Guild Renown Changes

[Tshober]

essentially - time to make guild renown NOT about the size of the guild but rather about how active it really is. Time to actually improve the guild system itself.

The measure of activity in DDO is renown earned. The guild that earns the most renown per day should level the fastest. That is exactly what happens under the current decay formula.

Under the old decay formula, the larger a guild was, the more it was penalized (by reduced renown) and the less the renown that it's members earned counted. In fact the penalty was not even limited to the amount they earned! The old decay formula could (and did) even penalize them into losing more renown than they earned. Don't let the IRS hear about this one!

[UurlockYgmeov]

The measure of activity in DDO is renown earned. The guild that earns the most renown per day should level the fastest. That is exactly what happens under the current decay formula.

Under the old decay formula, the larger a guild was, the more it was penalized (by reduced renown) and the less the renown that it's members earned counted. In fact the penalty was not even limited to the amount they earned! The old decay formula could (and did) even penalize them into losing more renown than they earned. Don't let the IRS hear about this one!

yes - it should be possible to loose guild levels because of decay. This decay should be applied fairly without any regard to the size of the guild. I am going to rethink my suggestion of decay = modified guild size * static variable based upon guild level [min 1 max 30]. I will keep the suggestion simple and straighforward; but it will be fair for guild of all sizes. equally fair.

[Tshober]

This decay should be applied fairly without any regard to the size of the guild. I am going to rethink my suggestion of decay = modified guild size * static variable based upon guild level [min 1 max 30]. I will keep the suggestion simple and straighforward; but it will be fair for guild of all sizes. equally fair.

To do it as you said "without any regard to the size of the guild", you will need to remove guild size from your formula entirely. Because if you have guild size in the formula, then you are certainly taking guild size into account and giving it some regard.

[UurlockYgmeov]

To do it as you said "without any regard to the size of the guild", you will need to remove guild size from your formula entirely. Because if you have guild size in the formula, then you are certainly taking guild size into account and giving it some regard.

clarification - guild renown decay should be fair - based upon the same amount of renown decay per member.

This (what I am working on) isn't as simple as a change to the formula - rather several simple changes that should make the system fair to all guilds of all sizes. In theory - work hard and be rewarded.

Current system is very sensitive to the wrong things, and insensitive to the things it should be sensitive to.

with that - preliminary ideas would be to change the criteria for what is called an inactive account. Currently an inactive account is one that hasn't logged in >30 days.

This criteria makes guild of all sizes kick players fast - and for reasons other than fair.

Simple method would be to just reduce the criteria to >6 days (so those weekend warriors can still be productive members of the guild). A more complicated method would be to make a sliding time / value scale - 6-10 days worth .75; 11-20 days worth .5; 21-28 worth .25.

Second part of the suggestion would have to be that inactive accounts (>6 months) should either auto boot without penalty - or be able to be booted with zero impact on guild renown. This might already be happening, but don't know for a fact.

Third part is that there needs to be a probationary / or trial period of say 2 weeks for all new guild invites. This would work like a quest pass - where they could be part of the guild without affect renown in any way during their trial / probationary time. Allows the guild and the prospect time to see if the guild / prospect is right for them. Can be abused but something to hash out in final suggestion.

Fourth part is the decay. Working through the hidden mechanics (or the intentions behind) the system. In order to be fair the math needs to take into consideration the ability of the guild to generate renown. Yes that means that the formula does factor in the number of modified members - but that is only fair. With the changes to what is included in the modified account size (see above) - this will be much more fair. Am considering a sliding window averaging approach - with a slight variance included for maintenance logs (logging in for none renown generating functions like mail).

This is what I am thinking ---- and will continue to evolve this today.

In the end - the renown decay formula must fairly allow all guilds to slide into nothingness if they entropy from active to inactive. Inevitable fall from grace to ruin without upkeep and maintenance. Fairly must include the ability of the guild to generate renown while allowing a certain amount of leeway / breathing room for all types of players.

more later...

