Guild Renown Changes

[Gremmlynn]

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.

What is this "meaning of guild levels" and why is it so important as to make less active players poor guild members?

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).

So a system that encourages guilds to get and retain many members has a higher potential for players to end up guild-less than one that encourages guilds to get lean and mean as far as membership goes? I don't see that.

While the current system may not be perfect, it seems to me that a system that encourages guilds to retain the best 1000 players they can find to be a more inclusive than one that encourages them to retain the best 11.

[Dirac]

Opal's guild, at size, did not benefit either way. Decay for her was unchanged being below 10, BUT she greatly values the competitive aspect of the guild leaderboard, and the change did affect some guilds "handicap" to use a golf term. The playing field is not level if it is to be considered competitive is what I think the issue is.

Yep, you are exactly right. Everyone should think about what this really means. If it really were a competition, why the handicap?

Some guilds cannot earn the renown of other guilds because they are much smaller. Therefore, for the sake of competition, they demand that other guilds' renown be taken away from them so they can "compete" even though the majority of the other guilds aren't competing with them. That is absurd on every level.

I have always been in favor of small guild bonuses, so people can be in small guilds and still advance even though they can't earn the renown that you can with a lot of people. To turn this around and say: "because you have so many people to earn renown you should never be able to advance at all" is pretty awful.

[Phemt81]

Any thoughts regarding new ship buffs for 71-100 range levels?

Maybe accessible from eveningstar?

[Zargarx]

I can't believe that some people don't understand that this change is both unfair and hurtful to many small guilds.

Unfair because it changes the rules we've all have followed to give only one group a massive benefit that far exceeds any percieved prior disadvantage. For those mentioning renown bonus for small groups, do the math as see why it is a joke. Not to mention tiny guilds to be considered as a size of 10 adding even more discimination.
Hurtful as this makes recruiting for a small guild, except for a few special cases much harder. With the current approach, there will be many large guilds at high levels recuiting making recruiting very difficult, and perhaps retention as well, for almost all small guilds, as they can't get to those levels due to renown decay.

Change is needed, but don't forget small guilds as well.

[Alcedes]

if i had to choose renown as it was or as it is now, i would choose it as it is now. but then again,

<south park> its choosing between a giant ****** and a turd sandwich. </south park>


the fact is, the old system had more flaws than we could begin to list and agree upon.
this system is just a slightly modified version of the old one and i suspect very incomplete.

while i flat out despised the old system entirely, i just dont care for this one as it is.

If i have to choose between the every day headache of calculating renown and looking over my roster and only being able to GUESS who is contributing (Hint, Hint Turbine!!!) or just not really care and watch every single guild with 500+ members start leveling every single day untill 100....

ugh...



id prefer to see those massive guilds. sucks. but if i have to choose between losing my left eye or my right eye, im choosing my left eye.

[Dirac]

Renown decay should be eliminated and have two leaderboards. One representing total renown and other could be a weekly and/or monthly competition. Ignoring all small guild bonuses, the game would track the total earned renown per active guild member.

Every week that leaderboard reflects the guild with the highest concentration of active members that week. This way, people can compete in this way who want to, and it doesn't hurt everyone else. We can watch the leaderboard change week-to-week as guilds become more active, rise and fall, and maybe have a special recognition for those who spend the most weeks at number one at the end of the year.

[Dirac]

Renown decay should be eliminated and have two leaderboards. One representing total renown and other could be a weekly and/or monthly competition. Ignoring all small guild bonuses, the game would track the total earned renown per active guild member.

Every week that leaderboard reflects the guild with the highest concentration of active members that week. This way, people can compete in this way who want to, and it doesn't hurt everyone else. We can watch the leaderboard change week-to-week as guilds become more active, rise and fall, and maybe have a special recognition for those who spend the most weeks at number one at the end of the year.

There could be one amenity only available to whomever is number one that week. One other permanent amenity to the guild with most number one weeks at the end of the year.

[bazooka99]

What is this "meaning of guild levels" and why is it so important as to make less active players poor guild members?So a system that encourages guilds to get and retain many members has a higher potential for players to end up guild-less than one that encourages guilds to get lean and mean as far as membership goes? I don't see that.

