Guild Renown Changes

[Charononus]

I'm sure you meant decay burden, and not renown burden, since renown is good and helps you level up and decay is, well, a burden. I am also hopeful that the devs will see that it would be more fair to extend the decay relief they have already given to guilds with more than 10 players to the small guilds that have not received any decay relief yet at all. Or, better yet, just remove the burden (decay) entirely for all guilds regardless of size or play-style.

Agreed with this, reducing the formula for account size so that tiny guilds get a benefit as well as everyone else is probably a good idea, and changing the ransack formula so it only takes effect on the second level gained or something like that would be a good thing. The other stuff in this thread especially lately is pretty badly thought out. Of course removing it and the small guild size bonus all together would be great then it'll just be a flat number everyone needs to earn and you'll be 100 regardless of size.

[UurlockYgmeov]

My posts are as neutral as can be. I try to see the whole picture - from all points of view; including the game and the company's; I am passionate in this belief. With that said decay needs teeth, and needs to be allocated both on number of members earning renown and size of guild.

The previous system could hit a level 100 guild with 1000 members with nearly 4 million decay a day - this was beyond unfair and unbelievable because that works out to 3,375 decay per member per day.

However, now that same guild is only being assigned 67.5 (at most) decay per member per day. This is a meaningless trivial amount.

At the same time a level 100 guild with 100 members is being assigned 10x as much decay (at most) per member. Not fair. The fewer members you have the more of an impact decay has on your guild. This was exactly the point the temporary patch was supposed to fix.

Now many say that the solution is to just add more members. This is not a solution - rather a reversal of a broken paradigm. Instead of fewer member needed to succeed, now it is more. Same broken paradigm.

I can understand why large guilds are fighting so hard to keep the current system, it is severely biased towards having more members, which many guilds do not want to have for many valid reasons, least of which is guild culture.

The system should be fair to all different styles of guilds. A one-thousand member guild should have the same ability to reach level 100 as a one person or ten person guild. This does not mean that any guild is receiving a hand out - or is guaranteed to achieve level 100; that capability is determined by time and activity level.

When we say that the size of a guild should not affect or bias the decay system that is not the same as saying that the decay system needs to account for the size of a guild. Currently the system is biased, just differently than it was before the change. So a biased system that was broken before the change is still just as broken after the change in spite of opinions expressed by others in this forum. In order to remove bias we must include the number of active accounts in the decay formula. This is fair because it eliminates the size bias completely.

The system has been broken even more with the temporary change because it has pulled all the teeth of decay making it lacking genuine force or effectiveness, which is the opposite extreme of the system prior to the change; previously the system was broken because it had too many teeth.

Further reduction of decay only makes it essentially meaningless for all involved. So I cannot believe that Turbine would do such a thing.

Now my opinions are very controversial. Many guilds are enjoying a 'golden age' of progressing levels and record membership levels. I applaud them for min-maxing and taking advantage of the system. However all golden ages come to an end and how this one ends can be up to all of us, if we can find a moderate middle ground that retains meaning for decay and removes bias (which removes all pressure to boot because of size).

Either we can try to find a balanced system that is fair and meaningful for both the players and the game; or we can sit back and watch as Turbine does what it will; which probably won't be very pleasant for anyone. I believe we can find a solution that doesn't end the golden age of guilds yet, rather extends it indefinitely into a long lasting silver age, a new renaissance and age of enlightenment for guilds.

We need to find a solution that finds an unbiased way to assign decay. What has been proposed is as close as we have come so far. It is not a perfect solution; but leaps and bounds further than anything else so far. The proposed system does include guilds size in its equation - to remove bias; rather than to inadvertently create or perpetuate bias.

The proposed system eliminates the pressure to boot players solely on activity levels by only counting accounts who generate renown, one cannot ever fully eliminate players being booted because of activity levels without infringing upon a guilds right to run itself as it sees fit (within the realms of the EULA).

