Guild Renown Changes

[Hendrik]

While I fully support the reduction or elimination of decay, I have to ask, if you are (as you previously asserted) okay with smaller guilds progressing less quickly, and the decay you are experiencing is neither causing you to fall backwards, nor is it an incentive for you to remove players from your guild, what problem are you trying to demonstrate here?

Guilds over 10 accounts got something he did not. He wants what they got. Wants the cake, extra icing, and able to eat it too.

ALL Guilds over 10 accounts got a reduction in decay from old to new. 10 and under did not. Even though 10 and under did not, they have the highest size bonus and are still able to overcome decay as shown.

If history is a guide and Turbine decides to drop the account numbers down to 10 ( and I personally doubt that will be the solution) I fear it would come hand in hand with a very small size bonus reduction.

Maybe this is an incentive for the very small to be inclusive? Maybe Turbine wants people in Guilds with lots of people? Maybe the 10 and under account are such a small percentage of the total guild population, they do not see it as an issue because they are advancing. Maybe the very small guilds are reaching the level ranges Turbine thinks the average 'should' attain as not all guilds will reach top level.

[Hendrik]

+ Reduce decay...
- smaller ship, smaller (easier to overcome) decay
- lower # of amenities, lower decay
- ddo store item to suspend decay for a day

+ Reduce / eliminate ransack penalty only for guilds 10 or smaller.

+ Give more renown for...
- challenges
- events

+ Completely change the system by...
- bonuses based on level and not size

Nice to see someone tossing out idea's and not sticking to playing the same broken record.

Rather see a Renown Shine vs a store item to suspend decay. WHile both could generate income, suspending decay IMO could be problematic.

[slarden]

Guilds over 10 accounts got something he did not. He wants what they got. Wants the cake, extra icing, and able to eat it too.

ALL Guilds over 10 accounts got a reduction in decay from old to new. 10 and under did not. Even though 10 and under did not, they have the highest size bonus and are still able to overcome decay as shown.

If history is a guide and Turbine decides to drop the account numbers down to 10 ( and I personally doubt that will be the solution) I fear it would come hand in hand with a very small size bonus reduction.

Maybe this is an incentive for the very small to be inclusive? Maybe Turbine wants people in Guilds with lots of people? Maybe the 10 and under account are such a small percentage of the total guild population, they do not see it as an issue because they are advancing. Maybe the very small guilds are reaching the level ranges Turbine thinks the average 'should' attain as not all guilds will reach top level.

Here is the funny thing about inclusivness. Your guild page shows "No" next to the question are you recruiting. It also state's you only accept people as members you ran with many times. In a previous post you made a comment about Bathory Hordes reputation due to their open recruitment policy.

I don't think this system really changed much with regardsl to inclusiveness except that the high level big mature guilds can now recruit vets from small guilds more easily. Of course everyone in large guilds are happy and will sing the praises of this new system.

I never saw many unguilded people at higher levels before the change or after the change. Guilds are selective regardless because if a guild gets a bad reputation they will have a hard time getting into raids, EE quests, etc. System changes will have no impact on that.

As for guild bonus, I think the charts show that guild bonus gives no unfair advantage. Even if decay was reduced we are still leveling significantly slower than larger guilds. Decay was the mechanism intended to keep all guilds from advancing too fast. It's current purpose is only to cap what level small guilds can get to or keep them from leveling at all.

WIthout guild bonus my guild would move backwards despite how active we are.

[slarden]

While I fully support the reduction or elimination of decay, I have to ask, if you are (as you previously asserted) okay with smaller guilds progressing less quickly, and the decay you are experiencing is neither causing you to fall backwards, nor is it an incentive for you to remove players from your guild, what problem are you trying to demonstrate here?

Again, my guild is active enough that reducing the fixed decay multiplier from 20 to 10 makes a small differnce in our progression at our current level. My concern is more for the numerous small guilds that are stuck in place and unable to move forward. They've commented in this thread and others. We've been stuck, we've moved backwards at times, but have mostly been moving forward lately. It really depends on what other things people have going on in their lives.

The problem is quite clear - the high decay/person which you can see in the chart I posted. Bathory Hordes will be able to advance to 100 without a problem. If my guild members had the same activity level we couldn't even hold our current level.

So we need to either decouple in-game rewards form the leveling system or make the leveling system more fair for the small guilds unable to advance due to crushing decay.

Smatt's and Hendrick's guilds were unable to advance. Hendrick even tried some advice which he passed along on this thread. The advice failed becaues decay ultimiately was too high. After getting massive decay reductions these guilds are now able to progress again. I would like small guilds to have the same opportunity.