While the current system may not be perfect, it seems to me that a system that encourages guilds to retain the best 1000 players they can find to be a more inclusive than one that encourages them to retain the best 11.

I never said more players will end up guildless in the new system - quite the opposite. Every guildless player will now find himself swarmed with guild offers because there's no penalty to adding another player (unless you've hit the size cap, which is when a guild will finally start to apply some form of selection).

Yes, it was messed up that guild level was previously a function of hours/week spent in the game. But at least the guild level meant something - that is, it indicated how active your guild was (which for my level 27 guild isn't all that much).

But what do you have now? Guild level is now ultimately just a function of the number of players you're able to collect. Under the new system, if I left my current guild, I could find a level 70+ guild willing - no, begging - to invite me in a matter of minutes, simply because there's no reason not to. Without some incentive for guilds to be selective, a newb can achieve a guild level of 100 as soon as he leaves Korthos by just getting invited to such a guild, which destroys the work of all those who have tried to level their own guild to 100 themselves.

It once took at least a year to attain a guild level of 100. Now it can (easily!) be achieved in a matter of minutes by asking an existing level 100 guild to invite you (and why would they say no?). This is what I mean when I say that the meaning of guild levels, and all the hard work that so many people have put into earning them, is utterly destroyed by this change.

[Gremmlynn]

These new changes will kill all the guilds who have invested on the quality and not on numbers of their members.

My guild got only 11 very active accounts and we have achieved 93 guild levels in less than 1 year ( see Obscura Consilium - Sarlona), so now we will get the same renow decay of a guild level 93 with 200 accounts right?

Well, this does not seem respectful for all people who put diligence and sacrifices to obtain prestigious levels.

I have a hard time being respectful of those who diligently sacrificed those who got in the way of their obtaining prestigious levels. I can also understand how Turbine might have qualms about continuing to reward those who diligently sacrificed those who helped support their bottom line in order to obtain those prestigious levels.

Systems that separate the winners from the losers are generally only profitable when enough non-participants are willing to pay to watch the process.

[OpallNotten]

Renown decay should be eliminated and have two leaderboards. One representing total renown and other could be a weekly and/or monthly competition. Ignoring all small guild bonuses, the game would track the total earned renown per active guild member.

Every week that leaderboard reflects the guild with the highest concentration of active members that week. This way, people can compete in this way who want to, and it doesn't hurt everyone else. We can watch the leaderboard change week-to-week as guilds become more active, rise and fall, and maybe have a special recognition for those who spend the most weeks at number one at the end of the year.

That system you talk about would put Large Guilds at a huge advantage.

Here is what I suggest:

It has been said and numbers have been run that a Large Guild can make it to 70-75 no problem. Turbine PLEASE, give these guilds all the shrines/buffs they want. Make a safe spot. When you reach 70, you can't lose that.

People are saying over and over again that they don't care about the level......that's not what those people think make their Guild. (I see their pov btw) I think ALL this is because Everyone thinks they deserve everything a game has to offer without earning it.
Large Guilds have had the upper hand. They got all the buffs way before small Guilds.
I did not complain. I knew back then I would catch up. I would get my stuff......because I worked at it. Earned it.
Due to the massive amounts of forum outcries, Turbine has caved a bit, IMO.

Please, Please, Please, Turbine!! Give them their silly buffs. Let them lock in a certain level. KEEP the DECAY! Please!

Please KEEP the competitive spirit!
DO NOT allow Large Guilds to make a Joke of that LeaderBoard....Please Turbine.

~Opall~

[Tshober]

Opal's guild, at size, did not benefit either way. Decay for her was unchanged being below 10, BUT she greatly values the competitive aspect of the guild leaderboard, and the change did affect some guilds "handicap" to use a golf term. The playing field is not level if it is to be considered competitive is what I think the issue is.

Why would you want to compete with guilds that are not even trying to compete with you?

Everyone I hang out with wants and expects guilds to be about cooperation and helping and socializing. My guild is not trying to compete with anyone else's. We are just trying to advance in guild levels. We are not even in a great hurry to advance. We just don't want to be unable to advance at all, as was the case with the old decay system.

