Doing the math: Guild Size vs. Renown

[Beethoven]

Higher than 65 shows much more even distribution, which suggest that large guilds have a significant advantage vs small guilds. Possibly due to decay of small guilds, which is 10+# accounts. This means that guilds of 10 accounts have double the decay per member of large guilds.

What you talking about? Take the three large guilds which managed to achieve a level ~80 or higher: two of those guilds existed already in June 2010 (when the system was released). It took them 9 months to get there. The third guild shows up first in July 2010. They achieved their current guild level after 8 months. Now I have not researched all the guilds of level 65+, but would not be surprised if the picture is similar (ie: it took them in excess of 6 months to get to their level).

Meanwhile there is a small guild who first showed early February 2011. They managed to achieve level 83 by mid March. You cannot possibly deduct from a small guild managing to achieve a level higher in 6 weeks than large guilds managed after 8-9 months, small guilds don't have enough an advantage.

In other words, given the data we have things may look distributed evenly in level but small guilds outperformed large guilds in level as much as 5! times as fast. Now, don't get me wrong - I am not trying to bash those guilds. They were probably very disciplined and dedicated in getting to where they are. Well played. More power to them. I am merely contesting they are somehow at a disadvantage or don't get enough a bonus.

The thing that does both me about the system that at the high levels it is too heavily slanted towards managing your decay. You want to exceed a level (which appears to be roughly the low 80s) you just cannot afford to allow people in your guild who do not produce regularly. It's not that it takes longer or is getting harder, but I am afraid it is just not doable. You have player(s) who for whatever reason cannot invest hours of play time every day, you will hit a hard cap on how high your guild can go; not within months, not even within decades. You suffer decay for all those accounts every day, but might only get contributions every four days a week. It's simple math really, there comes a point these accounts propel decay so high the more active members of the guild no longer can support the additional weight.

Maybe that's the intention and the highest guild levels are supposed to be reserved for guilds consisting almost exclusively of very active members, but that does still not mean I have to like it.

[Therigar]

A Case Study: The Halfling Commandos

We have about a dozen active players who are on most nights. Some of them play outside of prime time too. Another dozen or so participate regularly but not nightly. Another 40 play rarely*.

* This latter number used to be much higher but we have been pruning inactives to try and increase renown retention.

We zoomed through levels, regularly appearing on page 1 of the leaderboard, until we hit about 40. This was many months ago, quite soon after guild leveling was introduced.

We have been painfully fighting against decay ever since and have only managed to struggle our way upwards six more levels in the intervening months.

There has been some sentiment amongst some members to jettison the rare players so that we can qualify for the small guild bonus. Except, we like the rare players, and we like being a casual guild with few rules. This is actually causing us some stress.

I suspect that our real problem is not our size at all, but rather the fact that we allow our players to have characters in other guilds.

Having bashed you for poor research and insufficient data making any information gained suspect at the best (garbage in = garbage out still applies), I do think that the observations in your case study reflect some of the intangibles -- which you seem to understand exist even if you cannot quantify them.

Your conclusion about size and multiple guild affiliations is inaccurate. If you dump the ~40 rare players into a separate, associated, guild and retain only those that are active and committed to The Halfling Commandos your guild level will increase.

The saying is, "It isn't personal, its just business." You have to run your guild like a business and renown is the profit. If the members are not contributing to the profit they need to go. It is better to downsize and restructure than to retain your current business model if your goal is to increase your guild level.

You create a second guild for the casual, only somewhat committed players. You create a chat channel that both groups can use instead of your normal guild chat. And, you involve the associated guild's members in your quests and raids in preference to other guilds and players.

This lets you retain the emotional ties which are social in nature but that do not contribute to the business model you want for The Halfling Commandos.

Summary:

If you want to have a high-level guild, your best bet is to start a very large guild. But if you want to have the very highest-level guild you may be better served with a very small guild of very dedicated players.

This analysis does not disprove the “small guild is better” theory. It does prove that larger guilds are good too, and in fact are the only “sure” way to attain high level.

This is the old, hard choice between quantity and quality. Quantity has an initial bang for the buck and brings an early reward. But it is limiting and costly to operate.

The highest success will come with high quality and limited quantity. Twelve real live players that log on during the same time and always group together will achieve more in the long run than 120 players that seldom log on or do not group together. If they intentionally build mutually supporting characters, level together, share loot with one another and farm to make sure that they get the best gear sets for each character at each level -- they will advance even faster.

Success breeds success. And, a highly trained, well equipped small group can out perform almost any group that relies only on brute force.

You are trying to build high guild renown through brute force -- and that only works up to a certain point. I suspect that is the ceiling you are up against.

You can expand membership for a 10 level or so increase in your guild's level. Or, you can reduce membership and become committed to one another's individual success and see a 40 level increase.