[Chaos000]

clarification - guild renown decay should be fair - based upon the same amount of renown decay per member.

Increase in renown gathering potential doesn't directly result in a higher renown gain. Active and inactive members all factor into a guild's true potential. Unrealized potential (due to low activity or lack thereof) displaces the renown decay to the rest of the members gaining renown.

It's ultimately renown earned that is being deducted. The philosophy of decay per member is only fair when every member is gaining some measure of renown. Otherwise members that are active have a higher decay compounded by every member counted but not gaining renown.

So... decay per member that declines per each member that does not gain very much renown. This could be achieved by not assigning any decay to players that gain less than X renown, or only assigning decay to players gaining more than X renown, or assigning Y decay to all players but increasing decay for those gaining more than X renown.

[UurlockYgmeov]

Increase in renown gathering potential doesn't directly result in a higher renown gain. Active and inactive members all factor into a guild's true potential. Unrealized potential (due to low activity or lack thereof) displaces the renown decay to the rest of the members gaining renown.

It's ultimately renown earned that is being deducted. The philosophy of decay per member is only fair when every member is gaining some measure of renown. Otherwise members that are active have a higher decay compounded by every member counted but not gaining renown.

Based upon the concept that everyone remembers the hero but it was the hero's companions that did the ox's share. (Jason and the Argonauts - everyone remembers Jason - but Jason didn't do the rowing)

So... decay per member that declines per each member that does not gain very much renown. This could be achieved by not assigning any decay to players that gain less than X renown, or only assigning decay to players gaining more than X renown, or assigning Y decay to all players but increasing decay for those gaining more than X renown.

I've been thinking outside the box - something radically different - but essentially fair - and simple.

essentially it boils down to this: an average (if there is such a thing) player gains x renown per day (based upon a typical week - no bonus factored in because that would defeat the reasoning behind the bonus). If a guild is charged y% of x for all members that logged into the game during the 24 hours prior to decay assignment - then that would base the decay solely on the members who were capable and available to earn renown.

It is a simple concept. if 10 members logged in during the 24 hour decay window - then they would be responsible for the decay of the day. if 100 members logged in during the 24 hour decay window - then 100 of them would be responsible for that days decay. Since the decay itself is based upon how much each of them could have earned (which is based upon x (the average per day of a typical player)).

This totally eliminates the size of the guild in the equation - and makes it fair to all styles of play - if you log in you affect renown decay. It is really simple to code - most if not all of the mechanisms are already in play. Just have to decide x and y.

x being how much renown a typical player generates (before bonuses and potions and boosts) in a day. Really cannot go finer of resolution than a day or else would cause too much load on the server and coders. Any less resolution (say a week) and the system becomes unresponsive.

y represents what percentage of renown must go to maintaining the guild at its current status.

so just for example - and really rough numbers if x being 1000 and y = 25% then the renown decay per day under this thought would be 250 for every guild member that logged in that day. Could even simplify the formula even further and just adjust x and eliminate y

The minimum decay would be set to one member logging in each day. This allows for guilds to atrophy and disappear with neglect.

Now several examples:
10 person guild - 3 members logged in. 2 members ran quests and earned 2000 renown. Decay would be 750 - regardless of the level of the guild; and after decay the guild would have earned 1250 renown.

50 person guild - 22 members logged in during the 24 hour window. 15 members ran quests and earned 15,000 renown. Decay would be 5,500 - regardless of the level of the guild; and renown net gain would be 9,500.

500 person guild - 383 members logged in during the 24 hour window and 290 of them generated renown of 290,000; after the decay of 95,750 the guild had a net renown gain of 194,250.

1 person guild - no accounts logged in during the 24 hour window - no renown earned - but net loss of 250 renown.

again - really, really rough outline - but a very simple, practically elegant system that eliminates the guild level and makes decay fairly assigned to all members irregardless of the guilds size.

This system (as rough as it is) rewards active guilds without penalizing small guilds who are made of weekend warriors or say those who just got deployed. This system still holds a guild responsible for maintaining by making it about the members.

