Guild Renown Changes

[Gremmlynn]

I think a player-based route is best, since it gives ownership and responsibility to each player. It does not award bonuses simply due to a random definition that bigger = win. It would give bonuses on the basis of effort. That, I think, is fair.

The problem was it was effort/time with anyone who couldn't, or simply wasn't inclined to, put in the time to always fail. Seems a great way to cull one's customer base.

IMO, decay was a bad idea to begin with, but marketing needed some sort of mechanic to try to keep players perpetually in the "gold seal" zone if the devs wanted them to sign off on the cost of developing the system.

[slarden]

How did setting all guilds at the absolute minimum possible decay level under the old system cause anyone's decay to go up at all, much less double?

I think the issue is that small guilds are saddled with large decay relative to the # of members they have while large guilds are not. I don't think having a system that only penalizes small guilds with decay is right either - as Thac0 said earlier - there is really no reason to keep a decay mechanism at all given the objectives the developers stated.

I am not proposing hurting large guilds. I am happy to see my friends in large guilds having this monkey off their back. Unfortunately there are many small casual guilds and this doesn't do much for those players. Since guilds are really a social mechanic I see no point in having decay- and especially a decay that favors a specific guild size when one of the of objectives was to no encourage a specific guild size.

[Gremmlynn]

So we should all be in one single guild, because that's more better?

No, we should all be in as many guilds as there are willing and able guild leaders and cores playing the game. Fewer and the game loses those key players to other games that let them do their thing, more and we have dysfunctional guilds giving the rank and file members a bad play experience.

That's an optimal situation, but not really realistic. So what we get are guild level rules that give those leaders and cores an incentive to actually provide a home for the rank and filers that haven't the aptitude, inclination, time, whatever to run their own functional guilds. Because, as long as that guild has the necessary leadership and core, it has no real need for the rank and file players that make up the majority of the player base. While some embrace them, others need an incentive to contribute to the community as a whole.

Under the old system, leaders were given the incentive to find 10 highly active, highly motivated players and screw everybody else.

Under the new system, guild leaders are given the incentive to find a core of active players and as many other players as they can succeed in keeping satisfied with their leadership in an environment where guilds are competing for them.

Basically, for the average rank and file type player, the guild system just went from screw you, to we want you.

[slarden]

No, we should all be in as many guilds as there are willing and able guild leaders and cores playing the game. Fewer and the game loses those key players to other games that let them do their thing, more and we have dysfunctional guilds giving the rank and file members a bad play experience.

That's an optimal situation, but not really realistic. So what we get are guild level rules that give those leaders and cores an incentive to actually provide a home for the rank and filers that haven't the aptitude, inclination, time, whatever to run their own functional guilds. Because, as long as that guild has the necessary leadership and core, it has no real need for the rank and file players that make up the majority of the player base. While some embrace them, others need an incentive to contribute to the community as a whole.

Under the old system, leaders were given the incentive to find 10 highly active, highly motivated players and screw everybody else.

Under the new system, guild leaders are given the incentive to find a core of active players and as many other players as they can succeed in keeping satisfied with their leadership in an environment where guilds are competing for them.

Basically, for the average rank and file type player, the guild system just went from screw you, to we want you.

Not really I think many new and casual players start their guilds exactly the way we did. We started our guild when we are all new to the game and level 1s. We developed our characters and guild at the same time and had fun doing it. We didn't recruit but we accepted every person that asked to join our guid - sometimes after questing with us and someimes we got a random tell. There was no attempt to maximize our climb to level 100. There was no plan to mess with players or cause difficulty for anyone else. One person has one character that never left the harbor.

As our guild stands we have 2 active accounts, 2 semi active accounts and 2 that barely log in and mainly do so the socailize rather than play. Why is there this assumption that if small guilds are not saddled with this proportionally high decay tax that they will somehow screw people in their guild. I haven't heard a single logical argument supporting that notion that makes any sense at all.

Please remove decay entirely or make a minor change so that small social guilds aren't saddled with this massive decay. It is bad for small guilds for the exact same reason it is bad for large guilds.

[Tshober]

Please remove decay entirely or make a minor change so that small social guilds aren't saddled with this massive decay. It is bad for small guilds for the exact same reason it is bad for large guilds.

This is a very reasonable request. I hope the devs will consider it.

[Gremmlynn]

As to more players for the game? Well that's assuming they wouldn't be playing without your guild. A rather arrogant assumption in my opinion. From what I've seen plenty of the more casual players care very little what guild they're actually in, they're just in them because they got an invite or wanted ship buffs.

Making big contributions to the game takes a lot of dedication, and that is something big guilds often lack as is obvious by their inability to reach high guild levels in the old system. Contributing to the community is way more than just having some random groups posted up in the LFM panel from time to time or having tons of people in your guild.