And while the proposed system does increase the overall amount of decay for some guilds, the change is not unreasonable and is up to a 93% reduction in decay versus the previous system. The most decay it will see is 250 per member who has earned renown in the last 24 hours. This increase in decay will also be assigned to all guild which previously didn't have decay - those that are level 25 and under, because a guild that is dysfunctional should atrophy and decline due to neglect, while those guilds that are functional and have good leadership should prosper and succeed. This proposal supports both of those statement and fundamental core concepts equally.

At the same time what is called dysfunctional and lacking proper leadership should be very carefully informally defined to allow for all different styles of play. A guild filled with only weekend warriors who's members only play one or two days a week is as functional as a guild that has members playing at the same time almost everyday. A dysfunctional guild is one where the guild does not fulfill its stated purpose. If its stated purpose is to support in-game role playing, and it does that - it is functioning as it is intended. If the guild is there to maximize the renown gain through min-maxing the rules and it does that, then it is also functional. Only a guild itself (its members) can determine if a guild has proper leadership and is functional. If the members aren't satisfied they can try to enact change through many ways including leaving the guild.

The decay system has to support this through an unbiased system that has meaning. The proposal does just that through simple to effect minor changes to the code base that have meaning and allow for an unbiased system; removing bias toward large or small guilds. Some of the included suggestions in the proposal are there to help guild leadership and prospective members make informed choices about which guild to join, and which members will best fit into the guild (if the guild has a stated preference). Some allow for players to better communicate and some just are suggestions that have come up in this thread; but all pertain to improving the overall guild experience.

These suggestions are kept with the proposal in a separate section because they will be read and read in context in this thread. This does not mean that they are key to the proposals success, rather that they are there because they should help the guild experience for all — hopefully drawing in new members and consolidating that being in a guild is a good thing; maybe even helping to heal the wounds caused by the last and current decay system.

The proposed changes are minor edits to the existing code - essentially changing several static variables. This is the simplest way to effect a unbiased and fair change that has positive meaning to the players and the game alike.

Again, this isn't popular because of many reasons, and I understand that. I don't like decay either but I respect its purpose and intention in the game. All personal feelings aside, this is currently the most fair unbiased solution being presented other than eliminating decay altogether, which is not very likely to happen.

In closing - while some maintain that I am pushing this proposal to benefit the guild I belong to in game, or perhaps a friend's guild; that is utterly untrue. I personally am friends with many guilds in game, from several small and tiny guilds, to some of the largest, highest level guilds in the game. I want them all to succeed, with their success based on activity and not based upon a biased system.

The guild I belong to would benefit only slightly from the proposed changes. The guild's decay would go down by maybe 500 to 1000 decay a day, a trivial amount. Furthermore the guild I belong to is very open, and is formed on the idea that we like very limited structure, but is formed from mature adult professionals who respect one another, who may or may not be active from one week to the next, and may or may not be very social from one moment to the next. We respect others and only ask to be respected upon our own merits. We are evolving and like many other guilds, that evolution will be primarily based upon the bias of the renown system. We are helpful, and friendly, and try to promote the game as much as we can. We aren't perfect, and don't try to be. We just are a guild.

Finally as a general statement of my intent in this thread: I am merely trying to being faithful to the core concepts of the game which we all love; and to that end I firmly believe that without meaning there is no point.

Have a lovely St Patrick's Day! For those partaking in alcohol, please be responsible for your and others sake.

[Charononus]

The point of the guild change was not to make it easier on current players but to stop future casual players from leaving the game ( thus not spending money) because the guild structure is such that they arent welcome. Your system which you claim removes the reason to boot does not. Why? Because even if the casuals decrease is small it's still there and they will be booted. Because of this your proposal hurts turbines bottom line, and has as much chance of happening as me being named supreme emperor of the world.

[Gremmlynn]

The point of the guild change was not to make it easier on current players but to stop future casual players from leaving the game ( thus not spending money) because the guild structure is such that they arent welcome. Your system which you claim removes the reason to boot does not. Why? Because even if the casuals decrease is small it's still there and they will be booted. Because of this your proposal hurts turbines bottom line, and has as much chance of happening as me being named supreme emperor of the world.

