Question about patron change [Archive] - EQ2 Forum Archive @ EQ2Wire

Sonnyjim_Grumblestump

07-14-2005, 11:09 AM

Hi Devs! Hope you're reading. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> I am the guild leader of a small, casual guild. As it happens, that small, casual guild has <font color="#ff6600"><i>busted it's beer-drinking butt</i></font> to get to level 22 (so far) with a dedicated, hard working group of patrons. None of whom have left (so far). I have to say I can see both sides of this coin. While I think it's great that what SOE is proposing protects us in case one or more of our Patrons hears the call and decides to leave, I share the concern that trivializing guild progression is something we have to be concerned about. Speaking personally, we are proud of our accomplishment thusfar, and take a good amount of pride in the achievement. 'Breaking' the Patron system so that guilds with more members doing more HQs can hotswap patrons and trivialize what we've done would be a bigger hit to our morale than us losing a couple patrons and having to regain a few lost levels. While I accept that there is no simple, easy way that I can see to protect people from loss while also protecting the system from exploitation, I would feel greatly reassured to hear that SOE is working on, or has found a way. Please -- choose to allow for guild to retain their status or at least their level if you wish, but consider some form of defence from exploitation. Status debt, limited depatroning timers or counters.. or ? In short: <b><font color="#ff9900">Protecting guilds from level loss = </font><font color="#ff6600">good</font><font color="#ff9900">. Preserving the integrity and challenge of the patron system.</font> <font color="#ff6600"><i>Also</i> good</font>. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Thanks for reading! </b><div></div>

themysterious

07-14-2005, 11:20 AM

I think the solution is simple. If you make a patron not a patron, you loose the xp. If a member leaves the guild, you don't loose the xp. If a member leaves the guild and re-joins with in 5 days, you loose the xp. (ok that last part is tricky, but sony has some smart devs) <div></div>

Jan It

07-14-2005, 11:31 AM

Wow, this is a rather big step, from losing all status to losing none. I was always in favour of guilds keeping like 50% or so of the earned status from patrons once they leave, because most often those patrons had lots of help by fellow guild members that took part in leveling the guild. So my vote goes to: Keep 50% of the status on leaving patronage/guild plus patronage lockout timer for like 14 or 30 days to prevent patronage hopping. I don´t think guild leaders will be too happy if they are contacted several times a week from members that will finish a heritage quest soon to be patronized. <div></div>

themysterious

07-14-2005, 11:35 AM

<span><blockquote><hr>Jan Itor wrote:Wow, this is a rather big step, from losing all status to losing none. I was always in favour of guilds keeping like 50% or so of the earned status from patrons once they leave, because most often those patrons had lots of help by fellow guild members that took part in leveling the guild. So my vote goes to: Keep 50% of the status on leaving patronage/guild plus patronage<b> lockout timer </b>for like 14 or 30 days to prevent patronage hopping. I don´t think guild leaders will be too happy if they are contacted several times a week from members that will finish a heritage quest soon to be patronized. <div></div><hr></blockquote>A simple lockout timer probably is a good idea really, no matter which way it is done. Some one leaves a guild or is depatroned they get a field against their character set to the current date/time, and then can not be made a patron, in any guild, for 7 days after that date. Rather simple, if sony's devs can't write that, then they have a serious source management problem.</span><div></div>

Moorgard

07-14-2005, 11:49 AM

<P>Keep in mind that this change is currently just on Test. That means we want to test it a bit in practice and see what it means before sending it live.</P> <P>There are other changes to the patron system were are considering as well, so this change may or may not go live in and of itself.</P> <P>It's certainly a somewhat controversial move, with benefits for a lot of people but also the potential for abuse. But then, we're often faced with the choice between doing nice things for players and facing the likelihood that somebody is going to abuse it in some way.</P> <P>While the concept of guilds losing levels when patrons leave makes sense in a practical way, it's also different from other progression models we have in game. Your character doesn't lose levels when you die or fail a crafting combine, so it seemed strange to have the same thing happen to a guild, especially when guilds in our game are intended to advance just like characters do.</P> <P>At any rate, please keep the comments coming so that we can continue to review the pros and cons of this potential change.</P>

Homesli

07-14-2005, 11:58 AM

I mentioned this elsewhere but if you decide to keep the change of guilds not losing status you should just drop patrons altogether and allow all members to contribute at a /12 or maybe split the difference between 12-36 and use a /24. /24 would be a bit tougher on smaller guilds but still doable.

Anachroni

07-14-2005, 12:04 PM

Hi, first of all I have to say that I love those changes. I won`t go into details. It would just lead to another and very old dicussion - the advantages and disadvantages of status loss. When I read the update news I was just happy and never even thought of the potential ways to abuse the system. I guess I forgot how bad the world we live in really is <img src="/smilies/8a80c6485cd926be453217d59a84a888.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Maybe it shouldn`t be possible to make one person a patron more often than once per month. That way it would be very very difficult to advance faster by the unintended ways described above. Jörg <div></div>

Sonnyjim_Grumblestump

07-14-2005, 12:09 PM

<span><blockquote><hr>Moorgard wrote:<div></div> <p>While the concept of guilds losing levels when patrons leave makes sense in a practical way, it's also different from other progression models we have in game. Your character doesn't lose levels when you die or fail a crafting combine, so it seemed strange to have the same thing happen to a guild, especially when guilds in our game are intended to advance just like characters do.</p> <hr></blockquote>True, it is different. Things have come a long way since the days of status decay! I don't debate that loss of several guild levels when someone leaves and takes their status with them falls in the 'no fun' category -- As the rest of the game matures, this may well be one of those things that <i><b>should</b></i> change. To use your comparison though if I may, if something had to change with the way characters progressed (lets pretend for a second that 'XP debt' was a new concept and was only just now going on test) you would want to make sure that this new 'Fun' idea wasn't going to trivialize the entire levelling process for those who chose to exploit it. So far SOE's shown a pretty fair commitment to keeping character progression challenging enough that it retains meaning, so I don't *really* see why they wouldn't apply the same concern to changing the way Guild Progression works, but I just thought I'd speak up and lend my voice to those who also feel that we don't want to leave this progression system open to abuse. </span><div></div>

Sonnyjim_Grumblestump

07-14-2005, 12:16 PM

Oh -- and a postscript to what Jan Itor suggested: 50% loss for disbands/depatroning is an option that would perhaps mitigate the drastic change from 'all to none' if there were no other options available. Call it the quick and dirty, but I would accept that as a decent middleground if nothing else was available. All for the enterprising folx at SOE to come up with something better though. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> On Lockout timers -- how do you pick a lockout? 7 days (suggested above) isn't really that long if the intent is to prevent someone from becoming patronized just to do a HQ. Do you have to stetch it out to a month or more just to make the lockout worth something? <div></div>

Rashaak

07-14-2005, 12:20 PM

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Moorgard wrote:<BR> <P>Keep in mind that this change is currently just on Test. That means we want to test it a bit in practice and see what it means before sending it live.</P> <P>There are other changes to the patron system were are considering as well, so this change may or may not go live in and of itself.</P> <P>It's certainly a somewhat controversial move, with benefits for a lot of people but also the potential for abuse. But then, we're often faced with the choice between doing nice things for players and facing the likelihood that somebody is going to abuse it in some way.</P> <P>While the concept of guilds losing levels when patrons leave makes sense in a practical way, it's also different from other progression models we have in game. Your character doesn't lose levels when you die or fail a crafting combine, so it seemed strange to have the same thing happen to a guild, especially when guilds in our game are intended to advance just like characters do.</P> <P>At any rate, please keep the comments coming so that we can continue to review the pros and cons of this potential change.</P><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P><BR>I am actually fairly new to the guild thing. I've been playing since Feburary, and just recently had one of my toons join a guild, not even two months ago. I personally feel the way the guild system is set up now, is fine the way it is. Guilds are by far a whole lot different than from EQ1 (from what I remember), and thus, very impressed with the current system. I do feel however, why would a guild de-level when loosing a patron, when your toon is out adventuring and dies, doesn't loose a level. I do not play on test, but would like to share my insite if yall don't mind. Here a few ideas to ensure "non-expoit" of the new concept currently being tested.</P> <P>1. Incorporation of "Status Debt" based off the amount of status that particular patron accumulated would make sense. </P> <P>2. Have the "no status point loss" ONLY on those patrons that have not been active for 30 days or longer. (The guild should not be penalized due to a patron no longer playing their toon, that is something that can not be controlled)</P> <P>3. A "CAP" on the amount of patrons you can have at one given time. Basically this means, the guild can ONLY have 12 patrons. If you have 12 patrons, and you de-patron someone to put someone else as a patron. You have to wait like... 6 days or something before your able to do so. Kind of like the EPIC raid timer.</P> <P>4. Possibly if someone is de-patroned they can no longer be a patron of that guild. </P> <P>That last one seems kind of harsh, but to me, being a patron is a privelage and holds a great a responsiblity for your toon, and your guild. The way I see a patron, you are a THE representation of your guild. The "elite" if you will. Other member's of your guild look to you in awe and admiration, creating good morale and motivation for all within.</P>

Bloomber

07-14-2005, 12:20 PM

<DIV>Moorgard brings up an interesting point contrasting guild experience loss with experience debt penalty. What would be the potential outcome to treat the loss of a patron in a similar fashion as personal character death? Instead of the guild losing status and potential level(s), apply an experience debt to the guild to be worked off by its remaining patrons to account for the loss.</DIV>

DaenaeRavenso

07-14-2005, 12:22 PM

<P>I'm an officer and a patron of our small guild. At this moment, most of our main patrons have completed just about every heritage quest there is in the game right now. Several of us have over 100k guild status, with one at over 200k and 2 very close to that. We lost 3 patrons a couple of months ago that cost us 2 1/2 levels of very hard work. To lose any of our patrons right now would pretty much spell the end of our guild. The reason I say this is, the main way we have to earn guild exps is through writs now. Yes, a couple of our patrons are working a few heritage quests but for the most part, we are done with them. We aren't big enough to raid the "guild status" raid mobs, so we are left with writs. Grinding out writ after writ for hours on end at our current level 27 for a pixel of exps each, isn't exactly hugely entertaining. Having to do this for two or three times longer to again regain lost exps would definately be a morale buster.</P> <P>I'm hoping this change or something very similar does make it to the live servers. I have seen several good guilds disolve when they lose a patron or two since those that are left behind end up feeling like all their hard work has just gone down the drain. And in some respects, it has. I know how discouraging it was for us when we lost our levels and how many writs we had to crank out to get it back! </P> <P>I realize that there are probably going to be a few less honorable players out there that will take advantage of any positive thing that goes live. However, I tend to look at it this way, all guilds have to stop at level 30 anyway. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> If Uber guild #40 gets to 30 a month earlier than my guild, well, grats them, I guess they win EQ2. They aren't gaining any additional items or gear for being 30 first or longest. They can have their bragging rights at getting there first since it will be obvious to everyone how they did it. Besides, it's not much different than a guild that does lose a patron and runs their unpromoted new patron through as many quests as they can right up to the final step, promotes them, then does a mass sweep to complete as many quests as they can in a short time and regain the exps they lost.</P> <P>Please don't let the potential for exploitation spoil something good for the rest of us that feel this would be a positive thing to bring to the game. I'm confident that SoE will come up with measures to prevent as much exploitation as possible. (maybe a time limit on how soon you can promote someone to patron after losing one could be considered.)</P> <P> </P> <P>Dae</P>

Sonnyjim_Grumblestump

07-14-2005, 12:26 PM

The only flaw I can see off the bat with a 'status debt' type system, to bring it more in line with how character progression works is that the amount of status lost when an active patron departs is far greater than the amount of penalty one accrues if they get killed. If your level 40 character dies, no one wants to get 4 or 5 levels worth of XP debt, yet currently if you have a group of 12 patrons and one of them leaves, you may well experience the loss of several guild levels due to the loss of status. Of course, at the end of the day, no guild wants to work off 4 or 5 levels worth of status debt, but I have to agree even then it's better than losing the levels outright. <div></div>

Feaw

07-14-2005, 12:38 PM

<DIV>Im a partron in a modest hard working guild and I can also see two sides to this. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> On one side like other guilds we have had some deep wounds from people getting up and leaving and taking the points they contributed with them. At one point we lost almost 3 levels due to a failed attempt at a few members to try push the leadership into changing guild policy and then staged a mass walk out with their friends. The current system actually gives patrons some thing to threaten guild leadership with if they have built up enough points. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>On the other side I can imagine guild patrons made up solely of alts and bots that are used for the points they can get from heritages and then disposed of. Ive already seen entire groups that were being botted by one person mass collecting writ points. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I dont know what the answer is here but I wish you the best on finding a compromising solution.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV><p>Message Edited by Feawin on <span class=date_text>07-14-2005</span> <span class=time_text>01:43 AM</span>

Feaw

07-14-2005, 12:38 PM

<DIV>*gasp* double post by accidental tab, space bar, space bar :smileysurprised:. </DIV><p>Message Edited by Feawin on <span class=date_text>07-14-2005</span> <span class=time_text>01:41 AM</span>

Drizz

07-14-2005, 12:49 PM

Real simple solution to preventing abuse would be limit the amount of Patrons you can add/remove per x hours. For instance, a guild can only remove 1 Patron and add 1 Patron per hour. Sure you could prolly soak up a tiny bit extra xp each night for a raiding guild, but it wouldnt be anything huge or game breaking.

