Guild Renown Changes

[Dysmetria]

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.

Since you reverted the changes, how were those changes making matters worse?

[Tshober]

As far as I can tell the guild leaderboard is pretty accurate and that's what I was referring to as far as gathering data goes.

I just looked up my guild on myddo. It shows many players in our officer list who have not been in the guild for years, much less officers. It says we have 7644 members, despite the 1000 member cap. The guild info seems to be just as grossly wrong as the account and character info. If you want to go on trusting it, then that's your choice. But don't expect me to believe anything that comes from myddo.com.

[Chaos000]

I also don't understand why some people have such a great need to get to level 100, it's just a number and it provides basically no benefits. By level 70 you have basically everything important, by level 85 you have the last ship and after that you can't really argue that you want more stuff.

At that point wanting to gain more levels is just about stroking your personal ego. And hey, that's exactly what the old system was designed to be about at those levels only it was specifically built in a way that you'd really have to work for that ego boost.

That's just fine to me, if everyone could just progress to the max level given enough time the levels would become meaningless, they'd be just another time sink like all the rest.

Do you remember when death resulted in negative xp that could cause you to lose levels? Should they implement that for when people hit lvl cap? (therefore making ED farming in a PUG no longer desirable resulting in less open groups). If everyone could progress to max level given enough time... Introduce a ship with one more crafting location as a ship TR. Double the decay doesn't sound like fun for me and one more crafting spot isn't really worth it IMO but hey! incremental benefit to appease the ego.

The key word here is "you have basically everything important" Change the guild ship rewards to half (so biggest ship and best buffs can be achieved at guild lvl 50) and keep the renown decay the same.

[Impaqt]

[Dekh]

That's cool. I think we agree on the result. You are in favor of removing all renown decay so the competition is fair, right?

No, decay was right (amount of renow decay per number of accounts). But with these new changes who chose to make a small guild can not compete with the most common guilds (large and untreated).

[SeaWolf925]

I am an officer in The Dragon Order of Arcanix on the khyber server, we have existed since the beginning. We were first one guild and then we merged into a New Guild with a new guild name. The present system of renown has caused nothing but strife. We have well over a hundred accounts, sometimes people are real active and sometimes not. We have been flucuating between lvl 70 and 80 for over a year now. Some people could care less about guild renown, ( I am one of those, I will not boot people from guild to obtain some magical account size). We have had several purges in order to try to do this. We also froze any and all recruitement except for family and RL friends. After our second purge we started achieving our goal of guild lvl 85. We documented each dismissed member allowing for guild invite if they contacted an officer and we had officer meeting. We requested all members provide how many accounts and toons. Anyone not providing this information was dismissed from guild this was about a six process. Previously, dismissed people we allowed back in guild and we still have a no new recruits policy, with flexibility, several officers and officer's meeting to make guild invite or permenant guild invite. (2-week probation period is the new policy). This fighting between guild size and guild renown level has caused many old time members to leave guild. This guild was founded family, friends and then other good people that we ran into. There were no penalitis on guild size. We have not found within ourselves to hit the magic number for us of 50 accounts, hell we can not find it in our hearts to boot enough people to get to 100 accounts. Some people play often other do not, the most effective action would be to set guild account level at 50, require all members to provide toons and # of accounts, boot any and all who do not provide this information and then monitering player activity, we should then keep 50 accounts of active players boot all others and have no means of guild invites. This all violates the Rule 1. of the Guild: Remember this is game, have fun but not at other peoples expense. I really hope that this new process puts an end to all this in fighting we are, have experienced. Thank you for your efforts here.

[Dirac]

No, decay was right (amount of renow decay per number of accounts). But with these new changes who chose to make a small guild can not compete with the most common guilds (large and untreated).

I understand that you want the figure of merit to be renown/guild member. I understand, when you view it as a competition, it would be frustrating to see guilds level past you whose average member is not as good/active/whatever as your average guild member. However, at some point you have to admit you understand how absurd your argument sounds to others.

Say I love PvP. It is a huge part of my enjoyment of the game. However, I only choose to play 5 hours per week. That is the exact perfect fit with this game and my life. However, I have no chance to compete in PvP against those people who play 30-40 hours a week. That is totally unfair. Fair would be a mechanism that when every player who plays 5 hours or less gets a raid item, they magically get two more. Also, every person who who plays more than 10 hours a week will have a random raid item taken away, and another for every additional 10 hours per week they play. That will be fair because then I can beat them. I know that it will affect people who don't PvP, but so what. PvP is important to me and I can't possibly win otherwise.

