Guild Renown Changes

[HanzelC]

This will definately help large guilds. This will also have the affect of elevating guilds that take the time to plan activities for guild members. Folks will start heading to the larger guilds for the buffs, but imho, they will eventually move to where the action is.
Thus creating a more vibrant communty in general.

Meanwhile, the smaller guilds will not be affected.

Oldguy

[Dandonk]

I'm happy for the large guilds. Kicking people simply due to play time is not a great thing, and some people felt more or less forcecd to it.

But I do fear that it will become, for most guilds, a case of go large or go home now. Any large guild can now count on reaching level 100 within a not too long time. Small guilds will struggle or not, as they used to.

If decay is removed (which is what it more or less amounts to) for large guilds, why should small guilds keep it?

I like that Turbine is trying to do something about an issue that's been brought up many times in the forums, but I'm not convinced this is the best, or even a good, way to go about it.

[akiraproject24]

Look forward to more of the guild recruiting spams in general....havent seen that in years gladly....I can see it now every 3 seconds "**** is recruitng anyone with a pulse! Must be able to walk, jump and strafe, if you cant, thats fine too, just join so we get bigger boat". OVer and over and over

[Glenalth]

I would rather see the renown decay kept at the old rate per active account.

Instead, reduce the "inactive" timer for members considerably, possibly to only a few days. That way the system still scales for large guilds but doesn't penalize the casual guilds as much.

[Tshober]

It is nice to see renown being addressed, but I would've liked to see the following change instead:


#1 Change renown to be a function of activity, not a function of chests looted:

In general, DDO activities include:
- Favor Farming
- Loot/ingredient farming
- flagging for quest
- Running quests for xp.
- Explorer areas, Mabar/Cove events.

Current system punishes players that do anything above level for any purpose. It shouldn't be this way. Running quests above level to help other guildies farm/flag is still an ACTIVITY. Running challenges for ingredients is still an ACTIVITY. Doing favor runs is still an ACTIVITY. Guilds should not be punished for doing such activities.

Getting renown from chests should be a BONUS, not the main source of earning renown. Currently the renown system only rewards the following activity: Running quests at level or below level. But this is true only because the end rewards and chests actually drop best renown. And best renown comes from quests with most chests: Farming irestone over and over for renown is not fun.

Earning renown should be a function of activity (time), not a function of loot. It should come naturally just for being active and doing quests for whatever reason, regardless of difficulty.

Suggestion:
1. Grant renown reward upon quest completion (regardless of level) based on estimated quest duration:
Short Quests: ~100 renown
Medium quests: ~250 renown
Long Quests: ~500 renown
Raids: 1000 renown
2. Grant renown for completing optionals. (Maybe ~50-100 renown per optional)
3. Add % bonus for being 2 levels below quest difficulty.
4. Increase renown earned for kills

#2 Remove penalty for kickin inactive toons
Guilds should be allowed to maintain their roster without being punished 25% renown and incurring renown penalty for it.

#3 Remove penalty for leaving on good terms
Why should guilds be punished for guildies that leave on good terms? The punishment of losing a guildie is enough already.

#4 Adjust DECAY MULTIPLIER table
Removing the account modifier may be a bit drastic, I would've rather seen the MULTIPLIER was adjusted down a bit (say, maybe 10-25%) for levels 50+. This way guilds of all sizes benefit from reduced decay.

Any decay plan that is based only on activity is inherently discriminatory toward casual/social players. That was, in my mind, the main complaint about the old decay system. Unless I missed it, your suggestion does not address that issue at all. So, while I like some aspects of it, the bottom line is it does not really help with the main problem that plagued the old decay system. It does not remove, or even significantly reduce, the incentive to kick out casual/social players.

[Therigar]

I find reason in most of your statement aside the quote. above.

The problem here is that the small and medium guilds relatively to activity have mentioned they will be penalized does lie in the 3 level per day.

There are, perhaps, not many guilds smaller than the one I am in. It is called the Council of Village Idiots and is located on Orien.

I say this because my guild consists of me, my son, his friend and my daughter. Of those four real living people two are not active players (my son's friend and my daughter). One is scarcely active (my son). Of the four of us I am the only one who routinely logs on and plays.

