limits are probably a little too low and that should be looked at. I am also not opposed to increasing the small guild bonuses (within reason), if that is needed to keep smaller guilds viable. My only reasons for advocating the elimination of renown decay are to 1) remove the incentives to shun casual/social players, 2) make new players feel more welcome in DDO's guilds, and 3) allow all guilds to advance. I cetainly have nothing at all against small guilds and I believe they should be able to advance like everyone else.

[Silverleafeon]

A new huge change to guilds is being implemented atm, if it is undesirable it will be removed.

From what I understand, the change is very simple:
All guilds no matter how many accounts they have in them, experience the same amount of renown decay each day.

Having been able to sleep upon that, and dream about it (hey we artists have our own ways of analyzing),
I can only think one direction about this:
Wow, what a bold, simple and increadibly smart move!
Great idea devs, great idea, please keep it!

(Please note that Thalzur, Loreick, and Fawngate will need to have a major group meeting someday about this,
so don't think I am rejoicing because its helping us, cause our guild is not affected at all.)

Why is this such a great move?

I'm gonna point to The Mature Adventurers Guild on Khyber for this, cause I know them well, and they are a
great example.

They are on of the few guilds on Khyber that was close to 1,000 accounts.
They have around 200ish fairly active accounts.
They lead the charts as topish guilds till extemely heavy renown penalties kicked in.
They help people, something I cannot empasize as being important enough.
They thumbed their nose up at renown, and kept to their values.
They have exsisted since near the beginning of the creation of guilds.
Some of the old timers can talk about when they remember participating in the events that are documented
in the Chronoscope raid.
They are popular enough, they had to close doors on recruiting people, simply because there is no room left
in the inn.
They take all sorts of skill levels, monitoring attitudes and booting people who cannot behave in DDO.
They teach new comers, and give them a sense of home.
They stick to their core values no matter what the renown numbers are.

Their main problem is simple~horrific renown decay.
You have not seen renown decay till you watched a 1,000 account guild get hit with renown.
Its astonishing.

Their other main problem, not enough slots for all the boat buffs.
This is easily solved by granting them the ability to upgrade their airship.
Something that this change will do.

Now really ask ourselves, isn't this what a good guild really should be~people helping people.
A big guild with lots of grouping opportunities.
I like to think so.

Me, a completionist project, left MAC because when my father died, it put a lot of stress on the household,
and I was very worried about the renown decay. So, me a huge renown puller, left a nice supportive guild
during a difficult time in my life because of the renown decay system.

Aren't guilds there to give you support during times like this?
So shouldn't the number encourage guilds to help you at times like this?

Now every guild will need a sweet spot in their lineup to keep the renown going,
but it leaves a place for stars and rookies which is really nice IMHO.

So again I say, absolute stroke of brilliance Devs, keep it up!!!!!
This ranks up there with Tomes of Learning.

Now there are a few people out there, who are quiting the game for the wrong reasons,
and they will strongly rant and rave over this.

Why?
Because once again, suddenly DDO is not heavily kissing the uber ego elitetists.

Thanks devs!

Oh if you are an uber ego eliteist, please don't forget to neg rep me on the way out.

And no, I don't want you stuff, I don't have bank space for it ;)

[Krell]

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

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

Thanks for the change. I think guilds should be about bringing people together and the previous system provided incentive to avoid inviting or keeping people that didn't meet a narrow criteria of activity. Personally seeing more guilds reach and stay at 100 doesn't bother me any more than seeing players reach and stay at 25.

[Vargouille]

Can you confirm that if Decay has been made static, in-game Renown drops have been curbed also.

Unless your guild gained a level in the past day, renown drops are completely unchanged.

The 3-level-per-day limit is just a change from a 7-levels-per-day limit that was already live in the game before yesterday. It's likely most players weren't aware that existed, since it generally only mattered for new guilds that were gaining many levels in a single day. It probably still doesn't affect most guilds.

[Silverleafeon]

Handing out +1s, see alot of good posts...

[Gleep_Wurp]

getting rid of decay altogether.i wont buy a guild pot only to have the reward dimish over time.we have 4 in our guild, so now how hard is it going to be to hit 55 now?

[Zenako]

Unless your guild gained a level in the past day, renown drops are completely unchanged.

