Guild Renown Changes

[Hendrik]

Yes "Everyone" was a poor choice of word for sure, but out of the 100 or so small guilds that commented only a few didn't seem to think it was a problem. The others all seemed to be in agreement that the system is unfair to small guilds and most felt decay was a large problem for small guilds.

I am unable to search for a gulid EW because it is less than 3 characters. I want to find a guild that dispalys it's renown total on their guild page as net renown change over the 2 week period is certainly enough to show some useful metrics. We still need a 150+ large guild in the mid 70s and we are ready to start. I will post my information once we have a 150+ guild. I have friends in one of the biggest guild on Sarlona and they may be willing to pass me their info - I will check.

EW - Eternal Wrath.

No, not someone elses Guild, YOUR guild. The one you belong to. The one you have been claiming is unfairly taxed.


Now provide the information you said you would and not someone elses Guild.

Why won't you live up to your own agreement/statement?

Doesn't that really apply to you and not me? I offered twice and now this is my third time offering to gladly provide my guild information so we can track both our guilds for 2 weeks.

So please provide your server, guild name and # of active accounts (as showing when scrolling over guild level) and I will do the same. The only reason you are not doing so it that you realize it will only prove conclusively what everyone from small gulds is saying about decay being a problem for us just as it used to be a problem for large guilds when they had roughly the same proportional decay that we have today.

I have lived up to it and now it is your turn.

[DocBenway]

Doc, I do NOT mean to be rude, but with 20 accounts (4/5 active players), Small Guild Bonus of 105.88% and Decay @ : 2,531, how are NOT advancing? Are you even Questing

I never said not advancing, I said the advancement we make is not all counted and for no good reason. I have never said we hit the treadmill wall that decay causes without playstyle change, but that wall is in the exact same place it was before the changes, while it was effectively removed for some. Good for them, can I have the same? I dislike that this wall exists at all.

The fact that rot, putrefaction, withering, rust, decomposition or decay is associated with the word "guild" is the shame of the system and has no socially redeemable value.

If I were to prioritize renown and grind it out, enforce login and activity rules when none were ever meant to be, basically destroy everything that is our guild, maybe we'd hit 100, but I'd more likely flip my monitor the bird midway and find something else to play.

Decay is a detriment to my own personal continued support of the game's community in a social aspect or the games producers in a financial aspect. I can only speak for myself, but have never had one in game conversation about it that didn't include "Why the hell is there decay in the first place?"

[slarden]

EW - Eternal Wrath.

No, not someone elses Guild, YOUR guild. The one you belong to. The one you have been claiming is unfairly taxed.

Now provide the information you said you would and not someone elses Guild.

Why won't you live up to your own agreement/statement?

I have lived up to it and now it is your turn.

Ok I still want to include a guild of 150 or more people in it for comparitive purposes as well. A friend from Bathory Hordes told me their guild gains and loses people all the time but they are currently at 320 active. He said it woudl be fine to use their guild as an example since I am not proposing hurting large guilds. So now we have 3 guilds we can use to benchmark progress under the system.

My guild:

Guardians of House Cannith also on Sarlona
Active Members (per the Turbine determination): 9 (10 active - 1 inactive + 0 recent departures)
I can't really say how many are on at a given time because it varies and I am not on all the time. I think the only # that really matters is the net active accounts # Turbine shows.
Level 76

My friends' guild. He will let me know if there are any major changes in #s

Bathory Hordes
Active Members: 320
Level: 72

Let me mention one thing about Bathory Hordes because I think they are actually doing things that many of the guilds are just talking about. This guild has always had an open recruitment policy and will take on any player - new, casual, and otherwise. The experienced players in that group I respect alot because they didn't leave to join a higher level guild when large guilds were struggling. The guild added a second guild called Bathory Hordes Elite Division which many of the vets moved to so I am not sure how that will impact their advancement... I think it would slow it down.

Currrent Renown Totals:

Guardians of House Cannith: 22,070,083
Eternal Wrath: 30,405,998
Bathory Hordes: 19,340,221

What was dandonk's guild/server again? I would like to throw his in the mix as well.