Comments and queries are solicited and greatly appreciated.

[Tshober]

clarification - guild renown decay should be fair - based upon the same amount of renown decay per member.

Any formula based on renown per member is inherently unfair to members of larger guilds and inherently favors members of smaller guilds. Dividing by the number of members means that the renown that a member of a large guild earns is worth less than the renown that a member of a smaller guild earns. That is how the math of dividing by the number of members works. The measurement should be comparing guilds, not comparing members. The only fair way to compare guilds is to NOT didvide by the number of members, but instead use the total renown earned by all members. That way every player's renown earned counts the same as every other player's.

[Chaos000]

No opposition here. It helps to eliminate the issue with the old system. Not sure if there would be a simple fix to achieve this tho.

[Chaos000]

Any formula based on renown per member is inherently unfair to members of larger guilds and inherently favors members of smaller guilds. Dividing by the number of members means that the renown that a member of a large guild earns is worth less than the renown that a member of a smaller guild earns.

Honestly, I don't have an issue with a per member system that doesn't wait a month to determine that a player is no longer "active."

Despite scaling down the worth of renown gained of a larger guild, this is preferable to scaling up the worth of renown gained by smaller guilds.

[Tshober]

I've been thinking outside the box - something radically different - but essentially fair - and simple.

essentially it boils down to this: an average (if there is such a thing) player gains x renown per day (based upon a typical week - no bonus factored in because that would defeat the reasoning behind the bonus). If a guild is charged y% of x for all members that logged into the game during the 24 hours prior to decay assignment - then that would base the decay solely on the members who were capable and available to earn renown.

It is a simple concept. if 10 members logged in during the 24 hour decay window - then they would be responsible for the decay of the day. if 100 members logged in during the 24 hour decay window - then 100 of them would be responsible for that days decay. Since the decay itself is based upon how much each of them could have earned (which is based upon x (the average per day of a typical player)).

This totally eliminates the size of the guild in the equation - and makes it fair to all styles of play - if you log in you affect renown decay. It is really simple to code - most if not all of the mechanisms are already in play. Just have to decide x and y.

x being how much renown a typical player generates (before bonuses and potions and boosts) in a day. Really cannot go finer of resolution than a day or else would cause too much load on the server and coders. Any less resolution (say a week) and the system becomes unresponsive.

y represents what percentage of renown must go to maintaining the guild at its current status.

so just for example - and really rough numbers if x being 1000 and y = 25% then the renown decay per day under this thought would be 250 for every guild member that logged in that day. Could even simplify the formula even further and just adjust x and eliminate y

The minimum decay would be set to one member logging in each day. This allows for guilds to atrophy and disappear with neglect.



again - really, really rough outline - but a very simple, practically elegant system that eliminates the guild level and makes decay fairly assigned to all members irregardless of the guilds size.

This system (as rough as it is) rewards active guilds without penalizing small guilds who are made of weekend warriors or say those who just got deployed. This system still holds a guild responsible for maintaining by making it about the members.

Comments and queries are solicited and greatly appreciated.

Why do we need such a complex accounting scheme? The current system already has the very desirable feature of having all player's renown earned count the same as every other player's renown, with only the exception of the tiny guilds with less than 10 members. All that is needed is to complete the initial change and make the tiny guilds have less decay too. That is far easier than introducing a complex new accounting structure that will make players think twice before they log in to check thier mail and say hello, on days when they don't have enough time to do serious questing. Let's not encourage players to not log in. It could become a habit.

[Tshober]

Despite scaling down the worth of renown gained of a larger guild, this is preferable to scaling up the worth of renown gained by smaller guilds.

How so? We are talking about HUGE scaling here. A player in a 300-man guild would have his renown earned divided by 300 when a player in a 10-man guild would have his renown earned divided by 10. Why is the renown the small guild member earned worth 30 times as much as the same renown earned by the player in a larger guild? Both players put forth the same effort and used up the same amount of time to earn the renown. Both should count the same.