Aelore

07-14-2005, 12:57 PM

<P>No matter how successful or powerful a particular guild might be at this point, I am of the opinion that this is a good move by SOE. I mean, I'm sure their intentions are that the game last for years and I'm just having a hard time imagining that guilds can survive for years if there's no way that people can leave, join, etc without hurting their friends and family. The current system is just too unforgiving. </P> <P>The only thing I'm cheering for is the ability for people to leave a guild without the guild losing status. You can make it so that once a person is a patron, it's permanent until they deguild, and that would be fine with me ..lol. I just can't stand the thought of losing any more status because of someone leaving the guild or leaving the game ...it's just been too painful. And, for those of you that havn't been through it and you think that you're invunerable..think again. At any point, someone could get upset and take their 'clic' out of your guild and you lose a couple levels ...or, a group of people need a break and take a couple months off, etc..etc..</P> <P>No, I believe this change is a good one. There are plenty of other things to sink your time with in this game...let's make guild levels something that we don't have to stress about all the time. It's not like you get a free lunch at level 30 anyway, all you get is the ability to spend your money on something new ...lol.</P>

Rashaak

07-14-2005, 01:11 PM

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Aelorean wrote:<BR> <P>No matter how successful or powerful a particular guild might be at this point, I am of the opinion that this is a good move by SOE. I mean, I'm sure their intentions are that the game last for years and I'm just having a hard time imagining that guilds can survive for years if there's no way that people can leave, join, etc without hurting their friends and family. The current system is just too unforgiving. </P> <P>The only thing I'm cheering for is the ability for people to leave a guild without the guild losing status. You can make it so that once a person is a patron, it's permanent until they deguild, and that would be fine with me ..lol. I just can't stand the thought of losing any more status because of someone leaving the guild or leaving the game ...it's just been too painful. And, for those of you that havn't been through it and you think that you're invunerable..think again. At any point, someone could get upset and take their 'clic' out of your guild and you lose a couple levels ...or, a group of people need a break and take a couple months off, etc..etc..</P> <P>No, I believe this change is a good one. There are plenty of other things to sink your time with in this game...let's make guild levels something that we don't have to stress about all the time. It's not like you get a free lunch at level 30 anyway, all you get is the ability to spend your money on something new ...lol.</P><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P><BR></P> <HR> <P>I do believe this is a good change, but the assurance of it not being exploited is my concern. I mean...no matter how you look at it, and create ways to ensure new implementations are not exploited, there will always end up being an exploit. I think this would be a good a change overall, since the way adventuring/tradeskill leveling works it doesn't make much sense to have the guild levels be the total opposite. I'd just like to see it work in a way it will benefit the GUILD as a whole, the patron/member, and not to mention the roleplay aspect of having a guild. It shouldn't just be a race to 30.</P>

Jadr

07-14-2005, 01:32 PM

Fantastic move. <div></div>

Quasicroa

07-14-2005, 01:38 PM

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Moorgard wrote:<BR> <P>Keep in mind that this change is currently just on Test. That means we want to test it a bit in practice and see what it means before sending it live.</P> <P>There are other changes to the patron system were are considering as well, so this change may or may not go live in and of itself.</P> <P>It's certainly a somewhat controversial move, with benefits for a lot of people but also the potential for abuse. But then, we're often faced with the choice between doing nice things for players and facing the likelihood that somebody is going to abuse it in some way.</P> <P>While the concept of guilds losing levels when patrons leave makes sense in a practical way, it's also different from other progression models we have in game. Your character doesn't lose levels when you die or fail a crafting combine, so it seemed strange to have the same thing happen to a guild, especially when guilds in our game are intended to advance just like characters do.</P> <P>At any rate, please keep the comments coming so that we can continue to review the pros and cons of this potential change.</P><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P><BR>Really this is only a controversial move in the mind of those that can and will only see the worse in any change. </P> <P>I am sorry to say but I do not see or fear what those who are worred about exploiting such a system could bring. Such a fear would not happen if a proper check an balance system was in place, and such a system can be implemented by a very simple concept(yes coding may not be so simple, but it would prevent abuse).</P> <P>All that needs to be done is to implement an over time guild vestment approach. In otherwords for every week that the patron stays with the guild X% of their current earned status permenantly gets absorbed by the guild. After a certain set time the guild obtains 100% vestment of that patrons Status including all future status.</P> <P>E.G. - I decided to join "Gnome Punters of Norrath". I have started a few heritage which are near completion so the guild decides to make me a patron and then I proceed to finish "These boots are made for..." heritage. At that point I earn 2000 status for the guild.</P> <P>Now if I were to leave the guild or be depatroned within 7 days the guild would lose 100% of that status. So then at 7 days if either of those things happend the guild would lose 90% of all status I earned keeping 10% for the guild, at 14 days 80% lost, at 21 days 70% lost, at 28 days 60% lost........until finally say around 3 months with the guild all status earned would become 100% vested to the guild including all future status from that point on. </P> <P>Some of you may not follow the whole vested thing, but most who have experience with 401k's or stock options should be able to understand exactly what I mean to get across.</P> <P>Call it a form of "Guild Status Debt" if you like, but such a system despite what its called would provide what is done in real life already to prevent similar abuses. Its a tried technique that works.</P>

Syndic

07-14-2005, 02:03 PM

<span><blockquote><hr>Moorgard wrote:<div></div><p>At any rate, please keep the comments coming so that we can continue to review the pros and cons of this potential change.</p><hr></blockquote> Not really a comment more a suggestion. How about when a player is depatroned the guild still loses the points earnt by that player. Should this loss of points cause the guild to fall back a level it keeps the current level where is but the guild can not advance until the shortfall is paid back. Example. Say a guild requires 200,000 points to attain level 20. PatronA has 30,000 points contributed. Situation 1. The guild has 240,000 points, Patron A leaves, the guild now sits on 210,000. Guild stays level 20 and advances as normal, although they are further behind than they were before. Situation 2. The guild has 210,000 points, Patron A leaves. The guild now has 180,000. Instead of the guild losing a level they stay at level 20 but they will remain at 0% into level until they can make back the 20,000 points shortfall they have for the level. Reaching 30 should be a massive acheivement for a guild, although not out of reach. I believe this to be a happy medium. Guilds will still need to apply tact to the patron title and patrons will still need to be commited but at least now a guild as it reachs each step in the climb to 30 know there is a safety ledge behind them to catch them should the unforeseen happen.</span><div></div>

Zapo

07-14-2005, 02:19 PM

This is really something difficult. I could write a long rant but I will try and keep it short. What does guild status currently show me ? It shows me that a guild with a high guild lvl has invested a lot work into it. If it's a small to medium guild it shows that it must be a guild that has constancy (right word?). There seems to be a bunch of people that stick togehter and know how to reach goals. What will guild status in future tell me about a guild ? Hmm, really, nothing. I can't say if those who "were" the guild and built up the status hadn't left already. Or maybe it's just a guild whose members stay for some weeks and leave again. Maybe they just even botted their way up in guild lvl. There is no way I can know. I don't know if I made myself clear, For me the important part of a guild are the members and how they fit together. And in my oppionion the guild status should reflect this. I can't see how the new system will do this any longer. All we will get is many lvl 30 guilds (nearly every guild will be lvl 30 this way till expansion comes out). Titles like Sir and Madam will be a joke and meaningless. At least for me. By the way , I am member of a guild of about 20 active members, currently lvl 21. I am quite proud we made it so far. SOE is just going to trivialize another part of the game making it more or less meaningless. Just my oppinion, Anthur <div></div>

Ricassari

07-14-2005, 02:32 PM

<div></div>If you really want this - your decision, SOE. But then do the next step and save us the tedium of patroning and de-patroning everyone every time he is doing a heritage or writ: remove the patron system completely. Effectively, this patch is doing this, and while some may consider constant patroning and de-patroning an "exploit", face it, it will be the standard way to handle a guild in most cases. Make it simple and clear to everyone: There are no patrons any more. Everyone doing a heritage or writ will contribute to guild XP. A zergling guild of 100 people will have level 30 in no time, a small guild will have to work for it. Good or bad, everyone may decide for himself. Only way to retain a small fraction of the original idea, divide the gained points for the guild by the number of guild members instead of the number of patrons, which after that change will never be more than 12 in any guild at any given time. <div></div>

Dro

07-14-2005, 02:47 PM

<P>My solution would be to remove patrons and make any guild member effectively a patron - ie. they can gain personal and guild status.</P> <P>I's then add a scaling split system based on the total number of people in the guild.</P> <P>1-19 members : status split 1/10</P> <P>20-39 members : status split 1/20</P> <P>40-59 members : status split 1/30 </P> <P>and so on.</P> <P> </P> <P>Edit: oh - and would probably recommend also that anyone who leaves/is kicked from a guild is unable to join/rejoin for a set period of time (to avoid abuse)</P> <P> </P> <p>Message Edited by Droo2 on <span class=date_text>07-14-2005</span> <span class=time_text>11:50 AM</span>

Jelrak

07-14-2005, 03:04 PM

Yes, but then the problem would be how does one account for the alts/mules that are guilded and dont do any writ or patron work whatsoever. A guild with 15 active players, each with one or two mules or tradeskill alts (which is probably a conservative estimate -I know one member of our guild has at least 6 alts - each working on a different tradeskill ) who arent involved in the writ process at all, would suffer a massive penalty . Changing the patron status IMO is not the best approach to prevent abuse of the proposed changes.