[Chaos000]

Increasing a guild from 6 to 7 people increases the renown earning potential from 24 to 26.95. Even if the new person is only 1/4 as active as the rest of the guild the guild is still benefiting.

Therefore, if the new person is less than 1/4 as active as the rest of the guild, the guild would have benefited more by not inviting the person.

Taking it a step further. In a guild of 7, if a player is less than 1/4 as active as the rest of the guild, the guild would gain more benefit in the long term by booting the person.

Increasing the guild bonus would require that same person to be more than 1/4 as active as the rest of the guild in order for the guild to not find a benefit in removing said person.

The problem with not adjusting size bonus when someone leaves the guild is that large guilds are recruiting our players away since the new system encourages guilds to grow as much as possible.

I am ok with size bonuses adjusting when someone leaves the guild. Being that you are fine with penalizing the booting mechanic, a booted active player should not affect size bonuses.

Assuming that booting a person over renown/decay is wrong, a guild should gain no benefit for removing even players with long periods of inactivity.

[Gremmlynn]

As for lower level players, they are better served by joining one of the many guilds recruiting in the harbor - both before and after this guild change. When I was a new player I hated running with experienced players because they ran through the content so fast and left doors closed. I never got to learn the quest. Being part of a small guild with people that were also new like myself made sense and worked much better.

You do realize this is behavior that those experienced players can choose to curb if they are actually willing to do what it takes to make their guild succeed. It's the sort of thing those of us in large guilds are used to doing from even before the change to decay because our definition of success had nothing to do with guild level.

But from previous posts you have shown you have a completely different idea what guilds are about than some others here, so maybe this option never dawned on you.

[Hendrik]

Ok I still want to include a guild of 150 or more people in it for comparitive purposes as well. A friend from Bathory Hordes told me their guild gains and loses people all the time but they are currently at 320 active. He said it woudl be fine to use their guild as an example since I am not proposing hurting large guilds. So now we have 3 guilds we can use to benchmark progress under the system.

My guild:

Guardians of House Cannith also on Sarlona
Active Members (per the Turbine determination): 9 (10 active - 1 inactive + 0 recent departures)
I can't really say how many are on at a given time because it varies and I am not on all the time. I think the only # that really matters is the net active accounts # Turbine shows.
Level 76

My friends' guild. He will let me know if there are any major changes in #s

Bathory Hordes
Active Members: 320
Level: 72

Let me mention one thing about Bathory Hordes because I think they are actually doing things that many of the guilds are just talking about. This guild has always had an open recruitment policy and will take on any player - new, casual, and otherwise. The experienced players in that group I respect alot because they didn't leave to join a higher level guild when large guilds were struggling. The guild added a second guild called Bathory Hordes Elite Division which many of the vets moved to so I am not sure how that will impact their advancement... I think it would slow it down.

Currrent Renown Totals:

Guardians of House Cannith: 22,070,083
Eternal Wrath: 30,405,998
Bathory Hordes: 19,340,221

What was dandonk's guild/server again? I would like to throw his in the mix as well.

So the Vets of BH didn't leave to join a higher lvl guild, they just left the guild to make a vets only guild. Ouch. Yea, BH will suffer from the loss of the vets to vets only. And I mean NO disrespect to your friends or BH, but such an open recruitment policy has hurt their rep in the past. Again, no disrepect and appalud them for taking in anyone. Kudos for them giving people a home.

Also, your small guild is higher level then your friends large guild. On the surface, seems like the system to make leveling 'equal' between the guilds is working. Deciding factor is member activity level and size bonus.

Keep in mind, not all guild no matter the size will reach 100. For that matter, there is nothing over 85. 85 is where 'you' should be shooting for and anything over that is gravy.


Your getting 240% Size Bonus and Decay of 16.9k



Docs; day old
20 Accounts and 4/5 Active players @ GL 52 w/ Renown total of 7,189,252.

Small Guild Bonus: 105.88%

Decay @ : 2,531

Twigzz; few days old
7 Accounts

Sarlona;
Started Tuesday 12,864,709
Wed 12,928,810
Thurs 12,979,769
Fri 13,034,689
Sat 13.112.812
Sun 13,110,662
Mon 13,178,199


Blue; day old i think

Argonessen, 28 active accounts, Eye of the dragon.


