Guild Renown Changes

[Tshober]

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

I like this suggestion. I have endorsed very similar suggestions before.

[Tshober]

The current testing version promotes mass invites for small guilds, and then kicking them again after you get the levels you want.

Not as much as the old decay system did. The direct renown penalty for kicking members was not reduced at all, versus the old decay system. The only difference is, under the old decay system you would start kicking them gradually, in order of least active first, starting at around level 50 and shedding them all by level 65 or so, when they really start to hurt your renown. Under the new decay system, you can keep them all the way to level 100 and there is actually no incentive to kick them at all because they are not really costing you any renown, and kicking them DOES cost you renown. Yes, some abusers would still kick them just because they are what they are, but the decay policy would NOT reward them for kicking, as the old decay policy did. The new decay policy always rewards inviting, and never rewards (only punishes) kicking. The old decay policy rewarded inviting at low levels, and rewarded kicking at high levels .

[Imatotalnoob]

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.

how about this for an idea, only apply decay when a guild member is logged on.
If that's to hard, make the check "if any guild member has logged on in the last 24 hours."

Us small guilds that may have every member away for a week or two we return to a
"oh great more grind just to stand still"

cheers

[THAC0]

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.

Just remove the Guild Renown Decay. I never understood why it was needed in the first place. Or in this case, set it to 0 and lets try this out to see what breaks. If getting to the next level was a concern, it shouldn't be. Some guilds will get to 100 faster than others. Big deal. Its not like people can't get an invite to another Guild's Ship for buffs for whatever...



Nuth'n but luv Devs... I don't envy your position when it comes to problems like this.

T.

[ReaperAlexEU]

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.

first a word on expectations. when gamers see the word "level" they expect to be making constant progress towards the next level. with any decay system that expectation turns out to be false. what we really have is a guild scale system, not a guild level system. i think that tiny wording difference is why the guild level system feels unfair to so many. they play on a regular basis but eventually stop making progress. its just a problem of false expectations and ones you have tried to set up correctly but then used the wrong word to define the system leaving all the players who dont read the dev posts to jump to the wrong conclusion.

idea 1: constant progress unless a guild is abandoned

turn daily decay off and instead make a new decay system that only kicks in if no renown has been gathered for X days (i'm thinking a week or just over to cater for the weekend only crowd).

the aim is to allow constant progress for any active guild. but if all the players in a guild go inactive then the guild will slowly decay as it's left neglected.

ok, thats gonna suck when the guild members come back from a break after hearing about an exciting update. this also means that every guild will eventually hit lvl100 unless it's abandoned.

pros
all guilds have a constant feeling of progress, even if it does slow down to a crawl at the higher levels
as long as one member remains active there are no penalties for keeping inactive players or very casual players on the books
no incentive to kick members for renown reasons

cons
all guilds will hit lvl100, which negates the original concept of the guild level (achem, scale) system

idea 2: base guild size on players logged on today

have a much more reactive guild size system. calculate the guild size based on the number of players that logged in that day. so if during the week there is only a hard core of 6 players they will get max renown reward bonuses with the corresponding decay penalty. then come the weekend when all their other buddies log on their calculated guild size may shoot up to 30, renown bonuses drop accordingly and decay goes up accordingly, but just for the weekend.

that means throwing out all the current tracking, no recently left, no inactive, only players that logged on during the 24hr decay time span.

there will need to be some minimum decay amount for when no players have logged on during that decay cycle

pros
no penalty for keeping casual players on the books
no incentive to kick members for renown reasons
guild progresses at a rate that matches how active the players were each day

cons
all guilds will suddenly be earning renown at the best possible rate for their level of activity, which turbine may deem to be too fast
any guild with a core of highly active players (ones that match an optimised 6 man renown focused guild) are likely to hit lvl100, or at least get very close
the more active players might get a little irritable at the weekend slow down (not actual slow down, just perceived as their renown bonus drops), but only because us humans have the legendary capacity to immediately forget how bad the old times were and instead focus on how bad the current times are, unless they are talking to the younguns who would never believe how bad the old times were.
i can see that tempting the hard core players to splinter off and form a new guild, which is damaging, but also something today's system encourages too, so if you have some stats on how prolific that is then we will know how large a problem it might be.

[Dandonk]

Not as much as the old decay system did. The direct renown penalty for kicking members was not reduced at all, versus the old decay system. The only difference is, under the old decay system you would start kicking them gradually, in order of least active first, starting at around level 50 and shedding them all by level 65 or so, when they really start to hurt your renown. Under the new decay system, you can keep them all the way to level 100 and there is actually no incentive to kick them at all because they are not really costing you any renown, and kicking them DOES cost you renown. Yes, some abusers would still kick them just because they are what they are, but the decay policy would NOT reward them for kicking, as the old decay policy did. The new decay policy always rewards inviting, and never rewards (only punishes) kicking. The old decay policy rewarded inviting at low levels, and rewarded kicking at high levels .

The new system rewards being big, over ANY other factor. So, being big is great for levelling - and when you get what you want from the levels, you can safely kick anyone new you invited, if you feel so inclined. While you may lose a level or two, you already have what you wanted from those levels, anyway.