Udayen

07-14-2005, 03:20 PM

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Quasicroako wrote:<BR><BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Moorgard wrote:<BR> <P>Keep in mind that this change is currently just on Test. That means we want to test it a bit in practice and see what it means before sending it live.</P> <P>There are other changes to the patron system were are considering as well, so this change may or may not go live in and of itself.</P> <P>It's certainly a somewhat controversial move, with benefits for a lot of people but also the potential for abuse. But then, we're often faced with the choice between doing nice things for players and facing the likelihood that somebody is going to abuse it in some way.</P> <P>While the concept of guilds losing levels when patrons leave makes sense in a practical way, it's also different from other progression models we have in game. Your character doesn't lose levels when you die or fail a crafting combine, so it seemed strange to have the same thing happen to a guild, especially when guilds in our game are intended to advance just like characters do.</P> <P>At any rate, please keep the comments coming so that we can continue to review the pros and cons of this potential change.</P><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P><BR>Really this is only a controversial move in the mind of those that can and will only see the worse in any change. </P> <P>I am sorry to say but I do not see or fear what those who are worred about exploiting such a system could bring. Such a fear would not happen if a proper check an balance system was in place, and such a system can be implemented by a very simple concept(yes coding may not be so simple, but it would prevent abuse).</P> <P>All that needs to be done is to implement an over time guild vestment approach. In otherwords for every week that the patron stays with the guild X% of their current earned status permenantly gets absorbed by the guild. After a certain set time the guild obtains 100% vestment of that patrons Status including all future status.</P> <P>E.G. - I decided to join "Gnome Punters of Norrath". I have started a few heritage which are near completion so the guild decides to make me a patron and then I proceed to finish "These boots are made for..." heritage. At that point I earn 2000 status for the guild.</P> <P>Now if I were to leave the guild or be depatroned within 7 days the guild would lose 100% of that status. So then at 7 days if either of those things happend the guild would lose 90% of all status I earned keeping 10% for the guild, at 14 days 80% lost, at 21 days 70% lost, at 28 days 60% lost........until finally say around 3 months with the guild all status earned would become 100% vested to the guild including all future status from that point on. </P> <P>Some of you may not follow the whole vested thing, but most who have experience with 401k's or stock options should be able to understand exactly what I mean to get across.</P> <P>Call it a form of "Guild Status Debt" if you like, but such a system despite what its called would provide what is done in real life already to prevent similar abuses. Its a tried technique that works.</P> <BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR> <DIV>I think that this is an excellent Idea, though I lean toward the loss becomming debt in an equal amount. If a single partorn earns enough to normally drop a guild level, let a level of debt be in its place. This also would allow for hard working partrons to have that bit of control, as they should. But at the same time thier hard work builds the guild permenently.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Makes sense in an RG kinda way too</DIV> <DIV>If a good tailor joins a guild, initially their work is look upon individually, but as time passes thier work / name is seen as part of the guild. So if that tailor left, thier reputation and status would carry on with the guild. They still have individual stauts as well. But we all know Henry Ford is not with Ford anymore, but what he did is.</DIV> <DIV>As long as the tailor contributed, thier loss would be significant. Alloting the exp to cement over time is also a deterrant for patron swaping. Having to wait 3 months or so.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV>

Ellrin

07-14-2005, 03:53 PM

<DIV>As a guild leader of a guild that should be at least level 26 by now, but is 30% through level 24 because of high earning patrons leaving I welcome this change.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I do however share the concern of others in this thread about potential abuse.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Surely SOE have the tools to see if certain guilds are abusing the system and can take action accordingly. If this isnt an option then perhaps a timer can be implimented on patron removal/addition.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV>

Kizee

07-14-2005, 04:11 PM

<P>I don't like the change... you need to have something in this game thats is "hard" to reach. </P> <P>As of right now, when you see a level 30 guild you are in awe of how much effort it took to get there. If this goes live then getting to guild level 30 will be an every day thing. <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> (No, I am not in a level 30 guild)</P> <P>There has to be some sort of penelty for removing a patron or leaving a guild. I like the idea of the guild keeps 50% of the patrions status if they leave or stop becoming a patrion.</P> <P>Another good point that a friend brought up last night was... I hope you all trust your guild leaders because if they get bored with the game they could just disband eveybody and sell the account with a level 30 guild along with it. :smileyindifferent:</P>

Jeridor

07-14-2005, 04:34 PM

Hmm, how about this as a suggestion? Instead of /12, /24, whatever, why not look at a certain time period and use the average status contribution for that period as a gauge and make anyone who has contributed an amount within X distance of this average a pseudo-patron for sake of calculations? For instance, if you have a guild of 30 people and 8 have actively contributed recently, let's use some pretend numbers, let's say these are for the past 7 days: player1: 200 status player2: 1000 status player3: 800 status player4: 400 status player5: 700 status player6: 2000 status player7: 100 status player8: 500 status So, your average of all these is 950 status. Now let's say the above mentioned "X" distance is 25%, or 637 or higher. The players that fall under this guideline are 2, 3, 5, 6. So of the 8 active people working on guild advancement in the last week, 4 are pseudo-patrons and if someone did a writ or heritage right now, it would be /4. For sake of slowing guild advancement, that could also be multiplied by a factor as desired by the devs, say (patrons within guideline) x 3 = /12. <div></div>

Bookbunny

07-14-2005, 04:36 PM

<P>Im not a big time poster here but the few times I have sounded off it has been to congratulate SOE on keeping their promise of creating a game for casual players. From development to beta they advertised a game that anyone could play and enjoy, where hours of camping was not necessary (but DON'T get me started on the bouldering guard SOE) and where uber guilds were not the only means to reach the high end.</P> <P>This change is in line with the promise of casual playability. As someone very wisely posted above, the big guilds are going to hit 30 anyway. The small guilds may never reach 30 under the current system. With this change casual guilds may have a shot. And again, 30 is the cap. I wasn't the first Templar to reach lvl 50, but I got there in my own time and I know others who are still working hard to cap out even though they started playing on Nov 9 just like me. It's not about changing the amount of time it takes to get guild lvl 30, its about making it possible at all for smaller, casual guilds. And btw, this could definately help those legitimate large guilds who don't exploit - as they are just as vulnerable to mass disbands over something stupid.</P> <P>And lets look at disbands from a different angle. Not every Patron who leaves a guild is a horrible person out to hurt people. It is natural to move on to be with your friends, find a guild more suited to your play style, try something new, maybe its a timezone issue. Many people who disband still keep friends in their former guild, and are truly concerned at how their leaving is going to affect the guild and it's longevity. Patrons disbanding not only have to deal with the worry and sadness of leaving the guild they have pledged themselves to, but they also leave a permanent scar on that guild that de-levels. Do you realize how much harder it is to stay on good terms with your previous guildmates when you took 3 guild levels from them? Patronage can feel like a prison and suck the fun out of the game, alternating points for enjoyment.</P> <P>And another point a guildmate made to me: When a Patron completes a heritage quest, they didn't do it alone. Why not leave the heritage quest/epic kill status points with the guild and take the writ points? The writs were probably done solo or in a small group, but those heritage quest/epic kills were the combined effort of the entire guild and therefore should belong to the guild as a whole. Anyway thats another option to throw out there..... the guild xp debt I would also be happy with.</P> <P>*EDIT: Someone also mentioned that there should be some kind of penalty to leaving a guild. Well right now, other than emotionally, there is not much penalty to the player. The guild takes the xp hit but the player keeps every single point of personal status and can spend them freely once they are guilded somewhere else. The problem is all the penalty goes to the guild they are leaving. It actually makes guilds hang on to members that they would normally disband just because they have lots of points.</P> <P>Message Edited by Bookbunny on <SPAN class=date_text>07-14-2005</SPAN> <SPAN class=time_text>05:40 AM</SPAN></P><p>Message Edited by Bookbunny on <span class=date_text>07-14-2005</span> <span class=time_text>05:42 AM</span>

Jan It

07-14-2005, 04:47 PM

How about this approach: The longer you´ve been patronized the more points the guild will keep, e.g. no loss of status points after 100 days as a patron. For every day less you loose 1%, so leaving after 50 days will leave 50% of the status points to the guild, leaving after day 20 will make the guild loose 80% of the points. Quiet solid IMO. <div></div>

Case21

07-14-2005, 04:49 PM

Leppa

07-14-2005, 04:56 PM

I think it's a GREAT idea. This is supposed to be a GAME.. FUN... Enjoyment. Not a job where you must grind writs all the time and hope a patron doesn't leave because he's drunk one night and [Removed for Content] off at the world (yes that happened. to us. We lost 40,000 points) Why should the entire guild suffer after the loss of a patron? Get back to being fun. Losing guild levels is NOT fun. Good stuff. I hope this goes live. <div></div>

Ruben

07-14-2005, 04:56 PM

<DIV>I like this idea.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>That said I also prefer to keep some form of patron system if the number of people in the guild would be the determining factor in deciding how much status earned is divided by. We need some way to not factor in the alts (cough i got 10).</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>If this is added then I would like to see a limit on the number of times a player can be made a patron of a giving guild. Something to allow for mistakes but not enough to allow a person to be unpatroned then repatroned ever time it suits them.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>This would be very nice for guilds who have players that take extended leave due to real life, it would allow them to depatron the person until they returned.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>One other benefit this would create is to make guilds healthier, I know people who are in guilds and are extremely unhappy there but wont leave because they don't wish to hurt all the people of the guild by there actions. This would allow them to leave and move to someplace else without damaging the guild levels.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV>

Lunani

07-14-2005, 04:57 PM

Being patron and leader of a guild I can't believe this finally comes true. Since launch we lost several levels because of patrons leaving. Right now we have inactive patrons worth about half our total status. Thank you SOE for this change.<div></div>

Urglu

07-14-2005, 05:01 PM

<DIV>I like the concept. Certainly after so much time, people want to change mains, or have gone inactive, and the penalty to remove them was a bit harsh. However we can probably all point out a few large guilds that could exploit this and probably will (not that all or even most would). </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Maybe this would be a coding nightmare, but I wonder if you could implement something where you can de-patron one person every 7 days or something with no penalty but any additional de-patroning during that period would result in lost SP. This way you can weed out inactives without getting hurt but can't really swap people in left and right to grab all their HQ SP.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV>

Raahl

07-14-2005, 05:06 PM

<P>As an officer of a very large guild, I like the idea of the guild not losing a level because of a patron leaving. I think this has been said before but here is a better alternate solution.</P> <P>The guild still loses the status points of that patron, but does not lose any levels.</P> <DIV>Say you need the following status points for each guild level.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Level 20 - 2,000,000</DIV> <DIV>Level 21 - 2,100,000</DIV> <DIV>Level 22 - 2,250,000</DIV> <DIV>Level 23 - 2,450,000</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>If a guild has 2,260,000 status they are level 22. If several patrons leave with the patron status being 200,000. The following will happen.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>1. Guild status will fall to 2,060,000.</DIV> <DIV>2. Guild level will stay at 22.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>If the same guild then has an influx of new patrons and they bring in 50,000 status. The following will happen.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>1. Guild status will now be 2,110,000.</DIV> <DIV>2. Guild level will stay at 22.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Several weeks go by and the guild finally gets it's status to 2,450,000. The following will happen.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>1. Guild will gain a level and become 23rd level.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>This way the system cannot be exploited. I guess my solution is just not to lose guild levels.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Hope I explained this well enough. I'm sure someone has already suggested this. To me it seems like the most logical solution.</DIV><p>Message Edited by Raahl on <span class=date_text>07-14-2005</span> <span class=time_text>06:08 AM</span>

07-14-2005, 05:16 PM

Love the change, hope it goes live without any modifications, and I'd be interested to know what the remaining other patron changes are.With respect to the other ideas regarding guild debt and the like.. I don't like it, and wouldn't want it in game. That's my opinion. I've already given reasons in other older threads, but the short version is: Players should not be penalized for advancing their character. Sometimes, the only way to advance your character is to leave your current guild and move to another. This new system permits that, the old one didn't. Go Go new guild mechanic!