Sure seems like it would be an awfully unsatisflying competition if your opponents were not even trying to "win" and did not even think it was a race.

[Dirac]

I'm a little confused.

That system you talk about would put Large Guilds at a huge advantage.

My new leaderboard idea specifically negates guild size completely.

It has been said and numbers have been run that a Large Guild can make it to 70-75 no problem.

This is demonstrably false, as has been pointed out.

People are saying over and over again that they don't care about the level......that's not what those people think make their Guild. (I see their pov btw) I think ALL this is because Everyone thinks they deserve everything a game has to offer without earning it.

But the guilds did earn it. They are earning renown every day and it gets taken away. They are asking for the rewards they earned just like you did.

Large Guilds have had the upper hand. They got all the buffs way before small Guilds.
I did not complain. I knew back then I would catch up. I would get my stuff......because I worked at it. Earned it.
Due to the massive amounts of forum outcries, Turbine has caved a bit, IMO.

This boggles the mind a little. Other guilds grew faster because they were earning more renown than you. Why was that unfair? Fair is to have the guilds that make less renown higher level?

Most guilds aren't interested in your competition. Active guilds are earning renown, and they should be advancing in level. period. If you want a competition, come up with one that doesn't screw over everyone else. I'm trying, but if you don't like my idea, suggest your own.

[DocBenway]

Why would you want to compete with guilds that are not even trying to compete with you?

Everyone I hang out with wants and expects guilds to be about cooperation and helping and socializing. My guild is not trying to compete with anyone else's. We are just trying to advance in guild levels. We are not even in a great hurry to advance. We just don't want to be unable to advance at all, as was the case with the old decay system.

Sure seems like it would be an awfully unsatisflying competition if your opponents were not even trying to "win" and did not even think it was a race.

You are now taking the same side I did, of the guild definition discussion Opall and I had a few pages back. I was just clarifying that she, as a guild leader who's opinion was solicited in this thread, valued the competitive implications of the Leaderboard.

A guild is defined by the spirit of its membership. If that is a competitive spirit, then more power to them and they deserve to be heard in the discussion.

But the important Question at the moment is:
Was the test meant to only be 3 days long, as the old decay rates have reverted!

[Tshober]

Yep, you are exactly right. Everyone should think about what this really means. If it really were a competition, why the handicap?

Some guilds cannot earn the renown of other guilds because they are much smaller. Therefore, for the sake of competition, they demand that other guilds' renown be taken away from them so they can "compete" even though the majority of the other guilds aren't competing with them. That is absurd on every level.

I have always been in favor of small guild bonuses, so people can be in small guilds and still advance even though they can't earn the renown that you can with a lot of people. To turn this around and say: "because you have so many people to earn renown you should never be able to advance at all" is pretty awful.

^This!

Excellent points. +1

edit: Darn, I tried to +1 you but apparently I am out. So +1 in spirit!!!

[Gremmlynn]

You have no right speaking for every single Guild in DDO.

This change has/will hurt my Guild if it stays live.

I don't care about the buffs and the shrines.

I have always seen this as a competition. It was introduced as one. The decay serves a purpose....to keep large guilds in check. To this day, there is still a LeaderBoard.

So If this stays live, Turbine has just given Large Guilds an unfair advantage.

~Opall~

It's still a competition. It's just no longer about how much one plays, now it's about how many one is willing to play with.

[theslimshady]

yes as leader of a large guild since the decay started my only issue is about bleeding out renown it is demoralizing we have gone from level 76 with 200+ actives to 73 200+actives so alot of us have tp point shrines 5 percents stuck in the bank with a system that says we where lucky to get em at all

all festivals like mabar and cc are nothing but stress points because its a huge bleed

reading the forums is nothing but a giant insult about how we are inactive and a korthosstyle mega guild even thou the truth is we are always at toon cap so recruitting becomes should we kick inactive for space mentality which is horrible i got peeps on my list that have had medical problems family problems computer problems and in one case possible passed away

i am not saying anything about other guilds cause really i dont care but the idea that we should restructure or deal with it is hard to stomach

140k decay a day is absurb thats 980k a week just in decay so for us to make any gains we need a million a week in renown with only a 20k net thats 52 million renown in a year with a net profit of 240k towards next level and all this huge amount of math is based off a random drops and random end rewards

by the way level 100 is 40 million renown we are over 20 million so by my math we have decayed out more renown then it would have took to hit 100 already

[OpallNotten]

It's still a competition. It's just no longer about how much one plays, now it's about how many one is willing to play with.

