Guild Renown Changes

[DocBenway]

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

Yes, as of up to page 18, there were 4 mentions of leaderboard in the entire thread and 2 were Opall's and 2 were mine replying to her. I mentioned that if there were many guilds that enjoyed the aspect as it was very under represented in the thread.

Under representation might also be caused by half of in game guild leaders not even knowing any kind of renown experiment was happening, and now it has reverted.

[Gremmlynn]

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

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

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

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

It means that making the guild social circle accessible to as more players is rewarded. It means that "casual" players will have access to a more stable gaming environment than harbor chat and the LFM board. It means guilds will be rewarded for making the game better for more players, where the old system did the exact opposite.

Frankly, I find it a good thing that guild levels went from showing who could pop the most chests per day to, more or less, showing who's improving the play environment for the most players.

So what does a level 100 guild now represent? A guild that provides an environment that can attract and retain enough members to get and maintain that level despite the competition from other level 100 guilds. Players will no longer have to live up to the standards of the guild leaders, guild leaders will now have to live up to the standards of the players. Despotism has been changed to a form of democracy.

[Dirac]

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?

[Cap_Man]

There's a competition?!?

All this time I thought people only wanted to advance their guild level to get more amenities.

Who knew?

I thought the changes were a step in the right direction .. but then again, I don't really care what level other guilds are at.

[slarden]

I think the fix is really simple. The old decay curve was too high as you increased levels. Flatten the curve so that guilds can get to 85 without every person in the guild playing 40 hours per week.

I don't think they should change the system to favor one guild size over another. Under the old system I realize that large guilds complained more about the decay problem than smaller guilds. That wasn't due to the system, but the reality that people in large guild were less likely to feel ownership for their guild level, less likely to take guild renown as an end reward, less likely to run with guild renown boosts, etc. With a small guild it's easier to mobilize the members to go after renown and easier to identify when people aren't active. If they want to give a small boost to larger guilds that is fine, but having a guild of 1,000 suffer 10 renown per day per account while a guild of 6 suffers over 1500 per day per account is not the right answer.

Why should small guilds receive such massive penalties due to their size.

[Postumus]

Yes, as of up to page 18, there were 4 mentions of leaderboard in the entire thread and 2 were Opall's and 2 were mine replying to her. I mentioned that if there were many guilds that enjoyed the aspect as it was very under represented in the thread.

Under representation might also be caused by half of in game guild leaders not even knowing any kind of renown experiment was happening, and now it has reverted.

True. I can only use the information I have a available which is why I restricted my data set to this thread. How representative it is of guilds at large I have no idea.

Yet I do not think it is a stretch that if 1% of the posters have brought this up as an issue, then it probably isn't an issue for most guilds.

[Gremmlynn]

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

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

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

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

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



~Opall~

Here's my problem with the system. I help run a guild that tries to provide a quality gaming environment for anyone who is willing to act in a civilized manner. But this silly guild level system keeps causing the members we can rely on to log in regularly to go to guilds that are advancing faster. This causes the rest of the guild to quit logging in at all as there isn't a reliable source of people to play with.

Now take this and expand it game wide. We end up with an ever shrinking group of players who simply play enough to beat decay and and ever expanding group who simply either can't or are unwilling to trade enough of the rest of their lives to do so. How does this do anything but motivate more and more players into looking into games that don't have systems designed to make losers and rejects out of them simply because they don't treat the game as anything more than a game.

But I can see how you can find your position on the "who plays the most boards" is more important than what other game a bunch of losers are playing.

[Thayion516]

As far as a "Competition" with guilds goes, no Guild Leader i know of on Ghallara knows/cares about it.
Its a Non-Factor.

BUT what the ALL DO Care about is the broken renown system. Where we have massive decay that forces us to boot members for casual play to reach lv. That Sucks.

[Gremmlynn]

Not it does not. They increased the penalty for reaching a new level. So while big guilds have a much easier time leveling smaller guilds will have a harder time. Same decay, but when we reach a new level we will suffer lower renown rewards and with so few people we will likey drop a level. Then when we reach the level again we will suffer lower renown - a cycle that makes no sense. Before the change, the amount of renown required per account was roughly the same for a small guild as a large guild - with large guilds needing slightly less.

Actually those lower rewards wouldn't kick in until a guild has gained 3 levels in the same day and would go away on the next day. Seeing as my guild has been stuck at 46 for the last month or so, I have a hard time empathizing with anyone who thinks getting lower rewards after gaining 3 levels in the same day is an onerous penalty.