This seems to be the point of view he missed. It's not a fair system they want, nor would I if I were in their shoes. It's a system that any guild can succeed at, but those that help the company out will almost certainly succeed at. Which is where we're at.

A proposal to tweak it to give smaller guilds some relief might have a chance to get some attention. But remaking the system on a premise that the cream rises to the top and the rest go play WoW probably wont.

[Tshober]

The point of the guild change was not to make it easier on current players but to stop future casual players from leaving the game ( thus not spending money) because the guild structure is such that they arent welcome. Your system which you claim removes the reason to boot does not. Why? Because even if the casuals decrease is small it's still there and they will be booted. Because of this your proposal hurts turbines bottom line, and has as much chance of happening as me being named supreme emperor of the world.

Exactly. The current system rewards inclusion and discourages exclusion. The old system, and his proposed system, both reward exclusion and discourage inclusion. The only difference between his proposal and the old system is the magnitude of their badness. Both the old system and his proposal go in the wrong direction. They take us toward more decay, more unfun renown farming to stay in place, and segregation of the player population into net renown earners and net renown losers. Yes, his proposal would have fewer net renown losers than the old system did but they would still be there and they would still be just as unwanted in any guild that wants to level up. And, trust me, every guild wants to level up.

[Charononus]

Exactly. The current system rewards inclusion and discourages exclusion. The old system, and his proposed system, both reward exclusion and discourage inclusion. The only difference between his proposal and the old system is the magnitude of their badness. Both the old system and his proposal go in the wrong direction. They take us toward more decay, more unfun renown farming to stay in place, and segregation of the player population into net renown earners and net renown losers. Yes, his proposal would have fewer net renown losers than the old system did but they would still be there and they would still be just as unwanted in any guild that wants to level up. And, trust me, every guild wants to level up.

Yup and my personal experience is that on weekends you'd see a lot of unguilded people in pugs, now it's become very rare to see unguilded people running around. So I'd say the new system is working. While I don't like tiny guilds I actually support reducing their decay as well by making the new formula that I don't remember not take the size as 10 or whatever it is instead of say 6 that the guild actually has. The other problem I've heard of is the ransack for tiny guilds, modify that so it takes effect only after 2 level increases in a day and I think the problem would be solved.

[Tshober]

While I don't like tiny guilds I actually support reducing their decay as well by making the new formula that I don't remember not take the size as 10 or whatever it is instead of say 6 that the guild actually has. The other problem I've heard of is the ransack for tiny guilds, modify that so it takes effect only after 2 level increases in a day and I think the problem would be solved.

I support both of these suggestions. They help out the smaller guilds that still have the most problems with decay and they do not make any players undesirable simply because they earn less renown than they cost in decay.

[Tychagara]

The point of the guild change was not to make it easier on current players but to stop future casual players from leaving the game ( thus not spending money) because the guild structure is such that they arent welcome. Your system which you claim removes the reason to boot does not. Why? Because even if the casuals decrease is small it's still there and they will be booted. Because of this your proposal hurts turbines bottom line, and has as much chance of happening as me being named supreme emperor of the world.

Actually let's quote the reason:

...
The intent is to address concerns from guilds and guild leaders regarding the impact of optimizing guild size in order to gain or maintain guild levels.
...
This should ease the pressure for guild leaders to “kick” members from the guild to offset daily renown decay rates.

Thanks Tolero! Couldn't have said it better myself!

[UurlockYgmeov]

The point of the guild change was not to make it easier on current players but to stop future casual players from leaving the game ( thus not spending money) because the guild structure is such that they arent welcome. Your system which you claim removes the reason to boot does not. Why? Because even if the casuals decrease is small it's still there and they will be booted. Because of this your proposal hurts turbines bottom line, and has as much chance of happening as me being named supreme emperor of the world.

Bzzzz.... wrong. Actual reason was 'to ease the pressure from guild leaders to 'kick' members from guilds to offset daily renown decay rates.'

And I hereby name you Supreme Emperor of the World. Done.

