Guild Renown Changes

[Chaos000]

The current modified system is only unfair to small guilds; while the large guilds just get a free ride.

How large does a guild have to be to get a free ride? Will adding X amount of fake accounts help get there faster?

Decay only mean something to small membership guilds. And since 90% of all guilds are small - that means the current system is hurting the gameplay experience for a overwhelming majority of players.

I do not believe that 90% of all guilds translates to 90% of the total player base. It seems unrealistic that the sum total of players that make up medium and large guilds is far smaller than the sum total of small and tiny guilds.

Only the few, the elite in the large guilds have had their gaming experience improved.

The winners here were casual players. Under the old system, despite however much renown they gained it resulted in a negative net result due to the per/player renown penalty

Now it is the small guilds that must boot inactive and casual players in order to survive. Its either that or grow into something they don't want - to loose why they wanted a small guild in the first place.

While it is beneficial to grow, small guilds gain 0 reduction of decay (unlike the old system) by booting any players. In any case, if they remove minimum guild size and setting a cap, tiny guilds will get a reduction in decay which I feel may be beneficial.

[Nestroy]

How large does a guild have to be to get a free ride? Will adding X amount of fake accounts help get there faster?

Adding any marginally contributing player helps a larger guild. Even if the player is online for a zerg only favor run. Since the large guild does not loose any guild renown bonus, anything that brings in marginal renown helps. Fake accounts may help on the jump points to even less decay - e.g. a 299 members guild might want to get the max reduction at 300 members...

I do not believe that 90% of all guilds translates to 90% of the total player base. It seems unrealistic that the sum total of players that make up medium and large guilds is far smaller than the sum total of small and tiny guilds.

It as usual depends on the server and exact numbers will be available inside Turbine, but there seems to be a majority of players running in small to medium sized guilds. This is more felt than proven, except for Wayfinder, where there simply are no really big guilds.

The winners here were casual players. Under the old system, despite however much renown they gained it resulted in a negative net result due to the per/player renown penalty.

The winners were both the large and big guilds and their casual players. Casual players from smaller guilds (those with renown bonus, that is) still did not get any improvements and are still a liability for their guilds. Even for meium guilds with still high decay a casual player might be more of a liability than an asset if only the game mechanics would count.

While it is beneficial to grow, small guilds gain 0 reduction of decay (unlike the old system) by booting any players. In any case, if they remove minimum guild size and setting a cap, tiny guilds will get a reduction in decay which I feel may be beneficial.

They after time get a higher bonus. So booting casuals might result in higher bonus = more renown gained by those actively contributing. So as long as there are six warm bodies (max bonus) inside the guild, it might be beneficial not to add or even to boot casuals in order to grow. Regarding the cap/minimum guild size thing I am fully of your opinion - this might be highly beneficial.

[Tshober]

Anyway, hope to hear more from the devs soon...

I ceratinly agree that we are unlikely to see much clarity until the devs become engaged again. My own point of view is that we are very close to where we should be and just need some tweaks to make tiny guilds more viable. But until the devs share their thoughts with us again, we have no way to really know where this will head.

[Gremmlynn]

They after time get a higher bonus. So booting casuals might result in higher bonus = more renown gained by those actively contributing. So as long as there are six warm bodies (max bonus) inside the guild, it might be beneficial not to add or even to boot casuals in order to grow. Regarding the cap/minimum guild size thing I am fully of your opinion - this might be highly beneficial.

So, are you advocating for the removal of the guild size bonuses as they are disadvantages to casual players?

[Vanshilar]

When you say "most", how large do large guilds have to be before they are "coasting to level 100 by sheer size"?

The reality is, when taking inactive + active guilds into account, guilds of lower renown gathering potential will hands down exceed guilds of higher renown gain potential. It's the nature of active players preferring quality over quantity.

To calculate a guild's eventual level, you can measure its average net renown gain over a period of time (such as monthly), and add in the amount of decay they took during that time to get its raw (or gross) renown gain. Since the level-based decay multiplier for level 100 is 3375, the decay for a level 100 guild is 67500 per day. The number (and percentage) of active guilds within each character count bin whose raw renown gain exceeds 67500 is:

min	max	100's	total	percent
801	1000	9	12	75.00%
601	800	11	27	40.74%
401	600	14	47	29.79%
201	400	27	180	15.00%
151	200	13	123	10.57%
101	150	21	332	6.33%
51	100	34	978	3.48%
1	50	19	13029	0.15%

You can also consider level 93, which is the last actual in-game benefit (since level 100 is just a server-wide announcement but no direct game-affecting benefit). Since the level-based multiplier is 2533.7, the threshold for this is 50674. In this case the data is:

min	max	93's	total	percent
801	1000	9	12	75.00%
601	800	16	27	59.26%
401	600	25	47	53.19%
201	400	41	180	22.78%
151	200	21	123	17.07%
101	150	52	332	15.66%
51	100	76	978	7.77%
1	50	38	13029	0.29%

So you can see, under Turbine's current renown system, it's all just about size. While 75% of active guilds with 801 or more characters will eventually reach level 100 at their current rate, only about 1 in 686 active guilds with 50 or less characters will. The less characters a guild has, the less likely it will reach level 100 (although I'm stating this sloppily).

And it's not hard to see why. A guild's renown potential is always increasing by size, while the upkeep (renown decay) is fixed regardless of guild size, so it's easier to maintain a level (as well as level up) the bigger the guild is. It's already been shown elsewhere the math for why; this is just the empirical data backing up that math.

Inactive accounts are not considered in Turbine's calculations in the guild system, whether in terms of renown gain or renown decay. So they're effectively non-entities here. Similarly, since they don't contribute renown, they don't really affect a guild's renown earning potential. Whether a guild should be considered a 100-account guild with 30 people contributing 0 and having 0 potential (since they're inactive), or a 80-account guild where 10 members don't log in at all, is just semantics but don't really affect the analysis. Or if you prefer, you can call it just looking at the active accounts -- the earning potential of active accounts.

The graph shows how much gain a guild gets if its leadership is engaging the members (that are logging in) to the same amount in terms of getting renown. It's always increasing, so with more guild members, the guild will always gain more renown, as long the average member is still playing just as much. I don't see how guilds of lower renown earning potential can gain more than guilds of higher renown earning potential -- unless the members are simply being more active on average. In which case, it's due to effort rather than guild size. This shows however that guilds can always earn more with more players, provided they're engaging their members just as much -- because large guilds were pointing to the guild size bonus as if it made up for their manpower advantage.

This was the whole point of the renown earning potential. Basically you assume away different activity levels (by assuming for the analysis that everyone has the same amount, i.e. constant), and look specifically at how a guild's size will affect how much renown it gains, to isolate and show how size affects renown gain, since renown gain is a function of both size and activity. Under the original system, the renown gain scaled up with more people, but the decay also scaled up with more people, so it was roughly equal once a guild got into the higher levels (although the guild size bonus and the extra 10 accounts on decay distorted things). Before a guild got there, though, the system was purely about renown gain, in which case large guilds held a decisive advantage.

You are the one who feels entitled. Essentially, you advocate penalizing members of larger guilds for being in larger guilds. You want to see their renown that they earn taxed heavily because they are in a large guild but you do not want your renown taxed as heavily because you are in a small or tiny guild.

Blatant falsehood. I discussed the original system -- where 1 additional member meant 1 additional amount of decay (which depended on the guild's level). That member would contribute the same amount of additional decay regardless of if he were in a 30-account guild or a 300-account guild, if they had the same guild level. Nowhere do I say that a member should cost more to a large guild than a guild of any other size.

And the original renown decay as it was actually penalized (or "taxed") members of small guilds more heavily by tacking on an additional phantom 10 accounts that earn 0 renown but still applied toward the decay. Renown decay itself -- even prior to the change -- already favored large guilds, who (by definition) had more members to amortize that extra penalty.

A large guild had more total decay because it also had more members that could gain renown and more members using the guild benefits. But an additional member increased the decay by exactly the same amount regardless of the guild's size. (The exception is guilds with less than 10 accounts, since decay always treated them as having 10 accounts even if they only had 4 or 7.)

The fundamental misconception that these people from large guilds try to propagate is the difference between total and proportional. Under the original system, as guild size increased, renown decay also increased, but it was proportional to the number of members; add 10 more people and get 10 more units of decay, add 20 more people and get 20 more units of decay. But, add 10 more people and there are 10 more people gaining renown, add 20 more people and there are 20 more people gaining renown. That decay scaled with the number of people was to balance out the increase in renown gain due to having more people getting renown.

I think fundamentally, people can look at the issue this way. Take a restaurant:
1. A group with more people means that (more, less, the same number of) people are using the restaurant's benefits (i.e. getting meals).
2. A group with more people means that (more, less, the same number of) people can contribute toward the upkeep for the benefits (i.e. paying for their meals).
3. A group with more people means that the bill for the group will be (more, less, the same).

If we're looking at totals, then there will be more people using benefits, more people who can pay, and the bill will be more. If we're looking at proportion, i.e. dividing by total number of people, then there will be the same number of people using benefits (1 more person = 1 more benefit or 1 more meal), the same number of people who can pay (1 more person = 1 more person who can pay), and the bill will be the same for each person. These are consistent regardless of if you're looking at total or proportion.