[Tshober]

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?

Another excellent point. Why should the average renown per player per day be what determines advancement for a guild? Would it not make much more sense if the total renown earned by the entire guild were what determined advancement for that guild? After all it IS a guild leveling/reward system and not a player reward system.

If you wanted to know which of two guilds was more wealthy, you would add up all the money that each guild had and compare the two numbers. You would not divide each total by the number of players first because to do so would be measuring the wealth of the players, not the wealth of the guilds. It is the same for renown. If you want to compare the renown of two guilds, then you should add up all of the renown each guild earns and compare the two numbers. Dividing the totals by the number of players changes it from a comparison of guilds to a camparison of players. Logically, guild renown should be used for guild leveling and guild rewards, not average player renown.

It really sucks that I am out of +1's.

[bazooka99]

It means that making the guild social circle accessible to as more players is rewarded. It means that "casual" players will have access to a more stable gaming environment than harbor chat and the LFM board. It means guilds will be rewarded for making the game better for more players, where the old system did the exact opposite.

Frankly, I find it a good thing that guild levels went from showing who could pop the most chests per day to, more or less, showing who's improving the play environment for the most players.

So what does a level 100 guild now represent? A guild that provides an environment that can attract and retain enough members to get and maintain that level despite the competition from other level 100 guilds. Players will no longer have to live up to the standards of the guild leaders, guild leaders will now have to live up to the standards of the players. Despotism has been changed to a form of democracy.

What? First of all, the Korthos Army guilds that will be the powerhouses in the new guild system don't at all do what you seem to think they will do. They provide about as much of a social circle as do the thousand Facebook friends you acquired to win a worldwide contest. The new system doesn't reward guilds for helping new players, it just rewards guilds for using them (the two can but need not cooccur).

A system of guilds of size 1000, from a social point of view, is as good as no guild system at all. I'm about as likely to know someone in my guild of 1000 (which is what the new system incentivizes) as I am to know random people on the LFM panel.

We have not gone from despotism to democracy, but from an (albeit incredibly screwed up) free market to a universal guildcare policy, where whether or not you receive guild benefits is dependent on your willingness to abandon your small guild and join one of the huge "corporate" guilds.

[deathwarrior666]

That i must say is a great idea now all you have to do is make it to where looting a chest 6 times in a quest to more like 10 times or something like that or increase the drop rate of rare items and seals and shards to make it better. The scroll drop rate is great the way it is ty for that. but it is just an idea.

[rayworks]

Greetings! We are putting forth modifications currently trying out some temporary adjustments to the Guild Renown system and monitoring the outcome and feedback this week. The intent is to address concerns from guilds and guild leaders regarding the impact of optimizing guild size in order to gain or maintain guild levels. We’ll be making additional balance changes that we think you and your guildmates will appreciate, but for now we have applied the changes without downtime. As of today, you will notice two changes to your renown rates:

1. Renown decay no longer takes guild size into account. This should ease the pressure for guild leaders to “kick” members from the guild to offset daily renown decay rates. Renown decay now only takes a guild’s level into consideration rather than its size.
2. Renown ransack has been increased. Previously when a guild earned levels in a day, it would gradually reduce the renown drop rates. We’ve increased the rate so that a guild can only earn roughly 3 levels in a single day. This should prevent large guilds from completely dominating the field in terms of levels per-day.

There are some balance Pros and Cons to this method, but we’d like guilds to give us feedback about their experiences using the new settings this week. If players like the settings, or feel it is workable with minor tweaks, then we are ready to keep them! If players find the changes make matters worse, then we are scheduled to revert them. So this week, we encourage guild leaders/members to use this thread to give us feedback about how the changes are impacting your guild leveling dynamics. Important feedback for us is points where frustration has eased (or increased). Thanks for your participation as we work to improve our guild leveling system!

I've got a better plan. Get rid of renown decay entirely. It serves no useful purpose.

[Dhalgren]

I only care about my own guild's level, and only because of tangible benefits which that level can bring to the guild.

The ****ing contest that is the leaderboard is an utter non-factor to me, and as far as I know, to my guildies. In fact I've never even heard anybody (in guild or out) mention it in-game.

If the leaderboard disappeared tomorrow it would probably be a very long time before I even noticed--and much, much longer before I cared.

[Gremmlynn]

That's fine. Everyone agrees the steep curve for decay should be reduced. It should to be changed in a way that is fair to all guilds, not just large guilds.

