Guild Renown Changes

[UurlockYgmeov]

Yes, because the new guild change actually made things worse for your guild since you have 10 or less active accounts. You hae the same decay as always based on 20 accounts, plus there is a more severe guild renown ransack penalty when you gain a level. Your guild will get significantly less guild renown for one day.

The benefit is for large guilds. A guld of 300 now has decay based on 20 just like your guild.

*lightbulb* - thought they just removed the account modifier completely - instead of basing it upon 20 accounts .... now makes sense.

don't know if I agree with changes - but think it would be more fair to do the following:

take the modified accounts as the multiplier - but cap it at 20.

so a guild like the one I am in which has 9 modified accounts then the multiplier would be 9; if guild has 300 account (more than 20) then the multipler would be 20. seems like a fair way to treat both large and small guilds.

seems much more fair.

[holyshadow]

I have kept up with this forum regularly but have not taken part in the discussion as of yet. I did not have a large opinion either way simply due to a lack of experience with how it had affected my guild. At the beginning of the change we were level 35 to 40, somewhere in there.. and we had 3 active accounts so I did not notice much of an impact.

Well, we are level 52 now and the impact is enormous. We have 4 guild members. Three are very active and the final member had taken a break a couple of levels ago. He is perceived as inactive at this point by DDO so he is not really a consideration. In the breakdown it shows 3 active accounts.

Each night I quest for a while as do the others throughout the day and we gain a decent amount of renown. When I log on the next night we are usually only very slightly above where we started the previous night. Somewhere around 7,050,000... We may improve 5 or 10k in a full day after renown decay kicks in.

If even a single one of us is unable to quest for one day we drop lower than the previous day. We are in a cycle at this point where it is so annoying as not to be fun at all. We almost have to make the choice to just get ppl to join for the sake of renown or be content to not go much beyond where we are now.

In my lay opinion without doing any math on the subject... I feel that the renown is definitely unfair to guilds of our size. I am not of the opinion that a 3 or 4 man guild should be as powerful as a 30 or 50 or 100 man. However, if the intent is to balance renown decay then I do believe that ignoring the size of the guild completely is in error.

Blanket policies do not work, ever. There has to be some discrimination based upon size - no innuendo intended Perhaps the average size category should be larger and the two extreme groups smaller when considering how many guilds the rules should effect.

HS

[Chaos000]

If even a single one of us is unable to quest for one day we drop lower than the previous day. We are in a cycle at this point where it is so annoying as not to be fun at all. We almost have to make the choice to just get ppl to join for the sake of renown or be content to not go much beyond where we are now.

In my lay opinion without doing any math on the subject... I feel that the renown is definitely unfair to guilds of our size. I am not of the opinion that a 3 or 4 man guild should be as powerful as a 30 or 50 or 100 man. However, if the intent is to balance renown decay then I do believe that ignoring the size of the guild completely is in error.

I can sympathize with this. (btw adding a couple ftp accounts will increase your size bonus and should help somewhat)

Tiny guilds of 9 or less was negatively impacted by this change and a elimination of renown decay for tiny guilds (perhaps a gradual reduction of decay for any guilds who's daily earnings does not exceed more than half of the decay?) will help to allow them to advance.

[Gremmlynn]

If a VERY small guild or any guild for that matter sits in it's cozy little bed, that very small guild will stay right where it's at. It won't gain players, it won't gain guild levels. I really find it hard to believe that people are leaving the game because they can't bother to move their own guild forward in any meaninful way. Those people are more likely leaving because they're bored with the game as whole. Blaming outside sources for ones own guild problems is folly...

Guilds that want to advance in level take steps AS A GUILD to do so....

This is about how I see things.

Under the old system, large guilds that wanted to advance did something about it, booted less active members, and those that didn't want to do that didn't advance. Turbine didn't like how that worked so turned things around. So now it's the less than overachieving small guilds that either have to choose to change or stagnate.

Not an endorsement of the system, personally I can't see how the income from this offsets the amount of trouble it causes and think they would be better served with a no decay system settling for transient income. But that's the reality of how the system works.

[Gremmlynn]

One thing is for certain is that I no longer wish to have decay suck the fun out of the game for me. I am moving on.

Wouldn't simply not worrying about guild levels be a better solution?

[Nestroy]

Wouldn't simply not worrying about guild levels be a better solution?

As long as there as a few buffs quite usefull at lv. 60+ and the best ships at lv. 80 and 85 respectively a guild that wants to provide it´s members a good package has to be of the highest possible level. Given, after level 85 the motivational curve declines. The last XP shrine is a nice-to-have but one can live without it as well.