The 3-level-per-day limit is just a change from a 7-levels-per-day limit that was already live in the game before yesterday. It's likely most players weren't aware that existed, since it generally only mattered for new guilds that were gaining many levels in a single day. It probably still doesn't affect most guilds.

You betcha, never even knew that the old system had a limit. It was just not an issue since all the guilds I am/was in were medium sized or smaller so limits that that were irrelevant.

[djl]

The simplest change to placate small guilds would be to increase the bonus they get to bring it more in-line with the kind of renown "manpower" large guilds will have. The current bonus means each person in a six-person guild accomplishes the work of 4 people, so with these changes a six-person guild is functionally equivalent to a 24-person guild. Quintuple the renown bonuses, so that you get 1500% bonus instead of 300%, and then you'll have the equivalent of a 96-person guild which is in line with about how many "active accounts" many large guilds have (15x the renown + the base renown = 16x the renown, times 6 people = 96).

[theslimshady]

this post has turned to the same tired ole **** it always does tring to say because under 24 people get the small guild percent bonus which is equal or fair in any way or shows any data based on activity is a total shame you can have 12 peeps on in a hour pulling 50 renowns which equals 600 then add the bonus lets use 100 percent modifier thats 1200 in a hour where you can have 20 peeps on with no bonus means they pull 50s same hour equals 1000 it is a shame and has nothing to do with activity and this whole aurgument should be stoped cause its insulting and a form of bullying no matter how many words or graphs you use to spell it out .

[chrisdinus7]

<excellent post>

This. I agree completely. Everyone focuses on the tiny minority of small guilds that have leveled to high levels, while ignoring the vast majority that have not. Props on using actual data as well.

For a while, I have been thinking that removing the levels altogether might be best. Though someone's post about how it was going to stay due to it being an additional grind mechanism is probably true.

I have pondered other systems, but I am not sure what would make people happy. A scale-free normalization of guild renown based on # of players would put us back to where it is advantageous to kick casuals. Maybe using the old system but letting guildies opt-in / opt-out (or perhaps at the leader's discretion). At least casuals could be put in a spot where they were not hurting large guilds. Still doesn't do much for the small struggling guilds.

Maybe a choose n system (select 6 or 10 players or whatever) that are the only ones who can earn renown, and then re-balance the needed renown around that. It is scale free at least (you could give a bonus to guilds that don't have enough members). Problem with that is that you have a lot of players who can't contribute, and you might have people applying social pressure to the "renown team".

[chrisdinus7]

The simplest change to placate small guilds would be to increase the bonus they get to bring it more in-line with the kind of renown "manpower" large guilds will have. The current bonus means each person in a six-person guild accomplishes the work of 4 people, so with these changes a six-person guild is functionally equivalent to a 24-person guild. Quintuple the renown bonuses, so that you get 1500% bonus instead of 300%, and then you'll have the equivalent of a 96-person guild which is in line with about how many "active accounts" many large guilds have (15x the renown + the base renown = 16x the renown, times 6 people = 96).

But why even keep guild levels / decay then? It'll just create a bunch of level 100 guilds, which going by my experience in other MMOs tells me that it'll discourage the creation of new guilds. After all, why would most people bother when they can just join the standard max-level horde guild? Those players would probably be better off in the long run to create more supportive guilds, but from what I have seen, the initial cost will be too high, and they'll just drift from horde guild to horde guild, getting kicked if they are off for a week or so and then joining another guild where they are just a name on a list that no one cares about when they get a level 100 spam invite.

[Silverleafeon]

What effect does gaining a single level in a day have on guild renown?

Cause when a guild hits a stalemate, its losing a level then gaining it back every day?

[djl]

But why even keep guild levels / decay then? It'll just create a bunch of level 100 guilds, which going by my experience in other MMOs tells me that it'll discourage the creation of new guilds. After all, why would most people bother when they can just join the standard max-level horde guild? Those players would probably be better off in the long run to create more supportive guilds, but from what I have seen, the initial cost will be too high, and they'll just drift from horde guild to horde guild, getting kicked if they are off for a week or so and then joining another guild where they are just a name on a list that no one cares about when they get a level 100 spam invite.

This change is going to create a bunch of level 100 guilds regardless, it's just they'll all be Korthos Army guilds and small guilds will be hung out to dry. If they're going to devalue the accomplishment of getting a high-level guild, at least it should be fair to both sides. All this change really did was shift the imbalance from one side of the spectrum to the other. Now, instead of the system favoring small guilds and screwing over large guilds it is the opposite.

