Guild Renown Changes

[Qezuzu]

The only problem I see with this change is that high guild levels won't be as hard to achieve, and can be achieved in a shorter amount of time; which isn't all that major a problem in my opinion, because guild level is a trivial indicator of "how much me and my friends play each day". Some of the best players I know are in small, low-level guilds.

As a compromise, guilds could get "stars", which would be like wings for a TRed toon; they'd just be on either side of a guild name as it appears above a player. It would be awarded for having a certain rate of renown per player per time period. Because I do know some people value the prestige that a guild level brings to them, and a guild that can get high levels quickly just by having a large number of players would take away a part of that away.

[theslimshady]

look the feedback imo should be based on your guild not what could happen and my guess is that that would be gains to renown for some larger for others and the idea seems to be great for all established guilds of all sizes so again thank you ddo this is the first mabar festival we dont have to fear bleeding out a level to enjoy

[Postumus]

I am not trying to argue with you Doc.

I am not alone in thinking it is a competition. There are plenty more that think/feel this way.

A

I see your perspective. It's probably the only somewhat reasonable argument I've seen against reducing guild decay for everyone.


I disagree with you that there are 'plenty more' that view guild levels as a competition. Or, at the very least, 'plenty more' is merely a drop in the bucket in terms of the percentage of total guilds that exist in this game.

I think that the 'competition' is in name only and as such it is essentially pointless. As other posters have noted there isn't really any difference between a L85 guild and a L100 guild.

[mikarddo]

Well, not quite everything. Your sugggestion would still penalize guilds of social players. Like role-players who spend the majority of their online time doing activities that garner little renown.

Yes, that can and should be helped by setting a reasonable time limit after which there is no penalty for kicking inactives. Say 3 months. At that point you can be pretty sure they are unlikely to return and penalizing a guild for kicking them at that point is just silly.

Guilds with extremely active players in terms of logging on every day would gain nothing in the system I propose that is true. But then the idea was to help the problems for casuals not the hyper active which need no help in the first place. So, I certainly maintain that the system I suggest is far superior to the absurd one being tested now.

As for the second part of your post you misread what I wrote (namely that it cannot be helped that guilds near the cap retain a reason to kick inactives - renown or not) but even so I do agree that removing someone that has not been logged in for 3 months straight should not cost anything. On the other hand removing anyone that still logs in should probably cost 100% of the renown they have gained if the system in testing is implemented for good as each member no longer causes decay. Otherwise there is no penalty to a guild that takes in lots of people to milk for renown only to kick them out when the guild level is high enough for the leaders liking.

Thus I restate the suggestion. Make only those that logged in during the past 24 (or 48) hours count when decay is calculated and remove the lower bound of 20 - otherwise keep the current system (not the one in testing).

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

[Sonofmoradin]

if they want to fix renown system, they should also add double time buffs on achieving 100 level. There should be some real incentive to this system.

In order for that to happen, the system must be challenging and fair. All guilds regardless size, should have an even ground - fair game.

[Dekh]

My wife only gets to play 2-3 days, consequently there are weeks were she likely causes more decay than she pulls renown. You basically accuse her of being a low quality player because of it. That's not very respectful either, now is it?

The word Quality in this case is determined from :
the time you spend daily on ddo ( so yes she' a low quality player )
the intelligence that you uses ingame (i can not rate cuz i don't know the player)
the ability to maximize the time you spend online in : progress for your characters, progress for your guild levels, progress for your interpersonal relationships ( i can not evaluate)

So summary : I can not say if your wife is a quality player or not, but i can say for sure that she can not ever enter in my guild

[Sonofmoradin]

This system should respect leaders that can decide wether to make a small quality guild and take the small guild bonus, or go for the numbers but sustain penalty. All I am saying is that variance in guild composition and uniqueness should be promoted, exactly like the character building system - you got to choose and make your own toon that will be different, and achieve what style you choose to have.

[Gremmlynn]

The underlined part is why the change did nothing to help small guilds, not any sore point that made it worse. It is unchanged from a system that was bad, That is all.

The bolded part is mathematically false. There is a point that renown intake will not match/overcome decay across many sizes, without a playstyle overhaul. A size range that this change reduces but still does not allow anyone below size 10 to progress any further than before. They are still artificially paused on a treadmill detour.

That simply wasn't the issue the change was made to effect.

Simply put, the system was changed to take away the incentive to kick players from guilds and to give an incentive to invite players to guilds.

While I'll agree that the treadmill issue should also be looked at, from the point of view of the community as a whole, I'd have to say this was a more important issue. Before, how the guild system worked was only an issue for those who play enough for membership in a functional guild to even be an option. This change makes how the guild system works potentially an issue for the entire player base and thus more worth the time for the devs to look at it closer.

[Rapthorn]

Call me confused, but if the levels from 71 to 100 don't mean all that much, then why are we all arguing in the first place?

Under the pre-test system, a large guild could easily achieve level 70. At that level you get what I consider the last really good buffs; the large augment slots, and final shroud alter (although the alter to me is kinda meh). Judging from my own server (Argo), maintaining guild level 70 is not difficult for even the most casual friendly large guilds.