It´s a sad thing that for tiny and small guilds after lv 50 or so the game turns slowly into p2w due to decay (without use of the best pots or using methods like farming, multiboxing no growth possible) , while for large guilds of sizes 100 members and more the game remains f2p due to marginalized decay.

[Tshober]

As long as there as a few buffs quite usefull at lv. 60+ and the best ships at lv. 80 and 85 respectively a guild that wants to provide it´s members a good package has to be of the highest possible level. Given, after level 85 the motivational curve declines.

It is just stunning how different people's perspectives can be. You are worried about offering your members a good package, when tiny guilds are missing the thing I would find most important in a good guild, people to group with and talk to and get advice from. If I found myself in a guild like Slarden's where there was almost always no one but me and maybe one other person online, I would not care at all about ship buffs or even if they had a ship. My first and only question would be "When are we going to get more members?"


It is hard to relate when perspectives are that different.

[Nestroy]

It is just stunning how different people's perspectives can be. You are worried about offering your members a good package, when tiny guilds are missing the thing I would find most important in a good guild, people to group with and talk to and get advice from. If I found myself in a guild like Slarden's where there was almost always no one but me and maybe one other person online, I would not care at all about ship buffs or even if they had a ship. My first and only question would be "When are we going to get more members?"


It is hard to relate when perspectives are that different.

Hi Tshober, not that we do not group in the guild, but I can group LFM as well. Personally, most of my active guild members I found by grouping LFM and helping less advanced players with the quests. Personally, I did not have too much of a bad experience with LFMs on my server. Actually, I had been more of a burden than a help from times to times myself and I am quite tollerant if I cannot zerg a quest like RitD with my group in 1-2 minutes. This really helps getting along and it is fun to network as well. Second, most of my fellow guildies originate from Europe, like myself - we have perhaps only 2-3 hours a day we are online, but guess what, we are always online nearly the same time. So we can group actually. And yes, this is fun.

But as you said, perspectives, grouping in my guild only is not a perspective for me. Nor is this a perspective for 90% of the playerbase on Wayfinder as well. Maybe on Wayfinder we have to be different - everything is much smaller, especially the guilds.

Edit: And here is the rub: Growth on Wayfinder is especially problematic, compared to servers like Sarlona, Orien or the like. Most toons on Wayfinder are favorrunners from other servers that do not care to enter a guild for the about 3 hours they spend on the server with their toon. Favorrunners guild on Wayfinder is dead as a Dodo. Most of the genuinly new players that enter see the complexity of DDO compared to the in Germany very popular WoW and other MMOs and leave. Some are putting up to lv. 16, lv. 17 and find out that f2p turns into p2w in higher levels (you either advance very slowly by grinding or you invest real money for packs). These leave upon reaching their thresholds and before the grind begins. So this leaves about 200-300 hardcore active players you get to know by hearth coming time. And these have their settled guilds and that´s it. No base to grow on. Have fun enlarging guilds on Wayfinder.

[Gremmlynn]

As long as there as a few buffs quite usefull at lv. 60+ and the best ships at lv. 80 and 85 respectively a guild that wants to provide it´s members a good package has to be of the highest possible level. Given, after level 85 the motivational curve declines. The last XP shrine is a nice-to-have but one can live without it as well.

It´s a sad thing that for tiny and small guilds after lv 50 or so the game turns slowly into p2w due to decay (without use of the best pots or using methods like farming, multiboxing no growth possible) , while for large guilds of sizes 100 members and more the game remains f2p due to marginalized decay.

A guild is it's members. So it's up to them as a group to decide whether they want to put in the time needed to reach those levels.

This is just a symptom of Turbine bandaid fixes. Originally it was meant to be p2w for everybody but the real overachievers (who were supposed to be who the rest paid to keep up with) but their system was flawed in that guilds could get around this by dumping (on) their less active brethren. So it was changed to fix that resulting in large guilds not being stuck at mid levels. This is why I really don't expect any kind of relief for small guilds as they are not dumping members for advantage so it would seem best to keep them as p2w (to the geniuses in marketing anyway).

[Gremmlynn]

But as you said, perspectives, grouping in my guild only is not a perspective for me. Nor is this a perspective for 90% of the playerbase on Wayfinder as well. Maybe on Wayfinder we have to be different - everything is much smaller, especially the guilds.

Strange, I have the exact opposite experience. For me, if it wasn't for guildies I would rarely ever find another to play with on Wayfinder. Oh, and we grab up every new player we can as you never know if they might be one who sticks around. For the rest, well it really doesn't cost anything to have them around for as long as they do stay and makes it more likely that they do if they make attachments to the guild.

