Guild Renown Changes

[maddmatt70]

Hmm, you have some numbers Matt? As in what your decay was approximately, prior to the changes and what it is now? I don't see how the changes could've increased your decay rate. BUT, I have noticed a decreased renown drop rate in chests and end rewards overall. But this is just by feel after all the years playign this game i understand loot probabilites, streaks etc of course. But my gut tells me that renown is less common than it was.

Yeah I do not have numbers and you could be right that it is on the other end with less renown received rather then a decay based issue. It just seems like something is going on. I notice it with many of the other smaller guilds that have higher level as well. I know that destiny xp farming/etc. gives no renown, but still something is not making sense.

[Gremmlynn]

Since the booting of inactives is a problem for both small and large guilds, I don't see a reason to make decay only difficult for small guilds. Small gulds also have casual players and players that don't login or generate renown as much. None of those issues are exclusive to large guilds. The issue of the 1000 character limit forcing large guilds to boot inactive is unique to large guilds and this change does nothing to address that.

As you say, these changes were made for the benefit of players. Small guilds have individual players just as large guilds do. I don't think it is unreasonable to ask that Turbine make decay less of an issue for small guilds just as they did for large guilds. Even with changes I am proposing, small guilds are still at a significant disadvantage with regards to decay and leveling, it just makes the problem a little less for the individual players within small guilds.

I think the forgotten group here is the people in small guilds below level 60. While a boost was given to large guilds that are already above level 60 - there was no help for the multitude of individual players within small guilds that are below level 60.

What does the 1000 character limit have to do with guilds being at an advantage for booting characters that haven't logged in for two weeks, then 1.5 weeks, then 1 week, then 3 days, due to decay being tied to number of accounts in the guild. This wasn't a change to help large guilds over level 60. It was a change for all those players who simply don't play enough to be more than an added cost to any guild.

I can't think of any change that would help small guilds that wouldn't just cause the large guilds to simply jettison the cloud of casuals they allow along for the ride to take advantage of it with their small core of reliable players that are the heart of the guild. To put it bluntly, the only way a casual player is going to add a positive contribution to a guild is if the cost of them being there is very low to nil (be this cost in decay, missed bonuses, or any other currency). Their mere presence, whenever life or whim allows it, simply isn't worth being held back for by those who play regularly and generally take the game more seriously.

So, try to help out small guilds and the large guilds simply get small to take advantage of it and the only real losers are the "dead weight" they jettison to do so.

[Vargouille]

I think they should reduce decay for small guilds.

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.

[slarden]

What does the 1000 character limit have to do with guilds being at an advantage for booting characters that haven't logged in for two weeks, then 1.5 weeks, then 1 week, then 3 days, due to decay being tied to number of accounts in the guild. This wasn't a change to help large guilds over level 60. It was a change for all those players who simply don't play enough to be more than an added cost to any guild.

I can't think of any change that would help small guilds that wouldn't just cause the large guilds to simply jettison the cloud of casuals they allow along for the ride to take advantage of it with their small core of reliable players that are the heart of the guild. To put it bluntly, the only way a casual player is going to add a positive contribution to a guild is if the cost of them being there is very low to nil (be this cost in decay, missed bonuses, or any other currency). Their mere presence, whenever life or whim allows it, simply isn't worth being held back for by those who play regularly and generally take the game more seriously.

So, try to help out small guilds and the large guilds simply get small to take advantage of it and the only real losers are the "dead weight" they jettison to do so.

You are mischaracterizing what I said. I was merely restating what people from large guilds said that makes perfect sense. Due to the 1000 character lmit they have to boot inactives to make room for other people to join their guild. That was just a restatement of what many others from large guilds said on this thread. It is not something I have to deal with in my small guild and I can see where it is a problem. The point is that the change being proposed does not address that issue. The 1000 character limit is there and inactives will still need to be booted to make room for new people.

We have a small guild of 6 and 2 of us generate the vast majority of renown. We in small guilds have the same exact issue and would like to see decay reduced for small guilds as it was for large guilds. I don't propose hurting large guilds at all. One proposal I suggested was setting the fixed decay # at 10 instad of 20. This helps guilds of all sizes actually including giving another small boost to large guilds. But basing decay for a 5 person guild on 20 people is really unreasonable when the goal of this change is to make decay less of an issue for casual guilds.

Small casual guilds have been forgotten in this process and they are the folks that struggle the most to level their guilds. The typical small casual guild is at a lower level than the larger higher level guilds that are benefitting fro the changes. When you see a low level guild it is almost always a small casual guild or new guild.

[sirgog]

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.

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.

[slarden]

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 offered specific suggestions that help small guilds a few pages back that are fully consistent with your goals.