I think you understand this heuristically even though the data and information isn't sufficient to make the case for you.

[Ungood]

@Ungood: I think you are both arguing that small guilds have an inherent advantage regardless of the small guild bonus? Due to their ease of coordination?

I see maybe I said too much, but my point boils down to "Size is not the issue so much as deftness of purpose".

Unfortunately, as it stands the larger the guild, commonly the more lack luster members get mixed in with the driven ones.

One possible fix would be add more level locks. We only have one at level 25 now. I think what would really help players' stress level would be to have a lock at, say, level 50 and maybe 80. Just like 25, your GR would never dip after you achieve those levels.

This is a very good idea! A level Lock in once obtained!

Maybe have it so you lock the level once you get the ship of that level, so you could lock 50 or 55. Depending on which ship you got. and make it a players choice as well, they can choose to lock in, or not.

This is a great idea!

[Asmodeus451]

it never ceases to amaze me, the dedication of the players of DDO. +1 rep for the sheer effort and dedication it took to put this together, OP.

[Tholar]

I do believe the results will be flawed until we can obtain true input data. Number of members is nearly useless as a figure to use in these calculations.

Even accounts can be flawed if you consider some people have multiple accounts, but at least this still counts against your renown. Was in a guild run recently, and we figured that the 6 people in the party accounted for 102 of the characters in the guild.

Maybe we can do a quick survey to improve his data?

My guild:

Level 50
308 members listed, 40 active accounts.

[Lithic]

What you talking about? Take the three large guilds which managed to achieve a level ~80 or higher: two of those guilds existed already in June 2010 (when the system was released). It took them 9 months to get there. The third guild shows up first in July 2010. They achieved their current guild level after 8 months. Now I have not researched all the guilds of level 65+, but would not be surprised if the picture is similar (ie: it took them in excess of 6 months to get to their level).

Meanwhile there is a small guild who first showed early February 2011. They managed to achieve level 83 by mid March. You cannot possibly deduct from a small guild managing to achieve a level higher in 6 weeks than large guilds managed after 8-9 months, small guilds don't have enough an advantage.

In other words, given the data we have things may look distributed evenly in level but small guilds outperformed large guilds in level as much as 5! times as fast. Now, don't get me wrong - I am not trying to bash those guilds. They were probably very disciplined and dedicated in getting to where they are. Well played. More power to them. I am merely contesting they are somehow at a disadvantage or don't get enough a bonus.

The thing that does both me about the system that at the high levels it is too heavily slanted towards managing your decay. You want to exceed a level (which appears to be roughly the low 80s) you just cannot afford to allow people in your guild who do not produce regularly. It's not that it takes longer or is getting harder, but I am afraid it is just not doable. You have player(s) who for whatever reason cannot invest hours of play time every day, you will hit a hard cap on how high your guild can go; not within months, not even within decades. You suffer decay for all those accounts every day, but might only get contributions every four days a week. It's simple math really, there comes a point these accounts propel decay so high the more active members of the guild no longer can support the additional weight.

Maybe that's the intention and the highest guild levels are supposed to be reserved for guilds consisting almost exclusively of very active members, but that does still not mean I have to like it.

You are pointing to the extreme outliers (Rebellian and Dominion) and calling it a pattern. They are not leveling as normal guilds do (as shown in the guild horse race graphs), but are instead speeding their own renown due to bronze token and dragon runes turn ins. If you had a guild of 100 accounts that all did the same thing, as rebellion, they would have reached lvl 100 before a month had elapsed.

Don't believe me? lets use some numbers. Lets take Guild A that has 100 accounts (no guild bonus), and that all players contribute X amount of renown per day. They also suffer Y amount of decay per account. To make this simpler, lets imagine that Y = X/10. Then there is Guild B that has 6 accounts (+300% guild bonus), each of which also contribute X renown per day, modified by guild size bonus (4X per account) and also suffers Y amount of decay per account (or X/10) as both guilds are of the same level.

Now After 10 days:
Guild A will gain:
10 days * 100accounts * X renown = 1000X renown.
Guild A will also decay by: 10 days * 110 accounts * X/10 = 110X
Therefore Guild A will gain 890X renown.

Guild B will gain:
10 days * 6 accounts * X renown * 4 bonus = 240X renown
Guild B will also decay by: 10 days * 16 accounts * X/10 = 16X
Therefore GUild A will gain 224X renown.