I don't like that.......

<o> Founded 2006
Founders 6
Recruitment = in all these years I have taken on 10. Booted 8. Not because I wanted a "perfect" number. Because I did NOT like them as people/players.

I never wanted a Large Guild.
I will never want a Large Guild.

I shouldn't have to recruit to stay competitive. I have managed just fine with what I have. Keep in mind, I did not play on accounts related to <o> the 1st year of GR. We are on page 3. We check nightly the LeaderBoard. Simple math (<-- off topic but spellcheck is telling me I spelled Math wrong?) tells me that within 2-3 weeks, <o> will be on page 2.

That simple Math was before Turbine did this though......



~Opall~

[Postumus]

That system you talk about would put Large Guilds at a huge advantage.

Here is what I suggest:

It has been said and numbers have been run that a Large Guild can make it to 70-75 no problem. Turbine PLEASE, give these guilds all the shrines/buffs they want. Make a safe spot. When you reach 70, you can't lose that.

People are saying over and over again that they don't care about the level......that's not what those people think make their Guild. (I see their pov btw) I think ALL this is because Everyone thinks they deserve everything a game has to offer without earning it.
Large Guilds have had the upper hand. They got all the buffs way before small Guilds.
I did not complain. I knew back then I would catch up. I would get my stuff......because I worked at it. Earned it.
Due to the massive amounts of forum outcries, Turbine has caved a bit, IMO.

Please, Please, Please, Turbine!! Give them their silly buffs. Let them lock in a certain level. KEEP the DECAY! Please!

Please KEEP the competitive spirit!
DO NOT allow Large Guilds to make a Joke of that LeaderBoard....Please Turbine.

~Opall~

Actually small active guilds seem to have the largest advantage in the current system. I like the small guild bonus because I am in one and it helps offset the decay, but how is giving small guilds bonus multipliers for renown 'fair?'


"Fair" would be a level playing field for everyone. No bonuses for size. No penalties for size. The same opportunity to recruit and build a guild like everyone else. We don't have 'fair' now.


And as for the 'competitive spirit' argument, it appears that most respondents in this thread don't really care about that. I know my guild does not.


We care about level only so much as it regards which ship amenities we can have, not who has more renown than whom. Obviously you don't feel this way, but from the responses in this thread it appears that most guilds aren't competing against anything else except renown decay.

[Dirac]

I don't like that.......

<o> Founded 2006
Founders 6
Recruitment = in all these years I have taken on 10. Booted 8. Not because I wanted a "perfect" number. Because I did NOT like them as people/players.

I never wanted a Large Guild.
I will never want a Large Guild.

I shouldn't have to recruit to stay competitive. I have managed just fine with what I have. Keep in mind, I did not play on accounts related to <o> the 1st year of GR. We are on page 3. We check nightly the LeaderBoard. Simple math (<-- off topic but spellcheck is telling me I spelled Math wrong?) tells me that within 2-3 weeks, <o> will be on page 2.

That simple Math was before Turbine did this though......



~Opall~

Oh my goodness. And you insult other people about entitlement. You want a specific guild exactly your way. Great. But, such a guild is not competitive in a competition you want but most don't. So, you then demand that they be nerfed so you can compete with them. yikes.

[OpallNotten]

I misspoke about the "easy to get 70-75" part. It was 60. I think F.Piaz sp? He is the one who said that with the 70-75.

In case you guys missed it, I will add this in. Might not hurt to take a look and read it.

This change essentially just rewards the one segment of the guild population that was already high level compared to everyone else and needed little help, and does very little to the remaining 98% of the guild population that are still struggling to reach those high levels that they take for granted.