The problem is that changes you are proposing help large guilds significantly while doing nothing to help small guilds struggling from decay. Small guilds have a massive decay tax each day per player in the guild. You are in fact promoting guild size by reducing the decay on a 200 person guild by 90% while not reducing the decay on small guilds at all.

The argument that small guilds will boot casuals by lowering decay doesn't make any sense. If you lower decay, the impact of casual players is lessened for small guilds just as it would be for large guilds. There is no reason why high decay for small guilds would prevent the booting of casuals. The only people ever removed from our small guild were people that were inactive and obviously not coming back. In our small guild we have 2 that barely play and 2 that are very casual.

Your goals aren't wrong - the premise that these only apply to large guilds is not correct.

One simple proposal is to reduce decay from a base of 20 to 10 and keep it as a fixed cost of 10. This reduces decay for small guilds and further helps large guilds. Another is to lower the level required for ships and amenities by 15. These are not buzzwords and are fully consistent with your goals.

[Tshober]

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.

Yes, it was a measurement of certain kinds of activity per player per day. With the change the devs have made, that has changed to a measurement of certain kinds of activity per guild per day. To my way of looking at it, a guild leveling system makes much more logical sense if you are actually comparing guilds, rather than comparing players. On that measure, the new system makes a great deal more logical sense. It is not without issues, though. It means larger guilds have an inherent advantage over smaller guilds. That is what the small guild bonuses were meant to help out with. Perhaps those bonuses should be reviewed and adjusted to ensure that smaller guilds that have casual players in them can also advance in levels.

[Battlehawke]

Just a small bit if food for thought here. What if there was no decay for an account that hadn't logged infor at least 30 days and are given a small grace period to play and check out new mods to the game? Maybe they wouldnt generate any loss or gain for the next five days or so. That might provide an opportunity for players who wanted to come back and test out new updates to log in and see if they want to get back into the game. If you could somehow incorporate this into the system, it would encourage people to log in every now and then. If they only play for a few days and dissapear then the guild suffers no gain or loss of reknown. I know you have to draw the line somewhere, but now, if a player has been absent for a while logs in after being inactive just to see whats going on, it hurts your decay rate, and most inactive players know it and just don't log in.
You just have to find a way to make it so people don't feel like they HAVE to boot unproductive or low producing accounts.

Maybe even give guilds a bonus if inactive accounts log in every 30 days. This could give people a reason to want to log in and help out their team mates even if they don't intend to play. They could always get lured in when bored some other day!!!

The ultimate idea is that people want to log in. Currently any nice people that know they are inactive and are not sure if they are going to play for any extensive time are just NOT going to log in. Maybe you leave the current gaining system the way it is , but you've got to change the penalty system. You are hurting your game and your player base!

[Chaos000]

Small guilds have a massive decay tax each day per player in the guild. You are in fact promoting guild size by reducing the decay on a 200 person guild by 90% while not reducing the decay on small guilds at all.

The solution would be to no longer have guild decay tax be factored "per player" and reduce decay on guilds based on size (small medium large) without factoring number of individual players (static bonus). A suggestion instead of reducing decay would be to be more forgiving to smaller guilds in terms of renown ransack.

[slarden]

Yes, it was a measurement of certain kinds of activity per player per day. With the change the devs have made, that has changed to a measurement of certain kinds of activity per guild per day. To my way of looking at it, a guild leveling system makes much more logical sense if you are actually comparing guilds, rather than comparing players. On that measure, the new system makes a great deal more logical sense. It is not without issues, though. It means larger guilds have an inherent advantage over smaller guilds. That is what the small guild bonuses were meant to help out with. Perhaps those bonuses should be reviewed and adjusted to ensure that smaller guilds that have casual players in them can also advance in levels.

]

If they want to make the guild system more friendly for casual and new players I can understand that. But going from a measure of activity to a measure of guild size doesn't really solve the problem as casual and new players exist in guilds of all sizes. I appreciate that you are one of the few people that are in favor of the new system and yet recognize the need to do more for small guilds.

[Gremmlynn]

Just providing an example of one who has been overly vocal in this thread.


It hasn't helped do to that IF in your statement. This is a test still, or did I miss a permanent implementation post? The old decay system discouraging folks from returning doesn't inform them of test changes to it, and a metric crapload of guild leaders didn't even know it was going on. I'll wager some still don't, and a surprising number who found out and came to this thread, didn't understand the system in the first place.

It has the potential to help my guild under the proper planetary alignments and whatnot, but until a revamped, clearly documented and easily accessed description of what it is and just exactly how all aspects of it work, it'll still cause undue problems.