2,034,852 as of 1am local time.

I am by far the most active member of the guild.

[Gremmlynn]

And there is the crux. The renown we do get is taken away. The progress we make is slowed/halted because we play the way we like to play. Getting rid of decay gets rid of the whole issue. The treadmill is turned into a hill that gets steeper toward the peak, but your footing is firm and their is no backsliding. Your work is not taken away and everything you do that the game "counts" is kept rather than taxed for no purpose.

I am in no way asking for a free ride, I am saying that attempting to define guilds beyond what their membership has decided and dictate playstyle changes in order to be "competitive" in an area which should be of no contest in a non personal level, is detrimental to the gaming community as a whole.

I'll go grind 12 hours and let 15 newbies quit because without a pointer in the right direction they find the game too daunting or the only answer they get to questions is pvp trashtalk. I'm not claiming that all questing all the time is bad, but it is not my playstyle, and I know I was 1 more pug attempt from quitting the game in Oct. 09 had I not met the 5 others that were founding members of this guild. I met them through general chat shenanigans.

The fact that we were unfairly taxed above size when size was "fair", and now the "new fair" taxes us the exact same amount is just manure icing on the crapcake that is the renown system imposed on this guild 3/4 of a year after its creation.

The rewards are there, let us get them eventually without having to decide between playing the way we don't want to to get them or not playing at all. I don't give a cranium rat's behind what anybody else has/doesn't have or what the artificially imposed number by their tag is. Their guild is not my guild and affects the success/failure of mine in no way. I only care that Turbine is deciding only 75% of the way we have played for the last year should count. That percentage just gets smaller the longer we play the way we want to play, real incentive there.

I very much doubt there are many players that disagree with you that decay is a silly mechanic. But players don't make the rules and those who do seem to have some reason for keeping decay around.

[Gremmlynn]

I will add this. Decay forces guilds to earn renown very quickly. If a person is unable to earn enough renown quickly enough to cover their decay tax then it is beneficial to boot the person regardless of guild bonus. They are casualties of a high decay system. This has nothing to do with the guild bonus really but how fast the person earns renown relative to the guild's decay tax. For a small high level guild the decay tax/person is very high and requires people to play content fast to cover decay. Only players can cover this tax since guilds have no way to generate renown otherwise.

Our guild would never boot a person over renown/decay period.

Huh? How would booting help with decay in the current system? The decay is static.

So yeah, it would be dumb for anyone to boot over decay in today's game as that wont make the decay go away. 6 people working to knock out 10k decay will always be harder than 6 people knocking out 9950 decay with a 7th taking care of the other 50. That's why they made the change.

EDIT: Now if we factor in small guild bonus, that 7th might just start costing the guild if the bonus xp of the other 6 combined goes down by more than the 50 they can count on the new guy to bring in.

[slarden]

You do realize this is behavior that those experienced players can choose to curb if they are actually willing to do what it takes to make their guild succeed. It's the sort of thing those of us in large guilds are used to doing from even before the change to decay because our definition of success had nothing to do with guild level.

But from previous posts you have shown you have a completely different idea what guilds are about than some others here, so maybe this option never dawned on you.

First of all as a new player it was never necessary to have experienced players join our quests and at the time I found it to be a negative.

You are in a large guild with minimal decay/person so you are in a different situation than those of us in small guilds.

I don't think there is a problem that newer players group with newer players and experienced players group with experienced players. It seems quite natural to me as the difficulty and pace are naturally different. I felt this way as a new player and I feel this way as an experienced player now. Raids are a different story. All of us that are experienced in open raids to help those new players get through it and sometimes use our own pots and scrolls to do so. Those newer players can't get into guild-only runs.

I have done alot to help many people on Sarlona get through difficult quests, flagging, and favor runs. Those I run with know that.

