Guild Renown Changes

[slarden]

Many hands make light the work.

If you're arguing that all guilds should progress at the same speed, why not remove renown altogether and just grant upgrades based on the number of days that the guild has existed?

Full disclosure: I play primarily in a large "family" guild on Khyber. It has ~100 "active" accounts, although there are rarely more than 25 people logged at a time on weekends or peak times, and usually 10 or fewer at any other time. Under the old system, this guild was pretty much stuck at 70. Since the test system was introduced, it has shot up to a whopping...72. I also play in a small guild of friends on another server. None of us log in there much, I rarely play there unless they're on, and they log in at most twice a week. That guild sits at 26, where there is no decay, and maybe hits 27 if we're all on for a weekend, before falling again during the week.

I have no illusions that these guilds should progress at the same rate. I don't think that's realistic, but it seems to be what you're advocating for in the "small casual guild that logs on more when more of them are around, and less when fewer of them are around" being able to advance to the upper guild tiers.

Much earlier in the thread, I proposed a system that would reward players for being active and taking renown, but not punish them for periods of inactivity, or for players who just log in to say hi and remind everyone they're still alive. Here it is again:

Calculate decay based on the old formula without the "min10+10" line. For this formula, count as "inactive" any player who did not earn at least 1 point of renown since renown decay was last calculated.

Now this would prevent double renown hits when servers come down, because only those people who were on and earning renown between when the servers came up and went back down would be active, and it seems like a much fairer system to me. It would also have the effect of makign it more difficult for a 1-2 person guild to log in "phantom" accounts to artificially raise their size to 6 to increase their renown gain by 120% they would have to, at a minimum, log those accounts in once a day and kill an orange named mob to get that bonus. It wouldn't affect the real optimizers anyway, since they built their small guilds around having 6 active people taking as much renown as possible every day.

As I said, I have no issue that small guilds require more renown/account to level up. The only issue I have is the punitive decay aspect of the system. I don't think it makes sense for a person in a small guild to get 9.25 more decay than a person in a large guild. I think decay should be lowered and the more difficult leveling requirements should remain as they are.

I think the notion that all small guilds are using phantom accounts is absurd. Our small guild originally consisted of 5 real life friends and a few others. We do have one person with 2 accounts in our guild but everyone else has one account / person. Whenever someone asks me to invite another character I check whether our account # goes up. There are many people that have multiple ftp accounts because of the character limit and to make it easier to trade to bank characters. The person I know the most accounts is in a mid-size guild and not a small guld.

The system certainly encouraged a guild to be at least 6 accounts, but all that really did for small guilds was to reduce the significant per account penalty it already had, it never gave a leveling advantage.

The biggest advantage a guild could have is to have all active players regardless of size. I realize this is definitely harder for large guilds to accomplish than small guilds, but it's not the reality for most small guilds either.

[Cernunan]

What I am seeing at this point is that people are all envisioning what they believe a guild should entail.

The major disconnect is the point Sirgog made. Until we absolutely understand exactly what Turbine is trying to define as what a guild is, it is going to be impossible to give objective discourse on what the system needs to be.

All the discussion is now is people with firm positions on one end or the other trying to make sure that their personal definition gets the attention which they want.

We REALLY do need for Turbine to finally stop dragging feet and tell us what it is that they think a guild system should entail. Then we can start a dialogue on how it can be achieved that is fair for everyone.

[Artos_Fabril]

I think the notion that all small guilds are using phantom accounts is absurd. Our small guild originally consisted of 5 real life friends and a few others. We do have one person with 2 accounts in our guild but everyone else has one account / person. Whenever someone asks me to invite another character I check whether our account # goes up. There are many people that have multiple ftp accounts because of the character limit and to make it easier to trade to bank characters. The person I know the most accounts is in a mid-size guild and not a small guld.

I don't think I ever indicated that I thought that all small guilds were logging in phantom account, or even necessarily that any were. You have either misunderstood my note that the system I proposed would discourage that, or latched onto it as a handy strawman. Why you would do so is beyond me, as it seems to me that the system I proposed would address your concerns with the decay system by removing the min guild size from the calculation all together and figuring activity based solely on people who are earning renown.

[DocBenway]

We REALLY do need for Turbine to finally stop dragging feet and tell us what it is that they think a guild system should entail. Then we can start a dialogue on how it can be achieved that is fair for everyone.

I want and have been asking for this but don't see us getting a full definition, at least not without it including things that marketing or management would get in trouble with public relations over. Just ask who would buy 100 packs of Astral Diamonds in the store for obscene TP plus a whole chicken to trade them for Lordsmarch Marks or Purified Eberron Shards?

That's the cynical problem with decay, the whole system is tied to the store and the best solution for players is never the best solution for accountants.

[Vanshilar]

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

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

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

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

Under the current (or old) system, the vast majority of guilds won't reach those levels. They simply die of old age before they get there because the pace is so slow. The vast majority of guilds are still plodding on, even after years in the game, at the lower levels where each additional level does bring good in-game benefits, such as +30 resist shrines and +2 stat shrines. But they're small.

However, the most prolific complainers about the renown system are people who have already reached those levels, because their guild size made the earlier levels a cakewalk. The pace of leveling up was short-circuited by simply having hundreds of players dump their renown into the same pot. That's why you see that this thread has been primarily about renown decay.

But this change only furthers the gap between the top 1-2% of guilds with the remaining playerbase -- those guilds that flew through the early levels can now continue flying through the later levels, while everybody else is still struggling to catch up. That's why Turbine's focus should have been on renown gain instead, because that's where the vast majority of guilds are still struggling. They should be looking at how to promote guilds of all sizes to be able to reach those levels that give meaningful in-game benefits, rather than catering to the small number of guilds that are already past those levels and are clammering for more.

Vanshilar is playing guild wars, DDO style, so a lot of what he says is irrelevant. Not necessarily wrong, and I appreciate his effort and data collection, but irrelevant. He says one very accurate and very useful thing:

"As already pointed out, the original renown system rewarded active players."

His entire house of cards starts falling apart when you ask a very simple question: why should a guild reward system be based on active players and not active guilds?

Uh huh. So pointing out with evidence that large guilds have already benefited the most from the previous system (and even more under the current system) is "guild wars". Pointing out (again, with evidence) that small guilds have it tougher is "guild wars". Pointing out that, contrary to Turbine's stated goal of not trying to force people into specific guild sizes, the number of characters or accounts in a guild is the strongest predictor of that guild's level is "guild wars". Being just about the only player bringing actual data to the table to support their position (how many people in this entire thread have ever put any actual evidence to back up what they say?) is called "guild wars".

The counter-question to this and related questions is "why shouldn't a guild reward system be based on active players and not active guilds?" Should my university's intramural basketball team be "worth" more (in terms of salary, reputation, etc.) than Michael Jordan simply because they collectively can put down more total free throws than him? Should a school's reputation or endowment or resources etc. be simply based on the number of students they have? (As a side note, then, the most well-known or recognized university in America should be City University of New York, and very, very few people would ever have heard of Caltech.) Why should simply having lots of people under the same banner be rewarded more than if those same people were under different banners? In fact, it's actually easier to argue that less people doing something -- slaying a dragon, making a number of free throws, etc. -- should be worth more.