The system we are discussing here is one for leveling guilds. We should be comparing guilds, not comparing players. When you divide by the number of players in the guild, you are no longer comparing guilds, you are now comparing players. And the same is true if you do the inverse and multiply by the number of players to apply a penalty to a guild, you are no longer comparing guilds, you are then comparing players. Think about it this way, if you were going to rank all of the countries in the world on economic power, would you take GDP and divide by the population of the countries and then compare them? Of course you wouldn't. That is because you are wanting to logically compare the countries, not the people in the countries. It is exactly the same with guilds. The proper way to logically compare guilds on renown is to use total renown earned, not renown divided by number of players.

[UurlockYgmeov]

Why do we need such a complex accounting scheme? The current system already has the very desirable feature of having all player's renown earned count the same as every other player's renown, with only the exception of the tiny guilds with less than 10 members. All that is needed is to complete the initial change and make the tiny guilds have less decay too. That is far easier than introducing a complex new accounting structure that will make players think twice before they log in to check thier mail and say hello, on days when they don't have enough time to do serious questing. Let's not encourage players to not log in. It could become a habit.

the suggestion (rough draft at that) is simpler than what is now, or what was. There is one alternative I've been tossing around since posting but will describe that in a couple hours.

this is about renown decay. simple. it is quiet simple. every guild member that logs in (once or twenty times doesn't matter - counts as one) in a 24 hour window (which already exists - decay time to decay time) is active. take the active players in that 24 hour window and multiply it by x. it is exactly what is now - but there is no scaling for guild level.

x represents at least in my examples (again very preliminary examples) 250 - which is 25% of what a given 'typical' player earns when they play. all numbers are examples - just there as placeholders to help with clarification

the suggestion is inherently fair to all guilds of all levels of all number of members since it eliminates the level, and is just based upon a what members are active.

as far as not wanting to log in - well, it already is happening just not at this resolution - if anything this helps the weekend warriors and say tax accountants who have issues playing the game daily like the addicts we are.

[Chaos000]

How so? We are talking about HUGE scaling here. A player in a 300-man guild would have his renown earned divided by 300 when a player in a 10-man guild would have his renown earned divided by 10. Why is the renown the small guild member earned worth 30 times as much as the same renown earned by the player in a larger guild? Both players put forth the same effort and used up the same amount of time to earn the renown. Both should count the same.

My stipulation for being ok with having renown not count the same if the scaling is reasonable. For example... if only 10 players in a 300-man guild earned renown, their renown earned would be divided by 10 not 300. If all 10 players in a 10-man guild earned renown, their renown earned would likewise be divided by 10. If 30 players in a different 300-man guild earned renown, their renown earned would be divided by 30. On the decay/player field, all guilds would therefore be on equal footing.

A guild with a higher number of consistent players will have their renown earned count less by the very nature of higher decay.

I do agree that the proper way to logically compare guilds on renown is to use total renown earned. If total renown earned in a day determined the decay amount, I would also be ok with that. We'll get complaints on why more active players are being punished for their activity... but currently if you think about it, larger guilds only have a "free ride to max level town" because casual players are only now being rewarded for their activity by having their renown earned "count" and active players are not being penalized by having to shoulder the "extra burden" of casual players in their guild.

[Zargarx]

Example, 3 guilds at level 62 that make just enough renown to keep stable.
Guild 1 with a size of 200 needs to earn 1 trophy per day per member.
Guild 2 with a size of 16 needs to earn 4 trophies a day.
Guild 3 with a size of 6 needs to earn over 8 trophies per day per member to stay balanced.
(includes any bonuses.)

Turbine needs to fix this problem.

[Artos_Fabril]

Vanshilar, I have a couple of questions about your data and one of your assumptions. I have characters in a large (117 active) level 70 guild, a small (12 active) level 45 guild, and a tiny (5 active) level 28 guild. Any point I don't address, I concur with.

