Guild Renown Changes

[ickle616]

guild renown decay is killing the way guilds level up please keep the new system or at least reduce the amount it affects us!!

[DocBenway]

guild renown decay is killing the way guilds level up please get rid of this new scheme or at least reduce the amount it affects us!!

Can you give some more detail? The new system should have lessened decay, or kept it the same for all. There was a restart of the servers today and have read reports of decay "double dipping" and hitting twice on restarts, but have not seen it myself.

Maybe the restart turned off the new system again and the second dip was for old decay.

[HenryVIII]

Could the problem be that an account appears inactive (no character you know of or have in your guild) but the account actually has another toon you are unaware of that has been logged on recently?

[Vargouille]

Could you [...] recap all of this into one new concise post addressing all these changes please?

There were only two changes, both mentioned in the first post.

Any other replies are clarifications to the way the system has worked for some time now.

There was a restart of the servers today and have read reports of decay "double dipping" and hitting twice on restarts, but have not seen it myself.

When the server restarts, decay is immediately processed based on the amount of time that passed since the last decay happened, and from then on decay should happen every 24 hours from the restart time, unless the server restarts again.

This 'restart decay' isn't 24 hours worth, but rather an amount of decay based on how long since decay was last processed. So if decay hits at 3AM, and the servers restart at 11AM, you'll see decay at that 11AM restart that is about 1/3 of the 3AM hit (if levels didn't change, etc.), because that's 8 hours instead of 24. The next day at 11AM you'll see the normal 24 hours of decay.

This does mean guilds will see and are supposed to see decay hit multiple times in a day when the servers restart, but only for the amount they are supposed to decay by, not for two days worth in one day.

[katz]

There were only two changes, both mentioned in the first post.

Any other replies are clarifications to the way the system has worked for some time now.



When the server restarts, decay is immediately processed based on the amount of time that passed since the last decay happened, and from then on decay should happen every 24 hours from the restart time, unless the server restarts again.

This 'restart decay' isn't 24 hours worth, but rather an amount of decay based on how long since decay was last processed. So if decay hits at 3AM, and the servers restart at 11AM, you'll see decay at that 11AM restart that is about 1/3 of the 3AM hit (if levels didn't change, etc.), because that's 8 hours instead of 24. The next day at 11AM you'll see the normal 24 hours of decay.

This does mean guilds will see and are supposed to see decay hit multiple times in a day when the servers restart, but only for the amount they are supposed to decay by, not for two days worth in one day.

mmm. very interesting bit of information. thank you.

[jkm13]

Vargouille,

Thank you so much for that post. That's the kind of detail I wish we could get more of. I really think we could reduce the amount of hysteria and speculation in a lot of posts if the devs were more open with how the game really works. Instead, we have some very smart players reverse-engineering the game with the devs only occasionally poking their heads out from behind the Wizard of Oz curtain to give a thumbs up or down with regard to how close our guess is.

Of course, more transparently into the game mechanics wouldn't affect the level of DOOM(tm) posts, but hey, ya do whatcha can, right? Anyway, thanks and please keep it up.

[maddmatt70]

Greetings! We are putting forth modifications currently trying out some temporary adjustments to the Guild Renown system and monitoring the outcome and feedback this week. 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. We’ll be making additional balance changes that we think you and your guildmates will appreciate, but for now we have applied the changes without downtime. As of today, you will notice two changes to your renown rates:

[LIST=1][*]Renown decay no longer takes guild size into account. This should ease the pressure for guild leaders to “kick” members from the guild to offset daily renown decay rates. Renown decay now only takes a guild’s level into consideration rather than its size.
!

This is a massive hit to small guilds. This does not really benefit large guilds that much so I think the system should go back to what it was with less of a penalty for having more members.

My guild is 100 and one of best renown earners out there, but we have lost close to a million renown since this change. A lot of the small guilds that were close to 100 prior to this change have not gotten there. I have not seen large guilds benefit greatly from this either. What this means is virtually nobody can reach the higher level goals and maintaining those standards is next to impossible. I think more people not less people should have the opportunity to reach the higher level goals and the system should be expanded beyond 100 levels...

[Lerincho]

Again, why do we have decay, but could not keep the death XP penalty? Both are equally discouraging. For guild decay if someone has been inactive, is it really encouraging to find out they have been kicked from guild due to decay? Is it really encouraging for people that play everyday and be hampered because they are active yet still not gaining ground for guild level?

This is not gauntlet that requires you to periodically get food or die for no reason. Why should guild renown be treated that way? "Blue guild needs food badly" is not what being in a guild was supposed to be about.

[theslimshady]

This is a massive hit to small guilds. This does not really benefit large guilds that much so I think the system should go back to what it was with less of a penalty for having more members.