After level 70, is mostly fluff or things totally useless (epic alter). This leaves me to believe that after level 70, the guild levels are more about bragging rights than anything else (making it a competition).

Which only leaves one reason to me why all these large guilds are mad... the xp shrines. Is all of this really just over the xp shrines?! If that is the case, then please Turbine, just let the entitlement crowd get their shrines... lower the min guild level on them so everyone can have all the wonderful shinies. Then return the guild system back to the competition that it was.

[DocBenway]

That simply wasn't the issue the change was made to effect.

Simply put, the system was changed to take away the incentive to kick players from guilds and to give an incentive to invite players to guilds.

While I'll agree that the treadmill issue should also be looked at, from the point of view of the community as a whole, I'd have to say this was a more important issue. Before, how the guild system worked was only an issue for those who play enough for membership in a functional guild to even be an option. This change makes how the guild system works potentially an issue for the entire player base and thus more worth the time for the devs to look at it closer.

That quote was 80 posts ago and in direct reply to someone asking why small guilds made any noise about it. I was clarifying that small guilds were making noise because it did nothing to change their situation. I was specifically stating that this was not making small guilds worse off.

The main treadmill point was the fact that the house would never get built so the analogy was false regarding getting to the same place in more time.

As far as memberships, go another 100 posts back and I say:

...
What is different now? I don't feel pressure from a system to do what I never would and boot friends for math. This is good There is less deterrent to recruit. This is good...

So we are in complete agreement about the main "good thing" about the change.

[Gremmlynn]

This is spot on. This was a problem before, and remains a problem for any guilds that want to take advantage of the small guild renown bonus.

My suggestion, in two parts:

1. You only go from Inactive to Active when you enter a private instance (quest/challenge/wilderness). Running around the Market or chatting while on your guild ship or such does not mark your account as Active. So people who log on to say "Hi!" don't increase the Active account numbers for the guild.

2. You go from Active to Inactive...after 24 hours (or maybe 48). Not 1 month. So people who only play on the weekend don't count against the guild all week long, only for roughly the day(s) they are playing.

I think those changes would have helped alleviate anti-casual-player bias in a way that doesn't massively favor massive guilds.

I agree. But I'm realistic enough to know that if there is a good solution that takes some work to effect and a workable solution that takes simply flipping a switch, Turbine's going to go with the workable solution. It simply isn't cost effective for them to do otherwise.

[gangrilar]

I think the temporary changes that have been made to guild renown are excellent. The pressure on guild leadership to kick folks out of guilds for casual participation is significantly relieved. Moreover, guilds now have an incentive to be more open to recruiting new members. The effects of this change both maintains the enthusiasm of casual players who will have a significantly reduced chance of logging on to find themselves guild-less and increases the welcoming aspect for new players looking for a group of people to run with. I strongly encourage this change be made permanent.

[Gremmlynn]

Maybe....

But, even if I'm talking a different set of guilds the point is still the same -- the best known and respected guilds have earned that by how they treat other players on the server.

I fundamentally disagree with those who are locked in on this "recruit then kick" mind set. I think that the change is geared more to addressing concerns of guilds that felt forced to reduce size because inactive accounts created too much of a drain.

Totally removing guild renown decay would only make the problem of guilds recruiting and kicking a bigger problem. So, some form of decay is necessary.

My personal feeling is that the penalty for kicking accounts should be higher than the 25% loss. That seems a better solution.

Meanwhile, the penalty for voluntarily leaving should be reduced or eliminated.

This directly addresses the concerns of people worried that the "recruit and kick" mind set will bleed over to the changes that have been announced. It also lets people leave guilds without severe impact.

Obviously guilds need to be able to kick people who are really a problem. But, IMO it is a bit of the guild's own problem of poor recruitment and failure to really verify a player when this happens. Doesn't account for every jerk that ever lived or played DDO, but it does apply most of the time I think.

So, I'd be in favor of fixing the "recruit and kick" issue by upping the penalty to 75% or even higher of that character's renown contribution. OTOH, I'd support dropping the voluntary penalty to 0%.

IMO the opportunity to voluntarily leave on "bad" terms and penalize the guild 25% seems petty and a bit childish. But, that's just me. It might make a difference if you could take all the renown with you and auto apply it to a new guild. But, since we don't bank renown and can't earn it unless in a guild, it seems sort of silly to me to put a "mean" reaction choice out there.

Oh well, in any case I think the changes from Turbine are mostly positive here and that is the biggest thing to me. It looks like Turbine heard the community and made a change. I'm having a hard time finding reasons to fault them for that.

Frankly, I could get behind a 100% renown loss for kicking players. If someone is so bad they need to be kicked, putting the guild in the same situation they would have been in if they had never invited them in the first place can hardly be considered a loss. This would also eliminate any advantage from inviting players with the intent to kick. This should be reduced or eliminated after a period of inactivity though unless the max guild size cap were to be done away with. Many MMO players are way to migratory for guilds to be limited by players that are already on their 3rd new game since last playing this one.