As for the guild system, I think it stinks that small guilds are forced between zerging and losing guild levels. I made the decision to focus on renown so others in the guild don't have to worry about it. It has a cost - in my case it means many fewer lfms where I bring along other players more soloing and zerg parties. I think alot of people want to help their guild not just me. You have to make a choice - help random people by forming a pug, or help your guild.

Wasn't it the large guilds dumping players to gain levels? So what is the point of trying to put me in a bad light for doing nothing wrong?

[Gremmlynn]

Yes "Everyone" was a poor choice of word for sure, but out of the 100 or so small guilds that commented only a few didn't seem to think it was a problem. The others all seemed to be in agreement that the system is unfair to small guilds and most felt decay was a large problem for small guilds.

I am unable to search for a gulid EW because it is less than 3 characters. I want to find a guild that dispalys it's renown total on their guild page as net renown change over the 2 week period is certainly enough to show some useful metrics. We still need a 150+ large guild in the mid 70s and we are ready to start. I will post my information once we have a 150+ guild. I have friends in one of the biggest guild on Sarlona and they may be willing to pass me their info - I will check.

Sorry, can't help you my guild is 90 something members at 49.

[slarden]

Huh? How would booting help with decay in the current system? The decay is static.

So yeah, it would be dumb for anyone to boot over decay in today's game as that wont make the decay go away. 6 people working to knock out 10k decay will always be harder than 6 people knocking out 9950 decay with a 7th taking care of the other 50. That's why they made the change.

Quite simple. If you are a small guild and want to remain small. When someone wants to join your guild, boot the person that isn't covering their decay tax and replace them with the new person.

I am not saying I would do it. I am just saying that anyone that isn't running content fast enough to cover their decay tax is resulting in negative renown for the guild. Replacing them with a higher renown generator will always be positive.

So if you replace them with another person there is little to lose.

As I said my guild doesn't now and never did engage in these type of activities. Guilds are a social function and unfortunately this decay mechanic takes much of the benefit out of the system. The bottom line is that when decay gets to a point where guilds stop advancing, it creates frustrations and causes some guilds to engage in negative actions.

[Chaos000]

Wasn't it the large guilds dumping players to gain levels?

Dumping players to gain levels was not exclusive to large guilds. In a system where players with very little renown gain penalize the rest of the guild, there remains an incentive to remove or exclude these players.

Dumping players with a long period of inactivity. Capping recruitment short of losing guild bonuses (i.e. replacement yes adding no). Active members quitting a guild en-mass (leaving it with "just" casual players) and forming a smaller one where casual players are not accepted. All examples of dumping players to gain levels.

[Gremmlynn]

First of all as a new player it was never necessary to have experienced players join our quests and at the time I found it to be a negative.

You are in a large guild with minimal decay/person so you are in a different situation than those of us in small guilds.

I don't think there is a problem that newer players group with newer players and experienced players group with experienced players. It seems quite natural to me as the difficulty and pace are naturally different. I felt this way as a new player and I feel this way as an experienced player now. Raids are a different story. All of us that are experienced in open raids to help those new players get through it and sometimes use our own pots and scrolls to do so. Those newer players can't get into guild-only runs.

I have done alot to help many people on Sarlona get through difficult quests, flagging, and favor runs. Those I run with know that.

As for the guild system, I think it stinks that small guilds are forced between zerging and losing guild levels. I made the decision to focus on renown so others in the guild don't have to worry about it. It has a cost - in my case it means many fewer lfms where I bring along other players more soloing and zerg parties. I think alot of people want to help their guild not just me. You have to make a choice - help random people by forming a pug, or help your guild.

Wasn't it the large guilds dumping players to gain levels? So what is the point of trying to put me in a bad light for doing nothing wrong?

What bad light? I was just refuting your point that it was bad for new players to group with experienced players by saying it is only bad if the experienced players make it bad.

As to why I join our newbies' groups. To help fill them without having to rely on random puggers who they can count on not toning their game down, they simply have no reason to want to. It also doesn't hurt to offer a pro tip now and then. Not so much how to beat any specific encounter, but things like dragging mobs through traps before disarming or the like.

As to why this might be better use of your time than zerging for that 8k renown you need every day to cover decay? Well 1-5 others helping get that renown will lighten your load.