Leppa

07-14-2005, 05:19 PM

<span><blockquote><hr>Raahl wrote:<p>The guild still loses the status points of that patron, but does not lose any levels. </p><hr></blockquote>Are you sure? So you're saying to wait until you reach the next guild level before removing patrons? Are you certain you still lose points but not levels?</span><div></div>

Zoren Northwood

07-14-2005, 05:29 PM

What we really need is a sort of "vesting" -- say, for every week that the contributor remains a patron after contributing status points to a guild, 25% of 'em become vested. So you'd have to remain a patron for a month to vest all your status points. That would remove the pain of long-term members leaving, but also avoid (most of) the potential for just making anyone currently online and doing writs/HQs a patron.<div></div>

Eorendil

07-14-2005, 05:31 PM

I like this proposed change but think it should be somewhat tempered. There are some excellent ideas being discussed here as well. I don't see anything wrong with a certain amount of guild status debt or the use of vestment to cement earned status. What I dislike would be the change from the patron system to something where all of your guild members count against you. That is, it hurts guilds with guilded alts unless you can label characters as mains or alts or something similar but then, that too is similar to the patron system in a way. I do not wish to have to start up a sister guild for my guild's alts. We'll see what comes of this but for now it isn't a pressing matter as I haven't even seen anything on what the devs are considering as a replacement for the patron system. <div></div>

Kizee

07-14-2005, 05:40 PM

<DIV><BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Bookbunny wrote:<BR> <P>Im not a big time poster here but the few times I have sounded off it has been to congratulate SOE on keeping their promise of creating a game for casual players. From development to beta they advertised a game that anyone could play and enjoy, where hours of camping was not necessary (but DON'T get me started on the bouldering guard SOE) and where uber guilds were not the only means to reach the high end.</P> <P><FONT color=#ffff00>Uh huh.. Thats why they keep making the raid mobs harder and harder and nerfing all the "casual" attainable power regen items. :p</FONT></P> <P><FONT color=#ffff00></FONT> </P> <P>This change is in line with the promise of casual playability. As someone very wisely posted above, the big guilds are going to hit 30 anyway. The small guilds may never reach 30 under the current system. With this change casual guilds may have a shot. </P> <P><FONT color=#ffff00>Small guilds can reach level 30 if they have some dedication. My guild is a small guild and is level 26 (almost 27) and pushing very hard for 30. </FONT></P> <P><FONT color=#ffff00>A level 30 guild is not manditory to play this game and should remain fairly hard to achieve and maintain.</FONT></P> <P><FONT color=#ffff00>The way this game is going I am sure that there will be a insta level to 50 with all herritages completed and character fully fabled out button will be added to the character creation screen so all the casuals with so little of time they shouldn't even be playing a MMORPG will be happy. /rant off</FONT></P> <P> </P> <P>*EDIT: Someone also mentioned that there should be some kind of penalty to leaving a guild. Well right now, other than emotionally, there is not much penalty to the player. The guild takes the xp hit but the player keeps every single point of personal status and can spend them freely once they are guilded somewhere else. The problem is all the penalty goes to the guild they are leaving. It actually makes guilds hang on to members that they would normally disband just because they have lots of points.</P> <P> </P> <P><FONT color=#ffff00>Maybe they should add a penalty to the player that leaves the guild too and maybe the person would think twice about guild hopping.</FONT></P> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR></DIV><p>Message Edited by Kizee on <span class=date_text>07-14-2005</span> <span class=time_text>06:56 AM</span>

Ishbu

07-14-2005, 05:41 PM

<P>Sign me up for remove patrons all together, let everyone get guild status, since this new system would be so easily abused anyways. I never really liked the idea of select patrons, its basically saying to the non patrons that they are second class citizens and their endeavors dont count.</P> <P>While we are at it, can I have all my guild status back that I lose when I depatroned myself? <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></P>

SavinDwa

07-14-2005, 05:50 PM

<DIV>*sigh* .....</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I have read through as many of the posts as I could and, I have to admit, I'm very disappointed. It looks like almost everyone read the patch notes and, despite the fact that the patch notes are very sketchy at best, jumped to the conclusion of how it must work and how it could be fixed.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Could we possibily have someone on test make a post of how the change actually works. I suggest that most of the posters in this thread go and read the notes again, I think you will see that it tells us almost nothing except :</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>"<FONT size=2>- Guilds no longer lose status or levels when a patron leaves the guild or ceases to be a patron. Thus, guilds never lose the levels they have already earned. "</FONT></DIV> <P>that is all we have been told. BUT we also know its on test. So if this is important to you, LOG ON TO TEST and see how it works.</P> <P>For instance, some of the threads have talked about the potential exploits of having players patron and depatron... how do you know that a player can be returned top patron status? You don't, it doesn';t tell us how it works. So 90% of these threads are almost pointless discussions because none of us knows how it works.</P> <P>SO.... PLEASE!!!! can some one on test who has tried the new system tell us how it works. Then we can start discussing what's wrong with the idea. Or perhaps even a SOE rep can explain this in a bit more detail.</P> <P> </P> <P>The questions are: </P> <P>1) What do we mean by "leave the guild". Does that mean the character is no longer a member of the guild? I assume it does.</P> <P>2) Can a character that has left the guild rejoin the guild?</P> <P>3) Can a player that has "left the guild": rejoin and become a patron again? are there any restrictions?</P> <P>4) If a player is "de-patroned" does it still work the way it does today? or is it the same as "left the guild"?</P> <P>i bet there are a lot more questions....</P> <DIV><BR></DIV>

Raahl

07-14-2005, 05:54 PM

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Leppard wrote:<BR><SPAN><BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Raahl wrote: <P>The guild still loses the status points of that patron, but does not lose any levels.<BR></P> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE>Are you sure? So you're saying to wait until you reach the next guild level before removing patrons?<BR><BR>Are you certain you still lose points but not levels?<BR></SPAN> <BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P><BR>Sure that way you do not lose the level, just the status. Yes it takes the guild longer to get to the next level if patrons leave.</P> <P>The way I wrote it, yes you would only lose the status and not lose a level.</P> <P>However, in the purposed current changes, the guild will not lose status and will not lose levels. So a guild with a lot of players in it can easily power their guild level by rotating patrons. So in the end the smaller guilds will be lower level than the large guilds. Also the large guilds could easily hit any guild level cap that Sony puts into the game</P>

Leppa

07-14-2005, 06:00 PM

ah..that was your suggestion not what was happening. I think the patron system stinks as it is now. I'd be very happy to remove any penalties concerning patrons leaving or being removed. <div></div>

Zygon

07-14-2005, 06:04 PM

<DIV>I have read most of this thread and the proposed changes. I think this is a bit of an over reaction by SOE. The main reason guilds are hurt by Patrons leaving is they are keeping their patron numbers low so they can level faster. Right now there is a risk to leveling fast, while those who are on a slow steady leveling pace, do not have as high a risk. With 12 patrons you are going to be hurt if someone leaves with 28 its not going to hurt nearly as bad.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I can see a guild keeping staus if a patrom member leaves the guild, but not if they are depatronized. What are some reasons a guild has to remove patron status from a member without removing from guild too:</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>1. No longer active - Then remove from guild too</DIV> <DIV>2. Not keeping up with other Patrons - Not a reason to remove patron status (without consequences) you made them a patron, help them or loose some status.</DIV> <DIV>3. Overall trouble maker not deserving of the position - Not a reason to remove patron status (without consequences) you made them a patron, work out the problems or loose some status.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I cant think of any other reason to just remove patron status other than trying to take advantage ot this proposed change. Please post others if you can think of them.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>If a Patron leaves, no status loss. If a Patron is kicked after 30 days inavtive, no staus loss. If they are just depatronized or kicked while active, then you have to pay the piper. Be careful who you make a patron, as you should always do, this just emphasizes the point.</DIV>

Naughtesn

07-14-2005, 06:09 PM

<P>As much as this idea sounds like a great one, I am in the camp here that thinks this proposed new system will lead to trivialized GL 30 and abuse. In a patch where one change (same NPC fulfilling 2 writs) is made to help untrivialize guild leveling, another is made which could feed rampant abuse.</P> <P>In addition to toggling patron status for HQs - one could also toggle patron status for mob kills, for these new "status loot" items. or for guild-sponspored writ runs (e.g. no patrons online - just patron a group of six - depatron 6 not online - and knocks out 4 writs - then de- and re-patron). You could also keep the 12 patron ideal number, most of the time, by monitoring who is online and modify patron status hourly thus maximizing the divisor for status calculation purposes.</P> <P>There needs to be much more explained about this than just the line in the update notes, and there <STRONG><FONT color=#ff0000>absolutely</FONT></STRONG> needs to be some restrictions added to this new system. In addition, these idea needs to be on test longer than 5 or 6 days to fully flesh this out - please DON'T rush this one out.</P><p>Message Edited by Naughtesnec on <span class=date_text>07-14-2005</span> <span class=time_text>07:11 AM</span>

Hal

07-14-2005, 06:17 PM

<DIV><FONT size=2> <P><FONT size=3>In my opinion the change will be good for the smaller guilds. I think that control need to be complemented. I do think that idea of the cap on the level of the guild until the remaining patrons compensate the points of the one that’s leaving.</FONT></P> <P><FONT size=3>Another idea is that the status should be earned by all guild members there shouldn’t be just a selected few that (patrons). In a team (what I consider a guild) all players do contribute to the result not just a few, but they do contribute in different amounts. If you want to differentiate the guild work then do something related with the guild interior ranking, like guild leaders should contribute more than officers and this more than members, etc. To limit the level of contribution the formula could be something like [status points/(12*(number of members of the guild/12)*modifier by rank)] or something like that. Also I do think that their should be some penalty for the guild that loses their officers and their lider’s say they permanently lose the status bonus that they gained for they rank. These are just some ideas.</FONT></P> <P><FONT size=3></FONT> </P> <P><FONT size=3>Sorry for the English it’s not my native language</FONT>. </P></FONT></DIV>

Arsen

07-14-2005, 06:25 PM

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Moorgard wrote:<BR> <P>At any rate, please keep the comments coming so that we can continue to review the pros and cons of this potential change.</P><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P>I believe that if the change on test goes through as it is currently implemented, the standard operating procedure for guilds would be for everyone to be given the ability to promote/demote patrons. They would promote themselves before doing anything that would generate status and demote themselves afterwards. In effect, there would be no limitations on how many patrons you could have in your guild. Large guilds would level up extremely quickly.</P> <P>This change makes a complete joke out of the current patron system.</P> <P>I do believe that the existing system should be modified, but certainly not in this way. My current favorite alternatives are:</P> <P>1. Top 12. The top 12 status contributing members of the guild contribute to the guild level. If one of them leaves, then their status is lost, however the 13th ranked patron now enters the top 12 and their contributions are used to calculate the level. Depending on how deep your roster is, you will be able to withstand the losses.</P> <P>2. XP Debt. If a patron leaves, your guild experience never drops, but you recieve debt in amount to the status they had contributed. In order to earn more experience, your guild must first pay off that dept.<BR><BR></P>

blynchehaun

07-14-2005, 06:32 PM

< 1. Incorporation of "Status Debt" based off the amount of status that particular patron accumulated would make sense. > I was thinking exactly the same thing. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> Have a Status Debt instead, that decays over time (just like XP Debt). <div></div>