[Ainblizkap]

The problem:

Levels (and some perks attached to them) are the reason why someone will eventually complain about renown mechanics and balance. No matter how much the devs puzzle their minds to try to please everyone, it just won't happen because players tend to want everything the faster and easier the better, and of course they couldn't care less about other playstyles.



The (of course it's not perfect) solution:

Remove levels, decay and all that c**p. Make ships, shrines and crew members purchasable with astral diamonds and/or renown so you can p2w or pay just like you would do with plat, but with renown.

A very interesting system for me would be:

-- Renown is gained like we are used to, but some of it is kept by the char that earned it and the rest goes to a common renown pool. Let the proportion be selected and modified by the guild leader so when join a guild we accept that condition.
-- Ships have a common area for all guild members and a private room instanced per character. In the private room the "private" renown is spent in whichever shrine is wanted, in the common area only certain shrines previously selected by the leader can be placed, these are bought using the common renown pool.

This is thought to encourage all members to gain renown and create different guild models according to the % established. Let me give an example:

I discussed with my guild and found out that we can all benefit fron xp shrine and navigator, but some other shrines are controversial since divines want a +2 WIS shrine and a couple of rogues would love a +2 INT and there's no enough place for both. Thus I decide to keep only xp and navigator and forget about stats, keeping 30% of the gained renown to maintain the ship and those ammenities and save some renown for, let's say, a bigger ship.

My guildmates would be happy because they have their private room to place their favourite shrines and enough renown to buy them. I am happy too, because I know that if they want their own shrines they will have to earn renown, thus the guild will earn renown as well.



The complaints:

-- "I don't want Turbine to spend time on this!!! Fix the bugs FFS!!!! >.<" --

Indeed. It doesn't hurt to think creatively to find solutions for problems though :P

-- "I have an uber guild! I want to keep my high number to show everyone how cool I am!!! '¬¬" --

Awesome! Despite good guilds (usually) don't give a f**k about that number... Brag about belonging to it like people did before levels.

-- "What about size bonuses? Small guilds would get more net renown than big ones! UNFAIR!! :_(" --

Yep, potential WWIV if we consider this thread as WWIII. This would be tricky at such an abstract level but I'd probably remove bonuses but implement discounts related to the % of renown that guilds keep since it's natrural to keep a high percentage of renown, for instance, if we want to buy a new ship; since everybody is giving up to their personal cuota this must be rewarded with significant discounts! Of course this would work better because it would be CIRCUMSTANTIAL and as soon as you get what you want you can rethink your management with NO LOSS (this is key to avoid complaints).

-- "But... smalls guilds will need more time to get what big guilds can have faster... *sad panda*" --

Yes, a little, but JUST a little and for a FINITE time, not all the time like now. You can choose to make people contribute a lot and get it faster (via discounts and more net renown) or you can choose to make people contribute less and get it slower. Big guilds would be able to make people contribute less and get it a bit earlier but you STILL have a way to make it even faster than them with no real need to farm like crazy, just by agreeing it with you guildmates. Again, when you get what you want, you can keep your happy haunt as you please. There are options for all kinds, all have different trade-offs and benefits, but nobody is loosing at least.

-- "So your solution is not working at all!!!! We still have to think and decide what we want and the best way to get it... You liar! I want overall straightforward perfection! X-(" --

Perfection doesn't exist. Solving problems is a hell of a complex task when it involves human users. Even if you find a "perfect" solution, someone will come and break it in a way you didn't even thought it would be possible. It's important to minimize the flaws though, and the current system seems to me like a "I just want to shut up those guys that are complaining and go back to bed" solution, just plain arbitrary (been there, done that XD).

------------



PS: I'm in slarden's guild. I play almost everyday, sometimes several times a day, and I tend to grab renown anytime I can; same does my bf. I've seen other active accounts too. Believe me, decay is awful :/ It is also very unpolite to judge a group of people without even knowing them, just saying ^_^

[Nestroy]

The problem:

Levels (and some perks attached to them) are the reason why someone will eventually complain about renown mechanics and balance. No matter how much the devs puzzle their minds to try to please everyone, it just won't happen because players tend to want everything the faster and easier the better, and of course they couldn't care less about other playstyles.



The (of course it's not perfect) solution:

Remove levels, decay and all that c**p. Make ships, shrines and crew members purchasable with astral diamonds and/or renown so you can p2w or pay just like you would do with plat, but with renown.

A very interesting system for me would be:

-- Renown is gained like we are used to, but some of it is kept by the char that earned it and the rest goes to a common renown pool. Let the proportion be selected and modified by the guild leader so when join a guild we accept that condition.
-- Ships have a common area for all guild members and a private room instanced per character. In the private room the "private" renown is spent in whichever shrine is wanted, in the common area only certain shrines previously selected by the leader can be placed, these are bought using the common renown pool.