For the last year we have had mainly a core of 4-6 and a rotation of the other 15 active and not, but never enough to have more than 9 active at a time. Of the 15, 7 have expressed to me, a dislike of causing decay and reducing the bonus as a double whammy when they return from times away. On a rare occasion when there were 4 or 5 active I'd get to tell em they helped the bonus, but the standard reply is "I'll take you over (whatevernumber) percent any day." This may or may not help any personal 'guilt' they have over it, but I try.
Of the 4-6 core(still down to 2 sometimes, but usually not more than a week), all run giant's vault on alt character to be sure they have covered the days decay, so they can start having fun without worrying about hindering the collective progress made. This, even with a stressed don't worry about renown policy.

This post points out many things that are wrong with the guild system. Instead of adding to the game in general, in a lot of ways it's distracting from the game. Players are feeling guilty by even playing, players are feeling they have to grind renown rather than gaining it as a side effect of playing how they like.

When players are questioning whether even playing is more harmful than not, something is wrong IMO.

[Gremmlynn]

So, is there any time frame yet for this trial thing? Should we start mass inviting people just to kick them again in 4 weeks?

That would depend on whether you have a shred of honor or not.

[Gremmlynn]

You are mischaracterizing what I said. I was merely restating what people from large guilds said that makes perfect sense. Due to the 1000 character lmit they have to boot inactives to make room for other people to join their guild. That was just a restatement of what many others from large guilds said on this thread. It is not something I have to deal with in my small guild and I can see where it is a problem. The point is that the change being proposed does not address that issue. The 1000 character limit is there and inactives will still need to be booted to make room for new people.

We have a small guild of 6 and 2 of us generate the vast majority of renown. We in small guilds have the same exact issue and would like to see decay reduced for small guilds as it was for large guilds. I don't propose hurting large guilds at all. One proposal I suggested was setting the fixed decay # at 10 instad of 20. This helps guilds of all sizes actually including giving another small boost to large guilds. But basing decay for a 5 person guild on 20 people is really unreasonable when the goal of this change is to make decay less of an issue for casual guilds.

Small casual guilds have been forgotten in this process and they are the folks that struggle the most to level their guilds. The typical small casual guild is at a lower level than the larger higher level guilds that are benefitting fro the changes. When you see a low level guild it is almost always a small casual guild or new guild.

Um, it would probably take a programer less than 5 minutes to change the value from 1,000 to, say, 1,000,000 and solve that totally separate problem. It also wasn't to make decay less of an issue for casual guilds. Frankly guilds with no active core probably shouldn't expect to gain much ground. The issue was to make it so that small active cores don't jettison the large cloud of casual players that have been attracted to that active core in order to reduce decay.

That said, I could get behind a change in renown numbers from 10+10 to 1+10 or even just 1 across the board, but I think the reason the 10 min number is to give guilds an incentive to have at least 10 members and the +10 to have as many as they feel they can support to spread those 10 phantom members decay between.

[Vyder]

Our small guild of 7 has reached lvl 69. 4 of the 7 are casual. We are getting close to the point where we just can't keep up with the decay. We don't want more people, so I guess it just is what it is. I would be happy if they got rid of decay and increase the xp needed per lvl. I just want to log on a play the game, not the renown game.

[Bernaise]

While not perfect, I highly recommend taking a look at how Guilds & Nations were implemented in Atlantica Online.

[Mellkor]

I would like to see decay tied to veteran status somehow. Maybe total years of active players in the guild decreases decay by an exponential curve based on years played or something along those lines.

[blkcat1028]

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.

The exclusion of guild size from the equation was a step in the right direction. That leaves two things to consider: First, guilds of less than 20 members are subject to the same decay as they were prior to the change and therefore are at an even greater disadvantage when compared to larger guilds. The small renown bonus compensates for this somewhat, but it needs to be reworked a bit. Perhaps making the 300% at 20 members as opposed to 6 would be a possibility.

Secondly, inactive accounts, though they do not affect renown decay make it very difficult from a "paper-work" perspective. Making it so an account that was inactive for 6 months would not be counted as a recent departure as well as not applying a renown loss, may be a possible solution.

[Dandonk]

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.

The current testing version promotes mass invites for small guilds, and then kicking them again after you get the levels you want. If you were a small friends and family guild, chances are you'll want to stay that way. But some may want to "play the system" to get to the guild level they want.

As you mention, "ideas that feel fair" - which the current testing version is not. It removes decay from large guilds more or less completely, while small guilds have the same (or a little more, if gaining a level) as before.

I believe there should be room for all kinds of guilds in DDO. Small, medium, and large. Large guilds under the old system had trouble, since motivating every single player in a large guild was hard to do. So they definitely need some kind of helping hand, so levelling isn't as big an issue.