Warg

07-14-2005, 06:36 PM

<DIV>Trying to view the concept idea from SoE's point of view: <BR><BR>- People met other people from other guilds and sometime those friendships will limited to frienships and not guildmates (friendship + community effect...yea I made that up). But I think it's fair to say that there is a difference between friends and friends that are alos guildmates. Anyway, those friends are limited to stay at that because due to guild status to current guilds. Eeven if that 1 person is not necessarily happy, he/she will not leave the guild because they know the drawbacks that will outcome of that move. <BR><BR>- The fact that casual gamers may be "penalized" of the patron status(prohibited might be a better word) because they simply cannot produce the output that more serious gamers. The argument might be "well move to a casual guild" but would I do that when I have friends in the guild I currently am in? <BR><BR>- Non active patrons take away the spots for potential patrons because of the previous contributions made XX days ago and the guild would suffer from lsoing all that status. <BR><BR>- I had other sutff but I forget them cause my browser jumped back a few pages and I lost what I had down before. (This is a 2nd version of a post so it might be a bit choppy) <BR><BR>================================================== ======================<BR><BR>Higher level guild (20+) probably don't even consider having patrons under lvl 30 because the contribution they can provide to the guild are insignificant versus the insued long term penalty. Here's a out of the box idea for the developpers. <BR><BR>All guild members would contribute to the guild advancement with a 3.33% (or lower even) share of personnal status rewarded (equivalent of 30 patrons). Now instead of scrapping the patron system altogether, the "new" patron system would give contribution bonuses instead. <BR>1-12 patrons: 5% increase (bringing to 8.33% share whihc is what the current percentage is) <BR>13+ patrons: (1/#patrons) bonuses to everyone <BR><BR>These numbers are kind of large for my example because if you have 30 patrons.. you'd end up with 6.66% share on top of the current 3.33% of non patrons.... and if you have an infinite amount to patrons, the bonus goes to zero but all that base 3.33% added is major xp source. This is just rough data representation. Character level could also be a factor in the formula and other items that I haven't thought through. <BR><BR>I feel that reaching lvl 30 for your guild should not become a sped up process and thinking of Bookbunny's comments, lvl 50 is achievable for casual gamers so why not have the same mindset for casual guilds? <BR><BR>Ok went a little off topic there, but to o get back to the low level character point for high lvl guilds. Let us compare guildmates to money. <BR><BR>Even if you are lvl 40+, You don't throw away coppers because you are high level and stuff is sold in terms of sp because you know that with many coppers you get silver, gold and so on.... <BR><BR>Any contribution should be a welcome contribution even if it is 0.01% At least that low level casual gamer can have a feelig (very small) feeling of accomplishment at the end of the day. <BR><BR><BR>That's all for me, and I must say the feedback of this thread is incredible and the ideas generated are very creative. Good work everyone! <BR><BR>Maybe flaming post is only part of live content... yea that must be it <IMG alt=Smile src="http://www.aggroforums.com/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif" border=0> <BR><BR>Happy Trails!</DIV>

Bookbunny

07-14-2005, 06:50 PM

<P>These forums stress me out way too much so I'll just say I like the change and enjoy the discussion silently from the shadows... Happy bantering and we'll see what SOE decides in the end. :smileywink:</P><p>Message Edited by Bookbunny on <span class=date_text>07-14-2005</span> <span class=time_text>07:54 AM</span>

Killyaer

07-14-2005, 06:56 PM

<P>/sigh</P> <P> </P> <P>Sounds like a lovely change ..... Wish this would have been implemented sooner though. Our guild lost 3 and 3/4 lvls because of this. Although we worked it back up, it was very hard. Just thinking with this change we would be 25+ now for guild lvl. </P> <P>Will there be compensation to the guilds that lost their lvls? </P> <P>I like the idea of taking patrons out all together and each member of the guild donates. Then you will see when a guild hits lvl 30, it is because everyone worked together, not just the patrons.</P>

Ruben

07-14-2005, 06:59 PM

<P>The Guild I am in (Casual Alliance Blackburrow) has around 70 patrons out of 324 members. We are very open as far as patron goes, if a person asks to be one they are. I have had alot of people call it foolish but man you cannot beat that feeling you get when a person who has never played before and who is just learning what a guild is gets that first 28 points of status.</P> <P>You would think they just beat an epicx4 solo, that feeling makes it all worth it. We have been averaging a level about every week to 10 days now for the last few, and are about to ding 10. Its slower yes that 12 patrons but its great for morale to allow everyone a chance.</P> <P>That said even with this many patrons we still feel the loss when someone leaves. I would love this change but I do hope something is added to prevent depatron/patron as the mood fits.</P>

xyriel

07-14-2005, 07:00 PM

Skr

07-14-2005, 07:03 PM

<div></div>just remove status on heritage and make it a week lockout to reflag a new patron and cap patrons at 12 or so. this way you keep status when they leave but it takes upto a week to flag a new one, so the penalty would be a weeks loss of that patron producing, but not the loss of status. then no one can stack up a bunch of heritage to turn in, no one can depatron / patron for contested, and basically every flagged patron has the same odds of producing. writs and contested mobs make perfect sense. Heritage is nice but it causes a problem with the revamp of the system. Its either that or make it to where you get guild xp debt when a patron leaves, but level and xp stay the same. <div></div><p>Message Edited by Skrye on <span class=date_text>07-14-2005</span> <span class=time_text>08:11 AM</span>

Warg

07-14-2005, 07:05 PM

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Bookbunny wrote:<BR> <P>Wargut you are right that casual guilds should have the same mindset of achieving guild lvl 30 and that it is possible. The problem is that those guilds are much more strongly effected by disbanding Patrons, and loss of morale in a small guild can be crippling. <FONT color=#ffff00>(Exactly!)</FONT> There are multiple posts on the Guild Discussion forum about dying guilds, guilds that can't hold people, mass disbands by groups of people starting out on their own. These types of things can become unrecoverable (not sure if that's a word) to a small casual guild. In a guild of 12 regular players, if 2 leave the result can be astounding.</P> <P>I am not going to get into an argument basically because it stresses me out - but to me the "Prestige" of being guild level 30 is not enough to keep a system where one person can start the downfall of their entire guild by disbanding. Name one person who saw a Patron disbanding, watched their guild de-level and smiled about it. It's no fun.</P> <BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P>Oh yea, of course it's possible to get a small guild of 12 patrons to GL 30... Try to get all 12 online at the same time for a raid or go camp some guy for an HQ hehe... Then this is where small guilds will suffer. As far as i know, casual guilds are made of casual gamers, and casual gamers are CASUAL because of other stuff outside a game <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> <BR></P> <DIV>And motivation is probably one of the biggest factor in all of this and it's hard to keep control over it. "Don't worry about the 100k status we lost, we can do it!!!" .... Not as effective as it sounds hehe. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Speaking of patrons leaving, just lost one overnight last night... I think it was aroun 6k but it was enough to bump us back to level 19... how ironic <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></DIV>

Alarye

07-14-2005, 07:17 PM

<DIV>I like the ideas about debt, two Ideas and I am not sure if they have been mentioned as I do not have the time to read the entire post ATM:</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Treat guild XP just like XP in Characters, Char X leaves guild with his 20K SP's, the guild has to make it upbut they can still work on leveling the guild X Amount of Guild XP goes to the level and Y amount goes to the debt. And it just takes them longer. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>or</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>The SP's are removed untill the point at which the guild would lose a level. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Just my 2 pp's.</DIV>

Sa'meria

07-14-2005, 07:33 PM

<DIV><STRONG><FONT face="Comic Sans MS">I like this proposed system. Being part of a larger guild at first, we lost a few amount of levels due to people getting burnt out on the game. </FONT></STRONG></DIV> <DIV><STRONG><FONT face="Comic Sans MS"></FONT></STRONG> </DIV> <DIV><STRONG><FONT face="Comic Sans MS"></FONT></STRONG> <HR> </DIV> <DIV><STRONG><FONT face="Comic Sans MS">Guild Status Debt....</FONT></STRONG></DIV> <DIV><STRONG><FONT face="Comic Sans MS"> If you do this then like xp debt it should go away with time. </FONT></STRONG></DIV> <DIV><STRONG><FONT face="Comic Sans MS">Example:</FONT></STRONG></DIV> <DIV><STRONG><FONT face="Comic Sans MS"> Like 1k a hour, or 5k a day. Something to that effect, you get the point.</FONT></STRONG></DIV> <DIV><STRONG><FONT face="Comic Sans MS"></FONT></STRONG> </DIV> <DIV><STRONG><FONT face="Comic Sans MS"> Or give a bonus for writs or hq's that just go against debt. This bonus would only show up if you were in status debt.</FONT></STRONG></DIV> <DIV><STRONG><FONT face="Comic Sans MS">Example:</FONT></STRONG></DIV> <DIV><STRONG><FONT face="Comic Sans MS"> You guild has 20k status debt. The writs that you run now give a 10% bonus, that applies to the debt ONLY.</FONT></STRONG></DIV> <DIV> <HR> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>As far as people abuseing it throuhg running all the HQ's and then depatroning and then another group doing them. This could abused mostly by larger sized guilds. Smaller guilds playing with Alt's would not be doing this every week or so, cause it would take too long to grind a alt to lvl 40, when they would most likely be running raids, doing Prismatic quest, etc.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV>

Kendricke

07-14-2005, 07:41 PM

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> SavinDwarf wrote:<BR> <DIV>*sigh* .....</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I have read through as many of the posts as I could and, I have to admit, I'm very disappointed. It looks like almost everyone read the patch notes and, despite the fact that the patch notes are very sketchy at best, jumped to the conclusion of how it must work and how it could be fixed.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Could we possibily have someone on test make a post of how the change actually works. I suggest that most of the posters in this thread go and read the notes again, I think you will see that it tells us almost nothing except :</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>"<FONT size=2>- Guilds no longer lose status or levels when a patron leaves the guild or ceases to be a patron. Thus, guilds never lose the levels they have already earned. "</FONT></DIV> <P>that is all we have been told. BUT we also know its on test. So if this is important to you, LOG ON TO TEST and see how it works.</P> <P>For instance, some of the threads have talked about the potential exploits of having players patron and depatron... how do you know that a player can be returned top patron status? You don't, it doesn';t tell us how it works. So 90% of these threads are almost pointless discussions because none of us knows how it works.</P> <P>SO.... PLEASE!!!! can some one on test who has tried the new system tell us how it works. Then we can start discussing what's wrong with the idea. Or perhaps even a SOE rep can explain this in a bit more detail.</P> <P> </P> <P>The questions are: </P> <P>1) What do we mean by "leave the guild". Does that mean the character is no longer a member of the guild? I assume it does.</P> <P>2) Can a character that has left the guild rejoin the guild?</P> <P>3) Can a player that has "left the guild": rejoin and become a patron again? are there any restrictions?</P> <P>4) If a player is "de-patroned" does it still work the way it does today? or is it the same as "left the guild"?</P> <P>i bet there are a lot more questions....</P> <DIV><BR></DIV><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P>We'll be testing this tonight and through the weekend with the Test Chapter of the Legion of the White Rose.</P> <P> </P> <P><BR> </P>