If these large guilds are the sole reason some are playing this game then they are contributing but that doesn't seem very likely, why wouldn't these people be just as happy with some other guild of different size? Only exceptions to this are old players who've had time to build huge social networks within the guild. Though most old timers know plenty of people even from outside the guild so it's not necessarily that specific guild that's keeping them playing but the community at large.

Even though my own guild is small/medium I've made dozens and dozens of friends in DDO over the years. Guilds are not the end-all of community building and social networking in DDO, they're just one piece in a much, much larger puzzle. And this is why the whole concept of big guilds somehow contributing more to anything at all is silly.

I have to disagree. In my experience, casual players join guilds to be in a, hopefully, better social environment than they find in harbor chat. To be in groups that, hopefully, are more group oriented than the common PUG. Guilds that don't give players what they hope for, generally don't see those players sticking around very long. Hopefully, with the new system, those players will more likely be going to other guilds than other games.

In a lot of cases, in my casual friendly guild, new members don't even know that guilds offer a few minor buffs.

Making a contribution to the game simply makes making the play experience better for others. Simply by offering an environment with more structure and accountability than what we find in the game in general is all it really takes to make a players choose to spend their next every other Tuesday MMO session playing DDO than some other game. I don't see how the old system. Nothing earth shaking needed.

[Gremmlynn]

I think the issue is that small guilds are saddled with large decay relative to the # of members they have while large guilds are not. I don't think having a system that only penalizes small guilds with decay is right either - as Thac0 said earlier - there is really no reason to keep a decay mechanism at all given the objectives the developers stated.

I am not proposing hurting large guilds. I am happy to see my friends in large guilds having this monkey off their back. Unfortunately there are many small casual guilds and this doesn't do much for those players. Since guilds are really a social mechanic I see no point in having decay- and especially a decay that favors a specific guild size when one of the of objectives was to no encourage a specific guild size.

I don't think anyone, outside of those responsible for selling gold seal amenities and maybe a few super elitist players, is a fan of decay period. Unfortunately, one of those groups has a major say in how things are.

[BitkaCK2]

In my humble opinion the only solution is the final solution. That's right, nuke renown decay entirely. Get rid of it. Seriously. What's the worse case scenario if it's removed? Maybe a guild leader has a 100 members level his guild to 100 and then kicks everyone but him (or her) self. The Hive will take care of aforementioned GL and they are left to pay for ship amenities on their own. Meanwhile the other 99 form their own guild and level it back to 100. A PITA perhaps but made easier without decay. While considering all the possible fixes to balancing renown decay please consider if the ultimate fix would be its removal. I mean this thread alone is 1100+ posts long. Would removing decay really cause more issues than trying to figure out how to properly balance it? What purpose is it serving? I mean that sincerely because I honestly can't figure out why it's necessary.

My apologies if I missed this suggestion earlier in the thread but 1100+ posts is a lot of reading.

Just my 2c,
bitkaCK2

EDIT: Just found the Petition thread. lol

[slarden]

I just realized something after getting a legendary victory for 4000 renown. The 300% guild renown bonus is not a multiplier, but rather an increase to the multiplier. So my math in previous examples is wrong and although it doesn't change the end result in all but one case, it does change the severity slightly.

The one result it does change: that a guild of 6 did have less decay per account under the old system vs. a large guild.

Under the old system a guild of 6 was earning the renown of 24 and covering the decay for 20 while a a guild of 200 was earning the renown for 200 and covering the decay for 210.

[Qhualor]

i actually have no problem with decay. i just want it to be fair for all guild sizes and all types of players would be able to be in a guild without needing to meet certain playtime guild requirements instead of having to search out casual guilds.

combating decay to maintain and gain levels just promotes people to keep playing, playing with guild and showing support for their guild. it makes players feel a sense of pride and accomplishment when they increase their level and always striving to do better.

being in a guild today serves more of a purpose than it did 3 years ago. before, you could be in a guild and not know anyone in it. maybe you would say hi if you notice someone was in the same group as you and from the same guild. there wasnt much of a perk or a reason to be in a guild before unless you actually made friends with them. this was my experience the first 6 months of playing the game. i had 3 characters in 3 different guilds and knew not 1 person. someone asked if i wanted to join, i said yes and that was it.

today, due to guild renown and perks your guild gets along the way leveling, theres more guild togetherness and a lot more reason for players to group and get to know their guildmates. people actually care a lot more about their guild now and want to see it succeed. one way they help is pulling renown and combating the decay. guilds working together to maintain their sense of pride. i dont mean pride in a bad way. i mean it in a way that guildies feel good about having a guild tag and a number next to it, unlocking the next buff on the ship, upgrading to a bigger ship and being able to invite outside guild friends to use your altars. those of you in high level guilds, how many times have you invited someone from your group to use your buffs? it feels good when others see what their guild could eventually get in time and they say how nice your ship looks.

decay serves a good purpose as a way to maintain and strive for guilds to do better, but only if its fair to all. i would like it to work out so that somehow casual players can be a contributor in any size guild without the huge decay impact it could have.