But I think the current test is completely over the board, it makes decay a non-issue for large guilds, while small ones still have to pay the tax in full. Some further kind of change is in order, since this promotes "fake" invites for the sole reason of gaining levels... all the while preparing to kick the new members again later. This is not a good thing for the community.
No, most will not do this. But some will, and being kicked from a guild is not fun for a new player. So while the old system was not perfect (since it promoted kickig from large guilds in certain cicrumstances), the test version is not, either.

What to do? I don't really know. There have been many ideas here in this thread, though.

What did I want from my participation in this thread? That small guild who have the same problems as large guilds (not levelling due to casual players) get the same treatment, the same helping hand.

[Logic]

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 believe the best solution is to calculate renown once daily on a per player basis. Take guild size into account when calculating decay but omit any players that would have a negative impact. Minimum of 5 active players.

Example 1 with simple numbers
Guild level is 60 and renown decay per active player is 100 renown/day
Assume the guild had 30 players, 9 of which play that day
Player 1: 300 renown earned (this player is counted and nets 200 renown for the day)
Player 2: 250 renown earned (this player is counted and nets 150 renown for the day)
Player 3: 200 renown earned (this player is counted and nets 100 renown for the day)
Player 4: 180 renown earned (this player is counted and nets 80 renown for the day)
Player 5: 170 renown earned (this player is counted and nets 70 renown for the day)
Player 6: 150 renown earned (this player is counted and nets 50 renown for the day)
Player 7: 120 renown earned (this player is counted and nets 20 renown for the day)
Player 8: 90 renown earned (this player is not counted because decay exceeds what he earned)
Player 9: 50 renown earned (this player is not counted because decay exceeds what he earned)
Player 10+: 0 renown earned (this player is not counted because decay exceeds what he earned)
The guild nets 670 renown increase for the day

Example 2 with simple numbers
Guild level is 80 and renown decay per active player is 200 renown/day
Assume the guild had 30 players, 9 of which played that day
Player 1: 300 renown earned (this player is counted and nets 100 renown for the day)
Player 2: 250 renown earned (this player is counted and nets 50 renown for the day)
Player 3: 200 renown earned (this player is counted and nets 0 renown for the day)
Player 4: 180 renown earned (this player is counted and nets -20 renown for the day)
Player 5: 170 renown earned (this player is counted and nets -30 renown for the day)
Player 6: 150 renown earned (this player is not counted because decay exceeds what he earned)
Player 7: 120 renown earned (this player is not counted because decay exceeds what he earned)
Player 8: 90 renown earned (this player is not counted because decay exceeds what he earned)
Player 9: 50 renown earned (this player is not counted because decay exceeds what he earned)
Player 10+: 0 renown earned (this player is not counted because decay exceeds what he earned)
The guild nets 100 renown increase for the day

Example 3 with simple numbers
Guild level is 80 and renown decay per active player is 200 renown/day and guild goes mostly inactive
Assume the guild had 30 players, 2 of which played that day and earned
Player 1: 300 renown earned (this player is counted and nets 100 renown for the day)
Player 2: 50 renown earned (this player is counted and nets -50 renown for the day)
Player 3: 0 renown earned (this player is counted and nets -200 renown for the day)
Player 4: 0 renown earned (this player is counted and nets -200 renown for the day)
Player 5: 0 renown earned (this player is counted and nets -200 renown for the day)
Player 6: 0 renown earned (this player is not counted because decay exceeds what he earned)
Player 7: 0 renown earned (this player is not counted because decay exceeds what he earned)
Player 8: 0 renown earned (this player is not counted because decay exceeds what he earned)
Player 9: 0 renown earned (this player is not counted because decay exceeds what he earned)
Player 10+: 0 renown earned (this player is not counted because decay exceeds what he earned)
The guild nets 550 renown decrease for the day

This solution will accomplish the following things:
-Guild leaders are not penalized for having less active players and are not forced to kick them
-Less active players can still contribute if they log on only once a week and exceed the decay rate per player
-Small guilds are not overly penalized by having the same total renown decay as large guilds as long as they have 5+ semi active players
-Large guilds can earn renown faster than small guilds if they have many active players

[Tshober]

While not perfect, I highly recommend taking a look at how Guilds & Nations were implemented in Atlantica Online.

I played Atlantica for about a year and I found the guilds and nations setup to work well for that game. However, that game relied heavily on PvP combat for enforcement, with King's Judgements and war declarations and such. DDO has no real PvP in the game at all so I don't see how a system of nations competing for ownership of cities and resources could be implemented, short of a total rewrite of the game. The politics of that kind of setup is very interesting but without PvP I don't see it working out very well.