Effectively, I am a guild of one. And, in my wildest dreams I cannot envision gaining more than 3 guild levels in a single day. Even if I ran guild favor to easily reached chests, drank guild favor potions from the DDO store and took nothing but guild favor as end rewards I could not imagine advancing at that speed.

So, while it will be true to some extent at the very low levels it will soon be overcome simply by the shear size of the renown needed to advance to the next guild level. This is why I think it is not really a big problem.

In fact, the change to guild renown actually encourages me to accept people into the guild who just want to park a character in a guild with a cool sounding name. And, it lets me move characters to other, larger guilds in order to have an active group of people to game with while not having to dismiss my guild leader -- Doofus the Village Idiot -- or the guild itself.

IMO the change is extremely positive and the concerns about speed of guild level increase is mostly unwarranted. And, I think this is what people will see from a practical POV in the game itself.

[Therigar]

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.

IMO there are two sides to this.

From my own experience I know that it is still possible to quest without guild buffs and to do literally every level of content. I've gone without buffs into heroic casual content and into epic elite content. And, I've come out the other side sometimes dead but usually alive.

Keep in mind that if a character dies in a quest they are now running without the guild buffs. So this is effectively the same thing. Yet all content is routinely covered on the different servers every day.

OTOH, having the buffs is definitely nice and makes life a lot easier. Increased DCs, healing amps, elemental protections -- all of these makes it a lot more forgiving when you are in a quest.

So, I understand that people would like access to the full spectrum of buffs and that they would like to have that a lot sooner than they do now.

In my case, I find that it is almost always the case in pick up groups that those with larger ships are willing to invite the rest of the group on board for buffs. I think this is great.

But, for that part of the DDO community that Kmnh is talking about this isn't always an option. Right now I'm trying to place my most active characters into a new (to me) guild in order to have a somewhat static group to game with. If they accept me that will give them 6 or 7 real living people and most groups will be filled with only guild members.

So, when we go to buff we'll be on a low level ship with lower level buffs. And, I agree that it would be nice to see a way to get to those bigger ships and better buffs a little bit faster.

The idea Kmnh and others have floated of rewarding players for simply being online seems to already exist. I get guild renown just during questing even if I don't get a guild reward from a chest or as an end reward. But, what is different in their idea is to reward people for grouping with members of their own guild.

I like that idea, although I admit I have no idea how hard it would be to implement.

I also don't know how to implement such an idea without penalizing players who PuG. If guild renown is tied to the number of guild members in a group then there is even more reason to reject non-guild members. It could even work against guild alliances where people join together at raid times or to fill regularly scheduled quests.

So, while I like the idea I don't see a way to reward a guild for grouping together without introducing an even bigger potential problem to the whole community.

[ice584]

It would be a struggle for a 6-man guild to amass that much in a day.

This is true, but IMO this SHOULD be the case. One of the key intents of a guild system is to promote teamwork. The more people you can get to work together, the more you can get done. And I feel you should be rewarded in kind. Hence, large guilds should be able to get larger rewards, small guilds should get smaller rewards. If it was just as easy for a 6-man guild to get to level 100 as it is for a 60-man guild, there wouldn't be any incentive to grow your guild. I think there should still be things within the system that reward guilds for growth as well as sustainability.

However, I do believe that guild rewards as a whole (I.E. the "cool stuff") should be more and/or entirely focused on benefits to guild productivity (guild banks, crafting devices, teleport locations) rather than to gameplay directly (stat shrines, buff NPCs). And, if I may be so bold, I think that's where most of the animosity towards the guild system comes from. Smaller guilds feel cheated when they simply cannot get the same buffs to direct gameplay that larger guilds can. If you can separate guild productivity from direct gameplay I think the hatred for the guild system will largely decrease.

Renown calculation aside, I know that if there were more/better guild productivity items, our guild would focus more on increasing the guild level. A guild deposit box (to store in-game money) for example, is something our guild has been hoping to see for eons. I'm sure there are TONS of other good suggestions out there too.

My 2 cp.

[Zzevel]

It's like the political yahoos on tv...seriously.