My guild is 100 and one of best renown earners out there, but we have lost close to a million renown since this change. A lot of the small guilds that were close to 100 prior to this change have not gotten there. I have not seen large guilds benefit greatly from this either. What this means is virtually nobody can reach the higher level goals and maintaining those standards is next to impossible. I think more people not less people should have the opportunity to reach the higher level goals and the system should be expanded beyond 100 levels...

this does not seem right at max 60k decay a day for it to hit a million would be over 15 days this system was up less then 9 i beleave

[brentpatty1]

Are we on today as of the old renown decay system or do we have the new one as of NOV 5......or do i have to blow up a building in england

[Tshober]

This is a massive hit to small guilds. This does not really benefit large guilds that much so I think the system should go back to what it was with less of a penalty for having more members.

My guild is 100 and one of best renown earners out there, but we have lost close to a million renown since this change. A lot of the small guilds that were close to 100 prior to this change have not gotten there. I have not seen large guilds benefit greatly from this either. What this means is virtually nobody can reach the higher level goals and maintaining those standards is next to impossible. I think more people not less people should have the opportunity to reach the higher level goals and the system should be expanded beyond 100 levels...

If your guild is level 100, the change the devs made should have had no bad effect whatsoever on your guild.

The change reduced the renown decay amount for all guilds with more than 10 accounts and kept the decay amount the same as before for guilds with 10 or fewer accounts. The other part of the change slightly slowed down the renown drops for guilds that had already gained at least one level that day. Unless your guild was dropping to 99 each day and having to earn back up to 100, then your level 100 guild would not have already gained a level that day (or any other day) and thus would be completely unaffected.

As far as your statement that larger guilds were not helped much, my large guild was definitely helped. We were able to enjoy the Mabar event without taking a huge loss in renown like we have always done in past years.

The one part of your post I do agree with is extending the levels beyond 100 so guilds that reach 100 will have something to keep working on. I would caution that any rewards given for advancing beyond level 100 should be limited to "bragging rights only" rewards, such as announcements, titles, cosmetics, etc. More substantive rewards would only bring us back to the problems that were inherent in the old decay system where guilds were encouraged and rewarded for kicking out casual/social players and for never inviting any new players.

[TempestAlphaOmega]

This is a massive hit to small guilds. This does not really benefit large guilds that much so I think the system should go back to what it was with less of a penalty for having more members.

My guild is 100 and one of best renown earners out there, but we have lost close to a million renown since this change. A lot of the small guilds that were close to 100 prior to this change have not gotten there. I have not seen large guilds benefit greatly from this either. What this means is virtually nobody can reach the higher level goals and maintaining those standards is next to impossible. I think more people not less people should have the opportunity to reach the higher level goals and the system should be expanded beyond 100 levels...

Are you sure you understand the changes that were discussed here? Not trying to be funny or anything by asking this, because those changes should have had no impact on a small guild and been benificial to any guild over 10 accounts in size.

[slarden]

This is a massive hit to small guilds. This does not really benefit large guilds that much so I think the system should go back to what it was with less of a penalty for having more members.

My guild is 100 and one of best renown earners out there, but we have lost close to a million renown since this change. A lot of the small guilds that were close to 100 prior to this change have not gotten there. I have not seen large guilds benefit greatly from this either. What this means is virtually nobody can reach the higher level goals and maintaining those standards is next to impossible. I think more people not less people should have the opportunity to reach the higher level goals and the system should be expanded beyond 100 levels...

The decay is fixed at 20 not (guild size (min 10) + 10). So whether a guild has 4 accounts or 200, the decay is based on 20. This wouldn't cause your guild to lose renown directly, but if you dip below 100 and then gain a level back to 100 it will be harder to keep the level since the ransack penalty was increased. Your decay was already 20 if you were a small guild.

It is a huge help to large guilds. Small guilds aren't hurt by it directly other than increased ransack for gaining only 1 level. However, the disparity between what a small and large guild must do to advance on an account basis is very significant and should be adressed.

Here is the decay chart:

http://ddowiki.com/page/Guild_Renown

Based on this you are losing 67,500 renown per day with 20 or less accounts. If you have 200 accounts you would also lose 67,500 renown per day. Under the old system a small guild with <20 accounts would lose the same but the large 100 level guild would have lost 708,750. Of course a large level 100 guild never existed so that is just theory. That is the change Turbine is trying to make - to make it easier for large guilds to reach those same levels.

There was a large effort by leaders of large guilds to bring the issue to Turbine's attention and they were successful at that. Unfortunately it misses the point that the average small guild is a lower level than the average large guild. The small guild issue should be addressed.

Also, the test period for this change was during Mabar so guild renown earning is down across the board. So while it appears not to help large guilds much, I think it's misleading. Test results are only as good as the test design.