Trying to make the distinction between active guilds and active players obscures that guilds are made up of players, that guild rewards are gained by players, and that guild rewards are ultimately used up (consumed) by those players.

This ignores an even more fundamental issue. Turbine is in the gaming business, and it is incumbent on their bottom line to create incentives for players to play the game more. So the more active the players, the better. The guild system is no different. So the question then becomes "Why should each of 500 players who play 1 hour each week be given the same rewards as each of 50 players who play 10 hours each week, just for being under the same guild banner?"

So one of the reasons why my analysis is done assuming equal player activity (i.e. say each account making 500 renown per day) is to measure whether or not Turbine is fulfilling their goal that the system should not be encouraging a specific guild size. It is effectively asking "Should players be subdividing into size X or size Y guilds?" In other words, say Turbine has a playerbase of 10000 players. Under the guild system, should they subdivide into 10 guilds of 1000 players, 100 guilds of 100 players, or 1000 guilds of 10 players? According to Turbine, if the system does not encourage any particular guild size, it should make no difference -- that is, the players should receive the same rewards -- whether they've split up into 1000 guilds of 10 players each or 10 guilds of 1000 players each. But as I've repeatedly shown, not only does this system "in theory" favor guilds of large sizes because they level up far more quickly, but "in practice" (by analyzing all the guilds on MyDDO) large guilds are predominantly at the higher levels already, directly contradicting Turbine's stated goal for the system.

And it's not just Vargouille stating the goal as such in this thread. Fernando Paiz in his interview, in laying out the vision from Turbine for the guild renown system, explicitly said "we don’t want to exclude a guild that might only include four people. We think that’s a totally valid way to play, and we’re trying not to force people to have 50 player guilds." He probably thought that 50 player guilds were considered large enough already, which makes sense considering they had said that 12 accounts was the average size of a guild (it's probably different now). He probably didn't consider guilds with over 600 accounts spamming the forums about how hard it is for them to level when the system is already extremely biased towards them.

Fair enough. and I agree they should raise the cap. I think there are lots of possibilities for marginal improvements for guild levels 101-200. My suggestion was simply to repeat all the 1-100 amenities except have buffs last for 2 hours. I think adding an extra 1% xp bonus every 20 levels is not game breaking. How about an extra 1% movement buff every 20 levels? With a little brainstorming, we could come up with a bunch of stuff.

You do realize that under the current system, a 3% XP shrine is at level 63, and a 5% XP shrine is at level 93, so it's not too far off from what you state, yet people complain that these "not game breaking" benefits are the reason why they are forced to kill their close, personal friends? That is the level of discourse here on these forums for why renown decay should be removed and large guilds should be able to level unimpeded. I would suggest other minor improvements (such as, an additional minute on your guild buff for every level beyond 100) but when people already resort to such histrionics, I shudder at the consequences of adding any further improvements.

If we're talking "fair" the decay should be based on the percentage of *active* players...

Active would be determined by how much renown each player pulls in each day to determine if they are active that day or not.

This change would punish active players in large and small guilds equally (but not equally because smaller guilds would have a higher % of active players). Current system penalizes active players that choose to tolerate casual players in their guild.

How about a compromise? Decay being assessed by the level of guild takes casual players out of the equation as it should. Reduce that decay by 75% for small guilds and lock out guild size if it expands from small to any of the larger sizes.

It more or less already does that. The problem is that Turbine defined "active" as "if any characters from the account has logged into the guild within the past 30 days" which is entirely too long. However, to prevent certain exploits, the minimum time Turbine could (and probably should) redefine "active" is "within the past 7 days". Same goes for recent departures.

The origial system was complete nonsense.

When you argue that guilds of ALL sizes should be treated exactly equally, then that means even guilds with 1 member must be treated equally. That means your argument boils down into an argument that makes grouping together into guilds meaningless from an advancement perspective. You are just as well off to go it solo as to group into a guild with others. At that point, why even bother with guilds at all? Just give every individual player the ability to earn their own private airships and buffs and they would be able to do so just as easily and quickly as guilds with any number of players in them.

It means that each guild is given the same opportunity for advancement regardless of size, from a game mechanism (and game reward) perspective. At that point, what size guild people would join would boil down to which social aspects they prefer. The current system itself however highly encourages people to join large guilds, and even more under the recent change.

The old system was NOT equitable. It was horribly unfair to casual/social players and to the guilds who had lots of those players in them. Further, it encouraged and rewarded the shunning of casual/social players and was harmful to DDO's social environment.

The new system does no substantial harm to any guild or type of player, when directly compared to the old system. It does help larger guilds more than it helps smaller guilds but there is a big difference between not helping and harming. Going back to the old system directly harms casual/social players and guilds that have lots of those players.

The old system rewarded those who got more renown, i.e. more "active" (under the renown system). I don't see why it's unfair that those who spend more effort at something will be more rewarded by it. The old system's goal was to give most of the benefits for little effort, and then very few and small benefits for a great deal of effort beyond that. That's typical of many incentive systems.

The supposed "shunning of casual/social players" is basically for those guild leaders who saw the guild level as being more important than their guild culture and atmosphere, and who saw booting people for inactivity as a better mechanism for increasing guild level than encouraging players to be active by hosting guild runs and so forth. As I've already said, under the old system the key to leveling was to encourage activity among members, which is why Over Raided was able to hit level 100 even with a good number of casuals renown-wise. Booting casual players is a losing strategy because it encourage guild strife and finger-pointing, and the net benefit (in terms of increased levels) is very small compared with the potential increase from encouraging activity. Yet Turbine chose to acquiesce to guild leaders who have this type of mentality toward their guild and casual/social players, which is a pretty bad decision in my opinion.

This thread demonstrates how important Drakesan's guild leader survey was.

The renown decay mechanism is/was completely broken, and there has never been any intellectually honest defense for it. Many have pointed this out previously, but the arguments go back and forth anyway (like here), so one might think the playerbase is split on the issue.

We are not:

Like: 10
Dislike: 92
Meh: 21

Not only is the system broken, almost no one likes it. The current discussion does not need to continue. All that is left is to suggest what the new system will look like that fixes the problems, the most obvious one being active guilds not advancing. Removing all renown decay would be a worthwhile first step.

No, I knew as soon as the thread was made that it would be abused for this very purpose. For example, I have a mild dislike of the system; it encourages reliance on ship buffs rather than good play (i.e. people end up waiting too long for stragglers to get ship buffs), how long before an account is considered inactive is too long (I would say a week is a good amount of time), it focuses too much on chests as a metric for activity, and for the majority of players, the system encourages them to join a large guild as faceless character #573 rather than promote being a team player. But if I had posted in that thread I'd have been put down as a "dislike", only for my tally to be used for people to try to say "oh look at how much people don't like renown decay" which is an entirely different animal.