Under the current system, add 20 more people and there are 20 more people getting renown, but the renown upkeep increase is 0. It's like telling a restaurant "we have 20 more people than we expected, and they should all get full meals, but the total bill should remain the same". Under the current system, as guild size increases, on a total basis there are more people using ship buffs, more people able to contribute to their upkeep, but the same number of cost. This means that proportionally, for each member the same number of people are using benefits, the same number of people can contribute to their upkeep, yet their "bill" ends up less.

So this means that the renown that those 20 people get are essentially "free" to the guild -- no need to engage them, no need to build community, etc. Even if they're expelled, 75% of whatever they gained is still the guild's to keep for free. Thus the system fundamentally encourages guilds to simply max out their size. Yet people taking the position that renown decay shouldn't increase with more members are the ones claiming everyone else just wants "free stuff".

The measure of activity in DDO is renown earned. The guild that earns the most renown per day should level the fastest. That is exactly what happens under the current decay formula.

Under the old decay formula, the larger a guild was, the more it was penalized (by reduced renown) and the less the renown that it's members earned counted. In fact the penalty was not even limited to the amount they earned! The old decay formula could (and did) even penalize them into losing more renown than they earned. Don't let the IRS hear about this one!

Under the original system, once a guild got up to the mid-high levels where renown decay started mattering, the measure of activity was activity how much renown per member. In fact that was the role of renown decay, by scaling with the number of members. The scaling was essential to this, so that guilds that wanted the higher-tier benefits would have to encourage their members to be more active. It's only in the initial levels -- before renown decay kicks in by any significant amount -- where it's all about renown gain, and hence, all about just mass inducting.

As I posted previously, guilds that grew just by size alone without investing in their players on an individual basis quickly stalled as decay kicked in and then started complaining about it, because they had leveled so quickly that their mindset never adjusted from a size-oriented guild to an activity-oriented guild -- the change was so abrupt (because they had leveled so quickly) that they didn't really adjust. A guild that goes from level 30 to level 40 in a matter of weeks due to size alone is going to wonder why they're having trouble going from level 61 to level 62 -- roughly when it starts being about activity. We can still that mindset in full display in this thread.

And no, the old decay formula was purely linear. It was simply (level-based multiplier) * (10 + # modified accounts), where "# modified accounts" did not include inactive accounts (so they didn't hurt the guild) and included accounts which recently left the guild (to discourage guilds from booting willy-nilly and to prevent some potential "gaming" the system), and had a minimum of 10 (so guilds with 1-9 modified accounts still counted as 10 accounts for the purposes of decay).

It's ultimately renown earned that is being deducted. The philosophy of decay per member is only fair when every member is gaining some measure of renown. Otherwise members that are active have a higher decay compounded by every member counted but not gaining renown.

So... decay per member that declines per each member that does not gain very much renown. This could be achieved by not assigning any decay to players that gain less than X renown, or only assigning decay to players gaining more than X renown, or assigning Y decay to all players but increasing decay for those gaining more than X renown.

Well I've always felt that waiting 30 days before inactivity kicks in was a bit long (I'd vote for 7 days, but not shorter). Also, although this would have to be well-thought out, Turbine could potentially either set a flag where accounts could be marked as "inactive" (don't contribute to decay but also can't gain renown either), or only count someone as active if he actually stepped into a quest. After all, because of RL commitments nowadays I generally treat DDO as just a memory-hogging AOL chat room, and I would imagine there are many others in my boat.

Any formula based on renown per member is inherently unfair to members of larger guilds and inherently favors members of smaller guilds. Dividing by the number of members means that the renown that a member of a large guild earns is worth less than the renown that a member of a smaller guild earns. That is how the math of dividing by the number of members works. The measurement should be comparing guilds, not comparing members. The only fair way to compare guilds is to NOT didvide by the number of members, but instead use the total renown earned by all members. That way every player's renown earned counts the same as every other player's.

How is basing a system on the renown per member "inherently unfair" to guilds of any size? There are more members, so the denominator is bigger, but there are also more members contributing to renown, so the numerator is also bigger, so the ratio stays the same. That's the reason for using such ratios in the first place, to have a constant metric that does not vary due to other factors (in this case, size).

How so? We are talking about HUGE scaling here. A player in a 300-man guild would have his renown earned divided by 300 when a player in a 10-man guild would have his renown earned divided by 10. Why is the renown the small guild member earned worth 30 times as much as the same renown earned by the player in a larger guild? Both players put forth the same effort and used up the same amount of time to earn the renown. Both should count the same.

No. As much as you're trying to confuse the issue, that's not how to interpret the math's results.

When looking at renown per member, it means per member. If there are more members (thus increasing the bottom), there are also more members contributing to the top. So taking your interpretation, a player in a 300-man guild would have his renown earned divided by 300, but then he also gets 1/300 the renown from the 299 other members of his guild (or really, not him -- but the renown per member). A player in a 10-man guild would have his renown earned divided by 10, but 1/10 of the only 9 other members of his guild would be added.

That's how averages work (and renown per member is really an average -- you're summing up all the renown gained by all the members and then dividing by the number of members to determine the average renown per member). Hopefully most people are familiar with how averages work and why they're a useful analysis tool so I don't need to belabor this point too much. If I said students in a class scored a total of 2500 points on a test, no one has any idea if this means the students did well or not unless I told them it was a class of 25 students or 30 students or 100 students. And for others to assess how well the class did, it is critical that they know the number of students if someone only told them the total instead of the average (and this is so others can then calculate the average, not to use the total score by itself). A student complaining about a low class average saying "but it's not fair because the average score was divided among so many students" would probably have failed their math class.

The system we are discussing here is one for leveling guilds. We should be comparing guilds, not comparing players. When you divide by the number of players in the guild, you are no longer comparing guilds, you are now comparing players. And the same is true if you do the inverse and multiply by the number of players to apply a penalty to a guild, you are no longer comparing guilds, you are then comparing players. Think about it this way, if you were going to rank all of the countries in the world on economic power, would you take GDP and divide by the population of the countries and then compare them? Of course you wouldn't. That is because you are wanting to logically compare the countries, not the people in the countries. It is exactly the same with guilds. The proper way to logically compare guilds on renown is to use total renown earned, not renown divided by number of players.

But wait a minute. A guild's renown gain increases with more players (or at least, if the players are being similarly engaged). A guild's number of members using the guild's benefits increases with more players. Why then should a guild's upkeep be static and not increase with more players? It sure seems like many other aspects of the renown system are increasing with more players, and as with many other things, typically more rewards come at more cost. Do restaurants charge the same amount to a group of 50 as opposed to a group of 10 customers? (And to pre-answer, if the restaurant charges the same amount per dish then it will charge more with more dishes -- the same way renown decay used to work. If both groups order the exact same number of dishes, then the restaurant charges the same amount but the average member of the 50 group got less benefits -- which is different from how renown benefits work, where a +2 str shrine confers +2 str on a character regardless of the size of the guild; the benefits don't change based on the size.)

I think the fundamental confusion here is whether you are looking at the in-game mechanics of the guild renown system, or the meta-game "worth" or "reputation" of a guild based on its guild renown (which determines the guild's level).

In terms of the in-game mechanics, under the original system, once a guild has reached the mid-high levels and renown decay is significant, a guild's renown gain is used to unlock higher-tier rewards once it has accumulated enough renown. All the members of the guild can then use those better benefits. In other words, a guild's total renown (and thus, guild level) is used to assess what quality of guild benefits are available to members of the guild.

The societal analogy to this would be standard of living (or possibly quality of life). Just like under the original guild system, a better standard of living means that the country typically has more benefits for each person. But as you can see, it is on a per capita basis because when more benefits are being provided to more people, there is more cost associated with it since it is more expensive to give benefits to more people. It would be illogical to devote the same amount of money to a school whether it had 50 or 500 or 50000 students, yet proposing that renown decay should not increase with more members amounts to the same thing -- more people benefiting from it (and more people able to offset the costs) yet the total cost stays constant.

If you're looking at renown from a meta-game "worth" or "reputation" or something sort of standpoint, it's unclear why GDP should be the analogous measure chosen. Does having a higher GDP equate to better reputation? Are you trying to equate more GDP with influence and with renown? Or is it just because GDP conveniently has "Gross" meaning "total" in the acronym? But many countries can have low GDP and yet have disproportionate influence on world politics; just look at Israel or North Korea for example.

It's also not clear how having a higher GDP means that a country's citizens have more benefits. After all, according to the list of countries by GDP China has the second largest GDP (after the U.S.), but that doesn't mean that its citizens have the second-best benefits (or living environment or whatever you prefer) in the world, while in the game, having more renown means that members of the guild get better benefits.

I ultimately suspect that trying to connect renown to GDP is as I posted above -- a mindset seeing the renown system purely as renown gain, while ignoring all the other aspects of the renown system. I also don't see how all this talk about "but we're talking about guilds not players!" obviate the imbalance in having 300 people getting benefits and 300 people being able to contribute to offset the cost of getting those benefits -- but having the total cost be the same as for 10 people, rather than what would be appropriate for...300 people.

Here it seems that you are discounting the opportunity cost of maintaining a large guild in terms of time spent on administrative functions. Do you believe this to be a zero-cost endeavor? If not, what is the appropriate balance to this cost?