CoebyWu

07-14-2005, 07:41 PM

<DIV>Ok, after having some time to think about this, I have my idea of how this could work.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><STRONG>Some points to note:</STRONG></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>1. Taking out patrons, would definitely stear away from the original design of allowing smaller guilds as much opportunity as larger guilds. Therefore this should be protected. It should always be a ratio of status/patrons.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>2. The biggest problem with the old system, was that you could "lose" status. Everyone knows that Heritage quest status is the easiest, but also a one time shot. Once you've donated your Heritage quest status, you can no longer generate that again. Losing that type of status, if and when you changed guilds, is too much of a loss and ultimately destroys everyones interest in the system: meaning eventually nobody would care about the status system. This is why there should be no "loss".</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>3. I never liked the idea that only a few Patrons could contribute to the guild. As any guildleader will say, there are many players who would like to contribute, even though they know they wouldn't be the most efficient. Efficient? Good members are then reduced to either efficient or ineffecient, not a good mix when you are trying to maintain a fun atmosphere. Sorry member04, you're not efficient enough to be a Patron. This was never a good mix.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>4. With any new system, that eliminates any kind of "loss", you run the risk of abuse if you continue to allow leaders to change Patrons in and out. Unless you set up an intricate set of rules, that govern adding and removing Patrons, and the status involved, it will get abused.</DIV> <DIV>With those points in mind, I wanted to think of simpler way that would eliminate the abuse, while still maintaining the difficulty, and making sure guilds of all sizes had the same opportunity.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><STRONG><FONT color=#ccffcc>Here is what I think would work:</FONT></STRONG></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ccffcc>1. The idea of status/patron would stay. All guilds would have a Patron level that is 80% of the amount of members. This means if a guild had 50 members, it would have 40 Patrons. Every member of the guild would then contribute to guild level. In this example, status contributions would be from all members, and they would be divided by 40. 80% would allow a little room for alts.</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ccffcc>2. As an extra safeguard, I feel 2 timers should be put in place. <BR> A. New members - when you add a new member, status contributions wouldn't start adding to guildlevel until 2 weeks have passed.<BR> B. Guild removed - when a member leaves a guild, they must wait 1 week before they can join another guild.</FONT><BR> <BR>These timers are just to safeguard any abuse that might pop up. It's no secret that if you just slow down the process of adding and removing, chances are you can eliminate any chance of "creative" players thinking of ways to abuse. The idea of waiting 1 week before you join another guild has its merits even beyond abuse, and most guilds require that anyway before considering someone for joining.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>A simple concept that I feel would accomplish the most. Some guilds might feel it becomes harder, but overall it protects guildlevel while maintaining a system that is hard to abuse. It also protects the difficulty of leveling the guild, because it now becomes the added contributions of ALL members, which is how it should have been from the start.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Now granted, my idea may have loopholes. I haven't had the time to think on it for days, for obvious reasons. I do feel it has merit though.</DIV>

Makkaio

07-14-2005, 07:49 PM

<FONT color=#cc0000>Simple solution, yet controversial as well. Once a patron, always a patron. There are a number of irreversible actions that one takes in EverQuest II...make patronage irreversible. That cuts down on exploits. If someone is wanderer and would like to try a few guild before settling, why would they become a patron anyway? This would make a patron a guild member for life, but I think that is what a patron should be anyway.</FONT>

Ranger1017

07-14-2005, 07:55 PM

<DIV><BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> <P>Moorgard Wrote:</P> <P>While the concept of guilds losing levels when patrons leave makes sense in a practical way, it's also different from other progression models we have in game. Your character doesn't lose levels when you die or fail a crafting combine, so it seemed strange to have the same thing happen to a guild, especially when guilds in our game are intended to advance just like characters do.</P> <P></P> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR>Honestly, Moorgard, I must disagree with part of what you have said here. Losing levels when a patron leaves has NEVER made any sense to me at all. At best, it penalizes a guild when somone decides to move on, and at worst, it's something patrons can hold over the heads of the rest of their guild in order to have things their way.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>The entire Patron system itself never made much sense to me... why would only a select cadre within a guild be responsible for how that guild is viewed by the city? It makes much more sense for EVERY member of the guild to affect that guild's standing. The entire patron system smacks of artificial limitations.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Personally, I hate the idea of guild status debt, although that WOULD be the option most in line with character advancement, and making it so only a patron has been inactive for 30 days lets a guild keep their status is patently ridiculous and defeats the entire purpose of the change. I like the vestment idea some people came up with, and i think the simplest, best solution would be a lockout timer that keeps someone from being made a patron for seven days or so after they lose patron status for whatever reason(I don't see a need for the timer to be any longer than that.)<BR><BR>Though, if they are going to go with a more elaborate system, here is my dream:<BR><BR>The stupid, stupid patron system is scrapped. ALL guild members contribute to guild status at the same 1/12 of personal status rate. And when a guildmember leaves, no status loss. Possibly the paton system could be left in place, such that patrons of a guild have bonuses to the amount of guild status they contribute, but that would just be gravy.<BR></DIV> <DIV>People talk about how they are worried that the challenge inherent in gaining guild levels will be ruined... the thing is, there IS no challenge to gaining guild xp. Only stamina for the grind. It's a lot of effort, and effort to be proud of, to be sure, but the simple fact is that the big guilds that everyone is worried will exploit the system to get to level 30 are going to get there anyway, and this change, even without restriction as posted currently, won't do anything but speed them up a bit, while at the same time giving smaller, more casual, and more roleplay-oriented guilds a real chance to get there to begin with.</DIV>

PhalPhoto

07-14-2005, 07:55 PM

It is my understanding that under the current system a paton "donates" a portion of their status to the guild. By what system of logic can a patron take their donation back when they leave? How is it that a patron takes the donation when they quit the game? Why is it that a patron gets the donation back when they are booted from the guild? I've always had trouble wrapping my head around this idea and it still makes no sense to me. To make this system sensible, there needs to be some advantage to being a patron. Right now, there is ZERO advantage to being one. There is also ZERO penalty to betraying (leaving) the guild to which you dedicated yourself as a patron. IMHO, a very decent solution would be to give some advantage to being a patron (could even be something silly like a title), and to penalize those who leave by having them lose the sp they donated. But why should a guild be penalized for the member that leaves/quits the game/gets booted? My proposal: Once you are a patron, you keep your "p" tag if you stay in the guild. Period. If you leave the guild, you lose the sp you donated to that guild and the guild retains it. If you are booted from the guild, you lose the sp you donated and the guild retains it. You can only be a patron one time for the guild, if you leave and return, patron status cannot be given again. There should be a penalty for guild-hopping. There should be an advantage to being a patron. Currently there is no advantage to the "p" tag and no reason for a patron to not jump to a new guild. Because there is no penalty for leaving the guild to which you are a patron, there are patrons in game holding guilds hostage with their donated sp. As a guild leader, I am forced at times to tolerate behavior on the part of patrons that would be intolerable in a "follower" because to do otherwise would be to delevel the guild. I have members on my roster who have quit the game long ago that I cannot remove because it would delevel the guild. I can't tag new patrons because it would dilute the sp pay-out from writs and raids further. The current system puts all of the cards in the hands of the individual and damages the guild system. <div></div>

Pin StNeedl

07-14-2005, 08:21 PM

<DIV>As leader of a recently-30 guild, I would be happy to see some additions to the system to protect a guild from losing XP/levels due to loss of patrons (both for the level 30 guilds, and any other, lower level guilds out there)</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>However, I would be completely against changes which make it easier to gain XP/levels, and as such, the change put on Test today is <STRONG>BAD</STRONG>, as it completely trivializes the gaining of guild experience by enabling patron-cycling.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>As an example, this would mean a guild with 100 characters can go <STRONG>from level 1 to level 30 in about 3 days</STRONG> by completing 4 or 5 easy heritage each and just cycling the members as patrons.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>And to think I was happy with our efforts to go from 25 to 30 in just 39 days on writs, raids and heritage quests.</DIV> <DIV><BR>There are many better solutions than this, including 'status debt', or removing the status as now, but retaining the level.<BR>This proposal is just <STRONG>BAD</STRONG>.</DIV><p>Message Edited by Pin StNeedles on <span class=date_text>07-14-2005</span> <span class=time_text>05:22 PM</span>

Jeridor

07-14-2005, 08:31 PM

<span><blockquote><hr>Makkaio wrote:<font color="#cc0000">Simple solution, yet controversial as well. Once a patron, always a patron. There are a number of irreversible actions that one takes in EverQuest II...make patronage irreversible. That cuts down on exploits. If someone is wanderer and would like to try a few guild before settling, why would they become a patron anyway? This would make a patron a guild member for life, but I think that is what a patron should be anyway.</font> <div></div><hr></blockquote> More often than not, the issue isn't that a person leaves for another guild, it's that a person becomes inactive as a player and removing them as a patron means losing experience, while keeping them means dead weight penalty.</span><div></div>

UliTheGrey

07-14-2005, 08:35 PM

Here is my suggestion on status points: Statuspoints are earned by the player - sometimes with the help of a guild, sometimes not. I thinkt you need three elements: - Status Points in Posession of the Player (we have that) - Status Points in permanently donated to a guild (new) - Status Points borrowed to a guild (we have that) When you join a guild you become a patron automatically. Whatever Status you earn, a percentage is borrowed to the guild- depending on guild level: A Lvl 30 guild would cost you 2x30=60% of status earned. The minimum borrowing amount would be 10%. Whenever you earn status a window pops up displaying the amount earned, the minimum borrowing amount and slider(s)/input fields that allow you to borrow more to your guild and/or permanently donate to your guild. Whenever you leave a guild, the status borrowed will flow back to you. It will flow back to you at a rate reverse proportional to your stay in a guild. E.g. stayed in guild for 100 days: receive 1/100=1% of status back every day. In other words Stay N days in guild - leave - get your status back in N days. The status one donated to the guild will decay if the person who donated it is no longer in the guild - it will decay at the same rate as the borrowed status flows back. Guild leaders may transfer the points back to the original owner at their own discretion. If a guild dissolves all status flows back immediately to the owners. <div></div>

xxArcane

07-14-2005, 08:54 PM

<DIV>Just make it just like the death system...if you die you dont lose exp, but you do gain debt.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>If a patron leaves you should gain the same amount of debt as he had status...while you work off the debt 50% goes towards new guild exp and 50% goes toward the debt.</DIV>

Warg

07-14-2005, 08:55 PM

<DIV><FONT color=#ffff00></FONT><BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Pin StNeedles wrote:<BR> <DIV>As leader of a recently-30 guild, I would be happy to see some additions to the system to protect a guild from losing XP/levels due to loss of patrons (both for the level 30 guilds, and any other, lower level guilds out there)</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#33cccc>However, I would be completely against changes which make it easier to gain XP/levels</FONT>, and as such, the change put on Test today is <STRONG>BAD</STRONG>, as it completely trivializes the gaining of guild experience by enabling patron-cycling.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ffff00>>>> I totally agree with this, GL30 should not be a walk in the park... a level of dedication and hard work should be done in order to achieve that feat. </FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#33cccc>As an example, this would mean a guild with 100 characters can go <STRONG>from level 1 to level 30 in about 3 days</STRONG> by completing 4 or 5 easy heritage each and just cycling the members as patrons.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#33cccc></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ffff00>>>> I don't think you're numbers are exactly correct but regardless that would generate a massive amount of xp. Another point that people seem to have overlooked is even if a guild should reach level 30 in matter of days, the rewards from the city merchants require a pretty high amount of SP which people won't have by doing 4 or 5 HQs each. The SP will be there eventuallywith a little more hardwork but that was jsut an observation.</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>And to think I was happy with our efforts to go from 25 to 30 in just 39 days on writs, raids and heritage quests.</DIV> <DIV><BR>There are many better solutions than this, including 'status debt', or removing the status as now, but retaining the level.<BR>This proposal is just <STRONG>BAD</STRONG>.</DIV> <P>Message Edited by Pin StNeedles on <SPAN class=date_text>07-14-2005</SPAN> <SPAN class=time_text>05:22 PM</SPAN><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR>Before saying that the changes are bad right away, I'm curious to see how everything is working out on the Test server. I think I'm going to sit back and wait patiently after this post to learn more on the system's mechanics. How it really works and what did the vague update message ment (as mentioned by someone else earlier).</DIV> <DIV>I wouldn't want to sound like those people yelling *nerf* the minute I hear change or revamp. </DIV>