They say nothing changed for small guilds, but that's the problem. It is now VASTLY more efficient to have a large guild because past the work of 24 people (a six-man guild does the work of 24 people, as I showed in my last post), every bit of renown earned by additional people is simply bonus. Huge guilds will advance SIGNIFICANTLY faster than small guilds, so it's just as unbalanced as before-- it simply caters to a different group.

[Tshober]

I have pondered other systems, but I am not sure what would make people happy. A scale-free normalization of guild renown based on # of players would put us back to where it is advantageous to kick casuals. Maybe using the old system but letting guildies opt-in / opt-out (or perhaps at the leader's discretion). At least casuals could be put in a spot where they were not hurting large guilds. Still doesn't do much for the small struggling guilds.

This opt-in/opt-out plan gets proposed very often. The main problems I see with it are:

1) It places a ton of administrative effort on large guilds. Imagine trying to keep track of the current status versus the optimal status of 1000 members, as players and alts continaully come and go, with the present guild admin. tools. It would be an administrative nightmare. It would, in fact, be far easier for guilds to simply continue to filter out casual/social players and not invite new players and not have to worry about the opt-in or opt-out status.

2) It does nothing to help out with social players, such as role-players.

3) You can accomplish the same end-effect far more easiliy and accurately by ensuring (mathematically) that no player ever causes more decay than they earn in renown. Essentially this means you can never earn less renown than zero, after taking decay into account. Prior to this very recent change, many players earned far less than zero renown. This can be accomplished in a completely automated way by adjusting the math that calculates daily decay.

[Gremmlynn]

This is the exact same thing people were saying to members of large, struggling guilds a week ago. Telling them to change their playstyle to suit the guild system, which rewarded smaller guilds. Lots of people hated that idea, so the system got changed to this. Now I am getting told the exact same thing and I am just about as happy about it as those people were last week. I hate it, and if you don't see the inequality of this system then it is because you don't want to.

My guild will NEVER be significantly larger that it is now, no matter the the guild system, because we are a group of friends that know each other well and that is something you just can't get with a larger guild. I don't think we should be punished for that any more that people last week thought they should be punished for having many casual members.If your guild has more than 10 accounts, you just got a reduction in your decay. If your guild has 10 or fewer accounts, you are exactly in the same situation as you were before. I don't see where the inequities are here.

I do see where there were inequities in a system that made playing a certain amount of time/week a defacto requirement for membership in a functional guild.

[Gremmlynn]

This change is going to create a bunch of level 100 guilds regardless, it's just they'll all be Korthos Army guilds and small guilds will be hung out to dry. If they're going to devalue the accomplishment of getting a high-level guild, at least it should be fair to both sides. All this change really did was shift the imbalance from one side of the spectrum to the other. Now, instead of the system favoring small guilds and screwing over large guilds it is the opposite.

They say nothing changed for small guilds, but that's the problem. It is now VASTLY more efficient to have a large guild because past the work of 24 people (a six-man guild does the work of 24 people, as I showed in my last post), every bit of renown earned by additional people is simply bonus. Huge guilds will advance SIGNIFICANTLY faster than small guilds, so it's just as unbalanced as before-- it simply caters to a different group.In other words, the old system encouraged people to not play together as much as the new system. Seems like an improvement to me. But then, I never considered guild levels (or anything else in a video game) to an accomplishment. More of a bribe to keep playing the game. This system just lets more players take advantage of that bribe and thus more people will, hopefully, keep playing the game.

Those who simply don't want to play with others can keep doing so the same as before, others just wont be given an incentive to do likewise now is all.

[Wook]

I'll take a reduction means we might be able to actually hit that next level.
Though no decay would be more preferred.

[Jastron]

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

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

[djl]

If your guild has more than 10 accounts, you just got a reduction in your decay. If your guild has 10 or fewer accounts, you are exactly in the same situation as you were before. I don't see where the inequities are here.

I do see where there were inequities in a system that made playing a certain amount of time/week a defacto requirement for membership in a functional guild.

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

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

[djl]

In other words, the old system encouraged people to not play together as much as the new system. Seems like an improvement to me. But then, I never considered guild levels (or anything else in a video game) to an accomplishment. More of a bribe to keep playing the game. This system just lets more players take advantage of that bribe and thus more people will, hopefully, keep playing the game.