This is thought to encourage all members to gain renown and create different guild models according to the % established. Let me give an example:

I discussed with my guild and found out that we can all benefit fron xp shrine and navigator, but some other shrines are controversial since divines want a +2 WIS shrine and a couple of rogues would love a +2 INT and there's no enough place for both. Thus I decide to keep only xp and navigator and forget about stats, keeping 30% of the gained renown to maintain the ship and those ammenities and save some renown for, let's say, a bigger ship.

My guildmates would be happy because they have their private room to place their favourite shrines and enough renown to buy them. I am happy too, because I know that if they want their own shrines they will have to earn renown, thus the guild will earn renown as well.



The complaints:

-- "I don't want Turbine to spend time on this!!! Fix the bugs FFS!!!! >.<" --

Indeed. It doesn't hurt to think creatively to find solutions for problems though :P

-- "I have an uber guild! I want to keep my high number to show everyone how cool I am!!! '¬¬" --

Awesome! Despite good guilds (usually) don't give a f**k about that number... Brag about belonging to it like people did before levels.

-- "What about size bonuses? Small guilds would get more net renown than big ones! UNFAIR!! :_(" --

Yep, potential WWIV if we consider this thread as WWIII. This would be tricky at such an abstract level but I'd probably remove bonuses but implement discounts related to the % of renown that guilds keep since it's natrural to keep a high percentage of renown, for instance, if we want to buy a new ship; since everybody is giving up to their personal cuota this must be rewarded with significant discounts! Of course this would work better because it would be CIRCUMSTANTIAL and as soon as you get what you want you can rethink your management with NO LOSS (this is key to avoid complaints).

-- "But... smalls guilds will need more time to get what big guilds can have faster... *sad panda*" --

Yes, a little, but JUST a little and for a FINITE time, not all the time like now. You can choose to make people contribute a lot and get it faster (via discounts and more net renown) or you can choose to make people contribute less and get it slower. Big guilds would be able to make people contribute less and get it a bit earlier but you STILL have a way to make it even faster than them with no real need to farm like crazy, just by agreeing it with you guildmates. Again, when you get what you want, you can keep your happy haunt as you please. There are options for all kinds, all have different trade-offs and benefits, but nobody is loosing at least.

-- "So your solution is not working at all!!!! We still have to think and decide what we want and the best way to get it... You liar! I want overall straightforward perfection! X-(" --

Perfection doesn't exist. Solving problems is a hell of a complex task when it involves human users. Even if you find a "perfect" solution, someone will come and break it in a way you didn't even thought it would be possible. It's important to minimize the flaws though, and the current system seems to me like a "I just want to shut up those guys that are complaining and go back to bed" solution, just plain arbitrary (been there, done that XD).

------------

PS: I'm in slarden's guild. I play almost everyday, sometimes several times a day, and I tend to grab renown anytime I can; same does my bf. I've seen other active accounts too. Believe me, decay is awful :/ It is also very unpolite to judge a group of people without even knowing them, just saying ^_^

+1 for the idea, even if similar ideas have been around in here before. This one is quite well thought out.

Regarding guild size bonus - anything wandering into the guild coffers could or could not get a certain bonus to even things out. If bonus yes, the message woud be clear - Turbine / the devs want all guilds to be equal. If no, the message would be clear as well - we are living in a free world and everybody has to look where he remains.

2 ammendments to your idea:
1.) The personal renown could be used for general ship buffs as well. So anybody could help the guild directly, if officer. Alternatively, the guild chest would have a donate-only "banking" feature where one could donate personal renown to help the guild with.
2.) Guild airships would be strictly bound to costs, so turbine would have the possibility to sell the max (free and p2p) guild ships to any and even the smallest guild if they cough up enough plats or real money = TP = astral shards. Helluva sales of ships here, I am sure. Personal space depends on the ship size then, with instances parallell depending on size and cabin size depending on ship size, so small only one private buf, mdeium 2 buffs and large 3 buffs.

I like your idea!

[twigzz]

It´s a sad thing that for tiny and small guilds after lv 50 or so the game turns slowly into p2w due to decay (without use of the best pots or using methods like farming, multiboxing no growth possible) , while for large guilds of sizes 100 members and more the game remains f2p due to marginalized decay.

Not true.



Edit: Argh! Why did I post here?! lol

[Hendrik]

And one other thing. What you are saying about my guild going days without anyone logging in is a lie. We have someone on playing every day. As our test proved, my guildies are more active/person than either of the two large guilds we compared it to. And again we are talking about renown earned/per person after removing guild bonus to compare actual activity.