I see many small guilds stuck below level 55. This slight reduction would give them the boost they need to ge there.

Also important to note: small guilds have always progressed more slowly even under the old system. The exception were the small powergamer guilds that could overcome the natural disadvantages of being small with extremely high play time.

[Vyder]

Our guild is pretty much stuck at 70. It's a decent ship. We will not advance to 71 anytime soon with the current system. We don't want to add more people just to level. I Like a small guild, I know everybody. So in the current system we either all quit our jobs, leave our families and move back in with our parents and play ddo in there basement until the screen becomes a blur we will never advance. If its turbines wish for only larger guilds to be able to reach 100 than so be it. It is what it is. Maybe next we can loose crafting xp for not deconing enough loot in a day. No matter what they do I will not play more or harbor invite.

[Hendrik]

Our guild is pretty much stuck at 70. It's a decent ship. We will not advance to 71 anytime soon with the current system. We don't want to add more people just to level. I Like a small guild, I know everybody. So in the current system we either all quit our jobs, leave our families and move back in with our parents and play ddo in there basement until the screen becomes a blur we will never advance. If its turbines wish for only larger guilds to be able to reach 100 than so be it. It is what it is. Maybe next we can loose crafting xp for not deconing enough loot in a day. No matter what they do I will not play more or harbor invite.

Yep, because those are the ONLY options.



If you do not want to play more or invite then those are your choices.

[Nestroy]

Yep, because those are the ONLY options.



If you do not want to play more or invite then those are your choices.

I will save your comment here now and will post it again when you next time complain because the renown/decay pendulum swings into the other direction - against large guilds - again.

[Artos_Fabril]

Bathory Hordes will be able to advance to 100 without a problem. If my guild members had the same activity level we couldn't even hold our current level.

So we need to either decouple in-game rewards form the leveling system or make the leveling system more fair for the small guilds unable to advance due to crushing decay.

What I see here is that the system was changed because guilds, such as this very large guild, could have easily moved forward under the old system... by removing all players who weren't at least meeting their per-person decay.

You keep painting this as "Big guilds complained about not moving forward, so Turbine made it easy for big guilds to move forward" while every indication in statements from Turbine is that Large guilds were forced to choose between including/retaining less active members, and retaining more active members.

Which is what brings your complaint into question when you assert that adding a member will always increase your renown earning potential. The goal of making all guilds inclusive, per your assertion, has been satisfied by making every additional member beneficial to the guild (and therefore to its individual members).

Again, since it seems to need to be stated in every post, I am 100% in favor of the elimination or reduction of decay, but you're just repeating your talking points, and doing so in a confrontational manner, making this into a "small vs. large" issue, rather than focusing on making the system better able to support a wide range of options.

Also important to note: small guilds have always progressed more slowly even under the old system. The exception were the small powergamer guilds that could overcome the natural disadvantages of being small with extremely high play time.

Under the old system, Large guilds would often rise rapidly, up until their stall point, which was almost always lower the more members (accounts) were included in the guild. Smaller guilds would rise higher, but more slowly. That sounds like a pretty reasonable trade-off, until guilds start to lose either their most active members (and their renown gain, thus falling backwards) or least active members (discouraging people with below threshold renown gain/play times from logging in at all).

You seem to have lost sight of the fact that no matter who complained about what, the changes were made in support of increased inclusiveness, which makes it very unlikely that any argument in support of exclusiveness will hold any weight.

[smatt]

What I see here is that the system was changed because guilds, such as this very large guild, could have easily moved forward under the old system... by removing all players who weren't at least meeting their per-person decay.

You keep painting this as "Big guilds complained about not moving forward, so Turbine made it easy for big guilds to move forward" while every indication in statements from Turbine is that Large guilds were forced to choose between including/retaining less active members, and retaining more active members.

Which is what brings your complaint into question when you assert that adding a member will always increase your renown earning potential. The goal of making all guilds inclusive, per your assertion, has been satisfied by making every additional member beneficial to the guild (and therefore to its individual members).

Again, since it seems to need to be stated in every post, I am 100% in favor of the elimination or reduction of decay, but you're just repeating your talking points, and doing so in a confrontational manner, making this into a "small vs. large" issue, rather than focusing on making the system better able to support a wide range of options.

Under the old system, Large guilds would often rise rapidly, up until their stall point, which was almost always lower the more members (accounts) were included in the guild. Smaller guilds would rise higher, but more slowly. That sounds like a pretty reasonable trade-off, until guilds start to lose either their most active members (and their renown gain, thus falling backwards) or least active members (discouraging people with below threshold renown gain/play times from logging in at all).