Well, guilds of any size has to spend time on administrative functions. It has a cost but that cost is an investment (i.e. the cost is used to access gains, or to protect against other losses). Guilds of any size has to worry about maintaining its roster (that's me in Over Raided), running events like raids, maintaining a guild website, setting guild policy, etc. That's not limited to large guilds.

That's just part and parcel of running a guild. I would actually argue that it's harder for small guilds to maintain themselves, and that proportional to the number of members in the guild, it's small guilds that spend more time on administrative functions.

For example, consider scheduling raids. If you are in a 200-member guild, there is no reason to schedule each of the 200 members' schedules around each of the other 200 members. Claiming to have to do this is trying to set up a false comparison. Rather, you can look at the available people online at a given time. There is no need to have 200 people online at the same time because the game is instanced into 6- to 12-man groups (or less if people want to shortman). So the only scheduling that needs to be done is among people who are free at similar times, and with a larger guild, presumably there are more people around to have a "critical mass" that can quest together and get stuff done. During prime time the guild can even have multiple runs being scheduled simultaneously.

The same is not true for a smaller guild. For Over Raided, there is only one guild raid time per day, and there is only one guild raid at a given time (there are not enough members to split into multiple groups and run raids simultaneously). So all members have to agree on a time that is convenient for everyone, or someone will effectively be shut out of raids.

That's why you'd tend to see small guilds coordinating their logins -- it's by necessity to have enough people to get stuff done. Whereas this coordination is not as needed in a larger guild since with more members, presumably there are more people online at any given time.

So I don't think it's entirely a coincidence that the two biggest soloers in our guild, Nix and Shat, are also in a different time zone (since we're a US-based guild but they're from overseas). A significant part of their free time is when the guild is not available, so they have to be used to doing stuff without the guild's help, and more of their time is spent poking around on their own since no one else is on. Soloing is a natural extension of that.

Also, members having disagreements is much harder to tolerate in a small guild than in a large guild. Because there is only one guild raid, all the members have to get along with all the other members. So quite a bit of administrative overhead is spent on discussing guild policy and making sure that all members are okay with it, and discussing potential recruits to ensure that all members have no problems with them. In fact all recruits are discussed by all members (or at least, all members have the opportunity to veto) prior to joining to ensure that there won't be intra-guild conflicts, since each new member has a noticeable effect on the guild dynamics. Somehow, I don't think this is the case in a large guild.

Part of the stability of Over Raided is due to this "drama-free" culture, but it also means that the leadership has to spend more time considering these issues -- more administrative overhead that is taken away from just playing the game. It's completely unlike a big guild where if A and B don't like each other, they can just join different guild runs or whatever (unless their egos are big enough where they'd say "well this 200-player guild ain't big enough for the both of us"). Smaller guilds do not have this option.

I see administrative overhead as part of the social aspect of running a guild, and not something that needs to be compensated by game mechanics. All guilds have some administrative overhead (except 1-account guilds I guess).

In the first half of this statement, you note that large guilds were settling to equilibrium levels, but in the second half you ignore that your own calculations showed that small guilds had much higher equilibrium levels, and that guilds which kicked or refuse less active players would have a higher average activity level with fewer members than larger guilds which did not. Of course, it would be better still, from a renown gain perspective, to encourage all players in a guild to be more active, but because all players cannot, for various reasons, maintain the same activity levels, and some (many) players cannot maintain the same activity levels for 2+ years, you are looking at a choice between trimming the roster to raise the average, or settling at an equilibrium level that encourages the most active players on the roster to seek other guilds, which further lowers the average activity level. Below you again consign players who are unable, despite their desires, to increase their activity to either being removed or dragging down their guild.

No, I didn't ignore it, in fact I mentioned it here when the renown system was first released -- even before I figured out the renown decay formula.

The problem lies in the interpretation and application of that interpretation. Pretty much by the definition of "average", if you kicked out below-average members, then the average of the remaining members will increase. That's just math.

But that ignores what those members are providing. A guild isn't just made up of renown-collectors, even though we'll usually simplify it to that in discussing the guild renown system. These members also contribute to the guild in other ways, in providing interactions, connections, friendships, interest in the game, etc., and for guild leadership to expel them for renown is implicitly saying that the guild leadership valued the renown over those members' contributions. And I think generally that's a fairly dumb -- or at least shortsighted -- position to take.

For example, over the roughly 32 months the renown system has been out, I've gained a total of 3.2 million renown on my 3 capped (level 20 or higher) characters in Over Raided (yes, in my over 3 years of playing; two of them are still first-lifers while the third has one TR). Accounting for the guild size bonus, this is around 1.4 million base renown or around 1500 base renown per day (1.5 legendaries equivalent per day). This is significantly below the guild's average; by way of comparison, the guild averaged 4367 over the course of the first year, although it's certainly lower now.

Yet there hasn't been discussion of booting me (to my knowledge anyway) although one of Over Raided's goals was to be the first to get each guild ship and eventually, to level 100, and my additional account decreased everyone else's bonus and didn't even make up for decay at the higher levels. In fact, the leadership charged me with figuring out the renown system when it came out, even though the time spent meant the guild would gain less renown from me and the guild would level more slowly -- an opportunity cost that Over Raided bore but the knowledge on renown gain and renown decay was "free" to all other guilds since I've posted their formula publicly on these forums.

The reason is that I was contributing in other ways other than just raw renown gain, such as that because I was the one who figured out how the renown mechanics worked, I could also provide insight as to strategies for leveling up. I could also give predictions as to how other guilds were doing and whether or not we were on track to accomplish our "first" renown goals (which meant time spent looking at other guilds, which again meant less time on renown). A lot of the tools I developed for renown, such as the prediction data shown in the original post in my guild level records thread, were developed during this time; the guild was able to see those predictions "as they occurred" and were updated each day, rather than only whenever I got around to posting on the DDO forums.

Now I want to be clear in saying that Over Raided's success wasn't due to me; the credit goes to all the hard-working members that went out and pulled renown when they were online (and I certainly did pull some renown, just not as much as most of the guild). But my role was to provide a clearer picture of the renown and guild level situation to the guild leadership, so that they could more effectively lead and motivate the guild to achieve our shared goals.

Similarly, after the guild reached level 100 and we moved on to speed runs and then to shortman/solo runs, my role was (and is) to help understand the raid mechanics and develop the strategies for them. This in turn keeps the other members of the guild interested in the game and continuing to log in -- which leads to more renown.

The point here is that low-renown members may contribute in other ways, and those other ways can lead to more renown from the guild, not to mention keep members interested in the game and logging in which is ultimately the most important. Also, those members may be friends with members that are contributing a lot of renown, so booting can lead to guild discontent and people not wanting to log in. Now if you boot someone and nobody else in the guild minds, then that person probably didn't contribute that much to the guild atmosphere or didn't connect with most of the members -- at which point they weren't really helpful to the guild anyway (in terms of the community/social aspect), much less renown.

So when I say that the best strategy is to maximize gain (encourage members to be active) rather than minimize losses (boot low-renown members), I don't mean that in an absolute vacuum -- of course your average will increase if you boot below-average members. It's that ultimately booting members can lead to guild strife, and there is so much more potential in finding ways to increase your guild's renown gain by improving the guild culture and making this a game where players do feel like logging on.

Do you not see exclusive LFMs and the number of veteran players who choose to solo or only run in guild or "in channel" as the negative result of the same sort of "potential liability vs potential benefit" algebra occurring in other areas of the game?

Not necessarily any more than I see the development of a professional basketball association (such as the NBA) as being bad for the sport.

Do you feel that removing dungeon scaling (as an aspect of potential liability) from Elite/EE would be as detrimental to the game as removing the per-person factor of decay from guild renown calculations?

I certainly don't see the same amount of histrionics about it even though they both perform essentially the same function (and use essentially the same means to do so).

Certainly you can find examples of both of those instances. You could also find opposite examples. Adding members does not automatically make a guild impersonal and anti-social, although it is likely that in a large guild with a significant number of members online, you'll find a smaller percentage who note when someone logs on, which likelihood only increases if the guild as a whole is more socially active, as logons get lost in the rest of the guild chatter.

I'm sure there are small guilds that don't engage their members, and large guilds that do.

However, my main point was that large guilds have never engaged their members to the same extent that the small guilds they point to have. Large guilds made a big deal about how it was so unfair that they were held back from leveling while the small guilds near their level continued to advance -- and then they blamed guild size as the culprit, saying that these small guilds continued to advance because they were small. I'm pointing out that it's really because these small guilds are very active compared to those large guilds, and that had large guilds compared themselves to small guilds of similar activity levels, the large guilds would be of higher level -- because the system actually favored large guilds, even before the renown decay change. The large guilds always said that they were being just as active, but every time I quantified that activity -- namely, how much renown the average member of a guild was getting -- small guilds of similar levels always came out as being higher. This meant those small guilds were actually working harder just to get similar benefits, not the other way around.

Adding members doesn't automatically make a guild any which way, except bigger. Guild leadership in small and large guilds alike have similar tools to encourage players to log in and play. But these players were coming on the forums and complaining about the renown system when in reality, it was due to their ability and the amount of effort they put into engaging their players.