Yet two and a half years later, people are still trying to make the same point in this thread, that small guilds get a bonus so it's all hunky-dory, ignorant (or hoping people would be ignorant) of it hardly making up for the huge renown gain disparity that large guilds get just by being big.

Here it seems that you are discounting the opportunity cost of maintaining a large guild in terms of time spent on administrative functions. Do you believe this to be a zero-cost endeavor? If not, what is the appropriate balance to this cost?

Thus the original complaints about how renown decay was making large guilds lose members to other guilds were confusing at best. For a large guild, if the recipient guild had a higher level because of renown decay, it implies that the players of the new guild were more active, and thus, the player was looking for a more engaging environment. (It could also mean that the recipient guild has been around longer, but for large guilds which were settling into their equilibrium level, how long it's been around doesn't particularly matter for guild level.) If the recipient guild were a small guild, then the argument was doubly confusing, because small guilds had to be much more active than large guilds to reach similar levels -- in effect, the player was looking for a guild that was really active which the original guild leadership wasn't providing.

In the first half of this statement, you note that large guilds were settling to equilibrium levels, but in the second half you ignore that your own calculations showed that small guilds had much higher equilibrium levels, and that guilds which kicked or refuse less active players would have a higher average activity level with fewer members than larger guilds which did not. Of course, it would be better still, from a renown gain perspective, to encourage all players in a guild to be more active, but because all players cannot, for various reasons, maintain the same activity levels, and some (many) players cannot maintain the same activity levels for 2+ years, you are looking at a choice between trimming the roster to raise the average, or settling at an equilibrium level that encourages the most active players on the roster to seek other guilds, which further lowers the average activity level. Below you again consign players who are unable, despite their desires, to increase their activity to either being removed or dragging down their guild.

Saying that this was making large guilds remove less-active members was even more confusing. If players are leaving a guild because they want a more active environment, then the best response would be to make the guild more active by having more guild events, raids, etc., not by removing less-active players and having fewer people to interact with. The players wanted to be engaged more, and removing other players doesn't help them with this.

The other major reason brought up for the renown decay change was that it was encouraging people to exclude others. The way this argument worked was that guilds may not want to bring someone on board in case that player ended up gaining less renown than they cost in decay, resulting in a net negative in renown for the guild, and giving guilds an incentive to trim its roster. But this ignores the many other facets of the game where bringing in someone could result in a net negative:

In short, almost all aspects of the game has elements where an additional person may be a liability. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. An aspect of many incentive systems is to give better rewards for more effort, and for an MMO, this type of system is what spurs interactions and relationships as a player's ability develops through talking and playing with other people. This in turn makes the player more invested in the game and more interested in playing, which means $$$ for Turbine but also, converts a possible liability into an actual benefit for others that interact with the player.

Do you not see exclusive LFMs and the number of veteran players who choose to solo or only run in guild or "in channel" as the negative result of the same sort of "potential liability vs potential benefit" algebra occurring in other areas of the game?

By removing decay scaling with number of accounts, there is now little incentive from the renown system for any guild with 50 or more accounts to invest in their players. Since any additional accounts can only be a net positive and not a net negative, there is no need to interact with players to turn them from potential liabilities into actual assets. Even if the player makes a lot of fuss and leaves the guild on bad terms (or is booted), the guild keeps 75% of the renown the player gained, and the guild lost nothing in terms of decay (and the booted player loses out on all guild benefits with little recourse). Such guilds can freely recruit anybody and everybody without having to worry about the system. With the number of unguilded characters running around, and the 98% of all other guilded characters at a lower level, it's easy enough to attract and induct whomever and boot as the guild leadership pleases for guaranteed renown gain. (This is not true for guilds with 49 accounts or less due to the decreasing size bonus -- so they still have to be watchful lest their overall renown gain decreases.)

Do you feel that removing dungeon scaling (as an aspect of potential liability) from Elite/EE would be as detrimental to the game as removing the per-person factor of decay from guild renown calculations?