It also doesn't account for that for the past nearly half year or so, anybody who doesn't agree with a certain few posters about the renown system will immediately get spam jumped on by them until they give up and stop posting, which you can see in that thread and other related previous threads. That's argument by volume, rather than by reason, which Turbine should not encourage but by their recent changes, have completely validated this forum tactic as a means to get changes made to the game.

I just curious, but I wonder if there is a problem confusing two very different types of guild renown:

meta-game renown: This is what the accountant on the other side of the computer controlling the avatar thinks of your guild. Are all your members awesome, competent, lead good raids, die too often, don't know what is going on, rude, helpful, etc.

in-game renown: This is what Cydonie and Gerald Goodblade think of your guild. What counts is if (and how often) your protected the Havadasher, defeated the Stormreaver, or stopped the invasion.

I think it is a serious mistake for an in-game mechanic to try to measure meta-game renown. A lot of it can't be measured anyway. In-game renown is fairly straight-forward, it is the number of quests your guild completes, monsters killed, chests opened. Kind of what we have now (once decay is eliminated). As long as we are clear on the distinction, and not try to create an in-game mechanic to quantify meta-game guild renown, the path forward is easier.

That's a valid point, but then the fact is that many people will then use their in-game guild level as a measure of their meta-game renown. You can even see this in all the posts about how members leave for higher-level guilds -- in other words, the guild leader wants the higher guild level and the meta-game renown associated with it, not simply for the in-game benefits. In fact, if they were really looking purely for just the in-game benefits, then all the decay complaints would quickly dry up as having no basis, since there are very few of them beyond a certain level.

Let's use your preferred analogy of companies here. If company A is taxed at a rate of 20 (10+10) and company B is taxed at a rate of 310 (300+10), clearly the tax is far, far heavier on company B. Remember, we are talking about companies (guilds) here and not about employees (players). Obviously, to anyone who isn't biased to the point of blindness, the larger guilds are being taxed at a far higher rate than the smaller guilds. That is done on purpose to help level the playing field because the smaller guilds simply can't compete with the larger guilds when it comes to earning renown. The only way smaller guilds can get ahead is if the larger guilds are taxed (decay) far more heavily and the smaller guilds are subsidised (bonuses) heavily as well.

So in your mind it should cost the same to pay 1000 employees as it does to pay 10 employees? As already pointed out elsewhere, the renown system actually penalizes small guilds more than large guilds (because of the additional 10 accounts that get added) so they had a higher rate (cost per player), and that was even before the recent changes. It's just that large guilds had a higher total amount because they had more players, just like how a company with 1000 employees will naturally have a higher total salary cost than a company of 10 employees.

Large guilds never had a choice. It was 'hit the wall, or boot casuals'.

You have a choice. No one is saying you need to recruit hundreds of players. If you are having troubles levelling, you could recruit a few players.

We. Never. Had. A. Choice.

So it's unacceptable for large guilds to encourage their members to play more to level up, but it's perfectly acceptable for small guilds to have to either mass induct and destroy their guild identity to level (or be among the top 1% of small guilds in terms of renown activity), or not get to those levels that large guilds take for granted within any acceptable time (i.e. not decades)? Turbine, is this the type of argument that you find reasonable and persuasive?

I appreciate your work chrisdinus7, and I agree that all guilds ought to be able to advance.

I also believe the old system favored large guilds up to a point. If there is a positive correlation between character count and guild level then there should be (in theory) more large guilds near max level in comparison to small guilds near max level.

If the opposite is true, it's something that needs to be noted in the correlation.

No, that actually is an example of confusion of the inverse. If you look at the number of different-size guilds near max level, there's more small guilds, but that's because there's more small guilds at all levels. However, if you take any random large guild, you will extremely likely find that they are at a high level already (last I checked, which admittedly was in October, it was at 44/52 = 85% of large (501 or more characters) guilds were level 61 or higher). If you take any random small guild, it is extremely unlikely that they are at high level (671/17155 = 4% of small (150 or less characters) guilds were level 61 or higher). It's just that large guilds like to focus on the extreme minority of small guilds that are able to make up for their huge disadvantage in manpower by being very active in playing the game, to make the claim that the system benefits small guilds.

So there is very much a correlation between the number of characters in the guild and its guild level. If you're in a large guild, there's a very good chance that your guild is at a fairly mid-high level already. If you're in a small guild, there's a pretty good chance that you're nowhere near those levels yet.

We have no goal or agenda to promote specific guild sizes.

So from Turbine's perspective, how well has the system achieved its goal? Is the system actually agnostic (from a game mechanics perspective) to guild size and give equal benefits for equal effort to guilds of all sizes?

This happened quite a bit to my guild when we stopped gaining levels. About half of those who left due to decay went to smaller guilds and half went to other large guilds. In all cases they went to guilds that were already higher level and had made it clear they would not take any casual players or new players. Those who left would tell me that they loved the guild and would like to stay but they just could not stand the decay. Some had been with the guild for years. We dropped down 3 levels and stagnated again at the lower level (60). A few of those who left eventually came back to us after finding they did not like the higher level guild. We still have a great guild, we are just lower level and more casual than I wanted us to be.

I find it humorous that even in these examples it supports my position. Under the old system, since you're in a large guild, if the other guild was at a higher level that means they were more active, whether large or small (this is not true for if you were in a small guild). In other words, they left because they wanted a higher-activity guild. I don't see why booting casuals is a good response compared with encouraging guild members to be more active.

But this illuminates a deeper point. These large guilds complained that the renown system was unfair because other guilds were able to level past their equilibrium level by being more active (i.e. higher level), in other words, complain that they lost players to other guilds who were higher level. But now they are telling everybody that the change where they'll be able to outlevel everybody else does not hurt any other guilds at all in any way, shape, or form, and that you should be happy that at least one tiny subset of guilds will be able to advance much more quickly than anybody else again, going so far as to directly confront anybody who disagrees with "why do you care if other guilds get to level faster? You can just recruit a bunch of people and level as fast as them too!"

So I have an easy and simple counterproposal: Any guilds with 49 or less accounts should get a guild renown bonus, effectively immediately, of 100x. If these guilds are true to their word, that we shouldn't care about how quickly guilds of other sizes level, they should be absolutely ecstatic that other guilds are finally able to match the rates of renown gain that they get to take for granted. Any questions about "but that's unfair" can be met with "well you can always just get rid of a bunch of people if you want to level this fast", more or less the same thing that they've been saying to other guilds (just in reverse). Why 49 accounts or less? It's because that's how high the size bonus goes up to (i.e. the bonus is for level 1 to 49 accounts currently), and as a bonus, my understanding (though I may be wrong on this) is that the size bonus can be adjusted on the fly just like renown decay. (I remember once when it was adjusted without any downtime when it was first implemented, but the system may have changed since then.)

I am being somewhat facetious about this, of course, but it illustrates the contortions that people go through in their arguments to simply try to benefit whatever their personal status is rather than what is good for the game.