I know guild advancement is not the same as character advancement, however it is a good check. If you have a mechanism for guild advancement, that if you were to apply to character advancement, 99% of your playerbase would leave and your game would fold, then that is most likely a bad guild advancement mechanism.

[McFlay]

Fair would be a mechanism that when every player who plays 5 hours or less gets a raid item, they magically get two more. Also, every person who who plays more than 10 hours a week will have a random raid item taken away, and another for every additional 10 hours per week they play. That will be fair because then I can beat them. I know that it will affect people who don't PvP, but so what. PvP is important to me and I can't possibly win otherwise.

Yeah that's a great concept of what fair is. Welcome to ddo communist edition. Everyone should just have a level 100 guild handed to them because its not fair theres a handful of players that pump ridiculous amounts of time into the game that have things you don't. Come on turbine, let's make things fair, the less you play, the more xp, loot, and renown should drop from each chest for you. Its not fair that I have a full time job, friends, family, college courses, a dog, and this game to split my time up amongst, so just give me less reason to play by making it more rewarding for me to play less.

[Dirac]

Yeah that's a great concept of what fair is. Welcome to ddo communist edition. Everyone should just have a level 100 guild handed to them because its not fair theres a handful of players that pump ridiculous amounts of time into the game that have things you don't. Come on turbine, let's make things fair, the less you play, the more xp, loot, and renown should drop from each chest for you. Its not fair that I have a full time job, friends, family, college courses, a dog, and this game to split my time up amongst, so just give me less reason to play by making it more rewarding for me to play less.

Do you understand that what I presented was an analogy of the small-guild argument in this thread? Many small guilds have been arguing that renown should be taken away from large guilds simply because the small guilds can't compete with them. Classic communism.

However, my opinion now is in line with you in your thread in the general section. Simply helping large guilds that aren't advancing and leaving small guilds that aren't advancing is no solution. All guild decay should be removed unless it is for completely inactive guilds.

I'm just getting frustrated with the idea that large guilds deserve to have their renown taken away from them. For some reason, some people don't think large guilds have earned the renown they, you know, earned. Without any bonuses. That this idea is being presented with such self-righteousness is pretty nauseating.

[Viisari]

That is totally unfair. Fair would be a mechanism that when every player who plays 5 hours or less gets a raid item, they magically get two more. Also, every person who who plays more than 10 hours a week will have a random raid item taken away, and another for every additional 10 hours per week they play.

It's like you haven't the slightest clue of what "fair" means.

In general, more time invested yields greater rewards in DDO. That is completely fair.

Taking items away from someone who spent more time to get them than someone else would be the very opposite of fair.

However, my opinion now is in line with you in your thread in the general section. Simply helping large guilds that aren't advancing and leaving small guilds that aren't advancing is no solution. All guild decay should be removed unless it is for completely inactive guilds.

I'm just getting frustrated with the idea that large guilds deserve to have their renown taken away from them. For some reason, some people don't think large guilds have earned the renown they, you know, earned. Without any bonuses. That this idea is being presented with such self-righteousness is pretty nauseating.

You do of course realize that small guilds also struggle with renown decay?

You also of course realize that by far the minority of small guilds are anywhere near level 70 or higher?

High renown decay at the high levels served a specific purpose that was stated by the devs when the system was new. Now they're destroying that purpose instead of tweaking the old system. And they're not really explaining the reasons for not simply tweaking it either.

[Dandonk]

Now they're destroying that purpose instead of tweaking the old system. And they're not really explaining the reasons for not simply tweaking it either.

Yes. This is the method used for many new things in DDO.

Why so, you ask?

The Lord Leto may know, but I sure don't.

[Dirac]

It's like you haven't the slightest clue of what "fair" means.

I know what fair means. Some people do not, which is why I tried to highlight their error with my analogy.

In general, more time invested yields greater rewards in DDO. That is completely fair.
Taking items away from someone who spent more time to get them than someone else would be the very opposite of fair.

You are exactly right. Taking guild renown away from a guild that spent more person-hours to get it is the very opposite of fair. As long as you understand what fair is, we are in perfect agreement.