You seem to have lost sight of the fact that no matter who complained about what, the changes were made in support of increased inclusiveness, which makes it very unlikely that any argument in support of exclusiveness will hold any weight.

+1 for again making the same points many of us have made throughout this thread, until at least some of us get so frustrated we start playing his game...

[Nestroy]

(...)You seem to have lost sight of the fact that no matter who complained about what, the changes were made in support of increased inclusiveness, which makes it very unlikely that any argument in support of exclusiveness will hold any weight.

While your argument certainly holds true for any medium-to-large guild, sadly this does not fit for small guilds, except they would like to grow in size / quantity, which often is not an option. There is only one player base of certain size on any given server, so with mathematics alone it is impossible to reach high membership quantities for all guilds. Then you still have the problem with the playstyle argument.

If you have a guild that is already high level, recruiting to a bigger size is fairly easy. Until then, it is near to impossible, at least on the bigger servers. Who wants to join the next lv. 25 korthos army except for newbies? And as soon as they get to know the game and the players better on their server, they leave for greener pastures. And that´s even understandable.

And then there is Wayfinder... Wayfinder simply does not sport large guild populations at the moment. The player base is much too small for this. So "inclusivness" is not a sustainable strategy on that server.

So while I personally can fully follow your argument, I still think the devs have no such clear-cut strategy in behind their system at the moment at all. They felt pressure from the player base to do something for the big guilds in order to get them on track for higher levels again (perhaps pressure from sales and product management due to stalling pot sales from the big guilds - who uses them when decay eats away the gain anyway?) and therefore introduced a quick and dirty fix. And that´s it. All we here guess on a strategy to my mind has been in truth total coincidence and now gets over-construed.

I think, the devs left any clear-cut strategy when they did not care for the renown system for about 2 years until the pressure was gaining on them. Then a rushed fix, labeled as "test" - see initial posting in this thread. Now nothing except a cryptic message that sometimes they will work again on the system, ahem, ment "evaluate"... So far I cannot see any strategy for about 3 years now.

This, again, is not against your posting. Just something to think about for future considerations.

[Hendrik]

What I see here is that the system was changed because guilds, such as this very large guild, could have easily moved forward under the old system... by removing all players who weren't at least meeting their per-person decay.

You keep painting this as "Big guilds complained about not moving forward, so Turbine made it easy for big guilds to move forward" while every indication in statements from Turbine is that Large guilds were forced to choose between including/retaining less active members, and retaining more active members.

Which is what brings your complaint into question when you assert that adding a member will always increase your renown earning potential. The goal of making all guilds inclusive, per your assertion, has been satisfied by making every additional member beneficial to the guild (and therefore to its individual members).

Again, since it seems to need to be stated in every post, I am 100% in favor of the elimination or reduction of decay, but you're just repeating your talking points, and doing so in a confrontational manner, making this into a "small vs. large" issue, rather than focusing on making the system better able to support a wide range of options.

Under the old system, Large guilds would often rise rapidly, up until their stall point, which was almost always lower the more members (accounts) were included in the guild. Smaller guilds would rise higher, but more slowly. That sounds like a pretty reasonable trade-off, until guilds start to lose either their most active members (and their renown gain, thus falling backwards) or least active members (discouraging people with below threshold renown gain/play times from logging in at all).

You seem to have lost sight of the fact that no matter who complained about what, the changes were made in support of increased inclusiveness, which makes it very unlikely that any argument in support of exclusiveness will hold any weight.

Another +1.

Keep in mind, small guilds of 11 or more have less decay. ONLY guilds of 9 or less have more decay with the highest size bonus available by comapring the old and new systems.

The arugment is Very Small vs everyone else. Not Small guilds as they are 10 accounts or more.

[Chaos000]

Under the old system, Large guilds would often rise rapidly, up until their stall point, which was almost always lower the more members (accounts) were included in the guild. Smaller guilds would rise higher, but more slowly. That sounds like a pretty reasonable trade-off, until guilds start to lose either their most active members (and their renown gain, thus falling backwards) or least active members (discouraging people with below threshold renown gain/play times from logging in at all).

... and so long as any of the proposed tweaks to the current system does not make any additional member less beneficial to the guild, I will not oppose it.

Under the old system, all guilds benefited in some way from removing players who weren't at least meeting their per-person decay. Under the current system, by not devaluing the contribution of even the least active member, almost all guilds will not gain a benefit from removing a player.