Large guilds that do keep recruiting have a different problem. They are more likely to split because of the diverse interests of all of their members. But splits do not threaten the survival of the guild as long as the splits are handled without massive drama. As long as they keep recruiting they can easily replace those who split off. Often, those who split off will even come back if their new guild does not go so well. At least that is how it works for my very large and very open guild. We have been going for 3 years now, open recruiting all the way. Not even a hint of a collapse.

We may be a product of the old decay system though. Practically no established guild on my server, other than mine, will accept a casual/social player so those that don't leave DDO entirely often find a home in my guild.

I keep seeing these claims made. Once again I have to decide whether or let falsehoods go by unremarked due to space and time, or to take the time gathering the evidence to point them out.

Orien has just passed its three-year anniversary on November 4th. Guilds that were claiming to have been around for 3 years on Orien would belong to that august group of guilds that were around before their server opened.

But even beyond that, from archival guild renown data, the renown and size of your guild was:



Unless you're claiming your guild "laid low" when the server opened and after the renown system was released, but then suddenly decided to open its doors sometime in early 2011, it's highly unlikely that your guild has been around for 2 years, let alone 3.

I kind of take a personal affront to this because back then I was in one of the "big tent" guilds when the server opened up (Epic Fail, which is still around), and now we have other revisionist guilds trying to claim they've been around all this time or in any way influenced the early development of the server, to try to inflate their standing on the forums.

This isn't the first time that I've had to point out that people can't even get the basic facts about their own guild straight, yet go out and make those claims repeatedly in different threads. And of course, many guilds on the server are happy to take in casuals.

It also shows how large guilds can take the progress through lower levels for granted. When you go from 500 to 1000 characters and level 30 to level 40 in less than a month, it's easy to forget about just how hard it is for everybody else to level. Most small guilds will need more than a year just to reach level 40. Saying "oh but it's okay because you'll eventually reach level 60 too" after a decade of continuous effort is little comfort to the vast majority of guilds.

Part of this is because so much new content has been introduced that gives little or no renown rewards. DDO events like Mabar and CC give virtually no renown. Challenges give almost no renown. Epic Eberron quests don't give renown end-rewards. Renown is optimal when you run +2 level quests. But they have raised the level cap to 25. How many level 25, 26, and 27 quests have been added?

I agree with this but the proper course of action is to add renown to those events. As I keep mentioning, what Turbine needs to look at is their system for renown gain. Capped characters back then (level 20) could still get renown from running Shroud. Capped characters now (level 25) won't get much if any renown from Shroud, nor anybody else in their group (unless this has changed recently). Since guild renown is an incentive system like many other systems in the game, unless Turbine wants to encourage high level characters to run other content instead, it makes more sense for them to look at adding renown to the things that they want players to do.

I agree with most of what you said. But I am uncertain as to how many very small guilds are under level 60 and why. How many of them are that size because they just started up and would like to grow in membership but have not had time to yet? How many tried to expand their membership and could not find players? How many even have any active players at all? How many are pure solo players? How many are that size specifically because that is the optimal size for reaching level 100 under the old decay system? I just don't know. I just don't know how many players are in the catagory of very small guilds under level 60 because they really want to be in a very small guild. It could be a "multitude", as you say, but it could be that there really are not that many. I just don't know.

Even if it is a small number though, I do feel that they should be able to advance and level up and should not be held down in levels forever by renown decay, as larger guilds were under the old decay system.

Small guilds are basically held down by the renown gain system. Only a small minority of small guilds will ever get the 6,250,000 renown it takes to get to level 50. Large guilds can blithely blow through level 50 since for a 600-account guild, it only represents a bit more than 10.4 legendary victories for each player in the guild on average while it would mean about 31 legendary victories for each player in a 200-account guild. In the meantime, level 50 means 156 legendary victories per player for a 16-account guild, and 260 legendary victories per player for a 6-account guild. And this factors in the small size guild bonus. That Turbine decided on using the sum total of renown gained by players in a guild to determine guild level inherently encourages large guilds -- and it's almost an order of magnitude difference, even with the current small guild size bonus. As pointed out previously, the small guild bonus does little to offset this. A 6-account guild will gain renown equivalent to a 24-account guild due to the bonus, and a 16-account guild will gain renown equivalent to a 40-account guild due to the bonus, but a 200-account guild will gain renown equivalent to a 200-account guild, and a 600-account guild will gain renown equivalent to a 600-account guild. There is little comparison between the leveling speed of 24-account equivalent versus 600-account equivalent guilds.

Yet all guilds must pass through this renown gain wall before they get to the renown decay wall -- renown decay doesn't impact guilds significantly until the mid-high levels. Large guilds will not really "feel" the impact of this renown gain wall. But it's what keeps the vast majority of small guilds from ever seeing the levels that large guilds take for granted. They never even see the impact from decay because they'll have given up long before it's a significant factor in their progress.

It's somewhat difficult, but doable, to take a look at guilds of all sizes from two years ago when the renown system was released, and compare them at the present day. Difficult, though, because it takes a lot of computation time to compare and match those data sets (there are over 100k guilds currently). The last time I did this was in July 2012. What I did was to use datasets that were from August 6 and August 27, 2010, and filter out the inactive guilds (i.e. any guilds whose renown didn't change within that time). So basically this set of guilds was active back in August 2010. I then looked at them again in July 2012, again doing the same thing with the July datasets (using June 30 and July 31, 2012). In other words, guilds which were active soon after the renown system was released, and were also active almost two years later in July 2012.

The results weren't pretty. Of the 45 guilds that had 501 or more characters, 22 (49%) were level 72 or above, so that's roughly the midpoint of large guilds after about 2 years. By contrast, 2193 out of the 4372 guilds (50.2%) that had 150 or less characters were still level 29 or below. In other words, just slightly over half of the small guilds had not yet even hit level 30, and this was after two years. By contrast, the lowest level large guild was level 49. Although I'm being slightly sloppy in stating things, in effect if any guild had just inducted 501 or more characters, they were "guaranteed" to be at level 49 or higher after two years. Whereas only 785 out of those 4372 (18%) small guilds were level 49 or higher.

Any way you look at the data, the conclusion is inescapable: the renown system has largely rewarded large guilds, where by simply getting as many people under your roof as possible pretty much "guaranteed" that you'll get to the mid-high levels. Only the most active of small guilds have any chance of getting to the levels that large guilds take for granted. This is also backed up by modeling and simulations as I've already given elsewhere.

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.

I think before you get to ideas you should first discuss or figure out how guilds are supposed to encourage people to play the game, and the ideas should be discussed around that.

I'm sure there will be people who will chime in to say that large guilds are what drives players to DDO so I'll take the opposite tack -- that it's small guilds (beyond a very tiny size) that collectively encourage players who log in to log in again. We already have a system that is dedicated to anonymous players all playing together. That's a server. The guild system should complement that by being a system where players are directly encouraging each other on an individual basis to continue playing the game.

