Start Over On Airships and Renown, sorta

[Aspenor]

Basically, I feel that Turbine stuck their middle finger in the air to small guilds. Renown was a bad idea, period. Large guilds will continue to just get larger, and small guilds will see their members gravitate to larger ones just for the path of least resistance to some of the poorly thought out buffs available.

Stats, Damage, Energy Resistance? No. Scrap them. Pretty much anything that will improve your character in game should be thrown out. Things that help via convenience are fine (group storage, shops in one place, etc.). The other things are very poorly thought out and really don't make any sense, either.

[Memnir]

Agreed wholeheartedly, particularly on the second point.

[Zenako]

Basically agree.

It seems that have chosen to utilize how "focused" (I have other terms in mind, but focused will do), many players can be to obtain every little percentage of improvement. Witness the long and heated threads every time ANY change is made to combat that alters the results in ANY fashion.

They did get a few things right. From a simple perspective, getting to rank 25 and not having to worry about having your Airship dissappear from sight is a good thing. With reknown decay et al. Some of the perks are wonderful and completely in line with what many had been asking for all along.

BUT it seems that took what was looking to be a "good" thing and were trying to make it a "great" thing by adding more and more hooks and reasons to "focus" on the Airship. What does it take to drive those "focused" players to build bigger and more powerful Airships. Not Airship combat. Thats not likely. But ways to BUFF the hell out of their characters and make them even more dominant in quests.

Toss in the Scarlett Letter approach of including your Guild Rank under your name and this is not cool. Imagine if everyone around your school for example had a little floaty text with their GPA attached. Or if at your workplace everyone had their Salary in a little floaty text over their name (kinda like that commericial for credit ratings). It does nothing but stigmatize. It is not an positive incentor for most.

[Angelus_dead]

What are some guild airship features that are (mostly) acceptable?

* Convenient access to standard amenities (bank, mail, auction)
* Rapid travel to different zones (meridia, desert, refuge)
* Discounted vendors (maybe with items that bind-to-guild)
* Bank space shared between characters (with selectable access restrictions)
* Long-lasting buffs that don't stack with other bonus sources (and which may be limited by character level)

[Baahb3]

/signed

Anything that affects your character while adventureing should be thrown out. Convienance, travel, storage are what we all thought of when this was suggested, not character enhancing buffs.

The second thing is that any renown system should not be affected in any way by loot drops. Treasure bags, chests pulls and end rewards are not what renown is about. Completing deeds, adventures, difficult things is what renown should be all about, not how lucky you are with your loot rolls.

[Tharlak]

/Anything that affects your character while adventureing should be thrown out. Convienance, travel, storage are what we all thought of when this was suggested, not character enhancing buffs.

The second thing is that any renown system should not be affected in any way by loot drops. Treasure bags, chests pulls and end rewards are not what renown is about. Completing deeds, adventures, difficult things is what renown should be all about, not how lucky you are with your loot rolls.

/signed.

Couldn't agree more with both of these.

Guild rewards should be about the convenience, not character improvements.

Renown should be about accomplishing deeds. Give renown for completing optionals in quests and for completing quests themselves. Give renown for killing rares in the wilderness.

[UltraMonk2]

/signed

Anything that affects your character while adventureing should be thrown out. Convienance, travel, storage are what we all thought of when this was suggested, not character enhancing buffs.

Does your statement include House Phiarlan buffs?

[Scraap]

Would kinda like to see how the breakdown would work if renown / ranks worked closer to UMD, ie: you must be either x level to use this item, or bypass it via guild rank, for instance. Speaking of items, creepy thought: what happens to equipped items in mid-battle when your ranks decay below their usage stat? Do they just pop off?

[Zenako]

Would kinda like to see how the breakdown would work if renown / ranks worked closer to UMD, ie: you must be either x level to use this item, or bypass it via guild rank, for instance. Speaking of items, creepy thought: what happens to equipped items in mid-battle when your ranks decay below their usage stat? Do they just pop off?

Interesting thought about how dynamic they actually envision reknown to be. Do items you have bought for the various hooks based on your current reknown go away before they expire if your reknown decays below the threshold? That would be the source of many tickets I am sure.

[Sker-lyn]

I agree, totally.

I'm leader of a really small guild and I'm really thinking that we never will be able to achieve and maintain even the middle ranks in this system as it is now.