If a tweak to the current system provides a benefit that can be gained by removing enough players, it goes back to discouraging people with below threshold renown gain/play times from logging in at all.

Here's another idea:
+ Give more renown for...
- renown pots (smaller guild = higher multiplier for bonuses)

If the bonus is high enough, coupled with the size bonus, a tiny guild of one could exceeding the renown gain potential of a large guild after having used a renown potion. Yes there is a cost involved but it increases the incentive for small guilds to continue to buy potions despite the decay and gain far more benefit in comparison to players in larger guilds.

[Chaos000]

It's a a bit of a hollow statement considering your level 85 guild has the same decay/player as a level 51 guild of 6 has.

And from his level 85 guild, how much renown gain potential is being met? I would argue that a level 51 guild of 6 would be consistently meeting or exceeding the larger guild's percentage.

This is because it is "easier" for a smaller guild to be more active than a larger guild. The more players you throw in, the more difficult it is to maintain a consistent renown gain.

[Hendrik]

And from his level 85 guild, how much renown gain potential is being met? I would argue that a level 51 guild of 6 would be consistently meeting or exceeding the larger guild's percentage.

This is because it is "easier" for a smaller guild to be more active than a larger guild. The more players you throw in, the more difficult it is to maintain a consistent renown gain.

And hasn't he said that he is more active then a L85 Guild with 80 members and thus getting more renown?

Yes, he has.

[slarden]

And hasn't he said that he is more active then a L85 Guild with 80 members and thus getting more renown?

Yes, he has.

Once again your nose is growing.

My guild is getting more renown/account as the chart shows (before guild bonus is applied to compare apples to apples). This refutes a false claim you often make that my guild is not active and needs to play more. However we get to keep much less of the renown we earn because our decay/account is so high compared to your guild even though you are 9 levels higher.

My chart also clearly shows that you are getting much more renown in total and keeping a much larger percentage of that larger renown.

[slarden]

What I see here is that the system was changed because guilds, such as this very large guild, could have easily moved forward under the old system... by removing all players who weren't at least meeting their per-person decay.

You keep painting this as "Big guilds complained about not moving forward, so Turbine made it easy for big guilds to move forward" while every indication in statements from Turbine is that Large guilds were forced to choose between including/retaining less active members, and retaining more active members.

Which is what brings your complaint into question when you assert that adding a member will always increase your renown earning potential. The goal of making all guilds inclusive, per your assertion, has been satisfied by making every additional member beneficial to the guild (and therefore to its individual members).

Again, since it seems to need to be stated in every post, I am 100% in favor of the elimination or reduction of decay, but you're just repeating your talking points, and doing so in a confrontational manner, making this into a "small vs. large" issue, rather than focusing on making the system better able to support a wide range of options.

Under the old system, Large guilds would often rise rapidly, up until their stall point, which was almost always lower the more members (accounts) were included in the guild. Smaller guilds would rise higher, but more slowly. That sounds like a pretty reasonable trade-off, until guilds start to lose either their most active members (and their renown gain, thus falling backwards) or least active members (discouraging people with below threshold renown gain/play times from logging in at all).

You seem to have lost sight of the fact that no matter who complained about what, the changes were made in support of increased inclusiveness, which makes it very unlikely that any argument in support of exclusiveness will hold any weight.

Yes although the reason Turbine made the change was to promote inclusiveness and stop big guilds from booting members that played less, the complaints from large guilds rarely mentioned that issue over the past year. Let's also not forget that the reason these negative behaviors occured was because of crushing high decay.

As I've said before, changing the fixed account multiplier from 20 to 10 does nothing to change the reason for their change and has the side benefit of allowing small guilds that are stuck to move forward. While it's not a perfect solution, I think setting the account multiplier to 10 is a better temporary solution than setting the account multiplier to 20 so that all guilds get some relief.

The fact that large guilds argue against this has nothing to do with inclusiveness, but rather exclusiveness. They wish to deny small guilds the same opportunity to level that their guilds enjoy. When I look at Hendrick's guild page they are not recruiting ("no" is answered next to the question) and they state they only accept members they ran with many times. This pretty much sums up the way most mature guilds operate regardless of size. They are very concerned about protecting their "brand" and no system change will encourage them to add members unless they meet their critieria. This was true before and after the guild change.

The biggest thing I've noticed is that it is much easier for large guilds to recruit from small guilds now. But the mature guilds are still looking for vets - not new or casual players. Taking the most active members from small guilds is rather damaging to those guilds especially since the more casual members of the small guild won't get an invite to the higher level mature guilds.

So again, the new and casual players are pretty much in the same boat the've always been. They join casual guilds of all sizes or start-up guilds.