So you see, if 2 guilds of the same level have identical player activity and are of the same level, then the big guild has a big advantage. In fact, the bigger the guild, the more advantage they have. This is why the highest ranges (65+) on the OP's graph shows a MUCH higher proportion of large guilds vs small guilds than it should. Since the vast majority of guilds are small, a perfectly "fair" system would tend to cause the vast majority of guilds in the high guild levels to also be small. Pointing to outliers that are using uncommon ways to artificail gain massive amounts of renown and calling it a problem with the small guild bonus is rediculous. The problem is more about the turn in process than the guild bonus. If a large guild decided to farm bronze tokens, they might need 4x as many to gain the same renown but they would have at least 15x the number of accounts. It's just harder to get such a large team dedicated to farming tokens and such.

Again, pointing to the 2 small pseudo-exploiting guilds as proof of a broken guild size bonus would be like seeing a snail riding a rocketcar past a group of cheetahs and coming to the conclusion that all small animals are faster than large ones.

[Beethoven]

Pointing to outliers that are using uncommon ways to artificail gain massive amounts of renown and calling it a problem with the small guild bonus is rediculous.

Small guild bonus isn't the problem.

Don't believe me? lets use some numbers. Lets take Guild A that has 100 accounts (no guild bonus), and that all players contribute X amount of renown per day.

Now, I know hypothetically if you get 500 very active people together you can overcome the decay and also reach the highest level. Practically it is not going to happen, I don't think. We are basically talking about finding 500 people who (for the most part) get along, are dedicated, don't get interested in another game eventually and won't have anything come up real life in the near future that will significantly reduce their in game activity/production.

Yes, hypothetically, spoken you get hundred people together that contribute sufficient renown every day, you are right. And, hypothetically, we could get every person in the western world to donate but a single dollar we just might cure world hunger. Number games only go so far. My entire (and only) point was that large guilds are more likely to include members who cannot play every day, but cause decay every day and it puts them at a significant disadvantage in the higher levels. I'd find it more fair if only accounts who were online within the last twenty-four hours would be used for decay calculations.

I don't care about renown half as much as how players who cannot commit a few hours /every/ day are constantly categorized as freeloaders, dead weights, lack luster or somehow lower quality and/or unwilling to coordinate with other players - but under the current system this keeps happening, a lot. It's probably why I am posting on this thread yet again; it's just not true. Guild rank has significantly little to do with quality. All it measures is activity per account. It's easier to get 5 highly active people together and it is significantly more simple to coordinate efforts. The examples I was referring to are but two, hardly the only ones. Also, I am not going to assume no mid-size or large guild ever tried to use shortcuts.

[jkm]

My entire (and only) point was that large guilds are more likely to include members who cannot play every day, but cause decay every day and it puts them at a significant disadvantage in the higher levels.

No, this isn't your point at all. There are a ton of <30 small guilds that have players that don't play every day. The difference is that a large guild can skip right on by these levels based on the mass of players and the fact that there is always someone on. There doesn't seem to be any concern over small guild casual players who take months and months to just get their airship.

Where the game changes is after level 40. This is when all of those casual players that contributed + Net renown begin to contribute negative net renown. The only solution to this is to build a system that discounts their renown gain to the guild <40 the same as it discounts their renown decay to the guild >40. they did this with the inactive system.

as for the OP - each active player in the guild at level 40 contributes 24 points of renown decay per day (+ the 10 base that everyone gets). that is one heroic deeds every 2 days. at level 80, this moves up to 1k or a legendary every day.

[blametroi]

I don't care about renown half as much as how players who cannot commit a few hours /every/ day are constantly categorized as freeloaders, dead weights, lack luster or somehow lower quality and/or unwilling to coordinate with other players - but under the current system this keeps happening, a lot. It's probably why I am posting on this thread yet again; it's just not true. Guild rank has significantly little to do with quality. All it measures is activity per account. It's easier to get 5 highly active people together and it is significantly more simple to coordinate efforts. The examples I was referring to are but two, hardly the only ones. Also, I am not going to assume no mid-size or large guild ever tried to use shortcuts.

I didn't get that from the OP, but this and some other replies do bring up the point "what do you expect from a guild?"

As with individual player goals for their toons (completionist, fun, RP, challenge, min-max), each player (and probably each guild) has different goals.

As far as the categorization of players as freeloaders, I don't see this in my guild. We've banned some players (very few, I think 3 that I know of). I don't have enough experience with other guilds to know if your assertion is correct or not, but I suspect it is.

Guess I'm lucky.

[Beethoven]

No, this isn't your point at all.

It's not? You are right. I probably should have been a little more verbose here: large guilds often consist of a wider variety of players, some more active and some less. Small guilds often will be either here or there (consisiting mostly of more casual players or mostly of more hardcore players). Smaller casual guilds would benefit too though if only accounts active the last 24 hours would be considered for decay.

Also, for the record, we ran the numbers some point and for a/our large guild at level 81 each account would have needed to generate in excess of 2K renown a day to only compensate for the decay. Things get problematic (as far as renown is concerned) if you have a significant amount of guild members that simply are in no position to play every single day. You are right, that holds true for small guilds as well.

