Fix the small/medium guild renown bonus.

[jkm]

this thread reminds me of this image from fark

[Kinerd]

The most active large guild in teh game, is far behind the most active small guild in the game in levels. Is that fair?

If the most active large guild isn't as active as the most active small guild, yes. If you're the best player at the local YMCA, you probably can't compete with the best player in the NBA.

[moops]

You don't know that.

Neither do I, or anyone else for a fact. It's rather arrogant to make such an incredible assumption, especially when its about a group of generally 100+ players in great guilds.

I think the fairest thing to conclude here is that:

The most active large guild in teh game, is far behind the most active small guild in the game in levels. Is that fair?

To call the most active guild by far lazy and inactive in comparison to the dozen of so guilds higher lvl then it, all of which enforce a small/medium bonus - Not at all fair.

So thats not something you get to decide.

And IMO it isn't fair to work that way. Sure some won't agree.. But ultimately, will turbine?

I mean sure, if the difference was just a few levels - who cares its all fair. But its not, its a 10-20 level split, not acceptable for those very active guilds that really are trying.

PS: Very odd to come from someone in the highest lvl small guild in the game who proudly put that in his sig and the guild openly announces there enforcement of a small guild. Or not.

Im just curious, are you saying that every member of your guild plays every night for a few hours? And always finishes quests and raids to get the end chests? Will spend an extra minute to get a side chest? Always gets the small chest that are on the way to the end of a quest? Always picks renown as an end reward? Runs content fast and effecient? Runs high reknown content when not TRing? Actually gets chests while TRing? This is how the active small guilds that I know are doing things.

I have no doubt in my mind that if 3 -5 of the medium guilds on Sarlona that are in the top 25 now combined when the reknown came out, they would be at 100--but they would be miserable and full of Drama--We all get along and group with each other, but all have some very strong personalties that could not group with each other every day or even deal with them in guild chat--all 5 guilds have a very different feel and philosophy--but all 5 guilds Im thinking of are full of powergamers who play more than is healthy As are the top Small guilds.

I also personally think that if EW ( lvl 80 guild on Sarlona) would've stayed the size that they were, instead of expanding, they would be at the top of the heat, maybe even 100.

I had a guy in a few raids of mine last night from EW, and he offered to give up his end spot in chrono, if we had someone that needed any named items from the end chests--which was very nice of him--but I myself was surprised as I know that they are trying to move higher and that their members care about renown alot, I usually get at least one Impressive out those chests ( knock on wood). But then again, maybe when you are 80, 500 renown does not matter, but I think it all adds up.

I see guilds that are lvl 60+ whom dont even bother to loot the chests in Into the Deep cept at the last boss, many guilds do not bother to take the ext 2 mins to solve all the puzzles in part 3 of Shroud and just break the crystals. . .just some examples, but it all adds up. I myself don't bother picking up quests if they are out of the way, and dont even ask for shares, so Im missing out on reknown I know.

I just don't see Turbine retooling Reknown for less than 20% of its gamers, and at that, many people who are in some of these large guilds have joined them as a first guild, and will most likely move onto a guild that fits their playstyle better when they learn the game more.

Oh and I think that if people were to use a breaking point, it should be Level 60 as that is when we get the World Announcement.

If the most active large guild isn't as active as the most active small guild, yes. If you're the best player at the local YMCA, you probably can't compete with the best player in the NBA.

I see people on here who are supposed to be awesome players in awesome guilds, complaining about how hard EPic is and saying that you need the best DPS, while these small guilds can massacre Epic quests in good time as well as solo and Duo most of them with jsut so so gear. Makes you wonder.

[Clay]

I also wanted to be able to put a Velah's head trophy on the ship when your guild reached a milestone of 100 epic raids against her. ... Trophies for achievements would have been great and added a lot more to the game.

I like it!

[Clay]

this thread reminds me of this image from fark

That image does not include the best argument--the one you hear all the time--the super trump wins all arguments:















As long as you are living under my roof, blah blah blah.


/derail off.

[Ungood]

this thread reminds me of this image from fark

This is WIN!

I am now stealing this from you.

I might use this in the future.

I might use this against you in the future

You have been warned

But.. thank you for the image!

[sweez]

A guild of 20 that has 19 active people will pull more renown than a guild of 150 that has 100 active people, I can't even imagine what would be the problem here? Anyway, once you get to 64 it's not like it really matters that much.

[Lithic]

A guild of 20 that has 19 active people will pull more renown than a guild of 150 that has 100 active people, I can't even imagine what would be the problem here? Anyway, once you get to 64 it's not like it really matters that much.

Not necessarily true. It depends on how much renown/day the active people pull in compared to their decay. If every account generates 1000 decay per day, and you know that decay is amtdecay*(#account+10), (let X=base renown gained, and let the small guild bonus = 2)

The small guild:
19*2*X- 30*1000 = 38X-30000

Large Guild:
100X - 160*1000 = 100X -160000

The break even point is X=2097. If all active players are gathering 2097 renown per day, then both guilds gain the same amount per day. As this number increases (all players get MORE active), the large guild has a huge advantage.