I'm sorry, but to me it's just unreasonable to say I can't find experienced free agents to join my guild, so recruiting isn't the answer. New guildies generally have to be trained from the ground up and if your guild is unwilling to do that then I don't see any reason why you guys should be successful.

[Gremmlynn]

Quite simple. If you are a small guild and want to remain small. When someone wants to join your guild, boot the person that isn't covering their decay tax and replace them with the new person.

I am not saying I would do it. I am just saying that anyone that isn't running content fast enough to cover their decay tax is resulting in negative renown for the guild. Replacing them with a higher renown generator will always be positive.

You do know that keeping both is an even better option, unless one is so inactive as to cost the others due to lost bonus. But in that case it would be better to boot them regardless of adding anyone else for any guild larger than 6.

[slarden]

You do know that keeping both is an even better option, unless one is so inactive as to cost the others due to lost bonus. But in that case it would be better to boot them regardless of adding anyone else for any guild larger than 6.

It really has nothing to do with bonus.

Decay/people in guild = each person's decay tax.

If a person can't cover the tax they are losing the guild renown every day. It has nothing to do the with guild bonus, it has to do with how fast they run content due to the timed decay mechanism.

This is guild bonus neutral.

[Hendrik]

Sorry, can't help you my guild is 90 something members at 49.

Gremm, you are a L90 Guild with 49 members.

slardens Guild is 76 with 61 members.

How is it that you advance and his cannot? What are the differences between the two? What is it that you do so differently that his is not?

[slarden]

Gremm, you are a L90 Guild with 49 members.

slardens Guild is 76 with 61 members.

How is it that you advance and his cannot? What are the differences between the two? What is it that you do so differently that his is not?

1) My guild has 9 members, the character count on my ddo isn't accurate. I don't know what the actual character count is but i did confirm myddo was wrong on that the last time I checked. It has our leader with the wrong level and class the last time I checked.
2) My guild is advancing. We were stalled a bit over the summer but then shortly after I started posting on this thread I received some tips from a high level small guild about how he was able to advance. Namely, solo, zerg, don't post lfms, dual box strategically. Since taking this advice my guild renown output is significantly higher and the guild is once again moving forward at a very good pace. I am glad my guildies don't have to worry about not progressing at the moment.

[Gremmlynn]

It really has nothing to do with bonus.

Decay/people in guild = each person's decay tax.

If a person can't cover the tax they are losing the guild renown every day. It has nothing to do the with guild bonus, it has to do with how fast they run content due to the timed decay mechanism.

This is guild bonus neutral.

The decay is the same regardless of how many are in the guild. All booting someone who can't meet their share does is make the rest have to cover all that persons share, rather than just the portion they weren't hitting. It doesn't make that portion go away.

[Gremmlynn]

As a new player I wouldn't have wanted you in my group. I learned the hard way that I was not learning a thing that way.

How much would you learn standing around Khorthos waiting for someone to hit your LFM and when someone finally does they just run in and solo zerg the quest? Because that's what you can expect from a random puger. At least with me in the group with a new guildie, I would let them make decisions and set the pace as not doing so keeps them from becoming an asset to the guild.


Though personally I learned the game by soloing as I'm not one to publicly embarrass myself with my newbness if there is a choice. But some people seem deathly afraid to fail, even in private.

[Gremmlynn]

Gremm, you are a L90 Guild with 49 members.

slardens Guild is 76 with 61 members.

How is it that you advance and his cannot? What are the differences between the two? What is it that you do so differently that his is not?

Try a level 49 guild with, last I looked, 98 members. How we advance? Mostly through the odd heroic deed someone performs (best I could pull tonight lol). Generally though decay is about covered by my running a single epic and everything everyone else does is profit, as well as everything else I run. 2kish decay is cake even without a size bonus.

When the guild hits the level he is at, I will likely need a bit of help to cover the decay though as even spending a full hour running, say the first eveningstar chain, (yeah, I'm slow) only get's us 4-5k with no bonus to help. As we generally have 10+ on per night, we should gain more than we lose even at that level.