Its been so rare that I would ever run across unguilded high level players before and after the change - I am just not buying the argument that players were ever having trouble finding guilds.

[Zargarx]

Old system:
Best guild size calculated was 13 (and 14) with the range 11 to 19 being fairly close. Not even taking into account the overhead of dealing with a mid to large guild size. And if organized, a great size for doing multiple raid runs.
Below 10, despite the higher bonus, things go worse progressively worse to a size of 6 then became much worse below that.
Turbine mishandled how the bonuses worked. It should have been decreased more rapidly above 6. Removing 1/3 of the bonus would have also worked.
The main problem for larger guilds of the need to remove weaker players to advance however would have remained.
In any case, Turbine's initial path was to have a fix decay based on guild size. This corrected the issue with a mid teen account size being the best size, even though they are slightly better off than before (have about 15% less renown decay). And this will likely stay.
However the issue is that guild decay has been dramatically reduced for some. a guild size of 100 that had trouble advancing at level 65, would now only face the same decay at level 91. Now think of a level 13 guild but without any bonus that is also stuck at level 65, once you add with the 195% bonus and the lower guild renown would only be at 82. That is a huge difference.
The question then comes down to what is the purpose of the multiplier and what is the purpose of decay.
My current view is that if only those two parameters are adjustable, then currently the multiplier should be significantly increased, but not so much as to end with the same issue as before where a smaller size guild (say 13 accounts) is more advantageous mathematically than a larger guild (especially 50). However, if decay is removed or significantly reduced, then then the multiplier should be reduced.
A final note, after doing the math, level 6 guilds even with their big multiplier are much much worse off a guild size of 13 before and after the changes. The only reason I can see to bother mentioning them in this thread is to take pity on them (and more so for anything smaller).

[Nestroy]

Something I really would love to see on any server - and that being part of the licence agreement as well:

Any guild not having any activity for let´s say, one month (not even a single login of any member) shoud face a very hefty decay penalty until the guild finally reaches lv. Zero. Upon reaching zero renown, with the next hit of decay the guild automatically should get dissolved or marked for deleting with the next server clean-up.

This would make room for other guilds on the server and perhaps even would help with ship buffs repopulating after server down times when the database does not have to check through virtual thousands of dead guilds for repopulation as well.

At least this would give renown decay any understandable purpose.

[Chaos000]

The biggest thing I've noticed is that it is much easier for large guilds to recruit from small guilds now. But the mature guilds are still looking for vets - not new or casual players. Taking the most active members from small guilds is rather damaging to those guilds especially since the more casual members of the small guild won't get an invite to the higher level mature guilds.

Under the old system it was much easier for smaller guilds to recruit from large guilds. Due to the decay per account, guilds would start to lose either their most active members (and their renown gain, thus falling backwards) or least active members (discouraging people with below threshold renown gain/play times from logging in at all). Taking the most active members from large guilds was rather damaging to those guilds especially since the more casual members of the large guilds won't get invited to the higher level mature guilds if they fell below threshold renown gain.

Under the new system even the more casual members of the small guild would still be considered (be it a mentorship or sponser program) for an invite to the higher level mature guilds DESPITE their renown gain.

[Chaos000]

His level 85 guild is averaging quite high renown/player which makes sense since it's a very picky guild with mostly active veterans. I would agree that Bathory Hordes which is an open guild recruiting people from all levels would face that problem. I think there is likely a high correlation between an account's overall character achievements to renown generation. In other words someone whose highest level reached for a character is 5 would likely generate much less renown than a person who has multiple TRs.

We've heard from small guilds unable to get to 55 while His guild was stuck at 80 before the change. This is likely due to activity level or play style (i.e., zerging vs. flower sniffing). I think the argument that it's easier to mobilize a small guild really only applies to power gamer guilds. In my guild people do what they wish with their limited play time. I would never start promoting renown farming or anything like that because it would suck the fun out of the game for people.

If your guild is averaging more renown/account as the chart shows in comparison to Hendrik's guild, does that not mean that your guild (where people do what they wish with their limited play time) is meeting or exceeding their renown gain potential in comparison to his (very picky with mostly active veterans) guild?

Per your assertion that the argument that it's easier to mobilize a small guild really only applies to power gamer guilds, a smaller guild that is not a power gamer guild like yours would not have an easier time actualizing their renown gain potential in comparison to Hendrik's guild.

Potential Renown per account:
Actual Renown per account:
Percentage of Potential Renown Actualized: (Potential/Actual)

I think the results would be quite telling.