At X=2097:
Small guild = 49686/day
Large Guild = 49700/day

At X=2200
Small Guild = 53600/day
Large Guild = 60000/day

At X=2000
Small Guild = 46000/day
Large Guild = 40000/day

As you can see, as the average activity level goes up, large guilds get a large advantage proportional to their size. If you make average activity level X=20000 (about as high as you can get without being a DDO heermit), then the large guild would be gaining 1.84million/day, whereas the small guild would be only gaining 730k. As average activity level goes down, large guilds suffer more from their decay and small guilds pull ahead.

[Hendrik]

Im just curious, are you saying that every member of your guild plays every night for a few hours? And always finishes quests and raids to get the end chests? Will spend an extra minute to get a side chest? Always gets the small chest that are on the way to the end of a quest? Always picks renown as an end reward? Runs content fast and effecient? Runs high reknown content when not TRing? Actually gets chests while TRing? This is how the active small guilds that I know are doing things.

I have no doubt in my mind that if 3 -5 of the medium guilds on Sarlona that are in the top 25 now combined when the reknown came out, they would be at 100--but they would be miserable and full of Drama--We all get along and group with each other, but all have some very strong personalties that could not group with each other every day or even deal with them in guild chat--all 5 guilds have a very different feel and philosophy--but all 5 guilds Im thinking of are full of powergamers who play more than is healthy As are the top Small guilds.

I also personally think that if EW ( lvl 80 guild on Sarlona) would've stayed the size that they were, instead of expanding, they would be at the top of the heat, maybe even 100.

I had a guy in a few raids of mine last night from EW, and he offered to give up his end spot in chrono, if we had someone that needed any named items from the end chests--which was very nice of him--but I myself was surprised as I know that they are trying to move higher and that their members care about renown alot, I usually get at least one Impressive out those chests ( knock on wood). But then again, maybe when you are 80, 500 renown does not matter, but I think it all adds up.

I see guilds that are lvl 60+ whom dont even bother to loot the chests in Into the Deep cept at the last boss, many guilds do not bother to take the ext 2 mins to solve all the puzzles in part 3 of Shroud and just break the crystals. . .just some examples, but it all adds up. I myself don't bother picking up quests if they are out of the way, and dont even ask for shares, so Im missing out on reknown I know.

I just don't see Turbine retooling Reknown for less than 20% of its gamers, and at that, many people who are in some of these large guilds have joined them as a first guild, and will most likely move onto a guild that fits their playstyle better when they learn the game more.

Oh and I think that if people were to use a breaking point, it should be Level 60 as that is when we get the World Announcement.



I see people on here who are supposed to be awesome players in awesome guilds, complaining about how hard EPic is and saying that you need the best DPS, while these small guilds can massacre Epic quests in good time as well as solo and Duo most of them with jsut so so gear. Makes you wonder.

The thing is with EW, we DO NOT and WILL NOT change our gameplay to get renown. Yes we have expanded - when we find people that fit EW and EW fits them, we Guild them. We also like to keep friends together. If a Guild is falling apart and we pick someone up from that Guild, we like to see that person's friend(s) come to. Renown be damned to the Nine Hells, we like having good people to play this game with. We like having our friends/family play in the same Guild.

Yes Moops, we do 'care' about renown. We like to gain it and we would LOVE to have the L85 ship but we would also be very content with a FIXED L80. What you saw in that eChrono is a good example what what we in EW like to do. We care more for our fellow party members, as you witnessed, and our fellow gamers, Guildies, and non-guilded friends. Giving someone else a chance at eChrono loot is more valuable to us then the renown. Karma and all...

Very happy you got to be a part of that run Moops and hope you enjoyed yourself! Pass along a 'hiyas' to our friends in QE and look forward to having you and anyone of your Guildies run with us.

/respect

-Hen

[Beethoven]

Certainly some of the small guilds may be inactive, but unless you are making a claim that tens of thousands of guilds are actually just dead guilds (and also making the claim that every large guild is active), the conclusion is inescapable: large guilds have a huge advantage on renown, just by the sheer number of accounts.

You cannot make this conclusion since your actual data does not really support it. Look at the chart. Wouldn't it be more accurate to say large guilds seem to have an advantage in the low to mid-levels. Large guilds appear loose that advantage in the above mid-level to high level range and in the highest levels small guilds seem to have the advantage?

Translating the above into numbers would mean we should have a large concentration of small guilds in the low to mid level range with only few large guilds stuck there. Mid levels to high levels large and small guilds should be about evenly distributed and in the highest levels small guilds will be dominant again.

Any "Data" that anyone thinks they are collecting onthis is pointless.

There is no way to tell what kind of activity a guild actually has.

This. Way I see it there are two relative simple reason why we have the guild level spread we have:

1. it is significantly easier to get six like minded individuals together and organize their efforts than it is six-hundred. For example: some easy button is found to gain large amounts of renown quick, small guilds could easily turn around to take full advantage of it whereas large guilds would first need to "mobilize" their one-hundred members.

2. you take a random sample of hundred ddo players and you will end up with a large amount of casual players. Now, I am pretty sure you take a close look at large guild you will find a similar spread among their ranks (more less active accounts than highly active accounts). Guild renown basically measures activity per accound and the level they reach will mostly be based on the guilds ratio of active to less active.