[jkm]

It's not? You are right. I probably should have been a little more verbose here: large guilds often consist of a wider variety of players, some more active and some less. Small guilds often will be either here or there (consisiting mostly of more casual players or mostly of more hardcore players). Smaller casual guilds would benefit too though if only accounts active the last 24 hours would be considered for decay.

Also, for the record, we ran the numbers some point and for a/our large guild at level 81 each account would have needed to generate in excess of 2K renown a day to only compensate for the decay. Things get problematic (as far as renown is concerned) if you have a significant amount of guild members that simply are in no position to play every single day. You are right, that holds true for small guilds as well.

you need to go back and do your math again because in order for you to do 2k renown per account per day you'd need 18 accounts. that number gets smaller the larger the guilds gets. a 100 account guild would only need to get 1400 per day. conversely, a 6 person guild at level 81 has to get 3400 renown per person to make up for decay.

now if you want to argue that the small guild bonus is borked with regard to guild decay, i'll wholeheartedly agree there. decay should have been the basis for the small guild renown bonus in the first place. at any level, it should take exactly the same amount of legendaries per account to cover decay for every single guild in the game. currently, small guilds have to get less legendaries per player to cover decay. this imbalance in math is why they gain levels easier too.

[Therigar]

Also, for the record, we ran the numbers some point and for a/our large guild at level 81 each account would have needed to generate in excess of 2K renown a day to only compensate for the decay.

Which makes it rewarding to be in a small guild of very active players rather than a large guild of almost any type.

If a guild's players are not contributing enough renown to overcome decay then there is no benefit to having a large guild. The benefit of a large guild is in the ease with which it grows to L40 or maybe L50. After that the numbers become a liability.

I'm intrigued by the desire to have large guilds to begin with. Adventures are built for 1, 6 or 12 characters. Logic indicates that guilds will be at optimal size when they have 12 to 24 very active accounts. This creates the best opportunities for grouping and should lead to some semi-static mixes while also giving enough players for all raids.

The biggest problem with the present analysis is that it counts guild size based on characters not accounts. But, guild size is determined by accounts not number of characters.

I have 25 different characters on 1 account, a second account that could have that many, a third account that is F2P that can have 4 characters. Both my kids have F2P accounts with a maximum of 4 characters.

A look at The Council of Village Idiots includes 1 character that isn't even in the guild and has not been for several months. It could have as many as 63 characters, yet that represents only 6 accounts.

In game information rightly notes that there are only 4 accounts associated with the guild. We are a very small guild. We are also L26 and happy as peas in a pod with that.

If I were to associate with 5 other players in a static group and play 6 days a week, 5 hours a day, we would quickly surpass that L26 guild level. We would do even better if we had 12 players in 2 static groups and we coordinated our play to get into raids at the same time.

That some people have managed this and understand the innate benefits of doing business this way explains how and why they've achieved high guild levels. The number of characters/members is extremely misleading.

To put it into perspective, 12 players with 25 characters each would be a 300 member guild. If they played each character 1 hour a day they'd be able to raid all day on day 6. What would they achieve if they were dedicated to that?

As I observed earlier, the problem with the analysis is that it misses key data making the information worthless as it stands. If the estimation Beethoven makes is close to accurate it supports the idea that a guild should be small and intensely dedicated if it wants to reach the highest renown levels.

[Kinerd]

One possible fix would be add more level locks. We only have one at level 25 now. I think what would really help players' stress level would be to have a lock at, say, level 50 and maybe 80. Just like 25, your GR would never dip after you achieve those levels.

This is a great suggestion.

I don't care about renown half as much as how players who cannot commit a few hours /every/ day are constantly categorized as freeloaders, dead weights, lack luster or somehow lower quality and/or unwilling to coordinate with other players - but under the current system this keeps happening, a lot. It's probably why I am posting on this thread yet again; it's just not true. Guild rank has significantly little to do with quality. All it measures is activity per account. It's easier to get 5 highly active people together and it is significantly more simple to coordinate efforts. The examples I was referring to are but two, hardly the only ones. Also, I am not going to assume no mid-size or large guild ever tried to use shortcuts.

This is a simple equivocation. "Quality" in this context does not mean skilled player, or good player, or even good person. Quality in this context means renown generation, nothing more. If a player does not commit time to renown generation, they are low quality in this context.

If the majority of the guild wants renown, the people who do not are not going to fit in. This is also the case if the majority of the guild wants to raid, or do epics, or socialize, or make gimp builds. Humans are not going to agree - this is only further illustrated by guild renown, not caused by it.

[geoffhanna]

Interesting debate. Several objectionable statements (yes Therigar I am looking at you) but there always are

I want to iterate that I am not posting these stats to make a point. I was looking for something in the numbers, didn't find it, but instead I did find some interesting trends and chose to share them.