Ventisly

07-14-2005, 08:56 PM

<P>I like this change. As a patron that left a guild to follow my friends the last thing I wanted to do was hurt my old guild but that's what it did. Also, I read a lot of concerns about making it too easy to get a guild to level 30. So what? Currently, the only way a guild can get to 30 is with a small group of very hardcore players that have enough time to do writs until their fingers bleed. That's certainly not something that most players can do because of RL reasons and certainly not fun to grind and grind like that. Anyone can join a guild that is level 30 (as long as the guild isn't elitist about who joins) so what good does it currently mean to *belong* to a level 30 guild? Nothing really. The fun part of being in a high level guild is the ability to buy status items likes horses or crafting stations or mail boxes. So a player must commit a lot of time doing their HQs and complete lots of writs if they actually want to see a benefit to being in a high level guild.</P> <P>I know that the patron system was added so that a guild with 12 members could level just as fast as a guild with 100 members but a much bigger concern should be how fun it is. I would vote for opening up the guild status system so that everone in the guild can contribute status to the guild at some fixed rate no matter how many members there are (1/12 would probably be a good number). If a 100 member guild can level faster, I don't really care. A 100 member guild should have some kind of advantage. However, if none of the guild members can afford the high level status items because they all only have 250K personal status what good does it do them to be 30? Have you seen how much cash and status a flying carpet costs? If you want to make sure that dedicated status earners can continue to have fun create more status items that can only be afforded for the truly dedicated players. Now that sounds like fun!</P>

DaenaeRavenso

07-14-2005, 09:00 PM

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Kizee wrote:<BR> <P>I don't like the change... you need to have something in this game thats is "hard" to reach. </P> <P>As of right now, when you see a level 30 guild you are in awe of how much effort it took to get there. If this goes live then getting to guild level 30 will be an every day thing. <img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> (No, I am not in a level 30 guild)</P> <P>There has to be some sort of penelty for removing a patron or leaving a guild. I like the idea of the guild keeps 50% of the patrions status if they leave or stop becoming a patrion.</P> <P>Another good point that a friend brought up last night was... I hope you all trust your guild leaders because if they get bored with the game they could just disband eveybody and sell the account with a level 30 guild along with it. :smileyindifferent:</P> <BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR> <DIV>No they can't just get bored and sell their account with a level 30 guild. They would have to have that guild on the SE server to begin with. THEN they could sell their character, but if you read the SE threads and responses, that character is DEGUILDED. Now if your talking about keeping it on a non-exchange server and selling it illegally to IGEbay, well I"m sure SoE will be looking even harder into these types of account transfers.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>It's so easy to say, "Guild level has to count for something" or "You should lose exps when a patron leaves..." but until your in one of these guilds that takes a serious hit of more than 1 level when you lose people, you really can't experience the impact that has. It does take it's toll on the motivation of the remaining members. To have to "make up" exps debt would be the same thing for the smaller guilds that are working very hard at achieving level 30. These are the guilds that are getting their levels the way SoE intended for them to and losing guild exps when they lose a patron hurts them the most. Putting a time limit on patron invites after losing one would make more sense.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Dae</DIV>

Rashaak

07-14-2005, 09:08 PM

<DIV>/scratch :smileyindifferent:</DIV> <DIV>/ponder :smileysurprised:</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>So, if we go with "Status Debt", does that mean the guild gets a vitality bonus! :smileyvery-happy::smileyvery-happy::smileyvery-happy:</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>But, would like to here from some the Tester's on this...need to know how exatcly the patron change is working.</DIV>

Isa

07-14-2005, 09:09 PM

<P>I just wanted to quote and refresh this idea a person posted above, because I think it is the best solution I have heard to the issue yet.</P> <P> </P> <P><FONT color=#6699ff>Really this is only a controversial move in the mind of those that can and will only see the worse in any change. </FONT></P> <P><FONT color=#6699ff>I am sorry to say but I do not see or fear what those who are worred about exploiting such a system could bring. Such a fear would not happen if a proper check an balance system was in place, and such a system can be implemented by a very simple concept(yes coding may not be so simple, but it would prevent abuse).</FONT></P> <P><FONT color=#6699ff>All that needs to be done is to implement an over time guild vestment approach. In otherwords for every week that the patron stays with the guild X% of their current earned status permenantly gets absorbed by the guild. After a certain set time the guild obtains 100% vestment of that patrons Status including all future status.</FONT></P> <P><FONT color=#6699ff>E.G. - I decided to join "Gnome Punters of Norrath". I have started a few heritage which are near completion so the guild decides to make me a patron and then I proceed to finish "These boots are made for..." heritage. At that point I earn 2000 status for the guild.</FONT></P> <P><FONT color=#6699ff>Now if I were to leave the guild or be depatroned within 7 days the guild would lose 100% of that status. So then at 7 days if either of those things happend the guild would lose 90% of all status I earned keeping 10% for the guild, at 14 days 80% lost, at 21 days 70% lost, at 28 days 60% lost........until finally say around 3 months with the guild all status earned would become 100% vested to the guild including all future status from that point on. </FONT></P> <P><FONT color=#6699ff>Some of you may not follow the whole vested thing, but most who have experience with 401k's or stock options should be able to understand exactly what I mean to get across.</FONT></P> <P><FONT color=#6699ff>Call it a form of "Guild Status Debt" if you like, but such a system despite what its called would provide what is done in real life already to prevent similar abuses. Its a tried technique that works.</FONT></P> <P><FONT color=#6699ff></FONT> </P> <P>To me, this is one of the best ideas proposed yet. The only problem is, making the loss come in the form of debt might be the best implementation, since they are trying to get rid of guilds losing levels. It would actually punish a guild trying exploit then. They could basically get one round of repatroning, and that is it. While an honest guild, that just had some regular old attrition (which happens to everyone at some point) is not punished. As a guild that will be level 29 tonight, I sure hate the idea, that we have worked so hard to get where we are, just to have it diminished. I would argue for keeping the system the same over having no check valves. And yes, my guild has felt the bite of someone leaving us with a good deal of status, we have had to make the tough decision of biting the bullet sometimes (dropping low status patrons that quit playing) and we still have a quite a bit of dead-weight that active patrons have to carry. To me getting to level 30 has been a big adventure, full of trials and tribulations. Something that my guild will be proud of. We actually are hoping to be 30 or as close to as possible before the changes might go into effect, because we do not want our efforts trivialized.</P> <P>Just to be clear, yes I would be for the changes as long as there are checks and balances. I am against it if there are none.</P>

Dazzler_Twodir

07-14-2005, 09:11 PM

<P>This will help alleviate the problem of the raid guilds stealing patrons from other guilds.</P> <P>Seems as soon as someone hits 50 the raid guilds come knocking on the door and want them.</P> <P>Over the last month we've lost about 7 or 8 people to these leech guilds who refuse to help anyone get level 50 and would rather just take them from other guilds.</P> <P>In one day alone this week we lost 8 patrons and dropped from level 22 to just shy of 18.</P>

Naughtesn

07-14-2005, 09:30 PM

<P>As a poster mentioned earlier in this thread, it is difficult to come up with ideas to remedy the perceived problems with the new system. While some of these ideas are good, I think its more important right now to learn more about the exact details of how it works now on test while focusing a bit on potential exploits.</P> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Isawa wrote:<BR> <P><FONT color=#6699ff>Really this is only a controversial move in the mind of those that can and will only see the worse in any change. </FONT></P> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P>Keep in mind that the masses in this game are living with rules and an environment dictated by exploiters...</P> <P>Some examples:</P> <P>1) Tradeskill writ timer - put in place because a small % of people were exploiting this by having ppl create subcomponents and the writ-doer only doing the final combine.</P> <P>2) Instanced zone cap - a small % of guilds were zoning more than 24 into an instance to beat encounter</P> <P>3) Yell for help change - on contested mobs with outside of encounter adds, a small % of guilds were bringing forces outside the raid to deal with adds.</P> <P>4) Mitigation changes - because a small subset of guilds had made AE'ing x4 mobs trivial - the devs instituted a mitigation cap</P> <P>etc etc..</P> <P>It has certainly been the practice of the DEVs to respond to exploits of the few to punish the masses, and while I don't agree with the changes that were made and think that these changes have stunted budding raiding guild growth, I certainly see why the changes had to be made. If we can fully flesh out all the ways this could be exploted, perhaps a fair system can be implemented from the outset.</P>

lensp

07-14-2005, 09:37 PM

<P>I am in the Guild XP debt camp. Lets not make another thing (hitting level 30) so easy. </P> <P>As far as guild leaders "exploiting" the system by changing Patron status. If those are the rules, <EM>every</EM> guild leader <STRONG>WOULD</STRONG> do it, or they don't deserve to be guild leader/officer.</P>

DaenaeRavenso

07-14-2005, 09:48 PM

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> lenspin wrote:<BR> <P>I am in the Guild XP debt camp. Lets not make another thing (hitting level 30) so easy. </P> <P>As far as guild leaders "exploiting" the system by changing Patron status. If those are the rules, <EM>every</EM> guild leader <STRONG>WOULD</STRONG> do it, or they don't deserve to be guild leader/officer.</P><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P><BR>So your really saying that leaders that WON'T exploit this new system don't deserve to be a guild leader? Playing by the rules makes them unfit to lead? Personally, I'd leave the guild that had the leader that WAS exploiting the system, not the other way around.</P> <P> </P> <P>Dae</P> <P>Just say NO to guild exps debt or guild delevels.</P>

Pin StNeedl

07-14-2005, 09:55 PM

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Wargut wrote:<BR><FONT color=#ffff00></FONT> <DIV><BR></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ffff00>>>> I totally agree with this, GL30 should not be a walk in the park... a level of dedication and hard work should be done in order to achieve that feat. </FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#66ff00>I'm glad we agree there.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#33cccc></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ffff00>>>> I don't think you're numbers are exactly correct but regardless that would generate a massive amount of xp. Another point that people seem to have overlooked is even if a guild should reach level 30 in matter of days, the rewards from the city merchants require a pretty high amount of SP which people won't have by doing 4 or 5 HQs each. The SP will be there eventuallywith a little more hardwork but that was jsut an observation.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ffff00></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#66ff00>Level 30 is just under 2 million contributed status. An average level 40+ heritage is 55k personal status, or ~4600 contribution with 12 patrons.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#66ff00>Thus it takes 420 of these heritage quests to level to 30 with 12 patrons. hence the 4-5 each number with 100 characters cycling.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#66ff00></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#66ff00>And true, some of the rewards cost individuals a large amount of personal status to buy, but not all of them do. Also, the members may already have that personal status from the months that we've been playing already - just don't have the level 30 guild to spend them.</FONT></DIV> <P>Before saying that the changes are bad right away, I'm curious to see how everything is working out on the Test server. I think I'm going to sit back and wait patiently after this post to learn more on the system's mechanics. How it really works and what did the vague update message ment (as mentioned by someone else earlier).</P> <DIV>I wouldn't want to sound like those people yelling *nerf* the minute I hear change or revamp. </DIV><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE>Is this quote from a player on Test good enough?<BR> <DIV><BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> WuphonsReach wrote:<BR>It works exactly as stated. There are no restrictions or trade-offs. De-patroning does not lose status or levels, and you can re-patron as often as you want.<BR><BR>IOW... it's ripe for abuse.<BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR>i.e. It is currently on Test exactly how it reads in the patch-notes. Hence my post "and as such, the change put on Test today is <STRONG>BAD</STRONG>".</DIV>