[maddmatt70]

The decay is fixed at 20 not (guild size (min 10) + 10). So whether a guild has 4 accounts or 200, the decay is based on 20. This wouldn't cause your guild to lose renown directly, but if you dip below 100 and then gain a level back to 100 it will be harder to keep the level since the ransack penalty was increased. Your decay was already 20 if you were a small guild.

It is a huge help to large guilds. Small guilds aren't hurt by it directly other than increased ransack for gaining only 1 level. However, the disparity between what a small and large guild must do to advance on an account basis is very significant and should be adressed.

Here is the decay chart:

http://ddowiki.com/page/Guild_Renown

Based on this you are losing 67,500 renown per day with 20 or less accounts. If you have 200 accounts you would also lose 67,500 renown per day. Under the old system a small guild with <20 accounts would lose the same but the large 100 level guild would have lost 708,750. Of course a large level 100 guild never existed so that is just theory. That is the change Turbine is trying to make - to make it easier for large guilds to reach those same levels.

I question the renown chart in the wiki. This is not what is happening in game. The decay has increased for my guild since these changes. My guild size is low 20 members.

[Thayion516]

This is a massive hit to small guilds. This does not really benefit large guilds that much so I think the system should go back to what it was with less of a penalty for having more members.

My guild is 100 and one of best renown earners out there, but we have lost close to a million renown since this change. A lot of the small guilds that were close to 100 prior to this change have not gotten there. I have not seen large guilds benefit greatly from this either. What this means is virtually nobody can reach the higher level goals and maintaining those standards is next to impossible. I think more people not less people should have the opportunity to reach the higher level goals and the system should be expanded beyond 100 levels...

Knights of the Old School. G-Land server. 221 active accounts (after we have been kicking ~150 toons over the spring/summer). Our Renown loss/decay is currently at about 1/10th what it was. We have actually GAINED a level during the Mbar Event. Instead of fighting to keep levels.

The change is wonderful for Medium/Large guilds.

[TrinityTurtle]

The decay is fixed at 20 not (guild size (min 10) + 10). So whether a guild has 4 accounts or 200, the decay is based on 20. This wouldn't cause your guild to lose renown directly, but if you dip below 100 and then gain a level back to 100 it will be harder to keep the level since the ransack penalty was increased. Your decay was already 20 if you were a small guild.

It is a huge help to large guilds. Small guilds aren't hurt by it directly other than increased ransack for gaining only 1 level. However, the disparity between what a small and large guild must do to advance on an account basis is very significant and should be adressed.

There was a large effort by leaders of large guilds to bring the issue to Turbine's attention and they were successful at that. Unfortunately it misses the point that the average small guild is a lower level than the average large guild. The small guild issue should be addressed.

However, the small guild is seeing NO change under this system, and we have all seen what they can do. They can easily reach and sustain 80-100. The changes will not impact them at all, they will still have to do exactly the same thing they did before to keep whatever guild they are in. They still have the bonus to renown that the larger guilds don't get.

All this change does is remove the wall many many guilds were hitting due to their casual and inactive players, and allow guilds to decide their size more fairly according to their values. I don't understand the outcry of how this is unfair to small guilds, which will have to do NOTHING different from before to maintain/gain from their current levels to be honest.

DDO is not a race. If the large guilds get there first, that's okay. If I have 200 people picking grapes from a vineyard of 2 acres they are going to get it done before the neighbor guy's vineyard where he only has 20 picking. That's not unfair, it's just more hands make work easier. However, both will get their yards picked. It's not bad or unfair that the dude who gets more people to share the work gets there faster then the one who gets less, as long as everyone is ABLE to get there, which previously wasn't the case.

[Thayion516]

One thing I don't understand is how you could possibly identify social/players in a guild of 1000 characters. You get no information on renown generation and you can't possibly know every alt of every character. I heard this argument alot about booting casuals, but it woudl seem very large guilds have no way to know that someone is casual to boot them in the first place.

Are you really referring to actvity level? Booting people that hasn't been active in a long time? I would like to understand how you identify "casuals". Just curious, thanks.

Unfortunately, Turbine does not provide guild leadership with any tools to determine playtimes, toon-account linkage, or renown intake/accumulation.

So we just had to boot based on Time Inactive on the roster, its the only logical deduction you can make. In Spring we kicked all toons over 4 months. In Summer we started clearing all 2+ months not logged in. Then at the start of fall we Kicked all over 1 month not logged .....

Its by no means perfect, but its all we had. On the 1 month sweep im SURE we kicked many casual players. As the 4 month sweep was peeps not playing those toons any more or left game (still took that Double Hit tho).

We were going to take it all the way down to 3 weeks not logged in to get Decay/Activity under control IF we had too. BUT luckly these changes went in and this conversation started. We have not kicked a person sense.