Frankly, that's up to Turbine. But if I were in their position I would do it in a way that favors those guilds that do the most to help me retain customers. So yes, mine would reward large guilds as I know there are a lot more passive players than there are organizers and I would reward those organizers who give passive players a reason to keep spending money on my game.

[Devlinus]

I generally just lurk here on the forums, picking up tips from other players here and there. But this conversation has forced me to think over my opinions, and thereby speak out when I normally would be passively silent.

First, I would like to thank the developers for looking at this in more detail. I'm a member of a large guild, with a lot of casual players, and even more casually-casual players. Very few really active players (even though the equations say we have lots of active players by game definitions). So, we have been perpetually stuck at level 60 for so long that I had given up caring.

So, in reading some posts, people are saying that a change like this will 'flip' the tides of inequality to favor the really, really large guilds (read 1000 accounts) vs the really, really small guilds (read 6 accounts). And to that, I can't really disagree. I think they are right, and the 'maths' should be easy to prove that (as some have already done... 6 active accounts = 18 after bonus, so any guilds approaching 18+ active accounts will have an inherent bonus for every +1 account over 18). And I think there was another post that said the most 'efficient' guild size was actually 11 accounts in the old system versus 6 accounts? But either way, I think we should all be able to do the simple algebra needed to understand that 1000 member guilds should be able to outpace the smaller guilds, and hence I agree that this probably flipped the 'inequality' equation.

But then I have to agree with the developer, who asked "is that a problem?" Really, is that a problem? Really, is it going to break the game???

So, as I've read through this thread, several pros and cons have been suggested. And as I read some of those concerns/suggestions, it lead me to think back over the last few years.

One concern was that 'power gamers' would adjust to this new system, and start to actively recruit to 1000 accounts to maximize renown gains. My experience is that those power gamers are going to do whatever it takes to land on that 'maximum gain' point of the curve no matter what system is picked. Here is why I think that...

Now I am by no means the expert with it comes to the guild system, guild renown, guild decay. But from my memory, at least on the server I play on, I think the first thought from everyone was to have as large of a guild as possible. But then as people figured out the decay equations, it started to become obvious that smaller guilds had the advantage (in guild renown terms anyway). So what happened, a lot of those 'power guilds' actually broke up... to the point that I think some of them split into multiple smaller guilds (and then created 'guild channels' to link the smaller guilds into a larger umbrella for questing and raiding). And in doing so, they were able to 'min/max' their guild gains... there are plenty of 70+ small guilds now... heck I've lost count of the number of 100 lvl guilds on my server now.

But why is this bad? For one, PUG'ing and guild invites. How many times have you been in a PUG group, and the last person joins, asks for a ship invite from a larger guild (for the buffs obviously) and they can't get on any of the ships from the other members of the PUG because everyone is a member of a 6 man, high level guild.. that has at most 2-3 of those members online at any given time, and rarely if ever someone on the ship. Heck, I can even remember a few Shroud raids where the entire raid had to wait on the healer to 'hump it' to Meridia because no one could give him a ship invite without 'humping out' themselves.

Chances are that with larger guilds, and more online accounts at any given time, this should diminish. In fact, in most cases, those larger guilds that originally split up into smaller guilds might decide to recombine membership again. I all honesty, the only 'group' that I can see as 'losing' from going from the 'many/small guild' model to the 'fewer/large guild' model is Turbine themselves (less crystals sold through the store, etc).

Another concern has been the 'Korthos-Army' concept of mass inviting random new players, leeching the GR from them as fast as possible, and then kicking them when it suits the guild leaders motivations. Once again, I recognize the potential is there, and given the 'min/maxing' mentality of most of those power gamer types, I wouldn't discount it. In response, my suggestion is to make a change to the 'kick a guild member' penalty. Instead of losing 25% (or whatever it is now), increase the penalty to 100%.

[NOTE: I am only talking about a guild 'kicking' a member... for a member that 'leaves' of his on accord, the penalty should be very little, if any. Now, maybe a member should be allowed to 'punish' a guild for not making them feel welcome? So maybe it should be an option of 0% or 25% for a member volunteering to leave??? In all honesty, they did receive the benefits of the guild for the time they were a member, so I'm kind of in favor of 100% for being kicked, and 0% for leaving. But I can see it now, next will be complaints that the 'power gaming' guilds 'harass/bully' the unwanted member into volunteering to leave... so who knows... maybe a variable amount from 0% to 100% for volunteering to leave... although in all honesty, I'd probably just squelch the harassers and be done with it.]