Recently it got popular to claim large guilds are only large because they recruited everyone and often right off Korthos. What's forgotten is many never aimed high (in numbers). They started out small but over time members made friends outside the guild and the guild left their doors open to them. Then these new friends brought their family and friends in and (sometimes over years) the guild grew in size. Activity never was factor, but merely a fun/good personality, cooperative spirit and playing well with others.

So, in these cases guilds suffer from being too nice rather than lazy. What you going to do? Tell someone who is generally a great guy, sorry your job is so demanding / too bad you are involved in your family life to that degree - but you don't produce enough and we need to boot you now. Things just have gotten more polarized now and there are cases where more hardcore players left large guilds because they felt "held back" in terms of guild level.

Those hit hardest are hardcores that "burden" themselves by being part of a large family friendly guild (which by nature will have numerous less active accounts). They usually are left with but two options: stop caring about the level of their guild or leave to join one of purely/mostly hardcore guilds. Pity is that by design the system detrimental (if not destructive) to having mixed guilds (hardcores and casuals). There still are people who make the choice to stay with family friendly guilds despite the guild level system but hardly because of it. They do suffer a significant disadvantage to just grabbing a handful as active members to start a new one.

Personally I believe part of the problem is the system is designed after a "feel good" method (to prevent the term bait and switch) using bonuses on the front end (renown gain) and never anything that could negatively affect the positive numbers (renown awards), but therefor tries slow guilds down by hitting them heavily on the back end (decay).

I think it have been better do it the other way around, instead of giving small guilds large bonuses and then punitive decay I'd have given them less (or no) bonus and standard (or even reduced) decay. Similar I'd have used for large guilds, instead of increasing the decay by accounts I'd have decreased the gain. So, in either case, numbers aimed to never prevent a guild from making no progress at all with the speed of their progress based on their activity by account. With the highest levels being able to be reached by guilds that either consist mostly of highly active account (similar to now) or guilds who just remain around for an eternity (even if it takes them years what small and active guild could use in months).

[QueenPennyThe1st]

what is the ACTUAL formula used by the game? So far I have seen many try to "crack the code" but the question still remains.....

[Kinerd]

You cannot make this conclusion since your actual data does not really support it. Look at the chart. Wouldn't it be more accurate to say large guilds seem to have an advantage in the low to mid-levels. Large guilds appear loose that advantage in the above mid-level to high level range and in the highest levels small guilds seem to have the advantage?

Translating the above into numbers would mean we should have a large concentration of small guilds in the low to mid level range with only few large guilds stuck there. Mid levels to high levels large and small guilds should be about evenly distributed and in the highest levels small guilds will be dominant again.

The small guilds only appear to become dominant when the sample size becomes small enough to make conclusions meaningless. Looking at the top 5 and seeing 4 small guilds, for instance, literally means nothing. What you are actually seeing is 4 +/- 2 * sqrt (4), or 4 +/- 4 just from statistical noise.

The conclusion is inescapable.

what is the ACTUAL formula used by the game? So far I have seen many try to "crack the code" but the question still remains.....

The model accurately predicts the results of the black box formula. What the formula actually is, therefore, is irrelevant.

[PopeJual]

Roll 3d6.

Sometimes you'll get a 3. Sometimes you'll get an 18. Most of the time, you'll see something between 8 and 13.

I bet that if you're play an "18" amount of DDO that you can find 5 other "18's" that you can get together with as a guild.

I bet that you'd have a hard time finding 200 other "18's" to form a guild.


The "advantage" that small guilds have over large guilds is that it's extremely unlikely for anyone to gather a large number of statistical outliers together to form a guild while easier to gather a small number of statistical outliers together to form a guild.

[Arnhelm]

Here's my 2 pp's worth after being in a decent guild for a while:

The renown system makes playing DDO more "work" than "play".

The renown system penalizes groups who want to play the game but don't want to "work" at playing a game.

The renown system causes good, decent people to be left out of a guild play. I always considered being in a guild was about getting good, decent people together to enjoy playing a game. The requirement to earn guild renown, and especially to combat daily renown decay, destroys that aspect of being in a guild. So, we have a situation where people are expected to "work" every day to meet renown decay requirements, and whether they're good people who play casually becomes moot in the long run. This is destructive of building decent communities, and focuses rewards on people who "work" in DDO rather than people who enjoy playing a game together with other decent, non-power gaming people.

Renown, and especially renown decay, is counter-productive to the spirit of DnD. Groups are being penalized for enjoying game-play as play, rather than as work to meet "productivity" goals in a game that, to me, is supposed to be about relaxation and escape from just such pressures and stresses in the solid world.

Bad system, imo. 'Nuff said.

[QueenPennyThe1st]

Now how often have you been in a dungeon, and had a phone call take you from the action. You end up finding a safe place to "hide" and your party finishes the dungeon without you. Then as you go thru the dungeon checking the chests for loot you find more renown than any of the other players in the group did, they did the fighting, took the damage, and you end up with the renown......., now the numbers in a dungeon are already calculated regarding kills, items broken, secret doors found, etc. Why then is renown just a random luck of the draw? Shouldn't the DPS fighter get greater renown than the guy who took the telephone call? If a Cleric raises everyone in the party and facilitates the completion of a dungeon without anyone having to recall, doesn't that deserve a renown bonus?
It is simple algebra, it is also the way that original AD&D was played, You do something great you get points......!
Would this not encourage players to "do their job" i.e. clerics heal they don't do dps, rogues pick locks and assasinate in a sneaky manner, they don't do DPS, you get the picture, if doing your job is what you get renown for, it makes for a better game.
Hail Gygax!!