People keep talking about how it's the fellow players that they form friendships with that keep them logging into the game, long after the game loses its freshness. As a social system, I would argue that it's small guilds that encourages the forming of such bonds more than large guilds, although I know that bonds can form in any size guild. The reason is simple: In a small guild, with a limited number of players, the leader and anyone else in the guild gets to know you as an individual person. In a large guild, unless you are part of the the inner "core" or inner "clique" of the guild, it is less likely that random members of the guild will take the initiative to get you involved in the game individually, other than to say the obligatory "welcome" when you are inducted. So it is up to the player to seek out his own friendships and make his own bonds in a large guild. Not so with a small guild.

In a small guild, when I log on half the guild will say "hi" to me and ask what's up. In a large guild I can log on or off or sit around all day and nobody will notice me or bother to engage me in anything.

Of course, the usual suspects will say "but that's not fair, there's too many players in my guild to keep track of them all individually" but that's exactly my point. A lot of the renown discussion has revolved around the guild system and how it benefits guilds from the vantage point of guild leadership, which is why a lot of the complaints are about how guild leaders have to decide whether or not to boot casuals or whatnot. Very little has been about the average player who is just getting into the game, and what keeps him interested in the game, and I think you can probably see the different guild leaders' attitudes toward them. It is hard to convince me that someone who simply sorts the members by last logged in status and then boots characters who have not logged in for X days while blaming "the system" for "forcing" them to do that would have much empathy towards the average player in the guild that isn't in the inner clique. Whereas a guild leader in a guild with a limited number of players has more of a vested interest into looking at the welfare of individual players.

For me personally, I can list the individual players that introduced me to the game, got me "hooked", and got me to continue playing to interact with the next generation of players. They were looking at me as an individual person and knew my individual strengths and weaknesses, and looked at how to tailor my personal gaming experience around my interests.

I know that sounds very abstract, so let me make it a bit more concrete: the guild Over Raided has a pretty eclectic mix of players. Some are more into just simply playing the game (I guess the "stereotypical" gamer), some are more social, some are more explorer-type, and so forth. I fall into the latter category -- in any game I play, I invariably go into the game mechanics and look at how things really work. So the challenges that the guild leadership gives me to engage my interest in the game are more about figuring out stuff: figuring out how the renown system works (and in return the guild can devise better leveling strategies), figuring how the various components of DPS such as attack speed works (and in return the guild can build better characters), figuring out how the raids work (and in return the guild can have more efficient strategies for doing each raid) and so forth. I'm not simply "just another player" but a lot of the discussions with me revolve around my particular interests, and the guild will also entertain my needs as well, such as being the only person to attack Horoth for the first minute or so of the fight to measure his HP. Consider how many guilds in the game would be willing to all just stand around in something like elite ToD, buffs ticking, damages being taken (and heals tossed out), just because some random player says he wants to "collect data" -- and if anybody else attacks then the whole dataset is invalid. Believe me, I've tried it in PUGs. It rarely works out.

Would I have been similarly interested in doing "out there" things like accurately measuring a monster's HP through video recording the fight if I weren't in such a guild? Probably, but it's highly unlikely that I would have been able to carry it out on my own. All of that would have just been untested hypotheses had there not been a guild to support it and get me to where I need to be -- and of course, the hypotheses to doing that itself would unlikely have been made in the first place had there not been a guild that taught me individually how the game works.

I'm not a particularly active player -- if I remember right, I haven't even broken 1000 total raids in the over 3 years that I've been playing this game; I've only ever done 1 TR in all my time of playing, and that was just because I didn't want to re-acquire the gear on the character. This is far from the stereotypical profile that you hear from the forums about level 100 guilds -- all this talk about how supposedly it's only for those with no lives and 15 TRs or whatever. Yet the guild knows how to engage me because they have an individual interest in me as a player and have taken the time to talk to me individually.

I doubt this happens to this extent in guilds beyond a certain size. Obviously in a guild that is too small, the members might not even log on at the same time, making it hard to engage fellow players. But once a guild gets too large, the "in" crowd within the guild simply starts seeing the "out" crowd as random players to pick-up for raids or something rather than as individual players. Sure, they might feel as if they're engaging everybody because they'll ask in guild chat "hey does anyone want to do this quest?" and people in the guild will join, but that is distinctly different from looking at a given player and asking "hmm how can I engage this player" and keep him interested in continuing to log in.

Instead, the average player will have to find his own group of friends, whether inside the guild or outside the guild. So there will be a significant number of members who are effectively "lone wolves" within the guild, not really interacting with the guild much except for the ship buffs, but otherwise effectively unguilded (joining their own PUGs, etc.). Maybe posting the occasional renown token or two in the guild chat so that the leader doesn't boot them, but that's about it. There is very little leadership support for such players to encourage them to continue playing.

Yet the renown system in its current form has strongly encouraged such guilds. The high amounts of renown required to reach the mid-levels in the first place has ensured that guilds must be very active or very large to get most of the benefits of the system. This means that casuals are effectively driven to large guilds where by their own admission, the leaders just see them as characters to boot once they get low enough on the roster when sorted by "last logged in". The alternative is to be shut out from those guild benefits if they elect to join a small guild (since small casual guilds won't get to those levels in any reasonable length of time). So the system not only encourages one type of guild, it also encourages casuals to join the type of guild where the leaders openly state that they are not interested in providing support for them.

So what can the guild system do to give more support to such players? Presumably Turbine wants a system that encourages casual players to become frequent players, frequent players to become even more frequent players, etc. Admittedly it's somewhat difficult to say; as I continue to mention, the key to success (before the change to renown decay) was always to encourage guild members to be more active. Buying into the argument that the original system makes people boot casual players just displays how misplaced the guild leaders' priorities are. Over Raided and my membership in it is living proof of my stance, that a guild can have a sizable number of casual (renown-wise) players and still be level 100, yet as you can see in this very thread, people use my membership in Over Raided to conduct ad hominem attacks without bothering to discuss the validity of my points. With the changes, the key to success now is simply to get as many people into the guild as possible.

The original system at least encouraged players to be more active if they wanted to move from the mid-levels to the high-levels (for the marginal benefits), although mass recruiting was still the best strategy to go from the low-levels to the mid-levels. Decay, by being on a per-account basis (although small guilds were penalized more by decay), was the mechanism for that. I'm not sure if there's a better mechanism out there. A never-ending system, perhaps, where guild levels are basically infinite? Then you would still have the renown gain issue -- that the gain system encourages large guilds at the expense of everybody else.

I think this is the fundamental issue to be resolved, although I don't know if there's a good solution to it. The renown gain system, by making the guild level dependent on the sum total of renown gained by each member of the guild, effectively incentivizes guilds to simply induct as many people as possible without regard to engaging them in the game. After all, any random additional player can only contribute (not take away) renown from the guild, so you might as well as take him in, without regard to how much he may contribute, i.e. encouraging members to be active. The only limit to this is that guilds have a 1000-member cap, so that eventually they'd have to choose among the best 1000 characters they can find, but as you can already see in this thread, people are already clamoring for that to be removed. What's left unstated in this is that although the random player will benefit the guild, there's little to be said for whether or not the guild will benefit the random player, beyond providing ship buffs. There's little incentive for the guild to interact with the player, since it's much easier to just induct a new person than to spend time encouraging existing players to play more (get them more interested in the game).