Here I have to question your assumptions: you imply that is it equally difficult to engage 6, 12, or 24 members with similar play times, and 100+ members scattered across time zones. I have seen 100% concurrency in the 5 and 12 member guilds I am a part of, but I have never seen 100% concurrency even among the 117 active members in the larger guild. ... This resulted in power guilds reaching an equilibrium size equal to about 150% of the number of players required for an end-game raid. Should DDO go in this direction?

There's nothing in the game that require you to get 100+ members together. You see 100% concurrency in some small guilds, but then they're also likely not on for the rest of the day -- each member has limited playtime and so they have to schedule their limited playtime together. Whereas larger guilds can have players be active (and presumably gaining renown) at all times of the day, with whichever playtime is convenient for those players at a given time.

When I say engage the members, I mean encourage them to play, i.e. to log on, enjoy the game, etc., and one outcome of that is renown. They don't need to all play together, since Turbine's servers seem to get overworked once you get something like more than 20-30 or so players in a fighting instance, as Mabar shows (whatever instancing code they use don't scale up well).

I'm not sure which direction you mean. I'm an advocate for more effort nets more reward, which is common in most incentive systems (salary, hobbies, etc.) -- meaning that people will gain more benefits the more work they put into something, exemplified by the aphorism "you get out what you put into it". The renown system in its current state skews heavily from that, even farther from the previous state. In its current form, having more people is rewarded with more benefits from the same total amount of work, which means that each member can expend less effort for the same reward as the number of members increase, contrary to Turbine's stated position of not wanting to encourage any particular guild size. So it rewards size rather than effort.

Each member of a guild whose average member gets X renown per day should get the same benefits as each member of any other guild whose average member also gets X renown per day, regardless of if the guild is large or small. An alternative but equivalent way to state this is that a group of players (who each gain the same amount of renown per day) should be at the same guild level and get the same in-game benefits (i.e. guild buffs) no matter how many guilds they self-divide into. That's what it means to be size-neutral, or to not encourage any particular size, i.e. if it doesn't matter what size guild these players are in, they all end up with the same guild level. (Of course, they may prefer to be in larger or smaller guilds as a matter of personal taste, but what's important is that the system itself doesn't encourage one size over another). But that's not how the system worked in the past, since for the most part the guild needed to be big enough to have enough manpower to accumulate enough total renown for guild benefits, and it skews even further from this with the removal of the size component from renown decay.

A question about the information in this graphic: It shows upwards of 200 "Old" small guilds in the level 1-5 range, a gain of less than 10800 renown (no decay at this level) in 29 months. This chart also shows that the first "Old" large guild reached level 100 in January of 2013, 5 months after new decay formula was implemented, so any large guild that reached level 100 previously was formed after the renown system was implemented and is highly likely to have taken renown into account from its founding.

Looking at the guilds below 26, the data you've collected shows that over 1000 "Old" small guilds have not yet encountered decay, but are still being tracked here as "active".

Yes, there are plenty of small guilds that were active in Aug 2010, and are active now, and are still in the 1-5 range. They're certainly in the minority but they do exist. Again, to level up requires quite a bit of total renown for a small guild, since they lack manpower. Casual players exist in guilds of all sizes, as much as large guilds try to claim that they're at a disadvantage because they have casual players.

I'm not sure what you mean by the old large guild to level 100 comment. By the way, it's just a level 96-100 bin, not necessarily 100.

Yes, those small guilds are still active. Since they're not affected by decay, it means that during the month of January, they gained renown and/or lost renown due to expels or people leaving or whatever. All guilds whose renown was unchanged was filtered out (as well as all guilds that weren't active or didn't exist in Aug 2010). Again, the amount of renown needed to reach each level even at the lower levels is significant for small guilds because of the lack of manpower, even though large guilds will just breeze right through the lower levels.

Any changes to decay have absolutely no impact on these thousands of small guilds.

That's correct, they wouldn't, and as I mentioned before, the guilds that needed the most help were those guilds that are having trouble reaching the mid-high levels, not those guilds that were already at the mid-high levels and wanted to reach the highest levels. Yet by changing renown decay rather than renown gain, Turbine only helped the minority of players that already had decent benefits get marginally better benefits, and didn't help the majority of players that were still struggling to get those decent benefits in the first place, as I posted previously. This was the wrong focus for Turbine.

Furthermore, they altered the renown decay formula in such a way as to mainly benefit those guilds that collectively were already at the mid-high levels, rather than those guilds that generally were still low-level. And most of the latter group of guilds are still low-level to this day.

I can understand that Turbine may or may not want to change the decay formula again now -- after all, when a group of guilds lost one level on average after the Build your Guild event propped them beyond what they could normally attain (even though I know some guilds gained or lost more than others within this group), they unleashed holy hell on the forum for months until Turbine changed the renown decay formula. So I shudder to think about what would happen when they've been propped up some 7-8 levels on average now above the original system, if Turbine were to revert back. It's a can of worms that Turbine opened in its own face by not looking at and analyzing the entirety of the system carefully before acting, and looking only at people starting and spamming the same forum threads over and over, so I don't envy the position that Turbine put itself in now.

Turbine could, however, change the low-level problem at any time if they wanted to. They've shown for example that they can change the guild size renown bonus at will, just like they can change the decay size variable at will. I've suggested previously that Turbine could just set an immediate 100x bonus on all guilds with less than 50 accounts. After all, the people that were previously protesting so vehemently about renown decay have stated plentifully in this very thread that people shouldn't care about how quickly other guilds are leveling, that it's not a competition, it doesn't really affect other guilds anyway, etc., so Turbine can be assured that they will have these people's complete approval, if these people were self-consistent. Then Turbine doesn't even have to worry about this decay business.

But more realistically, there are a variety of ways to adjust the guild bonus to make it more fair for people that prefer not to be in huge guilds (which would be most of the player base). For example, just messing around a bit in Excel, I came up with this:

Accts	Current	New
1	2.5000	7.0000
2	2.8000	8.0000
3	3.1000	9.0000
4	3.4000	10.0000
5	3.7000	11.0000
6	4.0000	12.0000
7	3.8500	11.5000
8	3.7000	11.0000
9	3.5500	10.5000
10	3.4000	10.0000
11	3.2500	9.5000
12	3.1000	9.0000
13	2.9500	8.5000
14	2.8000	8.0185
15	2.6500	7.5949
16	2.5000	7.2192
17	2.3702	6.8833
18	2.2549	6.5811
19	2.1517	6.3075
20	2.0588	6.0586
21	1.9748	5.8310
22	1.8984	5.6220
23	1.8286	5.4293
24	1.7647	5.2510
25	1.7059	5.0856
26	1.6516	4.9316
27	1.6013	4.7878
28	1.5546	4.6533
29	1.5112	4.5271
30	1.4706	4.4084
31	1.4326	4.2966
32	1.3971	4.1910
33	1.3636	4.0912
34	1.3322	3.9967
35	1.3025	3.9070
36	1.2745	3.8217
37	1.2480	3.7406
38	1.2229	3.6633
39	1.1991	3.5895
40	1.1765	3.5191
41	1.1549	3.4517
42	1.1345	3.3872
43	1.1149	3.3254
44	1.0963	3.2661
45	1.0784	3.2092
46	1.0614	3.1545
47	1.0451	3.1018
48	1.0294	3.0511
49	1.0144	3.0023
50	1.0000	2.9552
51	1.0000	2.9098
52	1.0000	2.8659
53	1.0000	2.8235
54	1.0000	2.7825
55	1.0000	2.7429
56	1.0000	2.7045
57	1.0000	2.6673
58	1.0000	2.6313
59	1.0000	2.5963
60	1.0000	2.5624
61	1.0000	2.5295
62	1.0000	2.4975
63	1.0000	2.4665
64	1.0000	2.4363
65	1.0000	2.4069
66	1.0000	2.3784
67	1.0000	2.3505
68	1.0000	2.3235
69	1.0000	2.2971
70	1.0000	2.2714
71	1.0000	2.2463
72	1.0000	2.2219
73	1.0000	2.1981
74	1.0000	2.1748
75	1.0000	2.1521
76	1.0000	2.1299
77	1.0000	2.1083
78	1.0000	2.0871
79	1.0000	2.0664
80	1.0000	2.0462
81	1.0000	2.0264
82	1.0000	2.0071
83	1.0000	1.9882
84	1.0000	1.9696
85	1.0000	1.9515
86	1.0000	1.9337
87	1.0000	1.9163
88	1.0000	1.8993
89	1.0000	1.8826
90	1.0000	1.8662
91	1.0000	1.8502
92	1.0000	1.8344
93	1.0000	1.8190
94	1.0000	1.8039
95	1.0000	1.7890
96	1.0000	1.7744
97	1.0000	1.7601
98	1.0000	1.7461
99	1.0000	1.7323
100	1.0000	1.7187
101	1.0000	1.7054
102	1.0000	1.6923
103	1.0000	1.6795
104	1.0000	1.6668
105	1.0000	1.6544
106	1.0000	1.6422
107	1.0000	1.6302
108	1.0000	1.6184
109	1.0000	1.6068
110	1.0000	1.5953
111	1.0000	1.5841
112	1.0000	1.5730
113	1.0000	1.5621
114	1.0000	1.5514
115	1.0000	1.5409
116	1.0000	1.5305
117	1.0000	1.5202
118	1.0000	1.5102
119	1.0000	1.5002
120	1.0000	1.4905
121	1.0000	1.4808
122	1.0000	1.4713
123	1.0000	1.4620
124	1.0000	1.4528
125	1.0000	1.4437
126	1.0000	1.4347
127	1.0000	1.4259
128	1.0000	1.4172
129	1.0000	1.4086
130	1.0000	1.4001
131	1.0000	1.3917
132	1.0000	1.3835
133	1.0000	1.3754
134	1.0000	1.3673
135	1.0000	1.3594
136	1.0000	1.3516
137	1.0000	1.3439
138	1.0000	1.3363
139	1.0000	1.3288
140	1.0000	1.3213
141	1.0000	1.3140
142	1.0000	1.3068
143	1.0000	1.2996
144	1.0000	1.2926
145	1.0000	1.2856
146	1.0000	1.2787
147	1.0000	1.2719
148	1.0000	1.2652
149	1.0000	1.2586
150	1.0000	1.2520
151	1.0000	1.2455
152	1.0000	1.2391
153	1.0000	1.2328
154	1.0000	1.2265
155	1.0000	1.2203
156	1.0000	1.2142
157	1.0000	1.2082
158	1.0000	1.2022
159	1.0000	1.1963
160	1.0000	1.1904
161	1.0000	1.1847
162	1.0000	1.1789
163	1.0000	1.1733
164	1.0000	1.1677
165	1.0000	1.1622
166	1.0000	1.1567
167	1.0000	1.1513
168	1.0000	1.1459
169	1.0000	1.1406
170	1.0000	1.1354
171	1.0000	1.1302
172	1.0000	1.1250
173	1.0000	1.1200
174	1.0000	1.1149
175	1.0000	1.1099
176	1.0000	1.1050
177	1.0000	1.1001
178	1.0000	1.0953
179	1.0000	1.0905
180	1.0000	1.0858
181	1.0000	1.0811
182	1.0000	1.0765
183	1.0000	1.0719
184	1.0000	1.0673
185	1.0000	1.0628
186	1.0000	1.0583
187	1.0000	1.0539
188	1.0000	1.0495
189	1.0000	1.0452
190	1.0000	1.0409
191	1.0000	1.0366
192	1.0000	1.0324
193	1.0000	1.0282
194	1.0000	1.0241
195	1.0000	1.0200
196	1.0000	1.0159
197	1.0000	1.0119
198	1.0000	1.0079
199	1.0000	1.0039
200	1.0000	1.0000
201	1.0000	1.0000
202	1.0000	1.0000
203	1.0000	1.0000
204	1.0000	1.0000
205	1.0000	1.0000

