Guild Renown Changes

[Dandonk]

The whole idea of making a competition out of how much time you spend farming renown to outpace the decay monster is pretty ridiculous.

Renown decay was an interesting experiment that didn't work out well. It's time to end it.

I do not disagree.

My comment was meant to illustrate to the poster I was replying to that even the original (bad) purpose is no longer being served by the current system.

There is no longer any purpose being served by renown, beyond holding small guilds back. Which Turbine said wasn't their intention. But they're doing anyway, for more than half a year - without any word. I understand that they can't comment on every issue anyone could possibly have right away. But it's been nearly seven months since the original change. Surely during those months, some kind of comment beyond "We may or may not make any change, but we're not there yet". Which is no comment at all.

[TheNewSlarden]

I do not disagree.

My comment was meant to illustrate to the poster I was replying to that even the original (bad) purpose is no longer being served by the current system.

There is no longer any purpose being served by renown, beyond holding small guilds back. Which Turbine said wasn't their intention. But they're doing anyway, for more than half a year - without any word. I understand that they can't comment on every issue anyone could possibly have right away. But it's been nearly seven months since the original change. Surely during those months, some kind of comment beyond "We may or may not make any change, but we're not there yet". Which is no comment at all.

Do you remember DocBenway? A player that commented here previously but hasn't been on the forums at all recently. I am not sure if he is another casualty of the guild system or simply not posting any more. He was a long time player in a stalled casual guild.

Anyhow, he believed that Turbine's intention for this change was monetary and not strategic. I had never considered that until he pointed it out, but it makes perfect sense. Guild product sales is directly measurable regardless of how small that # may be. Measuring player loss due to the guild system is likely impossible to measure. So Turbine appears to believe that whatever they are earning from guild product sales is a bigger # than what they lose through player attrition. And I believe Doc actually nailed the issue with his statements. This would explain why Turbine decided to make it harder for tiny guilds by adding the ransack penalty on top of an already difficult system.

It's rather obvious that small guilds are the primary purchasers of guild products since they are at a natural leveling disadvantage even under the old system where advancing took much longer (except for the tiny % of highly active small guilds). There are also many more small guilds than there are large guilds. I think it's a mistake to believe small guilds will stop purchasing products by stalling them. To me guild elixirs are more valuable knowing I won't lose progress.

It would be interesting to compare sales volume the last few times they had guild sales to see the trend. My guess is that guild sales are declining and will continue to decline. If Turbine punishes a certain play style - in this case people that prefer to guild with a small group of people - over time you will have less of those people. It's common sense.

[Dandonk]

Do you remember DocBenway? A player that commented here previously but hasn't been on the forums at all recently. I am not sure if he is another casualty of the guild system or simply not posting any more. He was a long time player in a stalled casual guild.

Anyhow, he believed that Turbine's intention for this change was monetary and not strategic. I had never considered that until he pointed it out, but it makes perfect sense. Guild product sales is directly measurable regardless of how small that # may be. Measuring player loss due to the guild system is likely impossible to measure. So Turbine appears to believe that whatever they are earning from guild product sales is a bigger # than what they lose through player attrition. And I believe Doc actually nailed the issue with his statements. This would explain why Turbine decided to make it harder for tiny guilds by adding the ransack penalty on top of an already difficult system.

It's rather obvious that small guilds are the primary purchasers of guild products since they are at a natural leveling disadvantage even under the old system where advancing took much longer (except for the tiny % of highly active small guilds). There are also many more small guilds than there are large guilds. I think it's a mistake to believe small guilds will stop purchasing products by stalling them. To me guild elixirs are more valuable knowing I won't lose progress.

It would be interesting to compare sales volume the last few times they had guild sales to see the trend. My guess is that guild sales are declining and will continue to decline. If Turbine punishes a certain play style - in this case people that prefer to guild with a small group of people - over time you will have less of those people. It's common sense.

I don't think we have any reliable way of determining what the Store result of this change has been. Maybe not even Turbine can figure that out.

But generally speaking alienating a large part of your customer base due to something that would be fairly easy to change... that seems an, shall we say, odd business decision.