[THAC0]

It sure would put this beast to rest if they would just remove the Guild Renown Decay as I suggested earlier. And just think... all the time the Devs are spending trying to fit a square peg into a round hole...they could walk away from and know the DDO Community is happy Decay is gone. And the Devs can work on the next series of issues on their list to address.

Again, my opinion. And I still don't envy the position the Devs put themselves in with this flip flop of how Guild Renown Decay works.

/shrug

[Xezrak]

I think scrapping decay altogether is probably the best path to take.

[Gremmlynn]

Well I have to admit I assumed the devs were trying to do what their goals said, but you bring up an interesting point regarding money. Perhaps saddling small guilds with high decay is really about selling guild elixirs and amenities since it is completely inconsistent with the stated goal of not encouraging a guild size.

I am not much for conspiracy theories at all but it would certainly explain why they are doing this,

I would say they probably favor guilds of at least middle size. It helps them maintain casual players, as while casual players really offer little to an active guild, an active guild offers a lot to casual players. Small guilds tend to be small because they are either rather closed to the idea of bringing in these players or simply aren't active enough to offer them what they are looking for (it's not buffs, it's other players on-line on those occasions they are). Larger guilds are more likely to have the 24/7 player base that supports a more impulse type play "schedule".

[slarden]

I would say they probably favor guilds of at least middle size. It helps them maintain casual players, as while casual players really offer little to an active guild, an active guild offers a lot to casual players. Small guilds tend to be small because they are either rather closed to the idea of bringing in these players or simply aren't active enough to offer them what they are looking for (it's not buffs, it's other players on-line on those occasions they are). Larger guilds are more likely to have the 24/7 player base that supports a more impulse type play "schedule".

If that is the case it shows a misunderstanding new and casual players. There are many new and casual players in small guids. The size guild a person wants to be in is really a matter of personal preference. Being new or casual doesn't make you more likely to want to be in a large guild. We started our guild as level 1s in korthos and if you run around the harbor you will see many small and start-up guilds started by these folks. I think it would be good to give these small guilds a break on decay just as they did with large guilds. It must be real discouraging when these small guilds reach a point where decay hurts and they realize after spending so much time leveling their guild they reached a point where they can't level and their guild is far below the level of most guilds they see.

[Zargarx]

So according to the latest post, no guild renown decay based on guild size, and it appears that guild decay is staying.

Based on that, my suggestion on guild decay is to minimize it up a certain point.

Wiki had a guild renown decay multiplier that goes up based on level
From wiki:
The level-based multiplier, shown in the table above, is determined by the minimum renown needed to be at that level, not your current renown, which is 50 * Level^3. Take every 5 levels starting at the onset of renown decay to be a tier (so level 26-30 = tier 1, level 31-35 = tier 2, etc.). Multiply the renown by the tier that the level is in. Then, multiply the product by the following:
Level Multiplier
Level 26-40 2.5
Level 41-60 3.0
Level 61-80 3.5
Level 81-99 4.0
Level 100 4.5

Assume this is correct, or close enough, I would suggest changing that to:
Level 26-85 1
Level 86-90 2
Level 91-95 3
Level 96-99 4
Level 100 5
As before, guild renown size is set to 20 regardless of size.
This continues to help large guilds the most, but is also a big help to smaller casual guilds up to a point (99%+ small guilds that can't break through the guild renown decay in mid levels).

[Silex_Molior]

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

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

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

Here is my idea.

Guild should have a "watermark" guild size. This "watermark" is the highest # of active members the guild has ever had.

Then, compare the CURRENT active guild size to the "watermark". If its close (and I leave defining "close" up to Turbine), that means the guild is at its "natural" size (regardless of its actual size, small, med, or large) and get the "least" decay. The further you are from your "natural size", the more of a decay penalty you get.

So, in essence, guilds which fluctuate wildly (go real high, then drop real low) will get the highest decay.

Now, we don't want to punish these guilds forever, so, what you do is then implement a "decay of watermark", whereby each month or two, you "reduce" the watermark by some amount (again, to be determined) if the current active guild size is below the watermark. This has the effect of the "decay penalty" being reduced over time if the guild really did drop down in permanent membership, but allows the guild to recruit new members during that time to remove the decay faster.