I appreciate those who are posting fixes to the "problem". Very creative thinking too, kudos!

However, I have come to the conclusion that the only "problem" is in my expectations. I assumed that we would have a continuous upward path through guild abilities, but that was never Turbine's intent. Never.

My research included a re-read of this article from June 2010 where the devs lay out their design intent. Turbine has designed the entire guild system for two classes of people:

• Class 1: "guilds on each server that focus on guild activities exclusively to take full advantage of the benefits"
• Class 2: "casual guild, large or small, to earn the rewards on the side without being coerced into a game mechanic they are not comfortable with"

That's it. Either you structure your guild around getting guild renown, or you won't get it.

With those design goals in mind, I'd have to argue that the system is pretty much working as intended.

My guild is in between: we want the better guild benefits and are willing to work harder to get them but are not willing to structure our guild solely around them. Therefore we count as casual, and are fortunate to get some of the benefits "on the side", as it were.

That last paragraph sounds more acerbic than I intend. We aren't casual, but we aren't dedicated to renown either and that is simply the way it is. We have to manage our expectations better.

[Therigar]

Interesting debate. Several objectionable statements (yes Therigar I am looking at you) but there always are

If you do MBA work you'll eventually take statistics and you'll learn that relatively small sampling sizes can be used to predict large-scale trends. The work you did seems grounded in this principle but suffers because of the insufficiency of the data.

I spoke of your conclusions -- reached not because of but in spite of the data -- as being heuristically derived. This is because what we understand innately by observing the system is that small, structured guilds will out perform large, unstructured ones.

I'm gratified to see that you've finally accepted that the problem is in your expectations and the difficulty in reconciling those with the mechanics of guild renown and decay. I'm also happy to see that you understand that the system is indeed doing what it was intended to do.

I think that you are struggling with what to do with the social aspect of the guild which is working contrarywise to your desired goals. And, in spite of your assertions to the contrary, I think you were hoping to find something in the data to justify maintaining those social links while arguing for changes to the renown/decay system.

My contrarian posts do offer you a workable solution to the problem even if it isn't one that you desire. Your conclusion that you need to manage your expectations more effectively is certainly a valid alternative. You will notice that this is also indicated in my posts when I speak of my own guild and being satisfied with its level and accomplishments. It seemed better to imply this as a course of action rather than suggest it directly.

In any case, it has been a mildly informative thread -- especially this last post of yours.

[9Crows]

in the rise of small guilds take into account guild renown elixers for a 6 account guild me and a friend got almost 120krenown(and a few rare random reward drops in 6hrs)with 2 apiece, opening chests every 60 to 90 seconds for some reason people assume most renown is earned from end rewards,not so.doing 6th 7th level quests at 4th lvl running chest to chest and the only prob with earning mass renown and getting rare rewards is getting grind burnout,in 7 days we took a guild from creation to lvl 30 then got a little burned out that was at around 6hrs a day active chest questing that was just 2 people a full 6 man party would have tripled renown intake to about 300k per 6 hr session the elixers are expensive but work very well coupled with very small guild bonus

[Vanshilar]

Well if you extend the graph further, you'd see this:



You can see how the guild ecology is vastly dominated by small guilds below level 50. There are only a very small number of small guilds that have made it past level 50, compared with the number of all of the small guilds. By contrast, as the guild size (in terms of number of characters) increases, the chance of you being in a higher-level guild increases very significantly.

For the following I will only be looking at guilds that are level 6 or higher. There were a total of 49451 guilds as of 3/30, but 25042 of them were level 5 or lower (that's right, over 50% of all guilds are at level 5 or lower), leaving 24410 guilds. Removing the level 5 and under guilds means I get rid of (hopefully) the more "just trying out a guild" type guild, but more importantly, means that the number of guilds go under the 32000-data limit for some functions of Excel. I will be considering a "small" guild to be 1-150 characters, a "medium" guild to be 151-500 characters, and a "large" guild to be 501-1000 characters. These demarcations are somewhat arbitrary, but they should convey the general size of a guild.

Note that although yes, I will be using the number of characters, not the number of (modified) accounts for each guild, there is a correlation with the number of characters and number of characters in a guild. In theory they're not necessarily correlated, but in practice not many of the 800-character guilds have less than 50 accounts, etc. Similarly, a 50-character guild will not have 500 accounts (unless most of its accounts were just recently departed). So although the number of characters is not perfectly correlated with the number of accounts, there is still a correlation, and so even though it's a proxy variable, it can still tell us something about how guild levels are roughly varying based on number of accounts in guild.