When you build a house the more workers you have, the faster the house goes up. That should be true with Guilds as well, if you choose to have less members the work gets done slower simple as thet, it is your choice how fast you want to build.

As a Reward for staying smaller your government ..... Turbine .... has already chosen to subsidize your small/medium earnings (with the renoun bonus) even though they did not have to.... Yet you still scream you are not given enough / it isn't fair / I should be treated even MORE better than the next guy.... Seems like a political action Obamahama and Romromney need to weigh in on as the 'Underprivledged" feel they should get more just because they say so.

The political wire sways both ways and in the past the "want-ees" got their way, today the "earn-ees" are feeling the love. As it should have been the entire time.

[DocBenway]

...
When you build a house the more workers you have, the faster the house goes up. That should be true with Guilds as well, if you choose to have less members the work gets done slower simple as thet, it is your choice how fast you want to build....

That, once again, is not the issue at all. I have said repeatedly that I'd rather step off the no progress roadblock treadmill and onto the sidewalk, even if it is on the steepest hill. The time to get there is absolutely no issue. Being artificially prevented from ever getting there is.

When you build a house with 40 people you get done faster. When you build a house with 6 people, you get done slower and are artificially prevented from installing a roof, and 1/2 the plumbing? So not really done at all.

That's how the actual analogy would go.

[Dandonk]

That, once again, is not the issue at all. I have said repeatedly that I'd rather step off the no progress roadblock treadmill and onto the sidewalk, even if it is on the steepest hill.

When you build a house with 40 people you get done faster. When you build a house with 6 people, you get done slower and are artificially prevented from installing a roof, and 1/2 the plumbing?

That's how the actual analogy would go.

Yup. That's what the new system is.

[chrisdinus7]

It's like the political yahoos on tv...seriously.

When you build a house the more workers you have, the faster the house goes up. That should be true with Guilds as well, if you choose to have less members the work gets done slower simple as thet, it is your choice how fast you want to build.

As a Reward for staying smaller your government ..... Turbine .... has already chosen to subsidize your small/medium earnings (with the renoun bonus) even though they did not have to.... Yet you still scream you are not given enough / it isn't fair / I should be treated even MORE better than the next guy.... Seems like a political action Obamahama and Romromney need to weigh in on as the 'Underprivledged" feel they should get more just because they say so.

The political wire sways both ways and in the past the "want-ees" got their way, today the "earn-ees" are feeling the love. As it should have been the entire time.

Ignoring the politics aspect... More people does not always help in real life. 9 women don't produce a baby in 1 month instead of the typical 9 months for a woman soloing it. And when talking about renown, doing things with a smaller group is often more impressive. Take the 300 (it was actually somewhat more) defenders of at the Battle of Thermopylae. It is famous because they held back a much larger force for a while. If they had 100,000 troops at their disposal, no one would have been impressed. Achieving things with a smaller group is inherently more impressive than doing it with a larger group.

[Tshober]

Yup. That's what the new system is.

The new system removed the barriers to advancement for many guilds and significantly reduced the incentives to kick out casual/social players. It did not halt or even slow the advance of ANY guild at all, versus the old decay system. Your guild will advance at least as fast under the new as it would have under the old. That applies to every single guild in DDO. To pretend that your guild was somehow harmed by the change is not being honest about it. It may not be perfect and it may not have addressed every issue that the old decay system had, but I can see nothing other than overwhelming positives in it, when compared directly with the old system.

[Ague]

you boot them for being inactive for a year but what if they are deploied over sea's or fighting a war

This happened to me... I was with a guild (not to be named) and left for Afghanistan for a few months. The leader swore up and down that I would be an exception to the rule because of that. When I got back and was looking forward to chatting with all my buddies I had made in the guild, I was quite disappointed... So I started my own guild...

But back on topic, the whole renown system will NEVER be perfect to everyone's liking. Someone is always going to find that it favors large guilds, or small guild, or medium guilds. Nobidy is ever going to be happy with the system, even if they got rid of it, poor Turbine would get flamed so bad. Even though every other week, or so, there's a new thread saying get rid of decay and/or the renown system altogether.

My personal view is, put it back the way it was, and tweak it just a little bit. No need for a drastic change to the formula.