The flip side is the case where an additional player may be a contributor, but he also has the potential to be a net taker (i.e. causes the guild to have less renown than if they didn't take the player in). In that case, then there may be an incentive for the guild leader to boot the player from the guild if the leader feels like the guild may get more renown if he did. This occurred not only with renown decay, but also with the small guild size bonus -- an additional member can decrease a small guild's overall renown by decreasing the bonus that everybody else gets. I mysteriously don't see as many complaints about this as I see about renown decay, despite the fact that it affects a great deal more guilds (there are far more guilds with less than 50 accounts and impacted by the small guild bonus than there are above level 25 and impacted by renown decay). I wonder why.

Fundamentally though, this represents your two options. If an additional player will always be a contributor, then the system converges on simply getting as many people as possible into the guild -- there's no drawback to that. If an additional player can potentially be a taker, then at some point there will be an incentive for him to be removed. The goals are in opposition to each other.

The only alternative that I can see is to be able to mark some players as not contributing nor detracting from the guild in terms of renown -- in other words, their account doesn't count in terms of renown points, so they are neither a net contributor nor a net taker. This may have some promise in allowing guilds to have casual players without having to boot them (although undoubtedly they'll get booted anyway if the guild leader finds other players that will contribute positively to renown), but the devil's in the details on it.

The big question remains - what is guild level meant to measure?

Persistance? Activity? Prestigious in-game achievements?

Answer that question and we can make suggestions as to how to get those goals met. The old system was a measure of activity per member.

I don't have much to add here, but I do think that yes, this is a fundamental question that Turbine should consider. The original system measured guild activity, guild size, and guild longevity -- if you were high level, you were either a large guild (of any level of activity) or a very active small guild, and you had been around a while to accumulate those renown (although large guilds could shoot up within months). The current system after the decay change basically measures size and longevity. I think ideally it should measure activity, but it depends on what Turbine decides. Player skill (i.e. achievements) could certainly factor into it, but with the level of forum discussion about guild renown, any suggestion along the lines of giving more rewards to doing harder things (soloing raids etc.) would probably be met with the usual sort of demagoguery.

The best idea I have seen regarding decay is to base daily decay on the number of accounts that have actually logged on that day. Even better, to base it on the number of characters in the guild that actually logged in that day. Thus characters in another guild don't matter (so no encouragement/discouragement to have all characters in one guild), players that could not log on that particular day do not matter, etc.

As far as small and very small guilds go, I think the small guild/very small guild bonuses should be tweaked upward, with the cap on how many levels can be gained per day. As it stands it just takes WAY to long to level a small/very small guild.

It already does this. It's just that rather than the current day, it's based on the past 30 days. Characters in other guilds already don't affect your activeness status in a guild. You can be active in other guilds and still be considered inactive in a guild, if you haven't logged on with any characters in that guild recently.

I wish the devs would consider a 'minimum guild size' - below that level, you get no decay, and no renown bonus for size of guild... I'd choose a level of around 10 characters - because to me, that's not a guild, that's a pug... with a couple of backups.

My reasoning? Guilds of one shouldn't exist without massive amounts of work. Massive amounts of work. Events like build-your-guild are exploited to end up with level 100 guilds (with 1 person), how is that fair to the rest of us working hard?

And this brings up a good example. The poor guy leveled up 150 characters from level 1 to level 8 during the Build your Guild event to get his guild up to level 100. We have guilds with over 600 accounts who spammed complaints about renown decay leading to the change, including in this very thread. If each of the players in their guild had leveled up a single character from level 1 to level 8 just like this guy did, they would've been at level 100 too. Yet these guilds and many others claim that they are "incredibly active" and work "very hard" as much as small guilds near their level. Whenever you try to quantify what is meant by those terms, it just about always ends up being no contest: to get to those levels, each member in those small guilds has had to work much harder than each member in those large guilds at a similar guild level. And that ultimately is why those small guilds at the higher levels continue leveling when the large guilds stall. Because those players are putting in more effort.

How are you being forced to play any way? Given incentives to, sure. But guild leveling has always been and, until guilds start earning renown simply by existing, will always be that way.

The whole guild leveling system is such a small part of what guilds are, I can't see how anyone can feel forced to play in any way by it. On the other hand, it does give incentives to those willing to bring all the things a guild provides to those who don't have them.

Would you care to explain that to the people who were claiming ad nauseum that the original system was forcing, just absolutely forcing them to kill their dear, close, personal friends? Because that's what was being bandied about on the forums as being a justifiable reason to remove renown decay prior to this change. Certainly you'd take the same stance with those people, right?

According to DDOwiki:

Very Small
Guild Renown Bonus Small

Modified Guild Size Multiplier
1 150%
2 180%
3 210%
4 240%
5 270%
6 300%
7 285%
8 270%
9 255%
10 240%


So unless your definition of penalty includes a very large Renown Bonus Multiplier.... I don't see it.

Easy enough. Legendaries per player to reach guild level 50 by size (assuming guild size):

1	2500
2	1116
3	672.0
4	459.6
5	337.8
6	260.4
7	231.9
8	211.1
9	195.6
10	183.8
11	174.8
12	168.0
13	163.0
14	159.4
15	157.2
16	156.2
17	155.1
18	154.0
19	152.9
20	151.8
50	125
100	62.5
200	31.2
600	10.4

Renown decay for each player at level 50 under the current system:

1	750
2	334.8
3	201.6
4	137.9
5	101.4
6	78.1
7	69.6
8	63.3
9	58.7
10	55.1
11	52.4
12	50.4
13	48.9
14	47.8
15	47.2
16	46.9
17	46.5
18	46.2
19	45.9
20	45.5
50	37.5
100	18.8
200	9.4
600	3.1

Regardless of looking at renown gain (getting to a certain level) or renown decay (being able to maintain a certain level), both parts of the renown system are monotonically more expensive for a smaller guild and less expensive for a larger guild. In other words, this system encourages any size group of players to divide into the largest guild size possible, to 1) level the fastest and 2) maintain any level with the least effort. In other words, this current system encourages players to form large guilds instead of small guilds. Currently, the only incentive to form small guilds are social -- everything about the game mechanics encourages large guilds.

What I am seeing at this point is that people are all envisioning what they believe a guild should entail.

The major disconnect is the point Sirgog made. Until we absolutely understand exactly what Turbine is trying to define as what a guild is, it is going to be impossible to give objective discourse on what the system needs to be.

All the discussion is now is people with firm positions on one end or the other trying to make sure that their personal definition gets the attention which they want.