Turbine seems to want a peak at 6 accounts, so this retains that except the bonus goes up to 12x instead of the current 4x. It then decreases by 0.5x per additional account (instead of the current 0.15x per additional account) until it reaches 13 accounts. From there on out, the multiplier is such that the guild would have the same renown gain if the additional member gained 0.780706x the base renown of the average existing members. In other words, if the guild recruited someone as active as the existing member, the guild would end up with more renown.

This number was just so that the guild renown gain potential reaches 200 at 200 accounts. The renown gain potential looks like this:

Accts	Current	New
1	2.500	7.000
2	5.600	16.000
3	9.300	27.000
4	13.600	40.000
5	18.500	55.000
6	24.000	72.000
7	26.950	80.500
8	29.600	88.000
9	31.950	94.500
10	34.000	100.000
11	35.750	104.500
12	37.200	108.000
13	38.350	110.500
14	39.200	112.258
15	39.750	113.924
16	40.000	115.507
17	40.294	117.017
18	40.588	118.460
19	40.882	119.843
20	41.176	121.172
21	41.471	122.450
22	41.765	123.683
23	42.059	124.874
24	42.353	126.025
25	42.647	127.140
26	42.941	128.222
27	43.235	129.272
28	43.529	130.292
29	43.824	131.285
30	44.118	132.252
31	44.412	133.194
32	44.706	134.113
33	45.000	135.010
34	45.294	135.887
35	45.588	136.743
36	45.882	137.582
37	46.176	138.402
38	46.471	139.205
39	46.765	139.992
40	47.059	140.764
41	47.353	141.521
42	47.647	142.264
43	47.941	142.993
44	48.235	143.709
45	48.529	144.413
46	48.824	145.105
47	49.118	145.785
48	49.412	146.454
49	49.706	147.112
50	50.000	147.761
51	51.000	148.399
52	52.000	149.027
53	53.000	149.646
54	54.000	150.256
55	55.000	150.858
56	56.000	151.451
57	57.000	152.036
58	58.000	152.613
59	59.000	153.182
60	60.000	153.744
61	61.000	154.299
62	62.000	154.847
63	63.000	155.388
64	64.000	155.922
65	65.000	156.450
66	66.000	156.971
67	67.000	157.487
68	68.000	157.996
69	69.000	158.500
70	70.000	158.998
71	71.000	159.491
72	72.000	159.978
73	73.000	160.460
74	74.000	160.937
75	75.000	161.409
76	76.000	161.876
77	77.000	162.338
78	78.000	162.796
79	79.000	163.249
80	80.000	163.698
81	81.000	164.142
82	82.000	164.582
83	83.000	165.018
84	84.000	165.450
85	85.000	165.878
86	86.000	166.302
87	87.000	166.722
88	88.000	167.139
89	89.000	167.552
90	90.000	167.961
91	91.000	168.367
92	92.000	168.769
93	93.000	169.168
94	94.000	169.564
95	95.000	169.956
96	96.000	170.345
97	97.000	170.731
98	98.000	171.114
99	99.000	171.494
100	100.000	171.871
101	101.000	172.245
102	102.000	172.616
103	103.000	172.984
104	104.000	173.350
105	105.000	173.712
106	106.000	174.072
107	107.000	174.430
108	108.000	174.785
109	109.000	175.137
110	110.000	175.487
111	111.000	175.834
112	112.000	176.179
113	113.000	176.522
114	114.000	176.862
115	115.000	177.200
116	116.000	177.536
117	117.000	177.869
118	118.000	178.200
119	119.000	178.529
120	120.000	178.856
121	121.000	179.181
122	122.000	179.503
123	123.000	179.824
124	124.000	180.143
125	125.000	180.459
126	126.000	180.774
127	127.000	181.087
128	128.000	181.397
129	129.000	181.706
130	130.000	182.013
131	131.000	182.318
132	132.000	182.622
133	133.000	182.923
134	134.000	183.223
135	135.000	183.521
136	136.000	183.818
137	137.000	184.113
138	138.000	184.406
139	139.000	184.697
140	140.000	184.987
141	141.000	185.275
142	142.000	185.561
143	143.000	185.846
144	144.000	186.130
145	145.000	186.412
146	146.000	186.692
147	147.000	186.971
148	148.000	187.249
149	149.000	187.525
150	150.000	187.799
151	151.000	188.072
152	152.000	188.344
153	153.000	188.614
154	154.000	188.883
155	155.000	189.151
156	156.000	189.417
157	157.000	189.682
158	158.000	189.946
159	159.000	190.208
160	160.000	190.469
161	161.000	190.729
162	162.000	190.987
163	163.000	191.245
164	164.000	191.501
165	165.000	191.756
166	166.000	192.009
167	167.000	192.262
168	168.000	192.513
169	169.000	192.763
170	170.000	193.012
171	171.000	193.260
172	172.000	193.507
173	173.000	193.752
174	174.000	193.997
175	175.000	194.240
176	176.000	194.483
177	177.000	194.724
178	178.000	194.964
179	179.000	195.203
180	180.000	195.441
181	181.000	195.678
182	182.000	195.914
183	183.000	196.149
184	184.000	196.384
185	185.000	196.617
186	186.000	196.849
187	187.000	197.080
188	188.000	197.310
189	189.000	197.539
190	190.000	197.767
191	191.000	197.995
192	192.000	198.221
193	193.000	198.447
194	194.000	198.671
195	195.000	198.895
196	196.000	199.118
197	197.000	199.340
198	198.000	199.561
199	199.000	199.781
200	200.000	200.000
201	201.000	201.000
202	202.000	202.000
203	203.000	203.000
204	204.000	204.000
205	205.000	205.000

Under this, because the potential is still always increasing, a guild will still always gain more renown if it recruits players of similar activity as the rest of the guild. So it still rewards larger guilds. But because the increased bonus, smaller guilds will be able to level up substantially faster than under the current system, where most small guilds languish at the lower levels for years and most die of old age before getting to the mid-levels.

Note that even under this:
1. Because the potential is always increasing, a guild will still level up faster the more players it has, as long as each additional player is of similar activity as the average existing member.
2. Because the current renown decay system does not scale by number of accounts, smaller guilds will still have to earn more renown per member than larger guilds. Each member of a 10-account guild would still have to earn 675 base renown on average to maintain level 100, while each member of a 50-account guild would have to earn 457 base renown, and each member of a 500 account would have to earn 135 base renown. The amount of renown the average member of a guild needs to earn for the guild to reach a level is also proportional to this.

In other words, this is still worse for smaller guilds, and the system would still give an incentive to go for size. Even so, I'm pretty sure someone will pipe up and disagree and call names about a roughly 3x increase in gain over the current formula...even though the renown decay change meant that a 600-account guild only has to earn 3.3% or about 1/30 of what it previously used to prior to the change, while a 10-account guild still has to earn 100% of what it used to.