Could you play football if the quarterback hogged the ball and tried to make all the touchdowns???

[Kinerd]

The renown system penalizes groups who want to play the game but don't want to "work" at playing a game.

The renown system causes good, decent people to be left out of a guild play. I always considered being in a guild was about getting good, decent people together to enjoy playing a game. The requirement to earn guild renown, and especially to combat daily renown decay, destroys that aspect of being in a guild. So, we have a situation where people are expected to "work" every day to meet renown decay requirements, and whether they're good people who play casually becomes moot in the long run. This is destructive of building decent communities, and focuses rewards on people who "work" in DDO rather than people who enjoy playing a game together with other decent, non-power gaming people.

Renown, and especially renown decay, is counter-productive to the spirit of DnD. Groups are being penalized for enjoying game-play as play, rather than as work to meet "productivity" goals in a game that, to me, is supposed to be about relaxation and escape from just such pressures and stresses in the solid world.

A lack of a reward is not the same as a penalty.

It absolutely is the case that rewards are focused on people who power-game any system - put another way, rewards are proportional to effort. This is a Good Thing.

Being left out of guild play is a Bad Thing, yes, but I must challenge your claim that the renown system causes that to occur. Only people can leave other people out. I think your issue lies with them, not the reward system.

[Dmnqwk]

So the issue with renown tends to be large decay values based upon account size?

Then surely a fairer system would be to limit renown/day to the top X players in any guild.

Discouraging guilds from taking members is a poor way to run a guild-oriented game.
Discouraging guilds from letting players play their own game in exchange for running epics and other sources of high renown doesn't speak highly of the system.

The arguments put forward include:

a) it's fair to let small guilds get nice things
b) It's fair to let small guilds earn the same as large guilds.
c) statistically, small guild members work harder to get their renown because they are usually running at power level 18 (after rolling 3d6, in order for their stats).

If a guild has 6 active accounts, or 12, it's not really fair to force them to recruit more. But at the same token it's no better making the guild who has 150 players suffer for enjoying an actual guild experience.

Simple fix:
Each day only the top 50 accounts contribute towards renown (have it as a daily update)
Allow the 6 or 12 small guild to achieve 90% of the large guilds contribution (so 12 would receive a 275% bonus)
Change renown to something you simply earn, not quest rewards picked.
Fix hirelings not to be so stupid and stand on top of you (oh wait, that's a separate issue).

I joke of course, there's no such thing as a simple fix in DDO - the code is seemingly impossible to fix based on how DDO prefer to create new content instead of actually making the game run like a multi-million dollar enterprise.

But anyway - Noone's envious of Wanderlust after running with them

[Vanshilar]

Sorry for the somewhat necro of this thread, I haven't had much time until recently to look at some of these things in depth.

I stopped caring when; after spending the first week running Elite Amraths, Epics and so forth and when comparing notes with a guild mate who was on a TR train, got my renown butt handed to me... In what fantasy realm do the heroes gain more notoriety for opening chest than slaying the big bad dragon? Why is there no renown for COMPLETING a dungeon, and just this random chance at renown by opening a chest whether you complete or not.

It is backwards. There should be a static renown gain for every completion based on quest level, length, difficulty setting and level difference. Then, you get the chance based EXTRA in the chests/endrewards.

That's true but it's largely a criticism of the renown system as a whole, rather than small vs large guilds. Unfortunately, I don't see it changing any time soon; apparently DDO is moving toward these sort of gambling "occasionally get good reward"-type system to encourage Pavlov conditioning of the players, which requires different amounts of reward each time you perform an action. Chest opening fits this well; a static award upon quest completion does not. Of course, it can also be changed so that upon quest completion you get a random amount of renown. But yes unfortunately the renown system is largely based on chest openings. However, if you are active in raids/epic content, you should be finding your way across a lot of chests, especially with the Phiarlan pack, unless your guild specializes in Abbot. He's male and undead I think, or something like that.

Any "Data" that anyone thinks they are collecting onthis is pointless.

There is no way to tell what kind of activity a guild actually has. Only what the character count is/was at the time we looked at myddo.

I'm not sure if you're aware of how ridiculously easy it is to track how much renown different guilds are getting, now that the leaderboards are working again. Next to the "Members" column, which gives you the number of characters in the guild (not the number of accounts in the guild), is the "Renown" column, which tells you how much renown the guild has at each point in time. All you have to do is to copy down this number at different points in time, say once a day, once a week, once a month, whatever, and you will be able to determine the level of activity, renown-wise, a guild has. I'm far from the only one who does this, by the way; you can also look at here or here for some examples. The point is that it's easy enough to do for anyone that's actually interested in trying to figure it out, rather than people who just cross their arms around their chest saying "nothing is knowable because it would invalidate my position."