Anyway, I hope you get the idea.

[Hendrik]

Setting the guild renown size to 10+10 (20) does not help small casual guilds at all. It helps large guilds tremendously.

If all things were equal, this would be true.

However, they are not equal. The SGB (Small Guild Bonus) easily offsets the base 20 size in the equation. It is the SGB that 'helps' small casual guilds.

[Beethoven]

From what I've seen plenty of the more casual players care very little what guild they're actually in, they're just in them because they got an invite or wanted ship buffs.

You are making a /lot/ of generalizations there. I know as many casual players as I know Vets who have been ViPs for 3+ years. Also, Guild Renown does not care about contributions to the community at all, it merely measures chests per day. Case in point, I'd be to create a webpage compiling tons of useful material I would not get a single point of Guild Renown for it (but would incur Decay for while I am working on that). Meanwhile, I'd go ahead and spend the day ransacking IQ on mulitple toons I'd make a ton of renown.

Most people I know (both hardcores and casual) will pick their guilds on personal friendships; in lieu of that - yes, large guilds frequently will be more attractive for casual and new players than small ones because large guilds usually have a larger diversity of players. Chances are by joining a large guild you will be exposed to the occassional vet who is willing to teach while also be able to meet players roughly your own skill. Finally, more members is often translated into more potential people to group with.

Small guilds will often be only either or; either small groups of tight know friends who started play the game together or a group of hardcores / vets with enough game-knowledge and mad skills to make every new / casual player feel inadequate. However, the guild renown system did make many large guilds stop take chances with new members and left many casuals with no choice but create their own guild (which was going nowhere fast). And yes, there have been complaints about just that all over the place (ie: usually one thread ever other month).

I think that a flat rate for decay is just about right. I know math and factual data is far more useful then gut feeling, however, in light of that, it 'feels' wrong to do some EE Quest - one of the highest CR Quest in game - and only see a 50pt renown token for your Adventure. Not saying I want to always see 500/1000pt renown tokens all the time, just a little less 50's.

I actually like this suggestion. Tackle the (remaining) issues from a different end by adjusting (or implementing new) ways to gain renown. So, for instance have chest level (or quest difficulty) pay a larger role in what types of Renown tokens appear in chests. Could maybe veen go so far as to create new Epic only tokens that will pay in increased amount of Renown - perhaps only twice the Heroic value on Epic Normal and Hard and five or ten times on Epic Elite.

It could make blind recruiting straight off Korthos even less attractive as someone who'll eventually manage Epic Elite's will pull signficiantly higher Renown rewards than someone who still runs circles in the Harbor a year after. It'd also add another reason to actually teach Guild members since you will want to groom them for epics (or even epic elites) as quick as possible for reasons of renown).

Small hardcore guilds would be helped as they could more easily make up with skill what they lack in quantity by pulling higher renown rewards. The only ones who would not see a lot of change are small guilds consisting mostly of casual members - at least not unless they develop the skills (and toons) necessary to tackle more difficult challenges. Then again, we are talking about renown and if you are a small group of younglings who still are learning you might not get famous quick anyway.

[DocBenway]

If all things were equal, this would be true.

However, they are not equal. The SGB (Small Guild Bonus) easily offsets the base 20 size in the equation. It is the SGB that 'helps' small casual guilds.

At size 6, it acts as roughly 24 people, all other things being equal. At 5 it is 18 and a half people, at 4 it is 13.6, at 3, it is roughly 9 people, etc.
At size 7 is acts like 27 people, at 8 its 29.6, at 9 we have the average gathering capacity of 32 people.
The bonuses don't stop there and getting into medium bonuses, an actual 32 people, gather like 47 people.

So when it evens the field, it doesn't count evening the next field between medium and large either. Everybody plays catch-up and those under 6 are decayed for more people than the bonus adds to the count. All other gathering factors being equal.

[Beethoven]

They are not equal - not even close.

Large and small guilds never will be equal.

* I surround myself with but my three closest friends I will be subjected to less noise and drama than if I surround myself with 200 people.
* A guild consisting exclusively of 3 hardcores will have a significantly easier time establishing a server rep as hardcore guild than if the same 3 hardcores join a guild of 197 casuals.
* It is significantly easier to keep track of the needs (in, say, terms of loot) of 3 people than it is to keep track (and decide upon) the needs of 200.
* Finally, take 200 people and you get 400 opinions. Meanwhile, 3 like-minded individuals will be far less likely to have a large number of conflicting opinions on pretty much every issue.

I am not saying small guilds shouldn't get a little something, but lets not pretend there is no advantage of small guilds outside of guild level. We will never achieve a perfect equality between small and large guilds. The goal, I think, is keep both options as viable as possible.