You do of course realize that small guilds also struggle with renown decay?
You also of course realize that by far the minority of small guilds are anywhere near level 70 or higher?

Hmm, you may not be reading my posts closely. That is exactly what I said in the second paragraph in the post you quoted.

High renown decay at the high levels served a specific purpose that was stated by the devs when the system was new. Now they're destroying that purpose instead of tweaking the old system. And they're not really explaining the reasons for not simply tweaking it either.

That's irrelevant. Turbine has a long history of poor game design decisions (raid loot, xp penalty) realizing it and fixing them. This is one of them. As I stated before, they should fix the system to allow all active guilds to advance, regardless of size. We might be agreeing on almost everything. What exactly do you want to see?

[Tshober]

In general, more time invested yields greater rewards in DDO. That is completely fair.

Think about what you are saying. The large guilds have invested FAR more time than small guilds have. For example let's say all players play an average of 10 hours per week. A tiny guild of 6 players has invested a total 60 hours per week. A large guild of 120 players has invested a total of 1200 hours per week. By your statement above, and I agree with it basically, the large guild should advance 20 times as far as the tiny guild. Clearly the tiny guild can't compete with the large guild without some major help. To the rescue of the weak and underprivledged comes the old decay system that takes away 12 times as much renown from the large guild as it takes from the small guild and also tacks on a 300% tiny guild renown bonus as well. Now who is being subsidized communist style because they can't compete?

[Viisari]

Think about what you are saying. The large guilds have invested FAR more time than small guilds have. For example let's say all players play an average of 10 hours per week. A tiny guild of 6 players has invested a total 60 hours per week. A large guild of 120 players has invested a total of 1200 hours per week. By your statement above, and I agree with it basically, the large guild should advance 20 times as far as the tiny guild. Clearly the tiny guild can't compete with the large guild without some major help. To the rescue of the weak and underprivledged comes the old decay system that takes away 12 times as much renown from the large guild as it takes from the small guild and also tacks on a 300% tiny guild renown bonus as well. Now who is being subsidized communist style because they can't compete?

You assume that guild renown is about the total man hours invested.

Some the small guilds that are over level 90 pull something like 4000-6000 base (ie. renown before bonuses are applied, 4-6 legendaries per day if you will) renown per player per day on average, while in many large guilds it's only around 1000-1500 base renown per player on average. The total amount of man-hours invested is irrelevant because the system is designed to take guild size into account and isn't about total time played in the first place. If there were no bonuses for small guilds or bigger decay for large guilds then the system would be absolutely biased towards very large guilds like it was a few days ago with no size modifier in the game.

So the concept of the old system absolutely was fair. If a large guild was pulling anywhere near the renown numbers per player that many of the high level small guilds do then they would've been level 100 ages ago and way before any of the small guilds.

In practice the size modifier was overtuned, a level 100 guild of 6 players would need 1,5 legendaries per day to negate renown decay while a level 100 guild of 150 players would need 3,2 legendaries per day per player. So the unfairness in the system wasn't from the idea or concept but from modifiers that weren't really tuned too well.

But even ignoring this flaw in the system, small high level guilds are pulling more renown per player than any of the large guilds I've ever heard of which also means that yes, they do work harder for their renown. If this wasn't the case then they wouldn't be so high level in the first place because as you might've noticed, reaching level 90 takes 36,450,000 renown and reaching level 100 takes 50,000,000 renown. If they weren't pulling such huge numbers of renown per player then none of them would be near level 100 any time soon.

On the other hand, if the size of the guild is completely ignored then the system is inherently biased towards large guilds whereas with the old system any bias could've been taken care of by merely tweaking a few multipliers, be it with the renown bonuses small guilds receive or the size multipliers in the decay formula big guilds had.

[Tshober]

You assume that guild renown is about the total man hours invested.

Some the small guilds that are over level 90 pull something like 4000-6000 base renown per player per day on average, while in many large guilds it's only around 1000-1500 base renown per player on average. The total amount of man-hours invested is irrelevant because the system is designed to take guild size into account and isn't about total time played in the first place. If there were no bonuses for small guilds or bigger decay for large guilds then the system would be absolutely biased towards very large guilds like it was a few days ago with no size modifier in the game.