[Tshober]

Under the pre-test system, a large guild could easily achieve level 70. At that level you get what I consider the last really good buffs; the large augment slots, and final shroud alter (although the alter to me is kinda meh). Judging from my own server (Argo), maintaining guild level 70 is not difficult for even the most casual friendly large guilds.
.

This is flat out untrue for at least some large guilds. My guild ALWAYS has more players online playing than any other guild on my server, 24 hours per day and 7 days per week, and we have been that way for years. No other guild on our server even comes close to us in total online player activity. Yet we can not advance beyond level 61 because we are a very large guild and we have quite a lot of casual and social players. We got to 63 briefly during the Build Your Guild event but we dropped back down to 60 after it ended.

If my large guild, as incredibly active as it is in the aggregate, can't get past level 61, then I know there are others that can't as well.

[Merlin-ator]

Yay!

[bazooka99]

This makes no sense to me. Where is the motivation to kick people out of the guild after it reaches 100? What is the benefit?

Wouldn't it be more likely that no one would get kicked and we would just have more large casual guilds?

My comment about kicking wasn't really the point, but here's why I said it. This new system offers no incentive against creating large casual guilds (as you yourself seem to have acknowledged), so expect a fair number of guilds to fill up quickly with random newbs. Once a guild fills its roster and can no longer increase in size, the pragmatic thing to do is to boot the least useful members of the guild and fill their slots with more "useful" players.

In the previous system, this would not have happened because there was no practical incentive to invite newbs into a guild (in fact, there was disincentive). The only guilds interested in inviting newbs were the more philanthropic sorts who were genuinely interested in helping new players learn the game.

Now, this new system has opened the possibility for more cutthroat guilds to exploit large masses of newbs, farm them for renown while they can, and dispose of them once better players comes around.

(Thankfully, 25% of the earned renown is lost from kicking, so this effect will be somewhat mitigated.)

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My main problem with this new system is that it destroys the meaning of guild level by offering the potential for any guild to reach 100 (given enough time) if their guild is large enough.

This new guild renown system is like a worldwide facebook contest to see who can get a thousand friends. If you send an invite to every fb account you can find, you'll hardly get any refusals, because everyone else wants to get their thousand friends too. The same will soon happen with guilds, under this new system. Now that "bigger guilds are better", a lot of people are simply going to be interested in creating the biggest guild. Those guilds won't care who they invite (at first), they just want to get the biggest guild, and under this system they will eventually reach level 100. Of course, once the roster is filled, they won't be able to invite any more, so certain guilds might start replacing their less active players with more active ones so they can hit level 100 faster (or maintain it more easily).

[mondo]

The problem with the system overall is most guilds cant attain the highest level, or mayby even just the level they want. Obviously the system was created so if a guild wanted to attain a high level and keep it, they had to work hard and stay consistent to keep it. Did it ever occur to people that whatever level your guild is "stuck at" is as good as you are, and thats the problem everything else in the game is obtainable if you keep working to get it. Except guild level people think they are entitled to whatever the game has to offer, as you can see this thread is full of complaints from people this change doesnt help. The decay system makes sense but it hurts most guilds in the game, and these people pay money and keep the game going. I wouldnt say eliminate it all together but lower it alot across the board so everybody can cap there guild like they do there toons. And then they will be happy and they can carry on complaining about other things. My 2 copper

[Krell]

My experience is most guilds take pride in the quality of their members and would not be willing to fill up with problem or unknown players. That strategy risks losing quality players because their guild environment is no longer enjoyable. Also guilds that just fill with as many bodies as possible tend to get a certain reputation on the server that negatively affects the quality members. I don't think that strategy will be common for guilds that are currently well established and have any pride in their current member quality or reputation.

I think a number of guilds will now be able to reach 100 by doing what they do today: accepting new members that show promise and keeping quality players regardless of low or high game hours. Personally seeing more guilds reach and stay at 100 doesn't bother me any more than seeing players reach and stay at 25.

[Cryohazard]

My experience is most guilds take pride in the quality of their members and would not be willing to fill up with problem or unknown players. That strategy risks losing quality players because their guild environment is no longer enjoyable. Also guilds that just fill with as many bodies as possible tend to get a certain reputation on the server that negatively affects the quality members. I don't think that strategy will be common for guilds that are currently well established and have any pride in their current member quality or reputation.

I think a number of guilds will now be able to reach 100 by doing what they do today: accepting new members that show promise and keeping quality players regardless of low or high game hours. Personally seeing more guilds reach and stay at 100 doesn't bother me any more than seeing players reach and stay at 25.

That's generally the case with the guilds that have been around for a while and have established a core group of players, rules, and goals. I completely agree, very few leaders will risk alienating his/her core for the sake of a bigger number next to the guild name. Also, well-established guilds probably have witnessed these Korthos Army style guilds pop up and disappear, and learned from them. Sure, a few people will still do it anyway, but I can't see it being the major problem some folks here are pitchforking about.

[theslimshady]

so i am just following up on renown gains for a large guild

204 modifed accounts at toon cap
monday am 19742742
wed pm 20029888
total renown gained 287126
avg per day after decay 97702

difference with new system we gained old system we would have broke even or lost going into mabar which would have been a pure bleed so again thank you ddo