We REALLY do need for Turbine to finally stop dragging feet and tell us what it is that they think a guild system should entail. Then we can start a dialogue on how it can be achieved that is fair for everyone.

Yes. However, this dialogue (or some of it) already occurred over two years ago, when the system was first introduced. I even said that what type of guild Turbine should reward should be discussed. I talked about the reason for renown decay. I even gave predictions on the system at that time, and you can read them and consider how well my predictions based on my understanding of the system at the time have come to pass -- even though the details weren't fully known yet at the time (I didn't figure out the renown decay formula until several weeks later here). I even had to dispel misunderstandings and rumors about the system such as here and here, including someone claiming hey you better avoid high-renown small guilds, they're gold spammers so you'll be banned if you play with them (so high-renown large guilds must be hunky-dory, right?) to try to suppress what they considered to be competition, but apparently anybody having misgivings about the recent changes are called "fear-mongers".

I understand that players will make stupid arguments for any position. The forums are a marketplace for ideas, to see what sticks. I am disappointed however that Turbine chose to make such a knee-jerk reaction to ideas which have repeatedly been discredited and shown to be false, when the facts and analyses of the system continually point in the opposite direction. I could have played the same game and written a bunch of sob stories about how I couldn't find any friends in large guilds even though I'd really like some people to play with but the system was just forcing me to join large guilds to get the ship buffs even though small guilds are where the friendships happen and how small guilds are continually losing players to large guilds because of the easy buffs blah blah blah, but I would have expected Turbine to see through that and ignore such caterwauling. I would have expected Turbine to prefer forum posters who are able to make well-reasoned justification for their arguments, who can provide data to back up their claims and evidence to support their position.

Turbine is quickly disabusing me of this notion.

[Dandonk]

I wish I was Vanshilar. But I fall so far short I'm only Va.

/sigh

Poor me.

But well written, documented, backed up by facts and thought-through. Thank you for contributing meaningfully and intelligently to this discussion.

[Tshober]

Unless you're claiming your guild "laid low" when the server opened and after the renown system was released, but then suddenly decided to open its doors sometime in early 2011, it's highly unlikely that your guild has been around for 2 years, let alone 3.

I kind of take a personal affront to this because back then I was in one of the "big tent" guilds when the server opened up (Epic Fail, which is still around), and now we have other revisionist guilds trying to claim they've been around all this time or in any way influenced the early development of the server, to try to inflate their standing on the forums.

I am pleased that you took such a keen interest in the history of my guild. Let me fill in some of the gaps for you.

I joined Orien in December 2009. I started our guild in either late Jan or early Feb, 2010, I can't remember the exact date. Initially it was not an open guild, it was a 2-man guild run by myself and my nephew. But within about 2 or 3 months we opened up the guild for all players to join. However, we had a very hard time getting members to join because there were so many other guilds that were mass-inviting and were already higher level than us. So our membership remained fairly low for a good while. After many of the other guilds eventualy got all the players they wanted, and in some cases started mass booting casual/social players, we started to grow rapidly. Today we are the most active guild on the server, when measured by number of players logged in playing 24/7, and we have been for a long time.

Why did you cut off your graph a year ago? It is Nov 2012 now, but you stopped your graph in Nov 2011. I could see why you might cut the early history our guild, if the data that far back were unavailable. But surely the more recent data was available so why cut it off a year ago? Could it be that the data for 2012 does not fit well with your assertion that even the most casual large guild can get to the 70's in level? Or that it supports my assertions about what happens when a guild hits the wall and opts not to kick casual/social players? Nah, couldn't be.

In any case, our guild has been active for roughly 2.8 years and we have been the most active guild on Orien for a good while, when measured by the number of players logged in and playing. We have had the same leadership during that whole time. As far as I can see, we are just about the only established guild (those that have been around for more than a year and have had stable leadership) that will accept casual/social players or new players on our server.

[katz]

if i may ask... i missed it because i havn't read the whole thread, but which guild are we discussing?

[jhadden30]

Well played Vanshilar. I'm in a small guild on Orien (10 accounts) of which most of us are pretty active. Now, we are advancing renown wise however its at a terribly slow pace. Meanwhile, I have watched a large guild, also on Orien, gain five levels in thirteen days. Prior to this (temporary?) renown change, the same said guild was hovering back and forth between two levels for most of this year. If this system was fair to all guild sizes and does not promote large guilds than shouldn't my guild be advancing at the same rate?

Egit, Barnabys and Maschine
Members of Mistshadow Mercenaries

[Tshober]

Fundamentally though, this represents your two options. If an additional player will always be a contributor, then the system converges on simply getting as many people as possible into the guild -- there's no drawback to that. If an additional player can potentially be a taker, then at some point there will be an incentive for him to be removed. The goals are in opposition to each other.

Wow, out of that whole long mess, a paragraph I actually agree with in its entirety.

That is the fundamental issue. Do we want a guild leveling system that divides the DDO playerbase into two classes of players, those that add to renown and those that subtract from renown, those that are desirable and those that are undesirable? For my money, such a system is detremental to the game's overall social structure and offers really nothing to offset that damage. The best way to get more people to play the game is to make all of them feel welcome and give them the freedom to play the game they way they want to play it. If you try to force them to play the game in a way that they do not wish to play it, that only encourages them to leave the game for another gaming environment that is more tolerant of their preferred playstyle.

On the other hand, if you make everyone have a positive contribution, then almost all of that prejudice and contention disappear. People are free to make their guild membership decisions based on who they want to hang out with, rather than having to consider the effects on their guild's level. This is in no way charity. The more active players will still earn more renown and in roughly the same proportion as their activity level versus the less active players. The less active players are not being given anything they did not earn, they (and everyone else) are only being allowed to keep what they have earned.

Some will argue that if you don't have guild competition, then the game is less fun for many players. That may be true and I would not be opposed having guild competitions in DDO to fill that need. But such competitions should be seprate from leveling up and should have "bragging rights" only type rewards, and participation should be completely voluntary, much like PvP.

[Viisari]

We REALLY do need for Turbine to finally stop dragging feet and tell us what it is that they think a guild system should entail. Then we can start a dialogue on how it can be achieved that is fair for everyone.

Turbine seems to have little interest in doing so.

Defining what renown is about and what it represents is the first thing they should've figured out and messaged to us before messing with anything.

[Cyr]

While I agree with much of what Vanshilar posted I disagree with one of his basic premises, that discussions about booting members were not also shared by some mid sized and small guilds.

I agree that the guild renown bonus played as large (or larger) a factor in these decisions then guild decay for the smaller guild sizes.

I appreciate Vanshilar's personal guild story.

Let me state my own guild's story. Roving Guns is a small to mid sized guild (depending upon the current level of activity). We have casual to power gaming members and ones who change this activity level based upon interest in the game or life events. We hit a platuea in guild renown basically treading water at one point before being able to get the top tier airship. We used Van's formulas to understand the ins and outs of guild renown, but really it told most of us what we already knew just in more detail for the fringe cases... Players logging in once a week to run a single quest and say hi were extremely detrimental to our guild renown. That was a frustrating thing for our guild, because our guild very much is a guild where players can and do go from just stopping in to say hi to full scale power gaming activity based upon work/personal life stuff/interest in the game. Those members are good friends and most of us have been there more then once ourselves.