As already pointed out, the original renown system rewarded active players. It followed the typical MMORPG paradigm of the more you play, the more you are rewarded. Most of the incentive systems in this game (or many games for that matter) follow this paradigm, such as grinding for XP (unlocking new character abilities) or gear (increasing the DPS or other statistic of a character), etc. Guilds that can encourage their players to be more active and play this game more were the ones that got to higher levels and benefited the most under this system. It should be readily obvious that encouraging players to play more also improves Turbine's bottom line.

By negating the guild size factor in the decay formula, there is little incentive for a guild leader or officers to invest in each player individually; it is much simpler to just spam as many guild invites as possible, since it takes much less effort to /guild recruit XXXXX to get a certain amount of renown than to court each individual player, spend the time taking them out on quests, showing them the game, and getting them excited about the game and for them to continue logging in.

It's very straightforward to see proof of this dynamic in action. When the renown system was first released, since all guilds were low-level, renown decay was a negligible mechanic. Thus, just like with this change, the incentive at the time was to simply maximize total guild activity, rather than activity per player. And what did we see? Many of the fastest-leveling guilds at the time had character counts that looked like this:



In less than 2 weeks there were 4 purges totaling over 300 characters. Let that sink in for a moment. The guild's turnover rate was over 15% per week and yet this was one of the fastest-growing guilds in all of DDO -- and just like some guilds right now, they bragged that they were the biggest and most active guild around. Their MotD simply said something to the effect of "people who don't log in after 4 days will be removed".

Under a system where simply getting people into the guild is rewarded more than investing in each player, this is the natural outcome. For all the talk of supposedly "it's for the casuals!" there is rarely ever any mention of how casuals feel about this game when they get booted from a guild for not logging in for a few days so that the guild leader can make space for other casuals.

The obvious rebuttal to this is of course "but don't guilds lose renown for booting characters?" and this is correct. However, by losing 25% of the character's renown, the guild is still keeping 75% of whatever the character had gained for the guild. So it just means that the strategy is still 75% as effective as it was previously -- as if that's a big impediment.

Under the current system, inducting anybody and everybody that is willing to join is still the best strategy for leveling up in the low to middle levels (roughly level 1 to level 60). Simply having many bodies in the guild will level the guild up. This is why the majority of large guilds are above level 60 -- the sheer number of accounts in the guild ensures that they will blow through the renown needed to reach those levels (and for those that are curious, there are exactly zero guilds with 501 or more characters that are level 41 or below). For everyone else, even reaching level 60 itself is an achievement. To date, 44 out of 52 (85%) active guilds with 501 or more characters are at guild level 61 or above, while only 885 out of 17479 (5.1%) active guilds with 500 or less characters have reached level 61 or above. (By "active", I mean guilds where the renown has changed within the last month, indicating someone has logged in; guilds whose renown stayed constant, indicating no activity, were thus filtered out and not counted.) Even with the renown system in its state prior to the change, simply having a lot of bodies in the guild will just about guarantee that you can enjoy good ship buffs.

The flip side of that was that because renown decay became larger as the levels increased, guilds that wanted to keep leveling up would invest more in the players that they already have in the guild, in other words, encourage their members to like the game and want to log in.

To see why this is important, it is helpful to look at the current renown decay formula's level multiplier (the part that depends on a guild's level):



The initial decay is very small. However, at the higher levels, the amount of renown needed to offset decay increases very, very rapidly. In other words, the majority of guilds should be to maintain the lower to mid levels, while the higher levels are more difficult to reach.

Now if you count the number of ship benefits at each guild level, it looks like this:



There basically are not many rewards per increase in level until you hit around level 20, at which point you steadily gain a lot of rewards until you hit around level 60, where it sort of tapers off until level 100 (and I'm counting the guild-wide announcements as rewards too, even though they don't provide any in-game benefit; they make up about a quarter of the benefits after level 60). In other words, you've gained a lot of the rewards that there are to gain -- about 80% on a count basis -- by level 60, roughly before the renown decay really starts being more progressive.