As I stated earlier (and to my knowledge no one has tried to refute in the 1000 or so posts since I previously posted):

I can log on to a small guild and half the players online will say "hi". I can log on to a large guild for an entire day and nobody will bother to talk to me.

Certainly you can find examples of both of those instances. You could also find opposite examples. Adding members does not automatically make a guild impersonal and anti-social, although it is likely that in a large guild with a significant number of members online, you'll find a smaller percentage who note when someone logs on, which likelihood only increases if the guild as a whole is more socially active, as logons get lost in the rest of the guild chatter.

None of the large guilds, however, ever engaged their members to the same extent that the small guilds they compared themselves to did

Here I have to question your assumptions: you imply that is it equally difficult to engage 6, 12, or 24 members with similar play times, and 100+ members scattered across time zones. I have seen 100% concurrency in the 5 and 12 member guilds I am a part of, but I have never seen 100% concurrency even among the 117 active members in the larger guild. Conversely, I rarely log in to the large guild and see no one else on, but at least twice a week log in to the others and see no one else on. It's much easier to engage everyone in a smaller guild, where concurrency is high and events are easy to organize, and you can keep concurrency high by keeping the guild small, and not inviting people who do not play during your peak hours. I saw this a lot in WoW and EQ as well, without a renown-like mechanic: End-game guilds required daily participation during their primary activity hours, and removed members who would not or could not meet those requirements. This resulted in power guilds reaching an equilibrium size equal to about 150% of the number of players required for an end-game raid. Should DDO go in this direction?

1) Were active in August 2010, a few months after the renown system was released (specifically, whose renown changed from August 6 to August 27, since MyDDO stopped working after that)
2) Were still active at the time I did each month's month-to-month analysis

Then the guild count, as an animated gif, is below:



Note that the left axis values are for active small guilds, while the right axis values are for both active medium and active large guilds. Yes, there really are that many small guilds that are active and playing -- and have been around since August 2010.

A question about the information in this graphic: It shows upwards of 200 "Old" small guilds in the level 1-5 range, a gain of less than 10800 renown (no decay at this level) in 29 months. This chart also shows that the first "Old" large guild reached level 100 in January of 2013, 5 months after new decay formula was implemented, so any large guild that reached level 100 previously was formed after the renown system was implemented and is highly likely to have taken renown into account from its founding.

Looking at the guilds below 26, the data you've collected shows that over 1000 "Old" small guilds have not yet encountered decay, but are still being tracked here as "active".

Any changes to decay have absolutely no impact on these thousands of small guilds.

What we see in this thread, is rather a lot of a few members of high-level tiny/small guilds, and a few members of high-level large guilds bickering about who has it worse and why, while a very few posters try to offer alternative solutions, since we've pretty much reached a consensu that both systems are broken to a greater or lesser degree.

Think about it this way, if you were going to rank all of the countries in the world on economic power, would you take GDP and divide by the population of the countries and then compare them? Of course you wouldn't. That is because you are wanting to logically compare the countries, not the people in the countries.

Actually, GDP per capita is often used to compare certain aspects of the differences between countries, particularly Standard of Living:

GDP per capita is not a measurement of the standard of living in an economy; however, it is often used as such an indicator, on the rationale that all citizens would benefit from their country's increased economic production. Similarly, GDP per capita is not a measure of personal income. GDP may increase while real incomes for the majority decline. The major advantage of GDP per capita as an indicator of standard of living is that it is measured frequently, widely, and consistently. It is measured frequently in that most countries provide information on GDP on a quarterly basis, allowing trends to be seen quickly. It is measured widely in that some measure of GDP is available for almost every country in the world, allowing inter-country comparisons. It is measured consistently in that the technical definition of GDP is relatively consistent among countries.
The major disadvantage is that it is not a measure of standard of living. GDP is intended to be a measure of total national economic activity—a separate concept.
The argument for using GDP as a standard-of-living proxy is not that it is a good indicator of the absolute level of standard of living, but that living standards tend to move with per-capita GDP, so that changes in living standards are readily detected through changes in GDP.