What we see in this thread, is rather a lot of a few members of high-level tiny/small guilds, and a few members of high-level large guilds bickering about who has it worse and why, while a very few posters try to offer alternative solutions, since we've pretty much reached a consensu that both systems are broken to a greater or lesser degree.

I'm sure some of the posters would like Turbine to see this as just "bickering" as if all positions were equally valid with the same amount of evidence presented and it's just arguing over whether dogs or cats are better.

Unfortunately, that the guild system encourages players toward a certain guild size is both mathematically provable and empirically demonstrable, contrary to Turbine's stated position. It's not surprising that facts and data about the system are essentially being brought up by only one position in all of the renown threads...because all the facts point to the same implication, whether you look at mathematical models or data from the MyDDO leaderboards. Any time the system is analyzed, the implications are obvious. The rest is a bunch of sob stories and incoherent and self-contradictory statements, often repeated many times as if posting the same thing over and over makes it correct.

I've offered a variety of suggestions in the past, as have other posters in this and other threads. I think the suggestion that each use of a ship buff should cost some renown deserves consideration (and better buffs would cost more renown per use -- so guilds can choose what quality of amenities they want). I've always considered renown decay to basically be the actual upkeep needed for those ship buffs, rather than the plat cost for those buffs (which again penalizes small guilds because there are fewer members available to contribute plat). The advantages of this are:

1. It naturally ties renown upkeep with a player's activity. Someone that plays a lot will naturally use more ship buffs. This also means that it doesn't penalize casual members as much (i.e. if someone just uses the game to chat with friends, they won't contribute to upkeep since they're presumably not getting ship buffs), so casual members can stay in the guild without counting as a "full" member.
2. It naturally scales with size, in the same way as renown gain. Thus it is "size-neutral", which matches Turbine's stated position of not wanting to encourage any particular size guild.
3. It directly ties the in-game benefits of a guild with their upkeep, rather than indirectly (i.e. through renown decay). Thus the general "effort = reward" property of incentive systems is preserved.

Certainly there are kinks to be worked out, such as how to prevent griefers from using the buffs repeatedly (perhaps by not letting a character get a buff if it brings their personal renown below 0), or how to do non-in-game related buffs (auctioneer, bank, etc.; training dummy may also apply because people may be testing their damage on it rather than using it for the +2 attack), or how to calculate guild level, but I think it's worth considering.

The fundamental issue is that Turbine hasn't really stated what they're looking for in any modifications for this system. For example, Turbine's original vision was that it would be relatively easy for guilds to reach the middle levels, at which point they'd already have most of the benefits, while reaching the highest levels would take a lot of effort, yield relatively minor in-game benefits, and is more for "bragging rights" (i.e. a higher guild level as a status symbol rather than directly tangible game mechanics benefits).

The original implementation, however, effectively shut out most of the guilds because of the large total amounts of renown needed to reach the mid-high levels. Only the most active of smaller guilds and pretty much any guild of big enough size could hope to reach the mid-high levels before their players got bored and moved on to another game.

Once a guild reached the mid-high levels and renown decay started setting in, the guilds that were the most effective at encouraging their members to play and be active were the guilds that continued to advance. This was by design, since both total renown gain and total renown decay scaled linearly with the number of accounts, so the way to advance was to increase the renown per member ratio. Thus, by design, only the most active of guilds (of any size) could reach the highest levels -- each guild would settle down to an equilibrium level where their gain matched their decay, and that level would indicate how active the average member of the guild was.

The change to renown decay however, by no longer scaling with the number of accounts (so both a 600-account guild and a 10-account guild pays the same sum total amount of upkeep for a given level, even though the 600-account guild has 60 times more members to gain renown with and the benefits are given out to 60 times more members), essentially kept the original vision intact for small guilds but carved out an exception for large guilds. Large guilds can now reach the highest levels just on size. This was a mind-boggling decision since most smaller guilds were still at the lower levels while most larger guilds were at the higher levels already.

It's baffling as to why Turbine continues to encourage and reward guilds to simply get bigger without regard to the quality of the players or how it affects the individual player's gaming and social experience, especially since players had already "voted with their feet". Regardless of the forum posts or whoever's arguing which position, the analysis on active guilds shows that most players are in small guilds, indicating that most players prefer a small, close-knit, everybody-knows-your-name environment to play in. Even Turbine's own developer diaries stated this was the case, showing they were aware of this (although that was posted prior to the release of the renown system, so I wouldn't be surprised if the renown system with its ease of leveling for larger guilds has skewed the average guild size larger since then). Yet just about every aspect of the renown system rewards people more for larger guild sizes, directly contradicting their stated position.

Until Turbine makes their position clear on what their updated vision is for the renown system, it is difficult to offer constructive suggestions. Does Turbine still intend for the higher guild levels to be difficult to reach, or are the higher guild levels only meant as a "matter of time" sort of thing (such as leveling epic destinies)? Does Turbine still intend for an upkeep system (i.e. renown decay or something else) to guilds? If so, what factors contribute to it? How does Turbine plan to address the large discrepancy between their stated "not trying to encourage any particular guild size" position and the actual game mechanics which provably encourage a particular guild size? What is the analysis that Turbine is doing to illuminate their design considerations for the renown system? Once Turbine makes their position clear, it becomes a lot easier for players to offer solutions.

I am trying to come up with a model - a simple efficient formula that makes sense for the greatest number of players and play styles.
...

renown decay = number of guild accounts that log in during 24 hour decay window multiplied by static number (which is determined by renown typical player generates in a typical day * 25%).

At an abstract level, that's what the original renown system essentially was. Renown decay for the earlier levels was very small, and it's the earlier levels where you got most of the in-game benefits. This allowed casual members to still get most of the benefits of the system -- because you didn't have to work very hard to maintain a guild at the lower levels.

As a guild leveled up, renown decay got progressively harsher, while the benefits didn't get better by very much. And some of the higher-level benefits are really just conveniences more than anything, such as a planescaller so that you can go to Amrath directly from the airship rather than having to run through the Twelve Tower.

For example, at level 50, the decay multiplier was 94. So if each member were willing to get 2 heroic deeds per day, then they could get the following benefits:

* +2 to attack (from training dummy) and +2 to damage (from hobgoblin)
* 10% healing amp (House J healer)
* +1 luck bonus to skills (House P entertainer)
* +1 to saves, +1 to attack, +1 to natural armor (from kobold), though I'm not sure which of them are stacking nowadays
* +1 stat (str, dex, con, int, wis, cha) shrines
* resist 20 to element (acid, cold, electric, fire, sonic) shrines
* +2% XP shrine
* Level 2 navigator
* Tiny, small, and medium guild augment slots
* Altar of Invasion
* Level 50 airship
* Additional benefits such as discount hireling contracts, mail, etc. (takes too long to list)

Now if the guild were willing to work a lot harder, to 350 (so 3.73x as hard compared to with level 50), then it could also get at level 63:

* +2 instead of +1 to stat shrines
* resist 30 instead of resist 20 to element shrines
* +3% instead of +2% XP shrine
* Altar of Subjugation
* Level 55 airship for more slots to have more benefits be used simultaneously

Now if the guild were willing to work over 5 times harder, to about 540 (so 5.76x as hard as level 50 or 1.54x as hard as level 63), then it would get:

* large guild augment slots (in additional to tiny/small/medium)
* Twelve planescaller (can teleport directly to Amrath without running through Twelve)
* Altar of Devastation

Now if the guild were willing to work over 10 times harder than at level 50, to about 986 (so 10.5x as hard as level 50 or 1.82x as hard as level 70), then it would get in addition:

* Level 3 navigator instead of level 2 navigator
* +4% instead of +3% XP shrine
* Altar of Epic Rituals
* Level 80 instead of level 55 airship for additional slots

If the guild gets to 1474, or 15.7x more than level 50 (or 1.50x more than level 80), then it would also get:

* Level 85 instead of level 80 airship for additional slots

While 2 heroic deeds from each member would've sufficed for level 50, at this point we're at 30 heroic deeds per member each day.

Now, going higher, level 93 requires 2534 or 27x what's needed for level 50, and if a guild could reach this, it would get:

* +5% instead of +4% XP shrine

And of course, level 100, which requires 3375. For working 36x harder than what's required at level 50, the guild gets:

* No in-game benefits (just a server-wide announcement)

So once a guild reaches the mid-high levels, each level gets progressively harder and harder, yet the tangible in-game benefits are few and far in between and not really worth that much compared to what the guild gets early on. It's mostly conveniences such as the Altars (which just mean that you don't have to do Shroud to craft green steel items) and so forth.

Hence from a game mechanics perspective, leveling up beyond a certain point isn't really worth all that much -- a few time-savers basically.

The part that kept this in check was renown decay -- that a certain amount of renown is deducted from the guild on a daily basis. Because a larger guild had more members who could gain renown (and who were using the benefits), renown decay increased with the number of players, so that it would be a measure of the average renown activity of each member in the guild. This is what made the system relatively "size-neutral" (at least once at the mid-high levels, since the total renown needed to reach each level didn't scale by guild size -- so it was a lot harder for smaller guilds to advance to those levels), and its logic should be intuitively clear, at least to most people. This increase was purely linear, so it does not penalize larger guilds more heavily, contrary to the claims being made in this thread. Rather, all guilds, large and small, had their renown decay increase by 1 amount (given above in the examples by level) for each member in the guild.