The guild system should be fair to all, both large and small guilds. The test system helps out large guilds a lot - I just want the same consideration to small guilds who suffer from the same root cause of levelling issues (namely the casual players).

[LordDunmore]

One additional aspect of this whole decay discussion is the guild renown drops in end of quest rewards.

I have played in a guild that was very vocal in "Be sure to take ANY renown drop in your end of quest reward, no matter if there is something you need in that list or not.". Needless to say, I didn't stay in that guild very long.

So besides all the other pressures in obtaining renown, there is the pressue to bypass loot for that necessary renown to keep combating the decay.

I am not advocating removing renown from end of quest lists. I am looking to see if there could be more renown drops in loot chests. How about adding renown drops in bookcases (Trophys displayed in book cases make sense.. a trophy in a small bitof moss probably not so much).

I would also like to see a more diversified list of renown drops, in a slightly skewed rate towards higher numbers. Having just the four levels, 50, 100, 500, 1000 may not be suficient enough to get renown added to each chest. Why not include more drops between 100-500, and 500-1000? How about a very rare drop of 5000 in certain high level end of quest chests?

Just some thoughts on experiences I have had.

Forgesong of Khyber

[Tshober]

So, being big is great for levelling - and when you get what you want from the levels, you can safely kick anyone new you invited, if you feel so inclined. While you may lose a level or two, you already have what you wanted from those levels, anyway.

Again, this is not nearly as much of a worry with the new system as it was with the old system. The old decay system actually rewarded guilds for doing exactly what you describe. The new system only punishes kicking and never rewards it.

There is a simple way to avoid being a victim of an abusive guild leader that would kick you after using you to level up. Don't join a start-up guild. If you are a casual player, join an established guild that has been around for a few years and has had stable leadership and has had no history of shedding members for renown reasons. Under the new decay system, many such guilds will want you to join them. Of course, not every newb in Korthos will know that but, again, the risk of abuse is lower than it was with the old decay system.

If there is great concern that the new system has not done enough by simply removing the incentives to kick players, then I would not be opposed to increasing the penalty for kicking charactes from guilds, so long as there is a reasonable time period after which the penalty no longer applies. If a character has not logged in at all for 2 or 3 months, there should be no penalty for kicking them to make room for new players. Seriously, there is no way you can say a guild that kicks characters that have not logged in at all for months is doing anything even remotely abusive. So let's go even further and increase the penalty for kicking characters from guilds, but allow guilds to kick characters that have truly stopped playing with no penalty.

[ReaperAlexEU]

One additional aspect of this whole decay discussion is the guild renown drops in end of quest rewards.

I have played in a guild that was very vocal in "Be sure to take ANY renown drop in your end of quest reward, no matter if there is something you need in that list or not.". Needless to say, I didn't stay in that guild very long.

So besides all the other pressures in obtaining renown, there is the pressue to bypass loot for that necessary renown to keep combating the decay.

I am not advocating removing renown from end of quest lists. I am looking to see if there could be more renown drops in loot chests. How about adding renown drops in bookcases (Trophys displayed in book cases make sense.. a trophy in a small bitof moss probably not so much).

I would also like to see a more diversified list of renown drops, in a slightly skewed rate towards higher numbers. Having just the four levels, 50, 100, 500, 1000 may not be suficient enough to get renown added to each chest. Why not include more drops between 100-500, and 500-1000? How about a very rare drop of 5000 in certain high level end of quest chests?

Just some thoughts on experiences I have had.

Forgesong of Khyber

more renown in quest wont help either when the whole system is designed for a guild to peak out at a certain level, but not at the cap unless they are exceptionally active. all the time the system is designed for guilds to peak out at some point other than the cap you will encounter the problem you saw. and really the leaders should be recognise they are at their guilds peak and not impose horrible rules on their members. you did the right thing by moving on.

[Hendrik]

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.

No matter what the end result, I honestly appreciate you, the DEVs, listening and making changes to a system that the players feel is unequal to all playstyles. I like that you are making a change and seeing how that works on Live vs testing in a much smaller environment. I respect that.

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

Is there a way to code a Guild Renown Bonus, for the whole Guild, based on online accounts? Can it be made to fluctuate based on number of online accounts? More accounts online, higher the granted bonus? Only thinking like a 5-10% bonus in total.

Thoughts? Technical limitations? Viability?

[Chaos000]

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.

I'm sure after this test is over they will see how many cases of small guilds using mass invites and kicking them in-mass to determine if this statement is true. I am sure if all small guilds start mass inviting enough for this to be a noticeable issue, then steps will be made to fix this issue. (reasonable limits to invites/kicks per day for example or renown size bonus does not increase when you reduce in size)

I have a problem with the assertion that decay is a non-issue for large guilds. There's no data that we can reference to prove it either way. I guess the proof to determine this is how consistently large guilds hit renown ransack. If it is easy, then only a small minority of large guilds will not hit renown ransack.