EDIT: Genius idea I just had!!! How about make decay somehow based around how much renown you earn in a specified time. For instance, daily decay: x% of total renown earned for that day. If the guild is a casual guild, and earned no renown that day, they have no decay for that day. Kind of like income tax.

Example 1:
Guild Level: 82
Guild Size: 6
Renown earned: 32,621
Decay rate: 8.2% (see what I did there )
Decay: 2,674 (dropped everything to the right of the decimal point)
Renown kept:

Example 2:
Guild Level: 61
Guild Size: 350
Renown Earned: 91,743
Decay rate: 6.1%
Decay: 5,596
Renown kept: 86,146

Example 3:
Guild Level: 38
Guild Size: 26
Renown Earned: 0 (very casual guild)
Decay rate: 3.8%
Decay: 0
Renown kept: 0

Bottom line, this lowers the overall penalty of having casual players in the guild. Or an entire guild of casual players, for that matter. So instead of "taxing" us on how large or small the guild is, how about tax how much renown they receive.

It's late here, so don't flame me too bad if the idea's not up to par...

[Vordax]

More people does not always help in real life. 9 women don't produce a baby in 1 month instead of the typical 9 months for a woman soloing it.

Sort of nit-picky, but they average 1/baby a month for 9 months though.

[Zzevel]

Ignoring the politics aspect... More people does not always help in real life. 9 women don't produce a baby in 1 month instead of the typical 9 months for a woman soloing it.

Building a baby is an exclusive task (after the birds and bees of course), completly differnt than building a house or guild. your reasoning is skewed.

No where is the small/medium guild being penalized or held back any different than before, they still earn renoun, still get a bonus and still can level to the highest level. The house and plumbing can still be implemented as they gain levl 100, that process has not changed in any way shap or form.

[theslimshady]

defenders of at the Battle of Thermopylae. It is famous because they held back a much larger force for a while. If they had 100,000 troops at their disposal, no one would have been impressed. Achieving things with a smaller group is inherently more impressive than doing it with a larger group.

this does not make any sense at all there are multible small guilds of 100 levels on my server and 1 that i know of across the servers with 200 or more accounts that have ever reached 75 so by this alone the mathmatics would show it is much more impressive for a large guild to hit 70 then a small guild to hit 100 even in the old system

[eris2323]

Let the record show that I have lifted my self-imposed ban on paying for DDO points today with the purchase of a points pack - solely due to this change in renown decay determination.

This gives me hope for the future that guilds can be home to many, many players who always have someone online to play with. For the type of player who wants it, they can always log in, and have someone there. For those who don't, they can form smaller, quieter guilds, and we can all be happy.

Please, please keep this permanent, and consider other changes and improvements for the guild system for the future as well; I'm about to TR, BOUGHT my heart instead of grinding it... and it would be nice to know this was here to stay, so people I meet along the journey back to 20 could be invited to join

[mikarddo]

The new system removed the barriers to advancement for many guilds and significantly reduced the incentives to kick out casual/social players. It did not halt or even slow the advance of ANY guild at all, versus the old decay system. Your guild will advance at least as fast under the new as it would have under the old. That applies to every single guild in DDO. To pretend that your guild was somehow harmed by the change is not being honest about it. It may not be perfect and it may not have addressed every issue that the old decay system had, but I can see nothing other than overwhelming positives in it, when compared directly with the old system.

An ever better system though would be to only count those accounts that were online during the latest 24 hours when calculating decay as that would do all the things you mention without hugely favoring the creation of Korthos Army style guilds.

Current system: LevelMultiplier * ( Max(Modified Guild Size,10) + 10 )
In testing: LevelMultiplier * 20
My suggestion: LevelMultiplier * ( #Accounts in guild that logged in during the past 24 hours )

That way huge guilds dont automatically level at extreme speed though still much faster than small guilds - and there is no reason to kick out casual members (except for guilds near the 1000 member ceiling but that cannot be helped).

[Dirac]

Guild renown decay has been a major negative for a while and it is great to see it addressed. I'll have specific feedback once I see it in action, but thanks for putting it in the queue for getting fixed.