Late January quote from a Developer:

We're all for new ideas and brainstorming solutions (truly, really, not just tossing buzzwords). This particular idea is problematic, because it promotes kicking players from your guild to reduce decay, which is where we were before and a situation we want to avoid.

We are certainly still considering other changes and have never said that the current changes being tested were considered any kind of final solution. We'd love to have more ideas to consider.

Ideas that are more likely to work out are ones that feel fair, promote playing together with people you like and have fun with, and where the system itself isn't promoting who you play with. We don't want to promote any particular guild size. And we don't want incentives for kicking players you enjoy playing with, or for players who might like to come and hang out or play occasionally to feel like they are hurting their guild or harming their friends in any way. If these goals seem wrong, we're willing to hear ideas on that too. This isn't an exhaustive list, but current thinking is leaning us strongly towards including these goals.

As I have said, hints recently dropped in Lamannia strongly indicate Turbine is actively working on revising the guild system for implementation later this year.

This seems to be the point of view he missed. It's not a fair system they want, nor would I if I were in their shoes. It's a system that any guild can succeed at, but those that help the company out will almost certainly succeed at. Which is where we're at.

A proposal to tweak it to give smaller guilds some relief might have a chance to get some attention. But remaking the system on a premise that the cream rises to the top and the rest go play WoW probably wont.

so to answer your post with your own post....

To put it bluntly, the only way a casual player is going to add a positive contribution to a guild is if the cost of them being there is very low to nil (be this cost in decay, missed bonuses, or any other currency). Their mere presence, whenever life or whim allows it, simply isn't worth being held back for by those who play regularly and generally take the game more seriously.

So, try to help out small guilds and the large guilds simply get small to take advantage of it and the only real losers are the "dead weight" they jettison to do so.

So the only way to truely have casual players be included is to remove the bias completely from the decay system.

[UurlockYgmeov]

...
I'll just comment that devs have posted that this current temporary system is not intended to be final, and that it is not fair for small guilds to wait so long for a new system. This implies that there is an issue for small guilds with the current temporary system, and thus I still hope that the devs will come up with a new system soon, that will relieve the small guilds of their current renown burden.

Please do not think I want it to be harder on large guilds. I do not. I am happy that large guilds get it so easy now. I am even happier that their do not get pressured to change their preferred socializing style due to renown reasons.

EDIT: For an indepth treatment of the subject, with math, statistics and stuff see Vanshilar's posts. They are good reading, and give a lot of insight into the matter at hand.

I just wish that there would be some sort or balance between the guilds, regardless of socializing style - which Turbine has stated (both at the start and more recently) that they intend there to be. And that small guilds do not get pressured to change their preferred socializing style due to renown reasons. It was bad before, and it is bad now.

Thank you for reading. I will now go back to lurking in this thread until the 26th, when another month without any kind of word from Turbine will in all likelyhood have passed.

Agree Vanshilar's posts are very heavy and insightful.

Agree - remove the bias.

Looking forward to your next post on the 26!

[eris2323]

And do we know why " 'to ease the pressure from guild leaders to 'kick' members from guilds to offset daily renown decay rates.'" was the reason?

Because guilds were forced to count members; because if you had 50 members, you had to pay for all 50 members in renown per day.

That caused guild leaders, large and small, to think that perhaps casual players weren't as useful as players who played every day.

So casual players were being removed, or removed themselves.

This created a VERY bad system, which everyone hated.

It penalized new players AND casual players - this started to hurt Turbines bottom line, we think - because they finally fixed the problem.

Going back to the system where every person counts towards decay will bring back the same problem with 'is player a playing more often than player b, and player c is more than b, so we must remove b in favor of c.'

That's a bad system, and many people will not support any move going in that direction.

Even the devs posted that the old system 'promotes kicking players from your guild to reduce decay, which is where we were before and a situation we want to avoid.'

So why do you keep suggesting we keep returning to that broken system?

Not a single person so far is interested in that; your system promotes elitism and harms the social atmosphere of this game.

[UurlockYgmeov]

this started to hurt Turbines bottom line, we think - because they finally fixed the problem.