Like a tip, the devs can took Lama experience to messure the impact of this kind of method. You see, I entered in a normal guild, not DDO Daily, and was a full guild at all... Currently we are rank 12 but I saw a huge number of desertions in these last days, with people flying to DDO Daily just to see before the ships stuff. I don't see curiousity bad and Lama is a test server, but you can take that and translate it into live servers.

Huge guilds will grow up like monsters, hitting the top ranks, with huge ships and all the cool stuff and they gonna have that very fast. Small ones, in the other hand, will take their time and like people is impatient, there will be a disbandment to the high rank guilds. Sure, guilds like mine will be no affected for that 'cause my guys and I are friends, from long time, we play in a permanent group, all banded together. But small guilds with recruitment system and wishes to grow... bad, bad thing for them.

I don't saying that I want all the goodies just cause I'm cute like if my guild was one of the huge sharks in the game, but this is gonna make more harm than good. And... D&D is a cooperative game, a party bands together to bit the game and have fun. And this isn't about having fun together... is about bigs growing big and smalls being smaller.

Suggestion? Maybe will be good maintein the favor but transforming the guild into a pc... I mean, the guilds get renown just like now but they don't lose it (like if it was xp). In that way big guilds will have their stuff sooner and small guilds will be able to grow up in their own speed and, someday, with a lot of effort, gain the coolest things in guild favor just like the others.

[Kwyjibo]

I concur, I'm not a fan of this either.

I don't know how other guilds are run/built up, but ours is a small guild with people that just fit each other well. I'm quite sure that the core of our guild won't jump ship (so to speak) to another larger guild because of amenities.

Guild renown..meh.

[iamsamoth0]

Plain, short, sweet.
Lovely.
I sincerely hope they re-evaluate the concept.
And actually listen to, and compile some of the suggestions presented by the players.
To me, as stated previously, it feels rushed, and scant on imagination.

**ala' custom
/SIGNED

[Rickpa]

I don't see the guild renown/housing doing anything but hurting small guilds, and I am worried that actual questing will suffer even more as people grind low level quests (Kobold Assault) over and over, and parts of high level and epic quests without actually doing any quests.

As it is, this update looks not only to be a blow to small friendly guilds, but a blow to game play.

[moorewr]

I agree with this.

It would be better to throw out the entire renown system as it exists now, and simply make the ship and convenience amenities a gold sink.

The gold sink options are endless.. You could, for example, charge a delivery fee every time the "any public zone" delivery option was used. Eberron is a setting with commercial air travel and for-pay daily teleport service, so why not?

[In addition - I find the notional link between items we loot and the fame of a guild extremely sketchy. I am curious whether the renown system exists as it does because the development work to add it directly to quest completions was ruled out from some technical reason]

[karnokvolrath]

Id have to agree here, im notoriously in smaller guilds, more often i use user channel chat then stick something funny above my head.

The other day i was reading what all the ship did and the 1st thought in my head was,
"Great im going to have to be pingoenholed into some guild i barely know to keep up."

I dont mind guilds but often so much is made of them, and one bad member can give you a bad name, hence i usally just use the user chat channels.

/signed

Edit- On a side note, why is kobalt assault a big deal and epic runs/raids irrellevent? If we needed another Army of Krothos they sould just expand it.

[Angelus_dead]

Large guilds will continue to just get larger, and small guilds will see their members gravitate to larger ones just for the path of least resistance to some of the poorly thought out buffs available.

Yes, that will happen. It's funny, but that's analogous to the consequence of the new raid loot system: players gravitated to bigger groups to get better rewards, regardless of if it was less fun for them to play.

When larger groups have a mechanical benefit then players will be pressured to join the biggest groups, but past experience shows it will often be in name only. Often people will have minimal interaction with much of the rest of the group: the guild becomes more of a shared investment in services than a team that works together. Players who grow to dislike their guild will nonetheless feel stuck there for the bonuses, and leaders will feel bad to boot anyone on behavioral grounds if he's contributed to amenities.

[Steiner-Davion]

Yes, that will happen. It's funny, but that's analogous to the consequence of the new raid loot system: players gravitated to bigger groups to get better rewards, regardless of if it was less fun for them to play.

When larger groups have a mechanical benefit then players will be pressured to join the biggest groups, but past experience shows it will often be in name only. Often people will have minimal interaction with much of the rest of the group: the guild becomes more of a shared investment in services than a team that works together. Players who grow to dislike their guild will nonetheless feel stuck there for the bonuses, and leaders will feel bad to boot anyone on behavioral grounds if he's contributed to amenities.

Which is a good indication that the proposed system is seriously flawed in its rewards at the very least!