Get rid of decay altogether. Make the system open ended after 100 (with no further in game benefits), if you must cater to the competition crowd, but get rid of decay altogether.

[Nestroy]

I don't think we have any reliable way of determining what the Store result of this change has been. Maybe not even Turbine can figure that out.

But generally speaking alienating a large part of your customer base due to something that would be fairly easy to change... that seems an, shall we say, odd business decision.

Get rid of decay altogether. Make the system open ended after 100 (with no further in game benefits), if you must cater to the competition crowd, but get rid of decay altogether.

I will now post my Standard Posting(TM): If the devs would give a dime for their player base, the renown decay would have been done away with a long time ago.

Therefore, you are perfectly right, as is Tshober, was DocBenway and is Slarden. And no, there are no changes comming soon(tm).

[Dandonk]

I will now post my Standard Posting(TM): If the devs would give a dime for their player base, the renown decay would have been done away with a long time ago.

Therefore, you are perfectly right, as is Tshober, was DocBenway and is Slarden. And no, there are no changes comming soon(tm).

I fear you are right. Sadly.

[Gremmlynn]

It would be great if both guilds advanced, but instead the tiny guild moves backwards and the large guild moves forward very fast due to the broken system currently in place.

Your assertion that large guilds earn less decay/player is not backed up by any facts or data. There is no reason to believe that activity level has to do with guild size. In fact, before the change even though there was a tiny percentage of small guilds at high levels, the typical large guild was a higher level than the typical small guild.

You are using bath based on false numbers because you are assuming small guilds have more active members. If that was the case DDO should be discouraging large guilds and encouraging small guilds since it causes them to be more active. But it's not true, activity level and guild size are unrelated variable.

Large guilds happen because people prefer to group that way. Small guilds happen because people prefer to group that way. It's simply a grouping preference and DDO should not apply a penalty harshly solely because of a grouping preference. It will only continue to drive more people away from the game.

Actually, I'm not really using math at all as I don't have access to hard enough numbers to attempt to do that. I'm just stating my experiences and my take on the rough demographics.

As far how well small guilds were doing before. Factor in that every one person "guild", every guild that failed at attracting players and every guild that was falling apart defaulted to being a small guild and it skews the numbers quite a bit.

No, the game shouldn't encourage small guilds IMO as they don't make players more active, they just don't function well unless the players in them are more active. I know a lot of us seem to prefer the small guild environment, but the reality as I see it is that it simply requires more commitment to playing than most have to make them work. In this system or just in general. It's simply to have the quantity to make up for the lack of activity I feel I can expect from others that I play in a large guild over a small, be it for renown or simply other to play with.

[Gremmlynn]

There should be no such thing as guild renown. A guild should consist only of a chat channel and a shared bank, both controlled by a reasonable system of leadership. Ideally, people join a guild because they get along with each other and tend to be online at the same times so they can play together. That's what makes a guild fun, but it's not easy to achieve. Adding other factors only makes it harder. If you want the significant advantages available only to members of high-level guilds, you have to almost entirely give up on what makes a guild fun. The number of members needed to increase a guild's level at a reasonable rate almost guarantees that people won't get along.

The problem with this is it leaves out any players that simply don't have a tendency to play at any particular time or if they do it's not often enough to likely find a group of other player that match it. Which, from my experience, is a large group of players. In my guild of about 100 active members any of the 5 most active players likely play more than the 50 least active combined and those 5 combined easily play more than all the rest combined.

[Gremmlynn]

I think there is a big disconnect between some players and Turbine regarding this issue. It's clear that Turbine wants the current guild system to be a ranking system and a competition. And honestly, that's how most games do it. This idea that all guilds are special is foreign to me. It's just not something I've seen before or something I would enjoy.

So while Turbine designs the guild system in this manner, we get other people complaining that it hurts small guilds. Well, honestly, that could be on purpose. Perhaps a small guild isn't supposed to be the same as a large guild. This isn't the way the system is designed.