So the concept of the old system absolutely was fair. If a large guild was pulling anywhere near the renown numbers per player that many of the high level small guilds do then they would've been level 100 ages ago and way before any of the small guilds.

In practice the size modifier was overtuned, a level 100 guild of 6 players would need 1,5 legendaries per day to negate renown decay while a level 100 guild of 150 players would need 3,2 legendaries per day per player. So the unfairness in the system wasn't from the idea or concept but from modifiers that weren't really tuned too well.

But even ignoring this flaw in the system, small high level guilds are pulling more renown per player than any of the large guilds I've ever heard of which also means that yes, they do work harder for their renown.

On the other hand, if the size of the guild is completely ignored then the system is inherently biased towards large guilds whereas with the old system any bias could've been taken care of by merely tweaking a few multipliers, be it with the renown bonuses small guilds receive or the size multipliers big guilds had.

It is a GUILD leveling system, not a player leveling system. Why should we be comparing players? We should be comparing GUILDS. When you divide by the number of players you are no longer comparing GUILDS, you are comparing players. If it were a player leveling system then that might be appriate, but it is not.

[Viisari]

It is a GUILD leveling system, not a player leveling system. Why should we be comparing players? We should be comparing GUILDS. When you divide by the number of players you are no longer comparing GUILDS, you are comparing players. If it were a player leveling system then that might be appriate, but it is is not.

You're not making any sense. We're not comparing players, we're comparing guilds and how much renown the guild is capable of pulling PER player.

If we have a guild with 10 players, each of whom is pulling 5 legendary victories every day and a guild of 100 players, each of whom is pulling only 1 legendary victory every day then that is directly reflected in the guild level. The system is set up so that everyone in the guild has to pull their weight (on average anyway, there are always players who pull more renown than others, in every type of guild) and not just bruteforce through the system with sheer numbers.

That guild with 10 players, each whom is pulling 5 legendaries per day will eventually reach level 100. The guild with 100 players will get to level 77 and then be unable to stay at level 78. So they're already almost level 80 even though they're only pulling one fifth of the legendaries per active account as the small guild is. If they were to increase that to three legendaries they'd reach level 96 and with the fourth they'd get to level 100.

As I said, merely looking at the absolute number of legendaries pulled per guild (ie. 50 vs. 100) would be silly because then the large guilds would be greatly favored. The concept of this system was fair even if the implementation was not entirely so.

I'm also going to shamelessly quote Sirgog because he asked a very good and important question earlier in this thread:

Question: What is guild level supposed to be a measure of?

If it is supposed to be a metric to measure prestige then you don't want level 100 guilds composed of 1000 players that do not know what they are doing.

If it is supposed to be a guide to guild longevity or activity, then yes those 1000 player mass invite guilds should be able to hit 100. Ironically this would likely lead to some players inherently distrusting members of guilds of level 100 (just as on Khyber there were two guilds that for a long time were declined entry even into Shrouds in many PUGs because they had a server-wide reputation for incompetence that came from mass recruiting. Ironically one of them is now one of the best raiding guilds on the server)

If it is supposed to be a measure of average activity per player, then the previous system was the right way to do it.

And then some old dev quotes:

ZAM: So what’s the decay like for guild renown?

Paiz: Once you get above certain guild levels, somewhere around 50 and 75, the decay becomes much more aggressive. To be honest, once you get to those levels it’s much more about bragging rights than anything you might get from being of a guild level that high.

ZAM: How difficult will it be for guilds to rank up their renown score?

Paiz: That’s definitely something that we’re still trying to figure out and balance. There is some help for smaller guilds in this system… 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. If you’re in a small guild, you’ll get a small boost every time you pick up, what I call, a “renown token” because we want to make sure those guilds are able to get their airships and things like that.

This is a long term play; you’re not supposed to get up to level 25 in a day. This is more of a long term, stay engage with the game, sort of goal.

As I said, the old system wasn't perfect but it did achieve what the devs are saying here, fixing any unfairness in it wouldn't have taken more than some tweaking with numbers.

Which gets us back to the question above: Has the purpose of the system changed?

[Tshober]

You're not making any sense. We're not comparing players, we're comparing guilds and how much renown the guild is capable of pulling PER player.