[slarden]

However, the small guild is seeing NO change under this system, and we have all seen what they can do. They can easily reach and sustain 80-100. The changes will not impact them at all, they will still have to do exactly the same thing they did before to keep whatever guild they are in. They still have the bonus to renown that the larger guilds don't get.

All this change does is remove the wall many many guilds were hitting due to their casual and inactive players, and allow guilds to decide their size more fairly according to their values. I don't understand the outcry of how this is unfair to small guilds, which will have to do NOTHING different from before to maintain/gain from their current levels to be honest.

DDO is not a race. If the large guilds get there first, that's okay. If I have 200 people picking grapes from a vineyard of 2 acres they are going to get it done before the neighbor guy's vineyard where he only has 20 picking. That's not unfair, it's just more hands make work easier. However, both will get their yards picked. It's not bad or unfair that the dude who gets more people to share the work gets there faster then the one who gets less, as long as everyone is ABLE to get there, which previously wasn't the case.

When you talk about level 80+ small guilds you are referring to well under 1% of the small guilds out there. Small guilds also have casuals and inactives and should receive fair treatment. No it's really not ok as the system stands. I've shown many math examples to prove it. The average small guild is much lower level than the average large guild. I would like to see small guilds given fair treatment and small casual and social guilds given a chance to advance.

We shouldn't use the top 1% of the small guilds as an example for small guilds. Small guilds hit a wall just as large guilds do. When you join a high level guild it is very different than when you are working with a team to build a guild up from the start as we are. We've focused on renown and would like to see some adjustment for small guilds just like there were adjustments for large guilds. My issue isn 't as much with the level gaining aspect as it is with the decay. Decay was adjusted downward significantly for large guilds and the some fair adjustment should be made for small guilds. A 200 account guild received a 90% reduction in decay, maybe small guilds of <20 can get a 50% reduction even if it means that large guilds reduction changes to 95%. I would propose changing the decay formula from a fixed value of 20 to a fixed value of 10. That benefits everyone, but still mostly benefits large guilds the most.

I am on Sarlona and read all the Sarlona posts (as few as they are) and recall you posting within the past few weeks that you want to join a guild no lower than 70. So I assume you recognize the value of a higher guild level and why small gulids would also want an opportunity to reach higher levels.

[slarden]

Unfortunately, Turbine does not provide guild leadership with any tools to determine playtimes, toon-account linkage, or renown intake/accumulation.

So we just had to boot based on Time Inactive on the roster, its the only logical deduction you can make. In Spring we kicked all toons over 4 months. In Summer we started clearing all 2+ months not logged in. Then at the start of fall we Kicked all over 1 month not logged .....

Its by no means perfect, but its all we had. On the 1 month sweep im SURE we kicked many casual players. As the 4 month sweep was peeps not playing those toons any more or left game.

We were going to take it all the way down to 3 weeks not logged in to get Decay/Activity under control IF we had too. BUT luckly these changes went in and this conversation started. We have not kicked a person sense.

That is what I thought. The issue with "Casuals" is really "Inactives" and it is the same exact issue small guilds face. I don't know that the change will really solve the issue since the cap of 1000 characters was/is part of the problem. I understand that those of you in large gulds face issues we don't face, but the "inactive" issue is the same. The "1000 character" issue forcing you boot inactives is unique only to large guilds and that definitely needs to be addressed.

[smatt]

Unless your guild gained a level in the past day, renown drops are completely unchanged.

The 3-level-per-day limit is just a change from a 7-levels-per-day limit that was already live in the game before yesterday. It's likely most players weren't aware that existed, since it generally only mattered for new guilds that were gaining many levels in a single day. It probably still doesn't affect most guilds.

Kudos to the DDO Devs for taking a look at the renown issues. Being in a large guidl with 77 or so active acocunts and another 100 non-active ones, chalk full of more or less burnt out longtime vets who play a lot less than we used to as well as many casual players, we had hit our plateau around level 80-82. We simply can't keep up with a decay rate of 100-114k or so a day. So our choices were to be happy at 80, boot a bunch of the less active players and discourage the people who pop in to say high once a month that add to the decay.

I think what you've implemented has in large part dealt with a good number of the issues for large guilds battling extreme decay. Although, I would like to see the decay decrease from aquiring a level changed a bit. It should only decrease AFTER the 3rd level up in a day, simply change it from an incremental decrease for each of the 3 possible daily level ups to one big decrease upon attaining a 3rd daily level.

As for the issues with smaller guilds and how the implemented changes will now encourage the larger guilds to actualyl start gaining memebers again, which may encourage people in smaller guilds to jump ship as it were... Perhaps a small increase in the small guild bonus will allow those smaller and medium sized guilds to show enough progress to keep the players that might leave.

It is certainly a good incentive to encourage people to play the game, so I do agree that decay should stay. But I think that a few more small tweaks are neccesary to get the system right in a fair way.