Now, about decay. Most games have some factor that ranks their guilds by current activity, so you get a snapshot of guild rank as it currently is. Because of the nature of DDO, this is something hard for the devs to do. There's no PVP and there is really no other score to rank them by. This is why renowned exists. This is why decay exists. It's an attempt by the devs to take a current snapshot of guild ranking. Could it be improved? Yes, but I'm not sure how. Simply doing away with decay would be a complete change to guild design, and while it seems that this is something you may enjoy, it's not something everyone would enjoy. I like guilds being a competition. I use channels and friends lists for grouping. To me, guilds are something different, and that's the current design.

Unfortunately, I don't see how that point of view is good for most players or the game as a whole. DDO simply doesn't have the player pop to make systems that basically disregards a large chunk of the player base. With your system, only those with the ability and inclination to be competitive would really get anything out of guilds.

[Gremmlynn]

Get rid of decay altogether. It doesn't serve the purpose it did before - it only serves to hold small guilds back.

Actually, it serves the purpose of not forcing the devs to remove the level cap or allow guilds to hit 100 and be done with the whole thing.

That's how I think they see it. It's what keeps the system perpetual without their having to add man-hours to it and they don't seem to think that prestige levels above 100 would be enough to keep players busy. To me it seems the whole system missed the intended mark of giving the player base something else to do to keep them playing.

[unacceptable]

Actually, I'm not really using math at all as I don't have access to hard enough numbers to attempt to do that. I'm just stating my experiences and my take on the rough demographics.

As far how well small guilds were doing before. Factor in that every one person "guild", every guild that failed at attracting players and every guild that was falling apart defaulted to being a small guild and it skews the numbers quite a bit.

No, the game shouldn't encourage small guilds IMO as they don't make players more active, they just don't function well unless the players in them are more active. I know a lot of us seem to prefer the small guild environment, but the reality as I see it is that it simply requires more commitment to playing than most have to make them work. In this system or just in general. It's simply to have the quantity to make up for the lack of activity I feel I can expect from others that I play in a large guild over a small, be it for renown or simply other to play with.

I like my guild and the only thing I don't enjoy about it is getting crushing decay. It's actually the only thing in this game I strongly dislike. So much so, I don't know if I will purchase the expansion unless they will make it so that all guilds can get ship buffs. It was always bad, but now it's only bad for little guilds like mine. We can't recruit because nobody wants to be in a small guild that doesn't already have all the buffs. We are just left to wither on the vine after working so hard for so long. It's wrong. It's that simple.

[Nestroy]

I like my guild and the only thing I don't enjoy about it is getting crushing decay. It's actually the only thing in this game I strongly dislike. So much so, I don't know if I will purchase the expansion unless they will make it so that all guilds can get ship buffs. It was always bad, but now it's only bad for little guilds like mine. We can't recruit because nobody wants to be in a small guild that doesn't already have all the buffs. We are just left to wither on the vine after working so hard for so long. It's wrong. It's that simple.

+1

I am in a small guild that made it all way up to lv. 64. We meanwhile have most meaningful buffs, but recruiting still is tedious. Esbecially on a server like Wayfinder with most new players on the server being one-time favor runners. Guys, if you want to see a dead server, look at Wayfinder. If you think Argonessen is dead, watch the "german" server. There are days I find more people from german speaking guilds on Orien than total players on Wayfinder. Concept theoretically sound, badly implemented, idea dead.

[Dandonk]

Actually, it serves the purpose of not forcing the devs to remove the level cap or allow guilds to hit 100 and be done with the whole thing.

That's how I think they see it. It's what keeps the system perpetual without their having to add man-hours to it and they don't seem to think that prestige levels above 100 would be enough to keep players busy. To me it seems the whole system missed the intended mark of giving the player base something else to do to keep them playing.

Hmm, so they don't think their game is good enough to keep players playing, but want to add artificial minigames and hope that helps? Could be.

Daily/Weekly/monthly leaderboards, arranged by total and by amount per player, or something. Could work, too.

Please, Turbine, let's get rid of decay.

[TheNewSlarden]

The update does not address guild renown.

For those of you that thought this update might address the present guild decay burden small guilds are faced with. I wouldn't; get your hopes up, changing the multiplier to 10 or 0 instead of 20 could have been done long ago. There is really no reason to believe anything will change.

