Guild Renown Changes

[Zlingerdark]

Looks like a step in the right direction.

[DocBenway]

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

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

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

[FranOhmsford]

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

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

OK:

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

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

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

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

[Hendrik]

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

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

Cheers

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

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

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

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

[moiinwar]

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

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

Another idea is to stay in the old system but make a few modifications. In the old system decay vs guild size looked like this:

Calculated with this formula:
(S+10)/(S*G)
S = guild size, G = guild size multiplier (e.g. for size 10 G = 3.4)
Problem is that when the decay/person rises in the area between sizes 11-50 there is extra pressure to kick members to decrease decay for others.
Solution is to make decay / person constant. So that decay function would be changed from A*(S+10) (where A = decay multiplier) to A*S*G. This system would make decay/ person = 1.0 in all guild sizes. This increases the decay in many guilds so decay could be lessened to X*A*S*G (where X<1).

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

[Chaos000]

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

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

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

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

[DocBenway]

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

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

[Sonofmoradin]

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

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

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

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

[Chaos000]

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

Nice. You beat me to it

[Deadlock]

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

This is using calculated using Vanshilar's formula:

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

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

[karpedieme]

Previously to this "Switch Flipping Renown Fix"

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

This can be indicated by the

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Laters

[patang01]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Auralana7214]

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

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

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

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

This post is pink for emphasis.

[theslimshady]

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

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

[DocBenway]

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

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

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

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

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

[karpedieme]

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

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

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

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

This post is pink for emphasis.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Its all about keeping it balanced for all guild sizes.

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

[Therigar]

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

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

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

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

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

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

[theslimshady]

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

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

[Kmnh]

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

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

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

[theslimshady]

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