To make this point more direct, this is the plot of how much of the benefits you get by each level, versus the amount of renown decay for that level:



For relatively little effort, you can get the vast majority of the benefits, while for a great deal of effort, you can get marginally better benefits than that.

This is by design. All I've really done is just to quantify what Fernando Paiz qualitatively said about the renown system when it was introduced: that once you get to those levels it’s much more about bragging rights than anything you might get from being of a guild level that high. In other words, the purpose of renown decay should be readily obvious for anyone who bothers to look into the background of the system and what Turbine has said about it.

Of course, the people leading the complaints about renown decay are in guilds that are already at the upper part of the renown decay curve -- the part where it starts increasing sharply because guilds are encouraged to make their members more active. The complaints are not about not getting the basic buffs like +2 dex or +2 damage but about how they "have to" settle for a +3% XP shrine instead of a +4% XP shrine, etc.

Not only do those guilds have the majority of the benefits already, but they actively try to convince others that it is because of decay that guilds can't level up, rather than simply the vast amount of renown points to get between level 1 and level 100 (or just simply level 1 to level 60). If a guild is in the upper part of the curve, then decay is the reason, but the vast majority of guilds are simply not there yet -- they're still trying to get to those levels where decay makes a difference, and not enough renown gain is the main problem for the vast majority of guilds out there.

It's somewhat ludicrous to convince a small guild that goes from level 1 to 26 in a year that decay is the problem with the system, rather than how the system stacks the points needed for each level in favor of simply having many bodies. Newsflash for those guilds: If it takes you a year to go from level 1 to level 26, even with 0 decay it will take you 12 years to get to level 60 (=10,800,000/878,800), and 57 years to get to level 100 (=50,000,000/878,800).

Yet these people will shamelessly claim exactly this and say that the renown system benefits small guilds more because they will eventually reach slightly higher levels than large guilds -- as opposed to large guilds who gets benefits within months. That somehow, in a game that has existed for around 6-7 years and where this system has been out for somewhat longer than 2 years, it is much better to wait around for years for a slightly better benefit (and not have "pretty good" benefits for much of that time), than to get pretty good benefits now (and not get those slightly better benefits years down the line). I was going to say something comparing the length of time you'd need for this "delayed gratification" compared with the average length of a marriage, but it was difficult to quantify the latter properly.

Complaining that people don't understand the problems facing a large guild trying to overcome decay at level 60 misses out on that for 95% of the guilds out there, the problem is how to get to level 60 in the first place.

And that is the biggest flaw with the current system as it was: that the system was intended so that "just about any guild" should be able to reach the mid levels, yet in practice the amount of renown needed to reach those levels was so big that only large guilds and extremely active small guilds (relatively speaking) could reach them; large guilds simply by having hundreds of players contribute to the same pot of renown, extremely active small guilds by having a very high renown-per-player ratio. Smaller casual guilds, which collectively make up more characters than all the large guilds and extremely active small guilds combined, are left out in the cold under the renown system.

Large guilds like to claim that there's a small guild size bonus which makes up for the lack of manpower in a small guild, as if a 6-account guild being considered as a 24-account guild has comparable renown gain to a 450-account guild making those complaints about renown decay. For that 6-account guild to be on par in manpower with the 450-account guild, it would need a size multiplier of 75x (or +7400%) instead of the current 4x (or +300%). Yet we still get complaints about how small guilds have it so easy because of this bonus.

The bottom line is that the major problem with the renown system was that to reach the majority of ship buffs in any reasonable amount of time, you had to either join a large guild or join a very active small guild. Contrary to what's been posted, it has always been easy to join a casual large guild that's above level 60; I was able to do this multiple times on other servers for favor farming (which was obviously with very low-level and under-equipped characters -- so it's not as if those guilds were being picky or had high entrance requirements).

It's only the guilds where the guild leader starts to see the guild level as more important than guild atmosphere that it's problematic to join -- the same guilds that were complaining about losing players to other higher-level guilds and are now telling everyone else that it doesn't affect them that these guilds will now level much faster. Again, let this sink in for a moment. The same guilds that previously complained about the renown system because they were losing players to higher-level (i.e. more active) guilds, are now telling people that losing players to higher-level (i.e. larger under this change) guilds is just fine.