If we have a guild with 10 players, each of whom is pulling 5 legendary victories every day and a guild of 100 players, each of whom is pulling only 1 legendary victory every day then that is directly reflected in the guild level. The system is set up so that everyone in the guild has to pull their weight (on average anyway, there are always players who pull more renown than others, in every type of guild) and not just bruteforce through the system with sheer numbers.

That guild with 10 players, each whom is pulling 5 legendaries per day will eventually reach level 100. The guild with 100 players will get to level 77 and then be unable to stay at level 78. So they're already almost level 80 even though they're only pulling one fifth of the legendaries per active account as the small guild is. If they were to increase that to three legendaries they'd reach level 96 and with the fourth they'd get to level 100.

As I said, merely looking at the absolute number of legendaries pulled per guild (ie. 50 vs. 100) would be silly because then the large guilds would be greatly favored. The concept of this system was fair even if the implementation was not entirely so.

No, you are the one not making sense. If you were going to rank countries in military power, would you take the total militay expenditures divided by polulation? Of course not, you would just use total military expendatures to rank them. If you were going to rank countries in economic power would you use GDP divided by population? Of course not, you would just use plain old GDP to rank them. That is because, in both cases, you are ranking countries, not the people in the countries. It is the same with guilds. If you want to rank guilds on renown then you can't divide by the numbers of players because then you would be ranking the players, not the guilds. The proper way to rank guilds on renown is by total renown earned by each GUILD.

Here's another example. Let's say you have 2 armies. Army A is made up of 3 highly trained Delta Force soldiers armed with the best high tech modern light weaponry. Army B is made up of 250 plain boot camp trained soldiers armed only with AK47's and bayonettes. Clearly army A has more per soldier killing power and has trained far harder. But which is the more powerful army? Which one will get squashed like a bug if they fight a battle?

[Viisari]

No, you are the one not making sense. If you were going to rank countries in military power, would you take the total militay expenditures divided by polulation? Of course not, you would just use total military expendatures to rank them. If you were going to rank countries in economic power would you use GDP divided by population? Of course not, you would just use plain old GDP to rank them. That is because, in both cases, you are ranking countries, not the people in the countries. It is the same with guilds. If you want to rank guilds on renown then you can't divide by the numbers of players because then you would be ranking the players, not the guilds. The proper way to rank guilds on renown is by total renown earned by each GUILD.

But guild renown isn't about power or money. It's about fame (heellooo, it's even called renown) which means that you totally can divide it by the number of players because it's far more abstract than any of the things you brought up and thus isn't restricted by the logic you're applying to those.

Here's another example. Let's say you have 2 armies. Army A is made up of 3 highly trained Delta Force soldiers armed with the best high tech moden light weaponry. Army B is made up of 250 plain boot camp trained soldiers armed only with AK47's and bayonettes. Clearly army A has more per soldier killing power and has trained far harder. But which is the more powerful army? Which one will get swashed like a bug if they fight a battle?

Army A would obviously sneak into army B's camp at night, kill their commander and any officers they can while also planting explosives and incendiaries around critical targets in the camp. They'd then leave the camp and trigger their explosives while using sniper rifles to kill random targets to add more confusion.

This is a ******** example because these two forces would never, ever directly confront each other in combat. But regardless of that, both have their uses. Just because the other is more numerous doesn't mean it's good for tasks where the smaller force excels and where the small force would not succeed the large might be able to.

[djl]

No, decay was right (amount of renow decay per number of accounts). But with these new changes who chose to make a small guild can not compete with the most common guilds (large and untreated).

And there is a very easy solution: increase the small guild bonus multiplier.

[McFlay]

I'm suprised with all the chat about stupid guild features nobody mentions that for a very small guild with under 6 members to level if you have no intent of expanding your ranks is to random invite someone then kick them just to get your modified size up to 6 for max bonus.

If they want to make the entire guild system as fair as could be, then they should remove renown bonuses and scale xp to level a guild to guild size so a 10 man guild would need twice as much xp to level as a 5 man guild. The extra +10 multiplier in the decay formula should also be removed so adding a body to a level 74 guild would add the same exact decay whether the guild has 4 people or 40. That way a 2 person guild with an active person and a casual person would be in the same situation as far as decay/leveling as a 100 person guild with 50 actives and 50 casuals. At least that way all the bogus comparisons of large guilds loaded with casual players to small guilds with a super active roster would end.