For example, the totals for Khyber at 2 am PST, April 1, from the leaderboards, were:

Level	Total Renown	Members	Name
79	25447688	81	WanderLust
78	24569231	163	Prophets of the New Republic
77	23581852	193	Elite Raiders
75	21811469	514	Ransack
74	21088774	610	The Helpers Guild
72	19239656	331	Forgotten Souls
71	17944836	559	The Free Companions
69	17007858	64	Dragonblood
69	16687783	851	Loreseekers
69	16609919	590	The Dragon Order of Arcanix

where I've put the guild names on the right for formatting (so that the numbers line up in a column).

The totals at 2 am PST, May 1, were:

Level	Renown	Members	Name
83	29324274	95	WanderLust
81	26681658	192	Prophets of the New Republic
80	25993374	178	Elite Raiders
76	22348688	579	The Helpers Guild
76	21970472	521	Ransack
74	20974557	339	Forgotten Souls
72	18688351	64	Dragonblood
71	18327661	419	The Free Companions
70	17770665	870	Loreseekers
70	17607594	543	The Dragon Order of Arcanix

Now you can take the difference in renown for each guild between those two days, and divide by 30, to get the average daily (net) renown gain for those guilds during the month of April:

GainDay	Guild
129220	WanderLust
70414	Prophets of the New Republic
80384	Elite Raiders
41997	The Helpers Guild
5300	Ransack
57830	Forgotten Souls
56016	Dragonblood
12761	The Free Companions
36096	Loreseekers
33256	The Dragon Order of Arcanix

It would seem to me like this is a pretty clear-cut way to tell how much renown each guild has been gaining.

However, this can be taken one step further. From this, you can determine an estimate of the amount of base (i.e. before the small/medium guild bonus is taken into account) renown per account per day. I'll show how to do this with Wanderlust, however this can be done with any guild.

The above is the net renown gain. The other factor that needs to be taken into account is the renown decay. Wanderlust started off at level 79.8, and ended at level 83.7, so I will take the average level for renown decay to be that at level 81. Of course the exact way is to take the average of the levels across each day, but this is good enough as an approximation (note that the average truncates because from level 81.000 to level 81.999, the amount of decay received is that of level 81). Now, I don't know how many accounts Wanderlust has. However, the small/medium guild bonus by number of accounts is known. The renown decay by guild level and number of accounts is also known (at least up until level 90, I'm still working on the 91-and-above data). So what I can do is to figure out, given Wanderlust has X accounts, with the average level taken as the above (81 for Wanderlust), how much base renown per account would each member need to be gaining to match the observed net daily renown gain? I can do this for different values of X.

For example, say Wanderlust has 10 accounts. At level 81, the daily renown decay for 10 accounts would be 1275.4584 * (10+10) = 25509. Add this to the net daily gain of 129220 and you get that the raw gain is 154729. Since this is assuming 10 accounts, then this would mean that each account gains on average 15473 renown per day. At 10 accounts, the guild has a small guild bonus of +240%, or a multiplier of 3.4x on any renown they get. So dividing the average raw renown gain per day by this multiplier, you get that the average raw base renown gain per account per day is 4551 renown.

Repeating this for if Wanderlust had 25 accounts, the decay would be 1275.4584 * (10 + 25) = 44641, for a raw daily gain of 173861. Dividing by 25, each account on average gains 6954 renown per day. At 25 accounts, the medium guild bonus is about +70.6%, or a multiplier of 1.706. So dividing the gain by this, the average raw base renown gain per account per day is 4076 renown.

Again repeating for say 100 accounts, the decay would be 1275.4584 * (10 + 100) = 140300, so adding the net daily gain of 129220 and you get 269520. Dividing by 100 accounts (no small/medium guild bonus so the multiplier is simply 1), each account on average needs to gain 2695 base renown per day to match this.

So repeating this for every number of accounts from 1 to 200, for the top 10 guilds by renown on Khyber, you get something like this graph:



I've been putting off showing this type of analysis because this graph is easy to misinterpret, so it's important to understand what it means. It's showing, given a guild's level and its average net daily renown gain, what the average base renown per account per day would have to be at different numbers of accounts to match the observed net daily renown gain. If a guild were level 81 and wanted to match Wanderlust's observed gains, this is how much base renown on average its members would need to be getting, for different numbers of accounts.

Note the different regions in this graph. If the guild has below roughly 15 accounts, the amount of base renown members would need to be getting to match the observed gains skyrockets, because there are too few people making the renown gains and helping to make up the "+10 accounts" in the renown decay formula. After Turbine added the medium guild bonus for guilds up to 50 accounts, you can see that in this region the amount of base renown per day needed is linear. In this graph it's a coincidence that all 10 will slightly increase with more accounts (i.e. that it's better to have fewer accounts because less renown per member is needed to match the observed gains); whether this region is increasing or decreasing depends on a specific guild's level and activity. Above 50 accounts, there is no more bonus, but you can see that, for a guild that is having a net gain in renown, the more accounts it has, the less effort each account on average has to make for the guild to gain a certain amount of renown per day. So the larger the guild, the less each member has to work.