Those who simply don't want to play with others can keep doing so the same as before, others just wont be given an incentive to do likewise now is all.

So, you're just using the old "don't like it then play a different way" argument towards the other side. Large guilds are impersonal-- you never really get to know more than a handful of people nearly as well as you would in a smaller guild. For that reason, I much prefer being in a smaller guild. Just like it was BS for Turbine to punish large guilds then, it's equally unfair for them to punish small guilds now. Can we never have balance?

[LadyAerys]

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

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

[karpedieme]

Unless your guild gained a level in the past day, renown drops are completely unchanged.

The 3-level-per-day limit is just a change from a 7-levels-per-day limit that was already live in the game before yesterday. It's likely most players weren't aware that existed, since it generally only mattered for new guilds that were gaining many levels in a single day. It probably still doesn't affect most guilds.

We have been fluttering between 94 and 95 for 1 month Plus. So yes prior to the Flip Switch we were 94 and hit 95 during the day.

We hit 95 again yesterday and we have 7 guildies + running tr's. Looting a lot of chests and running a lot of content.

They all noted renown to be very scarce if any at all. Chests having some not always and End rewards too.

All running Elite BB and 2 levels over quest or below on repeats FYI.

Guildies farming EE demonweb chests did not get a single legendary a few scarce impressives in mutliple hour farms too.

Could be coincidental but so far the numbers seem off.

Running above quest level also should not affect renown drop but how did this translate with the cap lifting from 20 to 25? any view you could clarify here if possible.

Running lowbies 3 levels above quest level strips renown from End rewards.... So in parralel renown would not drop in chests in raids run 2 levels above like VOD HOX Reaver Shroud TOD etc....

Just very curious as to how Cap raise might of affected renown gathering in aspects of Character level Vs Quest level.

Cheers Vargouille and thanks in advance

[CaptainSpacePony]

This ... snip... community. (post 201)

Best Post this year... but you'll never make it as a politician. You keep clouding the issue with FACTS!

Sorry, I'm out of +1s atm.

[patang01]

But why even keep guild levels / decay then? It'll just create a bunch of level 100 guilds, which going by my experience in other MMOs tells me that it'll discourage the creation of new guilds. After all, why would most people bother when they can just join the standard max-level horde guild? Those players would probably be better off in the long run to create more supportive guilds, but from what I have seen, the initial cost will be too high, and they'll just drift from horde guild to horde guild, getting kicked if they are off for a week or so and then joining another guild where they are just a name on a list that no one cares about when they get a level 100 spam invite.

People leave and create guilds for all kind of reasons. I doubt that a bunch of high level guilds is going to change that. I wouldn't leave mine.

More importantly like someone else wrote - why would I bother buying a guild pot when you have this decay? It's like throwing away money.

[Vargouille]

Taking that away is like saying small guilds have to recruit, what if we dont want too? I like the other change, but give us back our small guild bonus

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

[Gremmlynn]

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

That's the problem-- with flat-rate renown decay, the bonus small guilds receive can't begin to keep up with the amount large guilds earn. The bonus small guilds receive needs to be increased for the system to be fair to them.Why does anyone have to keep up with anyone else? It can't be to be more attractive to new recruits, as that seems to be something a 6 member guild has no interest in doing or they would have more than 6 members already? So, what other reason does anyone have to give a rotten fig about another guild's advancement?

The only thing I can think of is they no longer feel they get an advantage by only surrounding themselves with the leetest, most hardcore group of players around. Basically the system no longer rewards them for avoiding the unwashed masses.

Personally, if this change means a larger number of less active players have a greater opportunity to play with the more active players that make guilds functional systems, I could care less why those more active players want them around. Symbiosis is wonderful, the more active players get faster guild levels from recruiting wider and the less active players get active guildies to play with from being recruited. Everything else is just fluff.

[WilliamBraveheart]

So far I love this change we are no longer fighting just to maintain our level and are actually beginning to slowly climb. We have a very large guild and had quit recruiting. if these changes stay we will again begin to recruit.