[Tshober]

Example, 3 guilds at level 62 that make just enough renown to keep stable.
Guild 1 with a size of 200 needs to earn 1 trophy per day per member.
Guild 2 with a size of 16 needs to earn 4 trophies a day.
Guild 3 with a size of 6 needs to earn over 8 trophies per day per member to stay balanced.
(includes any bonuses.)

Turbine needs to fix this problem.

Yes, larger guilds have more players in them and can earn more renown because they have more players to earn it. I don't see that, by itself, as a problem. It is how the world works. The more people you put to work on something, assuming they are all roughly equally good at it, the more you will accomplish. It is a system that reflects reality and treats equal work with equal reward. The guild that earns the most renown, levels the fastest. The guild that earns the least renown, levels the slowest. It's very simple. For the most part, the current system reflects that philosophy. The only exception is that tiny guilds with less than 10 members are paying an extra decay penalty that all other guilds are not paying. That part does need to be fixed. But the overall idea that more players can accomplish more than fewer players of the same approximate ability is sound.

[Zargarx]

My example has nothing to do with achievement. It is only about the differences by member to hold the status quo.
I can understand some diferences, but this is way too large.

[Chaos000]

Example, 3 guilds at level 62 that make just enough renown to keep stable.
Guild 1 with a size of 200 needs to earn 1 trophy per day per member.
Guild 2 with a size of 16 needs to earn 4 trophies a day.
Guild 3 with a size of 6 needs to earn over 8 trophies per day per member to stay balanced.
(includes any bonuses.)

Turbine needs to fix this problem.

The probabilty of all 200 members of Guild 1 logging in is far less than...
The probability of all 16 members of Guild 2 logging in which is lower than...
The probability of all 6 members of Guild 3 logging in.

It is a logical assumption that larger guilds are harder to coordinate and therefore it is reasonable to assert that Guild 3 is likely more active than Guild 2, and Guild 1 is less active than both Guild 2 and 3.

Guild 1 would be lucky to a significant portion of their members on at a given day. For every less member that doesn't earn a trophy, more must be gained by someone else. Same applies to the other two guilds. It isn't until the actual number of players not logging on is determined can we figure out exactly how many trophies are required by the remaining players.

Guild 4 with a size of 500 has less players logging in comparison to Guild 1, the players logging in for Guild 4 has to work harder than the players logging in for Guild 1 despite outnumbering them.

[tasslehofff]

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

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

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

this really hurts me since i am the only person in my guild if i dont play more then 4 hours everyday i cant keep up with the decay not good DDO a VIP player gets shafted for having a guild of one

[Tshober]

Actually, GDP per capita is often used to compare certain aspects of the differences between countries, particularly Standard of Living:

The point is that when you divide by the number of players in a guild, you hide the very real and obvious differences between guilds of greatly different sizes. If you take the examples of a 10-player guild and a 300-player guild and divide the total renown for both by the number of players and find them to be equal, you are hiding the fact that the 300-player guild actually earned 30 times as much renown was the 10-player guild. You are claiming they are equal when in reality they are not even close to equal. The 300-player guild brings far more of everything you can name to the game on a daily basis than the 10-player guild does. More accounts, more playing time, more renown earned, more social interactions, more questing, more VIP subs, more DDO store sales, more partys, more exp, more favor, more everything! Using averages of renown earned per player hides the vast differences between guilds of vastly different sizes. It is a grossly unfair way to treat larger guilds.

You might argue that there are far more 10-player guilds than 300-player guilds and that, taken as an aggregate, 30 10-player guilds would compare favorably to 1 300-player guild. And that may be true, but that does not matter when it comes to leveling up guilds. To rank guilds, you need to compare 1 guild to 1 other guild, not 1 guild to 30 other guilds. The only fair and equitable way to rank guilds on renown is by total renown earned by the two guilds being compared.