Anyway, so if you were to count up the number of guilds of each size in each 5-level band, you would get something like this:



If you blow up the bottom portion of the chart, it looks like this:



You can see that the vast, vast majority of small guilds have not yet even made it to level 50. In fact, only 177/24025 = 0.74% of all small guilds (level 6 or higher) have made it to level 51 or higher. By contrast, 130/329 = 39.5% of all medium guilds (level 6 or higher) have made it to level 51 or higher, and 47/56 = 83.9% of all large guilds (level 6 or higher, but there are 0 large guilds that are level 5 or less) are already level 51 or higher.

In other words, if you are in a small guild, chances are very, very small (less than 1%) that your guild is level 51 or higher. By contrast, if you are in a large guild, chances are very good (83.9%) that your guild is already level 51 or higher. As a side note, large guilds make up 56/24410 = 0.23% of all guilds level 6 or higher, while medium guilds make up 329/24410 = 1.35% of all guilds level 6 or higher, and small guilds make up 24025/24410 = 98.4% of all guilds level 6 or higher. The average level of all small guilds (level 6 or higher) is currently level 15.4, while the average level of all medium guilds (level 6 or higher) is currently level 46.7, and the average level of all large guilds (level 6 or higher) is currently level 60.9. So even though large guilds make up a tiny portion of the guilds, they are overwhelmingly already past level 50, while the small guilds make up the vast majority of guilds but the vast majority of them have yet to reach level 51.

For me, when a guild has "succeeded" of sorts is when it reaches level 63. By this level, the guild will already have a 3% experience shrine, all +2 stat shrines, and all 30-resistance elemental shrines, and there's not much else for the guild for quite a few levels (until level 70) unless it wants to continually burn TP. The number of guilds of each size that have reached level 63 or higher are:

size	>=lvl63	>=lvl06	percent
small	32	24025	0.133%
medium	33	329	10.030%
large	30	56	53.571%

The number of guilds in each category that have reached level 63 are almost even, even though large guilds make up only a very small percentage of guilds. If you are in a large guild, you are over 400 times more likely to be enjoying your choice of +2 stat shrines, 30-resistance elemental shrines, and a 3% experience shrine, compared with if you were in a small guild, even though large guilds make up only 0.23% of all guilds (level 6 or higher), or less than 1 in 400 guilds.

So this puts the lie to those that claim that the small/medium guild renown bonus is giving too much of an advantage to small/medium guilds. What large guilds do is to point to the 7 small guilds that have made it to level 75 or higher to claim that the bonus is unfair, while ignoring that those guilds make up less than 0.03% of small guilds, and that there are 8 other large guilds (making up 14% of large guilds) that are also level 75 or higher. Oh and by the way, the top 14% of small guilds are currently at level 25 or higher. You read that correctly -- 1 in 7 large guilds are at level 75 or higher right now, while only 1 in 7 small guilds are level 25 or higher right now, and every single large guild except one is already above level 25.

Yet large guilds keep clamoring that to be "fair", the small/medium guild renown bonus should be decreased/removed and that renown decay should be lessened, which would simply just cement the huge advantages that large guilds already have for renown.

The current system benefits small active guilds, there is no doubting that. You basically end up with the best of both worlds: low decay + large bonus.

Except that large guilds have the biggest advantage of them all: large number of accounts (by definition). Decay proportionally hits small guilds more than large guilds, and the number of accounts for a large guild will overwhelm the guild bonus of a small/medium guild.

What I do find somewhat problematic is the exponentially increasing decay at the high levels and firmly believe it to be the reason we will not see large guilds be able to reach (or maintain) a level anywhere close to 85. Most (if not all) will get stuck at ~80 - 81.

...

Now, I know hypothetically if you get 500 very active people together you can overcome the decay and also reach the highest level. Practically it is not going to happen, I don't think. We are basically talking about finding 500 people who (for the most part) get along, are dedicated, don't get interested in another game eventually and won't have anything come up real life in the near future that will significantly reduce their in game activity/production. Needless to say managing a roster of 500 people is far more complicated (even more so if you assume an average of only 3 toons per person, that's 1,500 toons).

You don't need 500 people. The current top renown large guilds are at around 100-200 accounts. Obviously decay is a factor, because it's a fundamental part of the system; however, the main limiting factor for a large guild right now is will. Large guilds have risen up to the high levels through sheer numerical superiority in their number of accounts, and haven't had to bother to actually go out and work for renown to the level that top renown small guilds have already been accustomed to for months. If any of the top renown large guilds were willing to match the level of activity of the top renown small guilds (in terms of renown gained per account per day), they'd be level 100 by now. As I mentioned here, the top renown large guilds (except one) are currently gaining around 1000-1700 base renown per account per day (i.e. equivalent of 1.0 to 1.7 legendaries), while the top renown small guilds are gaining around 2500-6000 base renown (i.e. before the small/medium guild renown bonus is applied) per day, meaning the average account in a top renown small guild will pull the equivalent of 2.5-6.0 legendaries per day. The reason why top renown small guilds are not being as slowed down by decay at the higher levels is that the decay is simply smaller relative to the large amount of gain that each account is putting out each day.