What I see currently is that Guild's that get no renown size bonus benefit most from this change because there is no dis-incentive to invite more players active and casual.
Small guilds still face a "per player" issue because their renown size bonus is tied to that and therefore casual players still suffer due to their lack of participation.

There need to be some way to account for that (for example: each player in a 10-player or less guild that does not gain renown for that day reduces decay by 10% for the day)

[Hendrik]

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 think it was to measure a guilded account activity and achievement.

More active the account, the more renown it generated and the more achievements it made, higher difficulty content, it accomplished.

To early and not enough coffee to try to find the original mission statement for Rise of the Guild.

[diggergta]

After stagnating for months and months (the last time we went up a level was when you had your guild renown event) we have gained two levels in a day. Keep the new changes.

[MrkGrismer]

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 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.

[Dandonk]

I think it was to measure a guilded account activity and achievement.

More active the account, the more renown it generated and the more achievements it made, higher difficulty content, it accomplished.

To early and not enough coffee to try to find the original mission statement for Rise of the Guild.

That's what I thought it was, too.

With this change, though, it's a measure of size and age of the guild, much much more than activity and achievement.

[Tshober]

With this change, though, it's a measure of size and age of the guild, much much more than activity and achievement.

It is still a measure of activity. The difference is it is now a measure of total guild activity, not per player activity. With the new system, guilds of the same size will differ in renown earned by how active their players are. A large guild that has players that are twice as active, on average, as another large guild of the same size, will level up twice as fast. The same would be true of guilds of any size when compared to other guilds of the same size. By the same logic, a guild that has players that are, on average, three times as active would level up just as fast as a guild that has three times as many players in it.

Our guild leveling system is now actually comparing guilds, rather than comparing players.

[Dandonk]

It is still a measure of activity. The difference is it is now a measure of total guild activity, not per player activity. With the new system, guilds of the same size will differ in renown earned by how active their players are. A large guild that has players that are twice as active, on average, as another large guild of the same size, will level up twice as fast. The same would be true of guilds of any size when compared to other guilds of the same size. By the same logic, a guild that has players that are, on average, three times as active would level up just as fast as a guild that has three times as many players in it.

Our guild leveling system is now actually comparing guilds, rather than comparing players.

Which is really fair for those preferring small guilds. You are allowed to have casuals in large guilds, but not in small.

Yes, I understand your point. But I think the idea of making the average activity of the guild be the deciding factor was a good idea. It meant a fairly level playing field between large and small guilds, when it came to levelling.

This way, it rewards taking more players beyond anything else. No matter how focused you are in your small guild, you'll never keep up with those guilds with ten times the number of players.

Diversity is good. There should be room for small, medium, large and whatever else guilds. The game forcing guild choices on players is a bad idea, IMO.

[Captain_Wizbang]

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.

.

Let's face it Vargouille the entire renown system is outdated, and we see you trying to manipulate it (thanks) and bring it up to a standard that "fits" the game trend we have now.
BUT...
There is a VAST majority of guilds AND players that have already made sweeping changes to their guild policies and player comfort zones. By kicking people out or leaving bigger guilds or merging guilds. We as a player base did this BECAUSE of the renown structure, and NOW you want to try and help improve that same system which has already forced US to adapt.

Decay had it's place, and that was great when "guild housing" was introduced. But it doesn't fit anymore.

The best solution is to remove it completely.
WB & Turbine is throwing good money right out the window by spending any more time on a feature that is no longer needed.

[allipoin]

. How about adding renown drops in bookcases (Trophys displayed in book cases make sense.. a trophy in a small bitof moss probably not so much).

That kind of makes sense.

[Tshober]

Which is really fair for those preferring small guilds. You are allowed to have casuals in large guilds, but not in small.

Yes, I understand your point. But I think the idea of making the average activity of the guild be the deciding factor was a good idea. It meant a fairly level playing field between large and small guilds, when it came to levelling.

This way, it rewards taking more players beyond anything else. No matter how focused you are in your small guild, you'll never keep up with those guilds with ten times the number of players.

Diversity is good. There should be room for small, medium, large and whatever else guilds. The game forcing guild choices on players is a bad idea, IMO.

I am sorry, but I just can't believe that somehow a guild of 100 players, working together and helping each other, should be treated exactly the same as some dude who wants to go it solo and make his own guild of one. I don't think he should necessarily be prohibited from doing that, nor do I think he should be unable to advance and eventually level up. But treating the two guilds equally is, IMO, ludicrous. There is literally no comparison between the two guilds. The 100 player guild brings vastly more of everything you can name to the game than the 1-man guild does. And that's the key, when you really compare guilds (and not players) there is no comparison when the sizes are so hugely different.

So I guess the bottom line for me is I very much like the new decay system. I think it is fair, in the sense that the relative contributions to the game from each guild is taken into account appropriately. I do think that tiny and small guilds should be viable and should not be prevented from leveling up by decay. But treating them exactly the same as larger guilds is simply not appropriate because they are not even close to the same in reality.


My recommendation for keeping the small and tiny guilds viable and advancing is to increase the small guild bonuses some. That is what those bonuses were meant for. The devs should have enough data to choose bonuses that will keep them from stalling out due to decay.