Now guilds have accounts that don't frequently log on, or sometimes, have left the game. Since these accounts aren't logging in, they're obviously also not gaining renown -- but if they were included for decay (or to determine guild size bonus), it would penalize guilds that wanted to leave old timers in the roster. Also, there are some possible loopholes/exploits possible if members left and rejoined the guild quickly. So the game goes by the modified guild size, which is:

total number of accounts - inactive accounts + recently departed accounts

The guild screen tab says "Active accounts" for this first field but that's incorrect, it's actually all accounts within the guild, both active and inactive. Inactive accounts are if no characters in the guild on that account has logged in within the past 30 days. Recently departed accounts are if the account left the guild within the past 14 days (or may be 15, I forgot).

Anyway, so the decay formula was:

(10 + modified guild size) * (level-based multiplier)

As you can see, it's very similar to the formula you came up with. The modified guild size takes into account inactive accounts (although by Turbine's definition it's last 30 days, rather than the 24 hours in yours) and there's an additional 10 accounts on top of it, so that a 10-account guild gets the decay of 20 accounts (so each member would have to work twice as hard relative to the level-based multiplier) while a 200-account guild gets the decay of 210 accounts (so each member would only have to work 5% harder than the level-based multiplier), which penalizes small guilds more than large guilds, as I mentioned above.

Also, rather than a static amount based on the "typical renown player", the decay is multiplier by an amount based on the guild's level, which is used to determine what benefits each member of the guild has access to. Thus, more active guilds that could maintain higher guild levels could access better benefits, but at the cost of getting more renown to keep those higher guild levels. Because the decay was really high at the higher levels but low at the low-mid levels, it meant that a high-level guild could lose its renown relatively quickly if players stopped being active, but guilds at the lower levels would suffer attrition very slowly -- in other words, make it hard for higher-level guilds to keep their level, but easy for lower-level guilds to keep theirs. So instead of your proposal that renown decay is low on a low renown-gaining day and high on a very active day, the original system was that renown decay is low when the guild generally gains less renown per member (i.e. lower-level), while high if the guild generally gains more renown per member (i.e. higher-level). So it was sort of the same except averaged over longer periods of time.

So your proposed formula is actually fairly similar to the original system in terms of structure. However, Turbine changed the formula so that all guilds count as 10 accounts now, in terms of decay (all guilds used to count as at least 10 in the original system). So a 600 account guild can have 600 members adding the renown total, and 600 members using the ship's benefits, but only "paying" for it renown-wise as if it had 10 accounts. Similarly, a 60-account guild can only have 60 members contribute toward their renown total and only 60 members are using the ship's benefits, but they're paying for the exact same total, meaning each members has to work 10x more proportionally to keep the same guild level.

Because this makes it so easy for larger guilds to just overwhelm the system, any formula you propose where the cost increases with more members (because the gain also increases with more members) is going to be met with strong resistance on the forums, with all sorts of nonsensical rhetoric -- even if it's common sense for more people getting benefits and able to contribute to a system to mean that there's a higher total cost with it (though the proportional cost stays the same). Most of the rhetoric will elide over this fundamental ("total" versus "proportional") distinction. Also, to a certain extent, you should get used to the resistance, since they actively trolled anyone who disagreed (and rarely dealt with the actual substance of what people were saying) for nearly half a year, until most of the people gave up and stopped replying. At that point they said "See? Everyone agrees with us!" to get the change to renown decay made so that it no longer increased with the number of accounts (again, even though renown gain and guild benefit usage still increased with more accounts). Part and parcel of this forum.

Why make this so work-centric? I mean, I started playing DDO to have fun.
When I started you could not buy extra character slots and minimum level was 10. So I opened a second acct.
I now have 3 VIP accounts and one f2p that I never used (DDO gave me two f2p accts when they started the whole f2p thing, I converted one to VIP), and a total of 58 characters (I know, get a life, in my defense 20 of them are mules, wait... that doesn't really support my cause at all, I do need to get a life).
But seriously, I started my guild on Sarlona back when I started playing. At one time, before there were guild levels, the Crypt O Knights were a fairly large guild. We are much smaller now, and when DDO started the whole 'guild level' thing, we only had 3 active accounts. We are up to level 45, with 14 accounts (3 are mine) and slowly getting up there. But, looking at an earlier reply, that showed the total daily decay by guild level, I can't realistically see how we are ever going to be a high level guild.
I know I joked about getting a life earlier, but I work a full time job, 60+ hours a week, as do most of the people in my guild. It seems to me that at higher levels, with decay in the tens of thousands per day, only people who literally have no life, and spend all day, every day, doing nothing but playing DDO will ever benefit from this.
Guys, this is a game, meant for enjoyment and recreation by the very definition of the word game. Can we not simplify this a little bit.

It really comes down to the "more effort = more reward" property of most games and incentive systems -- that if you put more effort into something, you'll get more reward out of it. For example, epic gear is only available to people who do epic quests, and not people who are stuck in Korthos, because epic quests are supposed to be the hardest content in the game.

Realistically a game will need to have something difficult to keep the players that have progressed through the game interested in it. For the renown system, it was that a higher amount of activity was needed to maintain the higher guild levels. However, renown is somewhat different than many other incentive systems in this game because it's not restricted to your character level. You can gain renown at any level (in fact some of the highest renown-earners in our guild are major TR'ers, since going through the lower levels quickly will oftentimes yield more renown than going through the high-level quests and raids). So you can play at any level you like for renown.

Also, the way the system works, there's nothing too particularly great at the higher levels (other than a bigger guild level number), so at level 45 you're already getting a lot of the good benefits out of it (although I consider level 63 to be when a guild is pretty much "set" because it'll already have all the +2 stat and resist shrines by then, as well as a 3% XP shrine). However, to continue leveling, the problem for you isn't really renown decay. It's simply that your guild needs to accrue so much total renown to get anywhere. Because as a smaller guild you'll progress so slowly, I wouldn't even worry about when you eventually hit your final level -- realistically you'll likely never reach it and you'll have moved on to other games (which will likely be using holographic interfaces) by then.

At the current rate your guild has been going for the past 3 months, you'll reach level 50 around July 6, 2013. Even if renown decay were exactly 0, it would still take you until around June 20, 2013 to reach level 50. It's barely more than a two-week difference after more than four months.

Now, imagine if the guild were 10 times bigger, but everyone were just as active as the average member in your guild. In other words, a guild with 110 accounts but with members as active as members in your guild, busy lives and all. This imaginary guild would reach level 50 on April 1, 2013, a bit over a month from now. By the time you hit level 50 on July 6, it would already be level 58. Even with decay at 0, your guild at its current rate wouldn't reach level 60 until around May 24, 2014, over a year from now, while this imaginary guild, even with decay at the original formula (so counting as 110 accounts for decay rather than the current "every guild counts as 10 accounts even if they have 600 members gaining renown" decay formula), would reach level 60 on Nov 12, 2013. So they'd reach it in 58% of the time, even when I stack the deck in your favor by setting your decay to 0 and this imaginary guild's decay to the original formula prior to the change. And remember, this is with members as active as yourselves, under the original system which the large guilds were complaining was so unfair for them.

Turbine's stated position is that they don't want to encourage any particular guild size, but in reality, the renown system heavily rewards guilds for simply being large, even if it means you lose the close-knit individual atmosphere that you and most other players prefer. The recent change to renown decay just meant that the system rewards larger guilds even more, even though they already had huge advantages from renown gain (which is why your guild levels so relatively slowly). Note that no one ever bothers to do any of the analysis to try to refute this. You would think that with over 2000 posts in this thread, someone would have pointed out how the renown system is making it more advantageous for a guild to be small, if that were ever the case. Instead a lot of the arguments put forth are ad hominem attacks and fallacious logic without ever dealing with the substance of what they're saying, even though Turbine has already warned against this behavior.

Since Turbine has shown no sign of changing the system any time soon, your options are basically to 1) find ways to make your guild super active 2) mass recruit and let the new members do the work of leveling your guild up even if it alters the culture of your guild 3) do without the additional benefits from leveling up. Even if Turbine removes renown decay completely, it won't make much of a difference to your guild; as much as we've been discussing renown decay (because it was what was changed recently), for the vast majority of guilds such as yours the issue is with renown gain not decay.

In the meantime I will say that it is possible to level up even with few members, just that it takes a lot of effort. Members in Over Raided are generally married with full-time jobs and some have kids, and yet we've been able to make it work in the 0-3 hours of free time that we have each night. The difference is that we've been one of the most active guilds in the game because we have high standards for playing ability (so that we can maximize our use of our limited play time). It is certainly a difficult path though, so if that's not it for you and your guild, well, go big or do without, is basically what the system is set up to be, both past and present.

[blerkington]

snip

Hi,

Great contribution to this thread.

Thank you, Vanshilar.

[Glenalth]

another awesome post

I really like the concept of "active" being based on having stepped into a quest. That combined with reducing the one month timer a bit would solve quite a few of the issues brought up in this ridiculously long thread.

[UurlockYgmeov]

Vanshilar props.