All that talk about getting along, dedicated, etc., is fairly immaterial because small guilds have to deal with the same issues. In fact I'd argue that people have to get along better in small guilds than in large guilds. If there's someone you don't like in a large guild, then just don't join guild runs that he (or she) is in; there's plenty of other guild runs. Whereas in a small guild, you can't really avoid people you don't like, because each guild run involves most of the guild -- you can't just join other guild runs because there aren't any. So in a small guild people have to be better about being willing to put their feelings aside for the sake of helping the guild complete a raid, while in a large guild people can just avoid each other and join other guild runs.

Here as simple example: assume only 1 in 5 person will eventually cease guild-renown productivity (for a lack of a better term).

* Small Guild (10 members): that'd mean loss of 2 people. It's not only significantly easier to get 10 hardcore players together, it is also not quite that difficult to find two new members. You set those 2 people on vacation (and consequently remove them from the roster temporarily) the renown penalty associated with it is manageable. Finally, 2 members will not cause a huge difference in renown decay.

* Large Guild (500 members): it'd mean 100 inactive/less active accounts. The renown decay for 100 accounts becomes enormous at the high levels. You cannot set them on "vacation" because removing 100 accounts is going to anihilate your guild renown.

I said it on another thread, going to repeat it here: the most elegant solution would be if they somehow manage to re-code the guild renown/decay in a way where guilds only suffer a daily decay based on accounts that were active during the last 24 hours. Leave everything else alone. Small guild bonus isn't the problem. The problem is large guilds are bound to have members that won't be active every day, but they cause decay every day.

The renown penalty for a small guild for removing 10% of the accounts will be the same as the renown penalty for a large guild for removing 10% of the accounts (assuming both at the same level). That's because while there are fewer accounts to remove, each account has produced more renown -- after all, the total renown is the sum of each individual person's renown.

It might not be hard to find 2 new people in a guild with hundreds of players, but in a small guild finding 2 new people is difficult because it is so important -- you are adding two players that will have to get along with the whole guild, and not only that, you are decreasing everyone's renown gain to do so.

For example, an 8-account guild has a bonus of +270%. So the guild gains renown equivalent to 8 * (1 + 2.7) = 29.6 accounts. But now say the guild adds 2 accounts that aren't doing anything, so it's a 10-account guild, but in reality, only 8 accounts are gaining renown. Then the bonus is 240%, so the guild gains renown equivalent to 8 * (1 + 2.4) = 27.2 accounts. The guild has just lost 8% of its renown gain by having two non-contributing accounts. And of course, its renown decay also increases.

Now if a 400-account guild were to have 100 non-contributing accounts, what would its renown gain be? Exactly the same. Sure, the renown decay goes up, but it also went up for the small guild as well. Having non-contributing accounts won't affect the renown gain of everyone else, while for a small guild, it can have a significant impact. Hence having members that aren't active will impact small guilds even more than for large guilds.

The thing that does both me about the system that at the high levels it is too heavily slanted towards managing your decay. You want to exceed a level (which appears to be roughly the low 80s) you just cannot afford to allow people in your guild who do not produce regularly. It's not that it takes longer or is getting harder, but I am afraid it is just not doable. You have player(s) who for whatever reason cannot invest hours of play time every day, you will hit a hard cap on how high your guild can go; not within months, not even within decades. You suffer decay for all those accounts every day, but might only get contributions every four days a week. It's simple math really, there comes a point these accounts propel decay so high the more active members of the guild no longer can support the additional weight.

Maybe that's the intention and the highest guild levels are supposed to be reserved for guilds consisting almost exclusively of very active members, but that does still not mean I have to like it.

Well the way Turbine has set up the renown system, it is precisely about having a good renown gain / renown decay ratio (with some qualifications). The major difference is that at the earlier levels, where decay is not yet significant, a large factor is simply the sum number of accounts, which gives large guilds a huge advantage in getting through the early levels quickly. As I showed here, renown decay across the whole range of guild levels is actually quintic (relative to x^5), meaning that each of the later levels will have a very significant increase in the amount of decay. You end up trying to push your car up an increasingly steep hill. So they didn't mean for every guild to hit level 100 -- the vast majority of guilds will eventually flatten out and stay at some guild level far below level 100. Each guild will have to decide how willing it is to accept and retain less-active players, keeping in mind that not all players care about renown. And that's perfectly fine -- the renown system, overall, is just another hamster wheel that they're setting out for the players, like TRs or trying to get the perfect set of equipment for your character. Not everyone will choose to consider it as a big factor in their playing style.

now if you want to argue that the small guild bonus is borked with regard to guild decay, i'll wholeheartedly agree there. decay should have been the basis for the small guild renown bonus in the first place. at any level, it should take exactly the same amount of legendaries per account to cover decay for every single guild in the game. currently, small guilds have to get less legendaries per player to cover decay. this imbalance in math is why they gain levels easier too.