By looking at this graph, you can make quite a few inferences about the guilds, depending on what you believe to be the actual number of accounts of each guild (of course, the guilds themselves know what it actually is, but some may choose not to make that public). For example, I believe that Wanderlust has between 15 and 50 accounts. If this is the case, you can see that each member would on average be gaining around 4100 base renown per account per day, at least in April. You can go through each guild and see how much base renown each account is gaining, based on what you believe to be their number of accounts. So although I can't say exactly how much base renown each member in a guild is getting, I can get a pretty good estimate by looking at this graph, and looking at how many accounts I think each guild really has.

Doing this analysis for the top guilds game-wide is why I can say without much qualification, for example here, that the top renown small guilds are gaining several times the base renown (i.e. number of legendaries, heroics, etc.) per account, in the range of 2500-6000 renown for the top renown small guilds and in the range of 1000-1700 (except for one around 2200) for the top renown large guilds. You can also see it in the chart above for Khyber, if you go through and mark how many accounts you think each guild has -- the top renown small guilds have high guild levels simply because each member on average is working several times harder than the top renown large guilds.

the vast majority of "Small" guilds are completely inactive. Using those guilds to skew your numbers is laughable. How many 1 man guilds with little to no renown are there on every server? Hundreds? Thousands?

I addressed this point already. Let me repeat it for you:

Even if some of them are inactive, unless you are saying that 8680 of those 8705 (i.e. 99.7% of those guilds) are really just fake dummy inactive guilds, you'll still have a better chance of being at level 70 or above if you were in a large guild rather than in a small one.

Let's say 20% of those guilds are inactive. This means that there are 8705*0.8 = 6964 non-large guilds, of which 4 are top renown, so the chance is 0.0574%. Guess what? My point still stands; it is still much better have a 4 in 25 (16%) chance to be level 70 or above if you are in a large guild, than if you were in a non-large guild (0.0574%). 50% inactive? Then there are 4352 non-large guilds, and the chance is 0.0919%. Still much better to be in a large guild where you have a 16% chance. What if 90% of the non-large guilds are actually inactive? Remember what this means; 9 out of every 10 guilds on Khyber are just dead guilds, none of the members ever logging on, etc. There would still be 870 active non-large guilds, and you would have a 4 in 870 (0.46%) chance of being above level 70 if you were not in a large guild, compared with a large guild's 16%. My point still stands. Certainly the numbers would need to be tweaked a bit depending on the actual number of inactive guilds, but the point still remains.

In fact, as I mentioned, unless you are positing that 99.7% of those guilds are inactive, that with 4 out of 25 large guilds already level 70 or above, there are only 25 or less other guilds (other than the large guilds) on the entire server that have members logging in, my point is still valid -- statistically, you stand a much better chance of being in a high-level guild if you are in a large guild than if you are not. In other words, large guilds have it way too easy compared with small guilds in terms of reaching the high levels. Certainly some of the numbers may need to be adjusted nowadays but not significantly to alter the point. So, is this what you are claiming? Because the only way inactives would invalidate my point is if over 99% of the non-large guilds are inactive, and you are claiming that inactives make my point "laughable".

This is really the heart of the argument, to me. Guilds seem broken when the Devs institute a system that rewards the guilds who won't have their buddy that plays once a week in it, or that family member who's always busy and maybe manages 15 minutes a night to just chat.

I'm not quite sure why it's wrong to institute a system that gives better rewards for greater effort. The renown system is set up so that at the higher levels, it's the average activity (in terms of renown gained per account per day) that counts. So yes, less active (i.e. less renown-contributing) accounts will be a drag on guild levels.

However, for large guilds, it's only a drag once the large guild reaches the higher guild levels, and decay takes up a significant amount of the raw renown gain. For a small guild, every less-active account is a drag from day one, throughout all levels, because they decrease the renown bonus that everyone else in the guild gets.

For example, let's take the case of an 80-account guild, whose members average 1500 base renown per account every day. Call this the "large-active" guild. Its average daily raw renown gain is thus 80 * 1500 = 120k renown per day. Compare this with the same guild except that it accepts 40 accounts that are only one-third as active, i.e. each contributing 500 base renown per account per day. This new 120-account guild, call it "large-mix", would gain 80 * 1500 + 40 * 500 = 140k renown per day.

Take the same thing, except 1/5 the size. So the case of a 16-account small guild, calling it the "small-active" guild, and also with 1500 base renown per account per day. The bonus is +150%, or a multiplier of 2.5x. So this guild gains (16 * 1500) * 2.5 = 60000 renown per day. Let's say the same guild, again, accepts 50% less active members, so an additional 8 members that contribute 500 base renown each per day. This new "small-mix" guild, now 24 accounts so a bonus of +82.8% or a multiplier of 1.828x, would get a daily renown gain of (16 * 1500 + 8 * 500) * 1.828 = 51184 renown per day. Note that by accepting less-active members, a small guild has actually decreased its overall raw renown gain, while a large guild has increased its overall raw renown gain.

From this, and with the renown decay formula, you can simulate how these guilds will progress through time. Taking 6/28/2010 as the starting point (when the renown system was released), using Update 7 rules (i.e. small and medium guild bonus implemented, even though they weren't implemented until later on), the guilds would progress as below:





You can see that the less active accounts are actually a net boon to a large guild, all the way until the guild reaches around level 75. In other words, for a large guild, until it reaches the higher levels, less active accounts actually help the guild. This is why early on, the leaderboards were dominated by large, shall we say, newbie-friendly guilds -- it was advantageous to the large guilds to simply have as many bodies as possible, regardless of player quality.