You mean you guess, and according to Turbine they didn't fix the bias or the problem.

where every person counts towards decay will bring back the same problem with 'is player a playing more often than player b, and player c is more than b, so we must remove b in favor of c.'

Wrong. Only those who earn renown in the last 24 hours are counted toward decay math.

So players do not count on days they don't play and earn renown - so therefore there is no pressure to remove accounts based upon play style.

And when an account does affect decay - it is at most 250 - which is much less than the current system which has as its most 67,000 per account.

[eris2323]

You mean you guess, and according to Turbine they didn't fix the bias or the problem.



Wrong. Only those who earn renown in the last 24 hours are counted toward decay math.

So players do not count on days they don't play and earn renown - so therefore there is no pressure to remove accounts based upon play style.

And when an account does affect decay - it is at most 250 - which is much less than the current system which has as its most 67,000 per account.

"We think" "We guess" "We surmise" insert whatever word you want, if you really want to be picky.

I'm not interested in your system, it counts players, I don't care what kind of extra fancy math you have in there, it is not a system I am at all interested, nor is anyone else. It penalizes people based on number of people in the guild, and that system is bad.

Your proposal has been shot down multiple times; multiple people - no one wants that kind of system.

I'm here to have fun with my friends, not play stupid renown-counting games, and trying to figure out who is playing 10 adventures per day, and who is playing 1 character per day, and your system, no matter how much you are blinded by it, will return us to that madness, and I will not ever support this madness.

[Tychagara]

"Your proposal has been shot down multiple times; multiple people - no one wants that kind of system.

Many support Uurlock - we just don't spend our lives on the forum.

[eris2323]

Many support Uurlock - we just don't spend our lives on the forum.

And many support this current system as well, including hundreds of my guild. I guess we'll have to count you as the sole supporter. We win!

I don't spend my life on the forum either... for instance, none of my replies consist of

47 lines, 1598 words, 8892 characters, all to try to pound my ideas into peoples heads.

[eris2323]

Agree Vanshilar's posts are very heavy and insightful.

Actually, Vanshilar has the same problem you do - you take data from myddo and try to pass it off as 'the final picture' - neither of you have access to correct data (myddo is broken, doncha know), nor to turbine generated real stats.

You do both like to get real wordy based on guesstimates from a broken data source though!

[UurlockYgmeov]

You mean you guess, and according to Turbine they didn't fix the bias or the problem.

Wrong. Only those who earn renown in the last 24 hours are counted toward decay math.

So players do not count on days they don't play and earn renown - so therefore there is no pressure to remove accounts based upon play style.

And when an account does affect decay - it is at most 250 - which is much less than the current system which has as its most 67,000 per account.

penalizes people based on number of people in the guild, and that system is bad.

Your proposal has been shot down multiple times; multiple people - no one wants that kind of system.
...
I will not ever support this madness.

It is funny IMHO how you keep forgetting (conveniently) the part of the system and quotes that are inconvenient truths for you.

You are correct - any system that has bias because of guild size is bad. It was bad before the temporary change, and still is bad now. Remove the bias and solve that part of the issue.

[eris2323]

It is funny IMHO how you keep forgetting (conveniently) the part of the system and quotes that are inconvenient truths for you.

You are correct - any system that has bias because of guild size is bad. It was bad before the temporary change, and still is bad now. Remove the bias and solve that part of the issue.

So, why not suggest something that DOESN'T harm the vast majority of large guilds in favor of the TINY guilds of 10 players or less? Why are they any more important than the 100+ real people I have in my large guild?

I'm never going to agree to a system that harms the large guilds all in favor of guilds that are less than 10 players.

Ever.

That's elitism again, and thats the way it used to be. Not going to support it. Ever.

[UurlockYgmeov]

Not going to support it. Ever.

Noted.

[eris2323]

It seems to me, that they can remove the problem immediate by doing two things:

1) Okay, make all guilds a modified guild size of 1, because apparently 10 is too much for tiny guilds.

2) Remove all small guild bonii. Everything.

Everyone is on the same level, problem solved, only 1 variable to change, the devs can then be re-assigned to bug-fixes!

Everyone wins!