See, this is my reason: There should really only be one reason to kick a guild member... when their 'play style' doesn't fit with the rest of the greater guilds... and by 'play style' I am NOT talking about their 'play ability'. Now for some, 'play ability' might equate to what they fill the 'guild goal' is. We all know that there are a lot of 'elitist' guilds out there, and so them removing a member for not playing up to the elite level expected of that guild is 'ok'. What I mean is that if they are giving the guild a bad reputation (stealing loot from a chest, bad chat behavior, harassing other players on the server, etc). In that case, the guild leadership has to make the choice... kick the guild member to save the reputation of the guild, or keep the renown, and suffer the reputation impacts. Knowing the general population of the DDO community, and the effect that reputation can have (both good and bad), I doubt that decision would be very hard for most guild leaders.

Now, maybe another reason to kick a guild member is to make room for more active players. I don't think that decision would have to made until a guild hit 1000 accounts (or is it members?). Which on at least my server might be hard to do even if there was only ONE guild on the entire server... LOL again. That would be funny... the entire guild is the entire PUG LFMs as well.

But still, for some older/larger servers, that could very well be an issue, so I can see/support the requests to have 'highly inactive accounts' be allowed to be purged with no renown lost... now how do you define a 'highly inactive account'? 2 months? 6 months? 1 year? Depends... but I would say the longer the better.

About the only argument that I've seen so far that I can't reconcile in my head are the 'competitors'. The ones that see the guild levels as a competition... as a 'status' symbol on their server, or as a sense of 'accomplishment'. And if that is how they define 'fun and enjoyment' for them, then so much the better. I saw some suggestions for leader boards for 'weekly gains' and/or for 'per account gains'. Personally, I think that seems like a lot of coding just to stroke the 'epeen' of the few... but I wouldn't be opposed to the ideas, since in reality it doesn't negatively affect anyone (except for maybe the Turbine coder that has to figure out the metrics, etc). However, I personally wasn't a fan of the 'shrine perks' for Number 1 on the leader boards... leader boards should be for 'bragging rights', and nothing more... every player should have access to all of the game, casual or otherwise... only that the active players will get it faster.

And then there are the arguments about the small 'tight' guild versus large 'internal PUG' guilds. Once again, this should be a choice of play style and social style. And I hate that the 'flip of inequality' will negatively affect those smaller guilds that choose to be small guilds because they like that play style. But as some have pointed out, really, those small guilds are no different off 'today' vs 'yesterday' when comparing to themselves... really for them, nothing has changed... the 'negativity' is in relation of 'them' to the 'larger' guilds of 'today'. Meaning that their pace has not changed at all before/after, but now other larger guilds should be able to get to the end goals faster than them now... which equates in head to 'I am no different than before, but now some other group gets a benefit that I don't get, and that's not fair.'

Anyway, sorry for the wall of text. But as I see it, the benefits of these changes for everyone is FAR greater than the drawbacks to to the few here and there.

Happy gaming,
Devlinus

[cidchronic]

As a leader to a very small guild (6), I think the changes are unfair to the little guys, all that is going to happen is that we will have large guilds at high lvls inviting everyone. Everyone in our guild knows that they helped get us to lvl 41, and we dont care how long it takes to get up to high lvls, but we will know we did it ourselves. mass invites were a problem before and now they will get worse as every new guild will try to get to high lvls. Being a guild of PnP people we follow different rules then most, which is why we remain a very small guild. For the most part, we remain unaffected by these changes, to those these changes benifit the most, dont abuse it or brag about how fast your guild lvled, you didnt earn it

[Gremmlynn]

What? First of all, the Korthos Army guilds that will be the powerhouses in the new guild system don't at all do what you seem to think they will do. They provide about as much of a social circle as do the thousand Facebook friends you acquired to win a worldwide contest. The new system doesn't reward guilds for helping new players, it just rewards guilds for using them (the two can but need not cooccur).

A system of guilds of size 1000, from a social point of view, is as good as no guild system at all. I'm about as likely to know someone in my guild of 1000 (which is what the new system incentivizes) as I am to know random people on the LFM panel.

We have not gone from despotism to democracy, but from an (albeit incredibly screwed up) free market to a universal guildcare policy, where whether or not you receive guild benefits is dependent on your willingness to abandon your small guild and join one of the huge "corporate" guilds.