[madmaxhunter]

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

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

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

If Turbine were interested in getting players "hooked" on the game and wanting to play it more (and spend money on the game as a corollary), incentive systems such as the guild renown system should be designed around benefiting guilds that are successful at encouraging members to log in and play, that spends the time to invest in each player in the guild. The change to renown decay instead encourages guilds to simply induct as many members as possible and treat players as faceless drones in the hive for renown, without regard to the individual player. Many players say the reason why they stick with the game is because of the people they meet and the relationships that they form, and this change discourages this time investment to the detriment of the gaming community.

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

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

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

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

[whiteline]

Ok Here I go

We have a level 63 Guild that is Medium sized (45) now as I have been booting players, Booting player?, oh Gosh!. But I think there has to be a limit of when a player is inactive and Over 1 year to me is ample time so all non actives 1 year + are going.
Now you say what about the 25% loss of Renown and I say what about the extra guild renown I now get after 14 days when my medium size drops from 45 to 35 (and yes I know if I hadnt booted them I could have been at 35 right now but NOW I can recruit 10 more active players to make 45 again without worrying that the 10 I booted could possibly pop on so say hello and make me a 55 thus taking away my Medium guild size)
So as far as im concerned this move is a GOOD one as it save me having to just send a toon out to farm renown to keep the guild at the same level.
I would also point out that our guild was originaly orientated at the casual player so that they could have the same facilities as other guilds but as it grew it became harder and harder to keep up the guild level.
I personaly would like to go back to the time before we had airships anyway as how many times do you hear "Just buffing then OMW" and it would also solve everyones problem in one go.
NO AIRSHIP=NO RENOWN=NO MOANS=NO HEADACHES
Oh and those that dont know how to get to Merdia when in a raid group with no airship YOU USE A TAXI from The Sub

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

[madmaxhunter]

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

Yeah, or they coulda been abducted by aliens! Put in stasis and then returned 14 months later thinking that it was only the next day.

(I'm a U.S. Army vet btw. Soldiers know when they are about to be deployed and can let the guild know, fail that would probably have informed the guild of their military responsibilities and possibility of sudden deployment.)

[Gremmlynn]

So, you're just using the old "don't like it then play a different way" argument towards the other side. Large guilds are impersonal-- you never really get to know more than a handful of people nearly as well as you would in a smaller guild. For that reason, I much prefer being in a smaller guild. Just like it was BS for Turbine to punish large guilds then, it's equally unfair for them to punish small guilds now. Can we never have balance?I miss where this change punishes small guilds. How did anything change for the worse for anyone?

[taurolyon]

My situation:
Figures, I get handed the reins to my guild about 2 months ago (after my initial guild leader got carried off by ewoks, and my predicessor got seduced by fuzzy pandas :eek: ), then 1 month ago, I booted about 40-50 characters that were inactive > 6 months, some up to a year. Thus reducing my overall account size from ~58 to ~28 after the 2 weeks of the guild penalty box. My active guild level stayed around 15-16 throughout. Alas, still stuck at 73.

My Opinion:
I think you're probably over-thinking a system that was over-complicated to begin with.

My initial thought was to completely nix the decay system (honestly, what's the harm with capped out guilds, provided they worked for it?), but this isn't feasible, as it takes funds away from the store, and removes an "unclimbable mountain" (even if you cap, you can't stay there, if you don't stay active).

I originally posted on this last year (http://forums.ddo.com/showthread.php?p=4051699), suggesting a "ratcheting" guild level achievement system whereas when a guild manages to attain levels in multiples of 10 (10, 20, ... 100), they would not be afflicted by decay to the point causing them to lose this particular level. This address the "unclimbable mountain" scenario and gives your guild mini-goals, and if needs-be safety nets if activity drops.

[Drona]

Wow! What a simple but clever solution for this problem - removing account size from the formula.

So basically, the guild (lvl 81) which I am in - the decay has gone

from : 1275.458 * (MAX(111,10)+10) = 154330.41 / day
to: 1275.458 * (MAX(NULL,10)+10) = 25509.16 / day

This is easily manageable and puts no pressure on casual gamers in our guild.

Thank you very much! A master stroke indeed. :)

[theslimshady]

so why not take xp from inactive /parked and capped toons too so they buy xp pots again a really useless argument if someone wants to dress up in pumpkinheads and dance in the streets they should not be punished in any way because thats how they play and there guild should not either i mean to hit 100 levels you still need to hit 40 million renown and thats with out any decay . if this system was on xp i can promise you there would be a mass exodus however we must read about how fair it is