Not so for the small guild. At any level, less active players decrease the overall renown gain of the guild by reducing the renown bonus of everyone else within the guild. Adding 50% less active accounts (i.e. 40 less active accounts to a guild that was originally 80 accounts, or 8 less active accounts to a guild that was originally 16 accounts) makes the large guild reach level 60 and 70 two weeks earlier (12 days and 16 days, respectively). For the small guild, however, it would make the guild reach level 60 over five weeks later (37 days) and level 70 about two and a half months later (79 days). Anyone who doubts these results is welcome to do the math themselves and see if they get the same answer.

So I think it's somewhat disingenuous for large guilds to be complaining about how less-active members hurt their renown gain, now that they have made full advantage of getting guild levels faster early on by having those members around. It's like getting a loan (get rich quick) and then complaining about having to pay interest on it when you're paying it back. You can also see that even if a large guild got rid of the less active members, in this case (i.e. 1/3 of the large-mix guild, making it like the large-active guild), it would only mean an extra level or two -- yet using it as an excuse to request for large changes to the system to continue their dominance. And of course, without or without less active members, large guilds by sheer number of accounts reach the higher levels many months ahead of small guilds of similar activity levels.

By contrast, having less-active members is detrimental to small guilds at every phase of the guild's life. It means that the guild will progress more slowly, and it also means that the guild reaches a lower maximum level. The people in small guilds have the same issues with maintaining activity as with large guilds; I'm overseas right now for example so I can't join guild raids, so Over Raided is effectively taking a penalty to everyone's renown gain right now due to a member that is not contributing much to renown for a couple of weeks. People are also busy with school and stuff and so there are less people showing up to raids lately (end of semester busyness). Stuff happens.

I've yet to see a complaint on activity that does not apply similarly to small guilds. Claim small guilds can enforce activity more easily than large guilds? Small and large guilds have the same observation mechanisms (i.e. the guild list) to see who's been logging on lately and who's not, and the same recourse (i.e. boot). The difference is that top renown small guilds have had to enforce activity ever since their inception, meaning it has always been a consideration before a member is accepted and while a member is in the guild, or they wouldn't be a top renown guild. Top renown large guilds however have been able to get to the higher levels with or without less active accounts. Top renown large guilds can always start enforcing activity the same way small guilds have been doing all along, or not and take the renown hit, the same way small guilds have been (except small guilds take an even bigger hit). The only one that may not apply to small guilds is the 1000-character cap, but that will eventually start applying to small guilds as they slowly fill up with members who play for a while and then go inactive.

Whether you look at empirical data from the leaderboards about the progress of actual guilds, or use simulations based on known formulae for renown bonus and renown decay to control for factors such as differences in activity levels, the conclusions all end up the same: the system gives huge advantages to large guilds over small guilds, and small guilds that have made it to the top have done so through sheer effort despite a system that disfavors them. For large guilds to ask for more benefits by comparing themselves to small guilds where each member on average is working several times harder is to reward complacency and inaction over effort-based rewards -- the equivalent of saying "I'm unwilling to work as hard as Jordan to get as good as he is but since he scores more points, I should get a 100-point head start whenever I play against him."

I have no doubt in my mind that if 3 -5 of the medium guilds on Sarlona that are in the top 25 now combined when the reknown came out, they would be at 100--but they would be miserable and full of Drama--We all get along and group with each other, but all have some very strong personalties that could not group with each other every day or even deal with them in guild chat--all 5 guilds have a very different feel and philosophy--but all 5 guilds Im thinking of are full of powergamers who play more than is healthy As are the top Small guilds.

It's much the same on Orien. If the endgame guilds -- Over Raided, Harmonious Balance, Phoenix Knights, etc. -- banded together into one big guild, that guild would easily be level 100 right now. All are very active and pull in more than the renown decay per account at level 100, i.e. the level multiplier (ignoring the "+10" additional accounts) even without the small/medium renown bonus. So the small guild size is actually an inhibitor of high guild levels, not a cause.

The reason I think why that super guild has not emerged on any of the servers, is more to do with the powergamer mentality than the guild size. That is, powergamers will tend to have stronger opinions and feelings about the game than the typical gamer, meaning that they will self-select and split into smaller groups over differences in ideology like in loot rules, ambition, focus on raids or epics or shortman or speedrun or game mechanics, Pepsi vs Coke, etc. The difficulty is not in finding powergamers; there are hundreds of them on every server (or at least, hundreds that can do Shroud, ToD, etc., even if that's not properly considered "powergaming"). The difficulty is maintaining cohesiveness within the guild so that people with strong opinions and strong personalities are still willing to live with each other and be in the same guild. But these are social in nature and are leadership issues, not flaws within the renown system. The renown system itself encourages large guilds over small guilds already; just no one has been able to make that effort to combine that many powergamers into one guild.