Then you should not say it then if you do not want it repeated.

The # of people in my guild can be as low as 0 at times during the week.

We have 0 on at times I said.

[Hendrik]

Yes, because the new guild change actually made things worse for your guild since you have 10 or less active accounts. You hae the same decay as always based on 20 accounts, plus there is a more severe guild renown ransack penalty when you gain a level. Your guild will get significantly less guild renown for one day.

The benefit is for large guilds. A guld of 300 now has decay based on 20 just like your guild.

And there you go attacking large guilds again. Why always turn this into your very small vs large battle? Should be very small vs everyone else.


EVERY guild over 10 accounts has a decay reduction between the old and new system.

[Tshober]

Hi Tshober, not that we do not group in the guild, but I can group LFM as well. Personally, most of my active guild members I found by grouping LFM and helping less advanced players with the quests. Personally, I did not have too much of a bad experience with LFMs on my server. Actually, I had been more of a burden than a help from times to times myself and I am quite tollerant if I cannot zerg a quest like RitD with my group in 1-2 minutes. This really helps getting along and it is fun to network as well. Second, most of my fellow guildies originate from Europe, like myself - we have perhaps only 2-3 hours a day we are online, but guess what, we are always online nearly the same time. So we can group actually. And yes, this is fun.

But as you said, perspectives, grouping in my guild only is not a perspective for me. Nor is this a perspective for 90% of the playerbase on Wayfinder as well. Maybe on Wayfinder we have to be different - everything is much smaller, especially the guilds.

Edit: And here is the rub: Growth on Wayfinder is especially problematic, compared to servers like Sarlona, Orien or the like. Most toons on Wayfinder are favorrunners from other servers that do not care to enter a guild for the about 3 hours they spend on the server with their toon. Favorrunners guild on Wayfinder is dead as a Dodo. Most of the genuinly new players that enter see the complexity of DDO compared to the in Germany very popular WoW and other MMOs and leave. Some are putting up to lv. 16, lv. 17 and find out that f2p turns into p2w in higher levels (you either advance very slowly by grinding or you invest real money for packs). These leave upon reaching their thresholds and before the grind begins. So this leaves about 200-300 hardcore active players you get to know by hearth coming time. And these have their settled guilds and that´s it. No base to grow on. Have fun enlarging guilds on Wayfinder.

Yes, I can see how playing on a very lightly populated server could change your perspective about grouping. On my server, the population is a bit lower than I wish it were, but it is nothing like Wayfinder. That is the point I was making, enlarging your guild will not work for the majority of tiny and small guilds because there just are not enough players for all of those guilds to become large or even medium sized. Not even on the most populous DDO servers. The only way a general migration to large guilds could possibly happen is if it is accompanied by a drastic drop in the total number of guilds. I have not seen much evidence that this has been occurring during the several months that we have been under the inclusive favoring decay system.

[smatt]

*lightbulb* - thought they just removed the account modifier completely - instead of basing it upon 20 accounts .... now makes sense.

don't know if I agree with changes - but think it would be more fair to do the following:

take the modified accounts as the multiplier - but cap it at 20.

so a guild like the one I am in which has 9 modified accounts then the multiplier would be 9; if guild has 300 account (more than 20) then the multipler would be 20. seems like a fair way to treat both large and small guilds.

seems much more fair.

Not a bad idea, and pretty easy to implement...

[Chaos000]

Not a bad idea, and pretty easy to implement...

I concur. account modifier caps out at 20 for 20 or larger and decreases for 19 and smaller.

Also since the renown ransack increase was designed to limit too fast of advancement for large guilds, perhaps change ransack from level earned to total renown/day earned.

[Nestroy]

Not a bad idea, and pretty easy to implement...

I concur.

[Nestroy]

(...)The only way a general migration to large guilds could possibly happen is if it is accompanied by a drastic drop in the total number of guilds. I have not seen much evidence that this has been occurring during the several months that we have been under the inclusive favoring decay system.

I think nobody makes the easy decission to leave a guild one has grown used to. Since the only possibility is to switch guild by loosing everything built up before (all renown collected is lost), even by leaveing all the fellow guilides one grew used to, this is not something taken lightly.

If there would have been a feature to fuse together 2 small guilds as long as they in total do not have a total of X members active, I think there would have been much less but bigger guilds by now. No need to take over all renown or anything. Just to make it possible to join 2 totaly independend guilds.

Sidenote, I would love to see a lot of guilds vanishing from the server roosters where there is lv. 0 and no active members...