Renown decay hits small guilds much harder than large guilds, due to the additional 10 accounts' worth of decay that each guild has to take on; it's the renown bonus that makes up for it. If you match the number of legendaries of decay to be based on the renown bonus, then the +10 accounts constant to decay should also be removed. And to make it fair, you'd also need to tackle the other part of the equation: that large guilds hold a huge advantage in gaining renown compared with small guilds. After all, the only reason why renown decay is an issue for large guilds while it's not as much of an issue for small guilds is that small guilds simply aren't at that level yet. Large guilds have advanced so quickly that they are now reaching the part of their growth curve where they plateau, while most small guilds are still climbing slowly and won't reach the plateau for literally years. Large guilds complaining about renown decay is like an airplane company complaining about the cost of jet fuel when everyone else is still using propellers. So if at any level "it should take exactly the same amount of legendaries per account to cover decay for every single guild in the game", then at any level it should also take exactly the same amount of legendaries per account to gain one level for every guild in the game. After all, matching the decay to account is important for renown equilibrium (where the levels are not changing and the renown gain to renown decay ratio is what's important), while right now we are in a period of renown growth (where the levels are increasing and the renown gain minus the renown decay is what's important). So under that philosophy, a 20-account guild should be having a multiplier of 10x to match the legendaries per account to gain levels as a 200-account guild. If you would support that, then the renown system would be fair for all guilds, large and small.

[geoffhanna]

See? Essentially a giant desert where there should be large guilds that are less than 50th level.

Here is another factoid that I found interesting; it further illustrates that larger guilds are statistically more likely to be successful leveling:

90% of all guilds have 22 members or less, but only one guild in the top 100 has 22 members or less.

Congratulations to the very-hard-working outlier, Token Airship Guild!

BTW Vanshillar I believe that this statement "So this puts the lie to those that claim that the small/medium guild renown bonus is giving too much of an advantage to small/medium guilds." is unsupported by the evidence available. There is no proof that small guilds _are_ gaining an unfair advantage, but also, no proof against the small guild advantage either.

Frankly I believe that small guilds are performing above expectation. I think that would be more clear if we could remove inactive guilds but we cannot. Note I am presenting an opinion, not a statement of fact. However, it is non-intuitive that both of our analysis shows a statistical advantage to large guilds, yet the top 10 (and also the top 100) is dominated by smaller guilds.

Yet, even so that would not indicate a causal relationship between "small guilds outperform expectations" and "small guilds have an unfair guild renown advantage". Maybe Beethoven is right and the advantage (if any) is easier coordination. Or some other factor altogether. Or (most likely) a combination of all the above.

Man I love data. I am such a geek.

[Kinerd]

However, it is non-intuitive that both of our analysis shows a statistical advantage to large guilds, yet the top 10 (and also the top 100) is dominated by smaller guilds.

Below the top 10 (or the top 100), small guilds make up an enormous percentage (>98%) of total guilds. Within the top 10 (or the top 100), small guilds make up a plurality, but the percentage is lower to a statistically significant degree. This necessarily means that something about being high level at this point in time favors non-small guilds. If there wasn't, literally every member of the top 10 would be a small guild, and at least 98 members of the top 100 would be small guilds.

[geoffhanna]

Below the top 10 (or the top 100), small guilds make up an enormous percentage (>98%) of total guilds. Within the top 10 (or the top 100), small guilds make up a plurality, but the percentage is lower to a statistically significant degree. This necessarily means that something about being high level at this point in time favors non-small guilds. If there wasn't, literally every member of the top 10 would be a small guild, and at least 98 members of the top 100 would be small guilds.

Maybe I am missing your point. It seems like you are disagreeing with my contention that the number of small guilds at the highest levels is counter-intuitive, but you are doing so based on the overall guild size distribution which we have proven does not apply*.

* Proof: if we were extrapolating the top 100 based on overall guild size distribution, 90 of them would have 22 members or less. But in fact only one does. Therefore overall guild size distribution is not a determiner in the composition of the highest level guild list.

I'll reword to see if it helps - and by the way I don't believe we can answer it with this data set no matter how I word the question - "if large guilds are more likely to be high level, why aren't most of the highest level guilds also large guilds?"

The paucity of large guilds at the top does not "prove" that small guilds have an advantage. It just strikes me as unexpected.