What Turbine should be addressing is the vast disparity in guild levels achieved by guilds of different sizes -- i.e. the renown gain part of the system, which is highly dependent on manpower (number of accounts in the guild). Instead, the change to renown decay will make this disparity even bigger: high-level guilds will be able to reach even higher levels, while low-level guilds will stay mired at those low levels. Since the change removed the per-account part of renown decay, it really means that high-level large guilds (or actually, large guilds in general -- except there are no low-level large guilds because they blow through the lower levels so quickly anyway) will be the main beneficiaries. This despite the fact that large guilds as a group are already higher level than the vast majority of other guilds. They don't need the help, or at least until the 98% of other guilds that are below them reaches their levels.

Under the original system, because reaching higher levels meant each player in the guild was on average more active (more renown per day per player), guilds that wanted to continue progressing once decay was substantial had an incentive to encourage members to be more active -- in other words, give players a reason to continue logging in. This meant forming stable relationships with each player and setting up the guild culture and activities such that people want to log in to this game and play it, over all the other distractions in their busy lives. I know it's anecdotal at best (because I don't have the account information on each guild that Turbine would), but most of the high-level guilds (at least on Orien) are characterized by relatively stable rosters with very low turnover rates, not just among the "core" players of the guild but among the rest of the guild as well.

And the evidence for this is, as they say, the proof is in the pudding. As I've mentioned elsewhere, Over Raided is actually a relatively casual guild in terms of playtime, with most of the members of the guild having full time jobs/school and/or married with kids, etc., despite people who continually try to mis-characterize level 100 guilds as not having "real lives". It is because members don't have much free time to spend that the guild focuses on getting things done quickly and efficiently. It's not as if members are focused necessarily on renown when they log in either; I can guarantee you that the over 500 hours of game time that I've spent on collecting data for weapon and guard proc rates has given the guild exactly 0 renown (apparently, killing the training dummy over and over is not considered renown-worthy) -- and this is just the length of the videos, it doesn't include the time it took to count them all up.

Yet Over Raided was able to reach level 100 because the guild leader and officers set up an environment where despite the lack of available playtime, members could be productive when they do have time to log in. The proof for how to level a guild is staring detractors in the face -- yet all they can reply with are snarky comments without ever addressing the substance of what I say, and continue claiming that they have no option but to boot all those poor casuals.

People who complain about the renown system meaning they have to boot casuals have learned exactly the wrong lesson about the system's social dynamics, showing that their priority is on fishing around the player base for active players (i.e. easy to get in and then easy to boot if the player isn't on often enough for the guild leader's liking), rather than improving on the players in the guild so that they will naturally want to log in (and then the renown will naturally flow from their playing the game). In short, the system was fundamentally about maximizing gains (encourage members to log in by making the guild a fun place to be) to get from the mid levels to the high levels, while these people focused on making it into being about minimizing losses (booting the members that are deemed to not be gaining enough renown, and then complaining that "the system" is making them do it).

That Turbine would cave in to demagoguery instead of well-documented reasoning is somewhat disappointing. The arguments are continually debunked and I've repeatedly shown that they exaggerate claims about their own guild to try to sway the forum community. Let this sink in for a moment. I've shown multiple times that what people claim about their own guild to complain about decay is in fact false. It's perhaps not surprising that these people then resort to histrionics such as claiming that the renown system makes them kill their close, personal friends, yet these are the arguments that Turbine chooses to pay attention to.

If Turbine were interested in getting players "hooked" on the game and wanting to play it more (and spend money on the game as a corollary), incentive systems such as the guild renown system should be designed around benefiting guilds that are successful at encouraging members to log in and play, that spends the time to invest in each player in the guild. The change to renown decay instead encourages guilds to simply induct as many members as possible and treat players as faceless drones in the hive for renown, without regard to the individual player. Many players say the reason why they stick with the game is because of the people they meet and the relationships that they form, and this change discourages this time investment to the detriment of the gaming community.