Glad someone understood the math and intention behind my 'simple' formula. I don't give up that easy. Might become frustrated - but try creating a forecasting model for the inventory needs of a cruise ship.... I am used to frustrated.

[Chaos000]

Adding any marginally contributing player helps a larger guild. Even if the player is online for a zerg only favor run. Since the large guild does not loose any guild renown bonus, anything that brings in marginal renown helps. Fake accounts may help on the jump points to even less decay - e.g. a 299 members guild might want to get the max reduction at 300 members...

When I asked about fake accounts it's accounts adding to the total number of the guild but NOT used to gain any renown. It is a non-contributing entity to increase the size of the guild.

Adding a 0 renown gaining account to a 299 member guild nets 0 benefit to the 299. If among the 299, 200 only log in to say hi and gain 0 renown, 99 members are dealing with an increased decay for each account not marginally contributing.

[Chaos000]

And it's not hard to see why. A guild's renown potential is always increasing by size, while the upkeep (renown decay) is fixed regardless of guild size, so it's easier to maintain a level (as well as level up) the bigger the guild is. It's already been shown elsewhere the math for why; this is just the empirical data backing up that math.

Inactive accounts are not considered in Turbine's calculations in the guild system, whether in terms of renown gain or renown decay. So they're effectively non-entities here. Similarly, since they don't contribute renown, they don't really affect a guild's renown earning potential. Whether a guild should be considered a 100-account guild with 30 people contributing 0 and having 0 potential (since they're inactive), or a 80-account guild where 10 members don't log in at all, is just semantics but don't really affect the analysis. Or if you prefer, you can call it just looking at the active accounts -- the earning potential of active accounts.

If an account countributing 0 is counted as active even if they don't really affect a guild's renown earning potential, it does affect the analysis.

Inactive accounts were not considered under the old system, in the new system because decay is fixed... an active account contributing 0 and an inactive account contributing 0 contribute the same in terms of a guild's earning potential.

Larger guilds in comparison to smaller guilds have a higher number of inactive accounts. It can be reasonably concluded that increased size will eventually result in naturally decreased activity.

A guild's renown potential increasing by size does not guarantee increase in renown earned. Therefore if decay IS to scale, it should scale based on something other than size. Scaling decay on "actual renown earned" would be a more fair measurement to use as (larger) guilds of high renown potential and only 1% of guilds over very low renown potential are ever likely to hit it.

[Tshober]

Blatant falsehood. I discussed the original system -- where 1 additional member meant 1 additional amount of decay (which depended on the guild's level). That member would contribute the same amount of additional decay regardless of if he were in a 30-account guild or a 300-account guild, if they had the same guild level. Nowhere do I say that a member should cost more to a large guild than a guild of any other size.

No, you did not say a member should cost more and I never claimed you did. You did say (mathematically) that the renown earned by each member of a large guild should count less toward leveling than the renown earned by each member of a smaller guild. That is because you claim that every comparison of guild activity should not actually compare the renown the guilds earn but rather compare the average renown that the members of the guild earn. This is not a proper way to logically compare guilds on renown. Doing the comparison your way, by player averages, means that the renown earned by each member of a 300 member guild counts 30 times less than the renown earned by each member of a 10 member guild. Your method completely ignores the fact that the 300 member guild actually earned 30 times the amount of renown that the 10 member guild earned in the same time period. You seek to hide that reality by averaging it away. But the 300 member guild actually looted 30 times as much renown. They did more work to earn it, 30 times as many player-hours spent looting renown. You can try to hide it by averaging it away but that does not make it untrue.

Fundamentally we are discussing a guild leveling system. We should be comparing guilds, not comparing player averages.

[UurlockYgmeov]

No, you did not say a member should cost more and I never claimed you did. You did say (mathematically) that the renown earned by each member of a large guild should count less toward leveling than the renown earned by each member of a smaller guild. That is because you claim that every comparison of guild activity should not actually compare the renown the guilds earn but rather compare the average renown that the members of the guild earn. This is not a proper way to logically compare guilds on renown. Doing the comparison your way, by player averages, means that the renown earned by each member of a 300 member guild counts 30 times less than the renown earned by each member of a 10 member guild. Your method completely ignores the fact that the 300 member guild actually earned 30 times the amount of renown that the 10 member guild earned in the same time period. You seek to hide that reality by averaging it away. But the 300 member guild actually looted 30 times as much renown. They did more work to earn it, 30 times as many player-hours spent looting renown. You can try to hide it by averaging it away but that does not make it untrue.

Fundamentally we are discussing a guild leveling system. We should be comparing guilds, not comparing player averages.

nope. this is about decay not leveling. moot post.

[Tshober]

nope. this is about decay not leveling. moot post.

You might want to go re-read the very first post in this thread. The one where the devs asked for input on "the guild renown system".

[UurlockYgmeov]

You might want to go re-read the very first post in this thread. The one where the devs asked for input on "the guild renown system".

more dust.

[Chaos000]

It as usual depends on the server and exact numbers will be available inside Turbine, but there seems to be a majority of players running in small to medium sized guilds. This is more felt than proven, except for Wayfinder, where there simply are no really big guilds.

I believe the claim was that 90% of guilds can be small guilds. Using that as an indication of server population I find to be misleading. For example: 50 solo guilds can outnumber a single guild of 500...

The winners were both the large and big guilds and their casual players. Casual players from smaller guilds (those with renown bonus, that is) still did not get any improvements and are still a liability for their guilds. Even for medium guilds with still high decay a casual player might be more of a liability than an asset if only the game mechanics would count.

Bottom line is that casual players decreases the decay burden instead of increasing the decay burden. Removing a casual player does not decrease the amount of decay a guild faces.

However I do agree that measures should be in place to help casual players remain beneficial even in smaller guilds. If a player who has not gained renown since the last decay hit gain "inactive" status then it will allow small and medium guilds to gain their guild size bonus faster without removing less active players.

They after time get a higher bonus. So booting casuals might result in higher bonus = more renown gained by those actively contributing. So as long as there are six warm bodies (max bonus) inside the guild, it might be beneficial not to add or even to boot casuals in order to grow. Regarding the cap/minimum guild size thing I am fully of your opinion - this might be highly beneficial.

This is why I believe if decay and bonuses ARE increased they should NOT be tied to a guild's size.

Adjust decay based on total renown gained per week. (only large casual guilds and small hyper active guilds will get a bump in decay)

Adjust bonuses based on inability to exceed decay. (casual guilds of varying sizes and moderately active small guilds will benefit)

[UurlockYgmeov]

This is why I believe if decay and bonuses ARE increased they should NOT be tied to a guild's size.

Adjust decay based on total renown gained per week. (only large casual guilds and small hyper active guilds will get a bump in decay)

Adjust bonuses based on inability to exceed decay. (casual guilds of varying sizes and moderately active small guilds will benefit)

Well - total renown gained per week is based upon number of members of a guild. The more members - general rule is more renown. A guild with 300 members and 200 are just mail.chat (which I find extremely hard to believe) still has 100 members generating renown as compared to a small membership guild that even with a more believable ratio of 30 total members with 10 are mail.chat and 20 earning renown.... you just proved our point. Renown decay should be tied to the number of members.

Decay should be a set amount - based upon members (active in 24 hour period) and guild level. Not every guild should be 100 and not every guild should be at the level they are already.

[Tshober]

Decay should be a set amount - based upon members (active in 24 hour period) and guild level. Not every guild should be 100 and not every guild should be at the level they are already.

Decay should be a set amount, and that amount should be zero. All guilds should be able to eventually reach level 100. If you want to give guilds more to work on after that then raise the max level greatly but give only "bragging rights" rewards for achievement beyond level 100. (ie. announcements, leader boards, cosmetics, temp buffs etc. Nothing that gives an advantage in the game permanently or endlessly repeatably.) All guilds should be able to advance and the guilds that are the most active, those that earn the most total renown per day, should advance the fastest.

[UurlockYgmeov]

Decay should be a set amount, and that amount should be zero. All guilds should be able to eventually reach level 100. If you want to give guilds more to work on after that then raise the max level greatly but give only "bragging rights" rewards for achievement beyond level 100. (ie. announcements, leader boards, cosmetics, temp buffs etc. Nothing that gives an advantage in the game permanently or endlessly repeatably.) All guilds should be able to advance and the guilds that are the most active, those that earn the most total renown per day, should advance the fastest.

even more phickuntiatus. aka as not going to happen. Dev's have clearly stated that that is off the table. So kindly stop beating a dead kobold. It's family would really appreciate.

[Tshober]

even more phickuntiatus. aka as not going to happen. Dev's have clearly stated that that is off the table. So kindly stop beating a dead kobold. It's family would really appreciate.

Where did they state that? Let's see a remotely recent link (one that's newer than the start of this thread please) to where they said any such thing.


Here's the last dev post I saw in this thread. It makes no mention of anything being "off the table".

This is not forgotten. We are still considering the changes so far and intend further changes as we don't necessarily consider that everything perfect, but don't have specifics to share at this time. Sorry there isn't greater detail to share right now!

[UurlockYgmeov]

Where did they state that? Let's see a remotely recent link to where they said any such thing.

atomized carbon particulates. jeez - kindly stop beating the kobold - what will the neighbor's think? kobold remembers the waterworks!

Kobold Comment


Decay exists. Decay is not up for an existential debate.