People like to pretend as if a 20-member guild means it has the top 20 players on the server, a 200-member guild means it has the top 200 players on the server, etc., whereas I see it more as that there are hundreds of powergamers (or at least, hundreds that can do Shroud, ToD, etc. even if that's not properly considered "powergaming") that make up the endgame guilds and that the guilds are more or less collectively fighting over. A 20-member guild can no more get the most powergamer 20 people on the server than a 20-employee company claim to have the 20 most talented workers in the profession (well, they can claim it, but you know what I mean). Instead, all the endgame guilds, big and small alike, are fighting more or less for the same group of people. Whether they choose to be a pure powergamer guild or dilute their ranks with more casual friends is a choice that each guild has to make, large or small.

When the top renown small guilds are gaining several times the base renown per account per day as the top renown large guilds across many small guilds, showing that many powergamers have no trouble getting renown, then the inescapable conclusion is that top renown large guilds either aren't as powergamer or active as they think they are, have diluted their ranks with less powergamer types, or simply don't care as much about renown. There is nothing wrong with any of these, but none are reasons for favoring large guilds further.

The thing is with EW, we DO NOT and WILL NOT change our gameplay to get renown. Yes we have expanded - when we find people that fit EW and EW fits them, we Guild them. We also like to keep friends together. If a Guild is falling apart and we pick someone up from that Guild, we like to see that person's friend(s) come to. Renown be damned to the Nine Hells, we like having good people to play this game with. We like having our friends/family play in the same Guild.

And there's nothing wrong with that. Turbine gives us many different things we can prioritize in the game. Some guilds will focus on TRs. Some guilds will focus on speedruns. Some guilds will focus on speed dating. Whatever. All guilds will focus on different things to different extents, and renown is only one out of many things that a guild can focus on. Other than getting to whatever guild level a guild is willing to put up with, there's not much need to bother with renown further or to make it a big focus for the guild. A guild after all is more than just its renown. It's a matter of setting priorities and trade-offs for the guild; in other words, a leadership issue.

However, I think there is a problem with demanding changes to the system to favor those that aren't willing to work as hard and still get the same benefits -- when the system is already set up to favor them. For example, I think it's great that there are guilds that shortman raids, being willing to take the time to learn a raid and die repeatedly in the process, and quaff hundreds of pots for a completion (or for a wipe) if need be. I personally simply haven't made that commitment yet. And I would think it's wrong to suggest that Turbine should make it so that I can shortman those raids just like people in those guilds when I have other priorities and am not willing to make that commitment to learn those raids in depth and quaff those pots. Greater effort should result in greater reward.

[OpallNotten]

What you seem to forget is that the rising star guilds you are so worried about are the vast minority of small guilds. Maybe 1 in 100 small guilds (probably less) are actually contenders for the top 25 on each server. On the other hand, ALL bloated guilds reach a decent level pretty quickly, though they then stagnate depending on their member's average activity. Take Korthos Army for instance. When they would invite every noob off the boat into guild and kick them for being inactive for 2+ weeks, they were at the top of the Argo renown ladder until about lvl 40. Big guilds have so much renown being pumped into them that even with a poor quality of renown gatherers they reach the middle levels easily. If you look at the leaderboards, you will see that every server's top 50 is dominated by med to large guilds.

I took a look at Argo, and there are currently 8 small guilds in the top 50 (50 characters or less, likely to be 6 account guilds). The top 10 are all in the 150+ member category.

Now another thing you should consider is that the more people you have in a guild, the lower the average activity level. Take my own for example. Whispers has 6 accounts played by 3 players (to max out renown, duh heh). We are all extremely active. Our average renown gain per player is on the order of 1million per month. Our decay rate is negligable (5k/day at lvl 58? Its not noticeable).

Now you take a huge guild like Chaosknights (currently #1 on argo at lvl 80, though probably almost static due to decay). They have lots more people, which means they are much more likely to have a lot of weekend warriors, or casual caseys in guild. These more casual players drop the average renown per day.

The way the bonus is now means that every person you add to your guild will mean more renown per day, despite gains in decay or loses of size bonus, AS LONG AS ALL PLAYERS ARE OF EQUAL QUALITY (quality in this sense measured in amount of renown gained per day). If Chaosknights had 900 people who played as much as me, they would have been lvl 100 within 3 weeks of the creation of renown.

I may be biased, being from a very small guild, but it seems like the renown bonuses are working pretty well. A few small guilds can compete with the giants just as the system intended.

I agree with everything you said

My guild started small and stayed small. I have the magic number 6 accounts as well.
I just came back from a year break and started off at sqare 1 with the guild renown. We are just now level 31. IMO, that's not too bad for a guild with only 2 actual people contributing to the renown. (the other 4 accounts are.....just there)

As it stands, my guild has a fighting chance to get the world broadcast for when we level up high
If they take the bonuses away......it will sting. Won't be game breaking, but it would sting


Opall

[BurnerD]

Perhaps the decay formula needs to take into account the difference between casual and power gamers.

Guildie A logs in 30 hours a week. Renown Decay value for this account is 1X

Guildie B logs in 15 hours a week. Renown Deacy value for this account is 0.5X

Guildie C logs in 3 hours a week. Renown Decay value for this account is 0.1X

The amount of login time and ratios are just for example. This would not penalize larger guilds with casual players as much. The theory is if you play alot you gain more renown therefore you can support more decay.

Just an idea... thoughts?