Those that don't provide it will find they lose their members to those that do. Frankly I believe they will provide a lot more to most players than all those small guilds that would never even consider inviting them to in the first place. Every large guild I have been a member of has always asked first in guild chat before pugging. Every large guild I have been a member of has always had members that helped put organize players looking for something to do. Every large guild I have been a member of has held it's members accountable to a higher level of conduct than you find in the general population, though this has rarely been needed because people generally act better simply by knowing they can be held accountable.

Yes players will be leaving their small guilds for the greater game play options that large guilds provide. No more doing whatever the group (or the GL) decides thy are going to do that day. Now they can have access to enough guildies to find a others who want to do whatever tickles their fancy at any given time without giving up the buffs that used to require surrounding yourself with a small group to get. Looks like an improvement for all but the despots who no longer hold all the leverage over who gets buffs and who doesn't.

[bazooka99]

Those that don't provide it will find they lose their members to those that do. Frankly I believe they will provide a lot more to most players than all those small guilds that would never even consider inviting them to in the first place. Every large guild I have been a member of has always asked first in guild chat before pugging. Every large guild I have been a member of has always had members that helped put organize players looking for something to do. Every large guild I have been a member of has held it's members accountable to a higher level of conduct than you find in the general population, though this has rarely been needed because people generally act better simply by knowing they can be held accountable.

Yes players will be leaving their small guilds for the greater game play options that large guilds provide. No more doing whatever the group (or the GL) decides thy are going to do that day. Now they can have access to enough guildies to find a others who want to do whatever tickles their fancy at any given time without giving up the buffs that used to require surrounding yourself with a small group to get. Looks like an improvement for all but the despots who no longer hold all the leverage over who gets buffs and who doesn't.

Alright here's the thing with your point of view. You seem to argue that the purpose of a guild is not to discriminate between who gets benefits and who doesn't, but to provide the optimal social environment (which I find entirely agreeable). Now, given the implications of that view, would it not be better to remove this discrimination entirely and grant all guilds the same benefits, regardless of level? Let players decide whether they want to be in a small guild (as I do) or a large guild (as you do) without penalizing them for making either choice. That way everybody's happy, not just the lovers of small guilds or the lovers of large guilds.

Further, by removing the ulterior motive to create large guilds, you ensure that the only large guilds that will invite new players are those genuinely interested in helping them to understand the game, and in promoting a positive social environment.

The differentiating factor between guilds would be plat and what types of airships/airship amenities they can afford to buy, so this still encourages large guilds, to the extent that they can pool their resources together to buy amenities and airships.

[AmaWibble]

To everyone who is a member of a small-medium guild, and who thinks that they'll lose members to giant, Korthos army guilds with this change: if the change became permanant, would you, personally, move? Would you leave the camaraderie of your small group to join a guild where you'll never know everyone? Just for faster access to buffs?

Extend this thought experiment a little further: assume for a moment you weren't a member of a guild; assume also that you'd played DDO for long enough to get a feel for the game and see some different content, plus meet a few people and start to recognise a few names. If you were in the market for a guild, would you want to join a group of like-minded people, or would you just want to gain access to guild buffs, without wanting any social stuff?

In both cases above, I would join the guild that suited my play style and personality. The size of the guild would matter not one iota - I'd rather join an under-equipped guild that suited me and help build it up than a level 100 guild that didn't match my needs. Based on what a lot of people have said, I suspect that many, if not most people here would behave in a similar manner. For those who just want guild buffs, or who actually like being in a mega-guild, or who don't really care and are happy to hop on the first band-wagon that comes along, well, you're probably not people I'd want to be in a guild with (and that's a good thing), as we don't want the same things from our guilds. Vive la différence!

Please don't hammer this change just because it doesn't improve your personal situation. Aside from the leaderboard bunnies (and you appear to be in a minority of 1 so far), nobody is actually disadvantaged by the (proposed) change, and given that nobody else seems to be competing, I'm not convinced that the leaderboard bunnies are actually disadvantaged anyway. Encourage Turbine to make other changes that sort out your particular issues without disadvantaging others, and bear in mind that the simple suggestions are more likely to be implemented than the complex ones. Someone else getting a leg-up does not equate to you getting pushed down. I'm fairly sure that nobody here is arguing that the current change is everything that's needed, or that there doesn't need to be some additional balancing, but I am seeing a whole load of small-guild folks who aren't hugely affected by this arguing that the change that doesn't affect them isn't fair because it only helps someone else.