So our guild asked for people to volunteer to drop guild tag and join a sub-guild made so everyone was still around (we use TS so everyone would still be in TS of course) in a place we could find each easily ingame until we got the highest tier ship. We lost some of those members as they felt farther away from the guild (and not to other guilds, but from the game entirely) . I myself did the math and showed people how to do it if they were interested. I was a fringe case easily beating out decay on average (play time was down due to non-interest in the game), but with guild size bonus considered it made sense. A month or two later I rejoined the guild after we got the new airship.

So in our mid/small sized guild's case the math did encourage us to drop players to reach our goals. It certainly was not a pleasant thing for our guild to do. It was inconvient and lost us some players from the game. That is a bad result for Turbine.

If guild renown decay was not ingame our guild would have never bothered to drop people because we would have been perfectly happy to plod along at the high levels to reach our goal, but falling backwards or making no progress was frustrating and annoying. Sure I left guild because of the renown size bonus, but that and others like me did so to hasten the return of our other members who were at that point earning enough renown to beat out decay.

The other alternative (which we tried first) was to encourage non-active players to not log into the game once a week and just stop into TS to say hi and chat with us until they were ready to come back and play. That was also a bad result for Turbine, because players who do not play at all for an extended period are also less likely to come back to the game.

So while large guilds most loudly beat the drum on guild decay they were not alone by any means in this complaint.

I also agree with Van's primary (in my view) suggestion to improve the system which focuses upon putting the emphasis on guild renown earned (away from decay based to even out guild sizes). That type of a system without decay, but with bonuses/penalties to earned renown which scales for all sizes of guilds (and not just upto midsized) would make for a much better system. I care little if every guild can reach and gets to keep level 100 just like I care little if every player can reach and keep level 25. It is the feeling of losing something that I dislike.

[Cyr]

Turbine seems to have little interest in doing so.

Defining what renown is about and what it represents is the first thing they should've figured out and messaged to us before messing with anything.

I agree. Turbine has been unclear about their goals with the guild renown system.

I think that has been a problem when it comes to most new systems and system changes in that game though and a primary issue with game development for a very long time. Essentially it is unclear that Turbine even has clear and well defined goals for most changes they make.

[Gunga]

tl;dr

I'm interested in smaller-medium guilds who can obtain level 100. Still possible? Maybe with a couple more build your guild events?

[Laurinia]

okay so maybe im a noob but im the leader of Hand of Retribution on Khyber server...right now there are 10 active accts with 2 recent departures....ive been noticing we've been losing a few thousand renown per day....i had never noticed any decay really before this lil change....we're level 51 and i ask that people don't go inactive over a week........basically im just not exactly sure how this decay is working but im not really a fan especially when im grinding my ass off just to get a few thousand renown..........could someone pleaseeee enlighten me! ty ty

[Arnez]

tl;dr

What I got out of that post was something about basketball... If I knew *anything* enough to even care about basketball- I wouldn't be spending real $ into DDO.

Now- about the "small guilds getting to 100" bit. There's an assumption that we (Small Guilds) want big empty ships.
Not that it matters to other guilds what my 6 Very Active accounts are doing- but our main goal is to get to 55 so we can (get this Turbine) SPEND REAL MONEY on the Medium Airship. Then we don't have to consider getting those Legendary Victories over good loot.

The more important question is- WHY does it matter what one guild gets over another? If a small guild wants to work towards something- let them. If a Large Guild wants to maintain drama & cliques- by all means, let them.
Edit- just to clarify: I'm all for complete removal of the Decay system. So what if many guilds (S,M.L) hit 100? Why does that part matter?

[Gunga]

tl;dr

What I got out of that post was something about basketball... If I knew *anything* enough to even care about basketball- I wouldn't be spending real $ into DDO.

Now- about the "small guilds getting to 100" bit. There's an assumption that we (Small Guilds) want big empty ships.
Not that it matters to other guilds what my 6 Very Active accounts are doing- but our main goal is to get to 55 so we can (get this Turbine) SPEND REAL MONEY on the Medium Airship. Then we don't have to consider getting those Legendary Victories over good loot.

The more important question is- WHY does it matter what one guild gets over another? If a small guild wants to work towards something- let them. If a Large Guild wants to maintain drama & cliques- by all means, let them.

I think a guild of 10 or 15 great players who don't want 100 noobs running around should be able to get to and stay at 100. Even if the guild were 2 or 3 people. It should obviously take longer, but it would be cool if it were possible.

[Mistindantacles]

Seriously.

Running one of the largest guilds on Cannith, with some 800 characters spread over ~ 250 accounts we were certianly butting our heads up against a ceiling. Since the recent renown change we are steadily gaining GLs once again. Our members are encouraged to pick up renown again knowing that in doing so they are not just "maintaining the status quo" ... which is something I believe has been lost in this thread. (Maybe it was discussed at some point, but at 200+ posts, I honestly have not read every word.)

Doing something to just keep from falling behind and doing something to further oneself, or in this case - the group you belong to - plays a part in how much renown is picked up. I am sure Turbine could provide a statistical analysis of how much more renown rewards are chosen during renown boost weekends / events that otherwise, just because the renown is worth SO much more.

So I want to thank you, Turbine, and as its spokesman in this matter, Tolero, for listening to your players and tweaking the system.

Now, I did mention "tentaively" in my post title here ... and I mean "tenatively" since this large guild I belong to will removing 6 month+ inactives on the first day of next month. I anticipate absolutely no change to our GL based on what we've been told here. Rest assured though, if something drastically negative happens, I'll be posting here.

[Tshober]

okay so maybe im a noob but im the leader of Hand of Retribution on Khyber server...right now there are 10 active accts with 2 recent departures....ive been noticing we've been losing a few thousand renown per day....i had never noticed any decay really before this lil change....we're level 51 and i ask that people don't go inactive over a week........basically im just not exactly sure how this decay is working but im not really a fan especially when im grinding my ass off just to get a few thousand renown..........could someone pleaseeee enlighten me! ty ty

Under the old your guild would have decayed at size factor 22. Under the new you will decay at size factor 20. All guilds now decay at size factor 20. Under the old it was 10 + max(10,size). Since your size is 12 (10 active + 2 recent departures), the old would have been 10 + 12 or 22 for your guild. So the new should have given you a very small decrease in decay versus the old.

[jhadden30]

Seriously.

Running one of the largest guilds on Cannith, with some 800 characters spread over ~ 250 accounts we were certianly butting our heads up against a ceiling. Since the recent renown change we are steadily gaining GLs once again.

So I want to thank you, Turbine, and as its spokesman in this matter, Tolero, for listening to your players and tweaking the system.

.

Well, if that's the case, than it would appear to me that Turbine is only listening to their players that belong to large guilds.