[Dandonk]

For those of you that thought this update might address the present guild decay burden small guilds are faced with. I wouldn't; get your hopes up, changing the multiplier to 10 or 0 instead of 20 could have been done long ago. There is really no reason to believe anything will change.

I guess we will have to be louder about this issue.

Well, it worked for large guilds, why not for us?

[Tshober]

I guess we will have to be louder about this issue.

Well, it worked for large guilds, why not for us?

Complaining did eventually get the devs to make a change. But for more than a year prior to that change, our many posts and long threads arguing for change were pretty much completely ignored. No devs weighed in at all in any of the many, many long threads on the subject until they posted a comment in one thread just before the change was made. One of the common arguments from those who opposed change was that the devs had obviously decided that our complaints had no merit because they had totally ignored our complaints for so long. It was disheartening. But we persevered and argued on the actual merits and eventually got change.

[Dandonk]

Complaining did eventually get the devs to make a change. But for more than a year prior to that change, our many posts and long threads arguing for change were pretty much completely ignored. No devs weighed in at all in any of the many, many long threads on the subject until they posted a comment in one thread just before the change was made. One of the common arguments from those who opposed change was that the devs had obviously decided that our complaints had no merit because they had totally ignored our complaints for so long. It was disheartening. But we persevered and argued on the actual merits and eventually got change.

Well, we're up to something like seven months now, so more than halfway there. Yay.

[TheNewSlarden]

This is the way it is going. I just saw this in the general forum.

I don't personally know you, but did you ever think that you have perhaps been blacklisted due to your behavior? There was a time when people could act a certain way and the community was large enough and spread out enough where their behavior had no consequences. With the change to decay and the rise of super-guilds, this is no more. Being rude to one person can get you blacklisted by a guild with 500 active members..

[TheNewSlarden]

I can't edit so I'll add here. Being rude is one thing, but I 've seen people blacklisted for some really bad reasons by guilds. Fortunately I don't think I am blacklisted, but I feel bad for people that are blacklisted by the super guilds.

[jalont]

I can't edit so I'll add here. Being rude is one thing, but I 've seen people blacklisted for some really bad reasons by guilds. Fortunately I don't think I am blacklisted, but I feel bad for people that are blacklisted by the super guilds.

I only take part in blacklists of people that deserve it. And those are people that are rude, cruel and immature. Not for any other reason. Of course, others blacklist for other reasons, but that's always happened.

I just wanted to piggyback this post by making a comment about your earlier comment about keeping decay for financial reasons. (did that make sense? hope so lol) I don't think that really makes any sense for Turbine to do that. Their changes have increased the ability for guilds to gain levels so very very quickly. That's a weird out to give the playerbase. I think they assume that people who want to have a higher ranked guild will work harder to grow their guild. I really think small guilds putting their foot down and saying, no, we will not work to grow our guilds, but will wait for the system to change and recognize us, was something that was really unforeseen, and not something Turbine depended on to make money.

[TheNewSlarden]

I only take part in blacklists of people that deserve it. And those are people that are rude, cruel and immature. Not for any other reason. Of course, others blacklist for other reasons, but that's always happened.

I just wanted to piggyback this post by making a comment about your earlier comment about keeping decay for financial reasons. (did that make sense? hope so lol) I don't think that really makes any sense for Turbine to do that. Their changes have increased the ability for guilds to gain levels so very very quickly. That's a weird out to give the playerbase. I think they assume that people who want to have a higher ranked guild will work harder to grow their guild. I really think small guilds putting their foot down and saying, no, we will not work to grow our guilds, but will wait for the system to change and recognize us, was something that was really unforeseen, and not something Turbine depended on to make money.

I believe blacklists are against the rules here, but I realize in reality the superguilds still have blacklists and Turbine will never be able to stop it.

I have never blacklisted anyone myself. The problem with these blacklists is that you can't know everyone in your guild and some people are going to get blacklisted for really stupid reasons - even if the blacklisted person did nothing wrong.

As far as growing the guild, there is just not many (if any) unguilded players at end game that want to join a guild. And if they do they won't want to join a guild that can't advance due to decay.

I respect your opinion. I just think it's hard to understand the decay burden of a small casual guild unless you were ever in one.