Stromul

07-14-2005, 10:13 PM

<DIV>Well I think a simple solution would be to set a timer on patroning/depatroning someone and guilding/deguilding someone. Make a 2 weeks timer that you have to wait after you leave a guild to join a new one, another 2 weeks timer to be promoted to patron and another week to be depatroned plus another 2 weeks to deguild. So this would put a 4 week timer on most of this. I feel that would probably reduce the amount of exploiting possible. </DIV>

lensp

07-14-2005, 10:56 PM

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> DaenaeRavensong wrote:<BR><BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> lenspin wrote:<BR> <P>I am in the Guild XP debt camp. Lets not make another thing (hitting level 30) so easy. </P> <P>As far as guild leaders "exploiting" the system by changing Patron status. If those are the rules, <EM>every</EM> guild leader <STRONG>WOULD</STRONG> do it, or they don't deserve to be guild leader/officer.</P><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P><BR>So your really saying that leaders that WON'T exploit this new system don't deserve to be a guild leader? Playing by the rules makes them unfit to lead? Personally, I'd leave the guild that had the leader that WAS exploiting the system, not the other way around.</P> <P> </P> <P>Dae</P> <P>Just say NO to guild exps debt or guild delevels.</P> <BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P><BR>Exactly!</P> <P> </P> <P>There is a Dev that has already replied to this thread, so they are definately aware of it, if it goes live this way it would not be an exploit, rather it would be "Working As Intended". No exploit there. </P> <P>They would be naive to think that guild leaders would not figure this out in under a minute and use it to the best benefit of their guild.</P> <P>I would not want to be part of a guild whose guild leader would choose (for example) to receive 2000 GS instead of 10000. If the difference would be only 10 or 20 or even 100 clicks, he better do it.</P> <P> </P>

Ranger1017

07-14-2005, 11:24 PM

<P>The more I think about it, the more I like the idea of guild xp debt, but NOT debt in the entire amount of the departing Patron's contributed xp. That would just be too harsh. 2-5 % of their total would be more in line with the way PC levels work, and it would still be enough to deter people from switching patrons in and out to exploit the system.</P> <P> </P> <P>That, possibly combined with a seven day lockout timer on Patron status, would be more than enough to keep the system from being exploited.</P>

Aegori

07-14-2005, 11:54 PM

<DIV>Personally, I'm of the school that says "get rid of the patron system". It honestly doesn't make sense anymore if this change goes into affect. Here are the advantages of being a patron:</DIV> <UL> <LI>You get to feel like you are contributing to your guild (a feeling which i believe every giuld member should have the right to). You are a member building guild level so that your members can participate in guild level raids and have city merchants open up new items to them. </LI> <LI>You simply have more to do, if you wish. Writs and such are something that i'm sure many people would run, but they just dont need to or dont have the incentive to as they dont provide anything meaningful. Remove patrons and everyone can do writs in their offtime.</LI></UL> <P>Other than that tho, i honestly cant think of any advantages of being a patron. It's more a responsiblity than a perk. With the removal of negative guild status upon de-patron, there's really no reason everyone shouldn't have the honor of being able to meaningfully participate in building their guild level. The people who are currently patrons are one's who the leaders feel are dedicated enough and responsible enough that they wont leave the guild and leave that negative impact. Now, why not simply let everyone participate? (besides the slowing down of earning guild XP).</P> <P>My idea for revamping this system boils down to the following... remove the patron system and make everyone able to contribute towards guild level. Make earning SPs based on static amounts of SP based on the event completed instead of basing it on a static amount divided by a number of patrons. Across the board, the amount of SP per writ/turn in/heritage completion/epic kill/etc. should be significantly reduced, but guilds will have a much broader base on contributors to make up for that. With all the new ways guilds earn SP for the guild and making everyone a contributor, guilds will likely level very fast, which is why i'd ask for the significant SP reduction based on the completed event. Basically, my system boils down to making raising guild XP much like on earns regular XP. Complete the tasks towards raising guild XP and it does.</P> <P>I would understand the argument against this being that this removes the small guild ability to level vs. the larger guild, but the way i see it is that there are now (or soon to be) ways in game to earn SP for the guild without really trying. Even when i was in a small guild, we still ran writs and did heritages and managed to attain guild lvl 21 (with 30+ patrons) before we decided to merge with a larger guild. Now, with epic mobs giving SP and SP from dropped items, even small guilds can make up for the lack of membership simply thru doing what they naturally do... take on small raid targets and get drops from grouping.</P> <P>That's just my 2cp on the issue tho. It seems like a bit needs to be re-evaluated with the system if a change like this goes into place.</P> <P>-Aeg</P><p>Message Edited by Aegorian on <span class=date_text>07-14-2005</span> <span class=time_text>04:01 PM</span>

Screamin' 1

07-15-2005, 12:05 AM

<div></div><span><blockquote><hr>Moorgard wrote:<div></div> <p>Keep in mind that this change is currently just on Test. That means we want to test it a bit in practice and see what it means before sending it live.</p> <p>There are other changes to the patron system were are considering as well, so this change may or may not go live in and of itself.</p> <p>It's certainly a somewhat controversial move, with benefits for a lot of people but also the potential for abuse. But then, we're often faced with the choice between doing nice things for players and facing the likelihood that somebody is going to abuse it in some way.</p> <p>While the concept of guilds losing levels when patrons leave makes sense in a practical way, it's also different from other progression models we have in game. Your character doesn't lose levels when you die or fail a crafting combine, so it seemed strange to have the same thing happen to a guild, especially when guilds in our game are intended to advance just like characters do.</p> <p>At any rate, please keep the comments coming so that we can continue to review the pros and cons of this potential change.</p><hr></blockquote>Hi Everyone, First, I love this idea on the surface. It would allow a small guild (such as mine is right now) to us it's alts to help generate status, w/o making their contribution negative due to a doubling of the GSP divisor. Many in my guild love playing their alts, and would play them more often if we could generate gsp with them. I certainly see the difficulty in balancing the need to do good things, while preventing abuse. Here is a simple suggestion (in theory, but implementing within the Eq2 framework may not be easy.) When a player character stops being a Patron, or leaves the a guild, that player character may not be a patron for that guild, ever again. In effect, they are retiring from patronage to that guild. The guild retains the status, and can add new patrons over time w/o causing the GSP divider to grow out of proportion. This is, by far, better than the current live system, and does not have the abuse potential of the new system. [Edited. After reading everyone's ideas on this, and realizing how useful being able to switch between alts/mains could be, I am no longer a fan the 'never again' idea, although it is still better than the live system. I think the next option is a better way to go.] Another option that was mentioned already is to restrict the return to patron status to several days. This will probably not work perfectly since it would let some folks do HQs once a week, and add a lot of status w/o increasing the GSP divisor. Perhaps a value of two weeks would work. It would let someone play an alt for a while as a patron, and allow them to come back to their main character and become a patron again w/o really exploiting anything, and not losing anything either. With the two week timer, it would take 10 months at least to run through all of the HQs. I like the idea of not losing status when a player is no longer a patron. But, many guilds will be turning patron status on and off like crazy, getting benefit where it seems none is intended. The larger the guild, the more advantage there will be. Large guilds already do (and should) have an advantage, as they can assign players to simply support partons doing tradeskill writs. I am not sure if adventure writs or hqs benefit as much from this strategy, but there is probably some benefit. </span><div></div><p>Message Edited by Screamin' 103 on <span class=date_text>07-15-2005</span> <span class=time_text>01:06 PM</span>

Screamin' 1

07-15-2005, 12:08 AM

<div></div><span><blockquote><hr>xxArcanexx wrote:<div>Just make it just like the death system...if you die you dont lose exp, but you do gain debt.</div> <div> </div> <div>If a patron leaves you should gain the same amount of debt as he had status...while you work off the debt 50% goes towards new guild exp and 50% goes toward the debt.</div><hr></blockquote>This is a very interesting idea. It allows guilds to stay at their level, add new patrons and continue to advance, while practically eliminating the usefulness of playing musical patrons. [Edited, added some hard numbers for discussion] I played around with some numbers to give an idea of how this would look: Under a debt system: 12 patrons do 3 HQ's 12 x 120,000 / 12 = 120,000 GSP They leave (or stop being patrons) Guild status is 120,000 Guild debt is 120,000 12 new patrons do 3 HQs 12 x 120,000 / 12 = 120,000 GSP Guild Status is 180,000 Guild Debt is 60,000 These patrons stop being patrons. Guild Status is 180,000 Guild Debt is 180,000 (or 120,000 if you dont' include GSP that went to cover debt earlier) 12 new patrons do 3 HQs 12 x 120,000 / 12 = 120,000 GSP Guild Status is 240,000 Guild Debt is 120,000 (or 60,000 if you dont' include the GSP that went to cover debt earlier) etc..... In the current live system: 12 patrons do 3 HQs 12 x 120,000 / 12 = 120,000 Guild status is 120,000 GSP Guild Debt is 0 Add 12 patrons, do 3 HQs 12 x 120,000 / 24 = 60,000 (I know, the original 12 patrons can still generate GSP, this is for illustration only) Guild status is 180,000 GSP Guild Debt is 0 Add 12 patrons, do 3 HQs 12 x 120,000 / 36 = 40,000 </span><span>(I know, the original 24 patrons can still generate GSP, this is for illustration only)</span> <span> Guild status is 220,000 GSP Guild Debt is 0 Interestingly, there seems to be a negative consequence to the debt system if members leave the patron ranks regularly, compared to the current live system. Perhaps if GSP debt decayed like adventure debt, it would be more balanced. For comparison, on the current test system: 36 x 120,000 x 12 = 360,000 (and they can all be done basically in parallel, so this will take about 1/3 of the time of the other examples.) BTW, I am in a small guild, I love the sytem the way it is in test, it will let us play our alts w/o leveling slower. Large guilds will love it too, they will level a lot faster. The question really is, how fast is too fast. Can the game content handle 20 100+ player guilds per server at level 30? Can it handle 30? Does it really matter? </span><div></div><p>Message Edited by Screamin' 103 on <span class=date_text>07-14-2005</span> <span class=time_text>04:58 PM</span>

07-15-2005, 12:19 AM

<P>I agree with the majority of the posts here (which is to say: change the system=good, changing it as proposed=bad). There are a number of great ideas that I hope the Devs really take into consideration.</P> <P>The biggest concern I have is all the talk about debt. If a guild incurs debt equal to the amount of status contributed by a patron when they leave, it could be much harder for the guild to regain that status. When a character dies and incurs debt, they are able to work off that debt at half the rate at which they were gaining xp previously by killing the same stuff and getting the same xp for it (half to debt and half to xp). This isn't true with guild status points.</P> <P>Large amounts of Status Points are contributed by patrons that complete Heritage Quests, versus completing writs. If non-patrons helped the patron complete the Heritage Quest, they no longer have the opportunity to contribute the Status from the completed Heritage Quest if the patron leaves. Should those non-patrons have to forego the opportunity of nice rewards (by not completing the HQ), just so they can help the guild later, if a patron leaves?</P> <DIV>If the only way to level a guild was by grinding writs, I would say that debt is an answer, though even then, not 100% of contributed status, because it is likely that 100% of that status was not gained by the patron by himself. As it currently stands, though, it would be unfair to guilds with players that have completed a lot of Heritage Quests as non-patrons to incur the debt from an ex-patron that completed the same quests, because they can't work it off as fast (or half as fast) as it was incurred.</DIV>

Shadowstryd

07-15-2005, 12:32 AM

<DIV>What I would rather see is this.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Currently EQ2players keeps track of your status if your a patron or not.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>If say patron X has become inactive or is not pulling his weight then the guild leader or officer can swap out that patron for another guild member that has applied or wants to be a active patron that will run writs.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>When patron X is removed from patron status the guild looses the status of that patron but when the <STRONG><EM>new</EM></STRONG> patron applicant is promoted to patron status he keeps his current contributed status listed on eq2players to the guild instead of it resetting to 0.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>This would allow more flexibality to current guilds and would eliminate any abuse that would take place. It would also alow for more motivation to current active patrons to keep up the work knowing that another member is applying and working hard to pass them up in contributed points to get the promotion.</DIV>

Screamin' 1

07-15-2005, 12:43 AM

<span><blockquote><hr>Shadowstryder wrote:<div></div> <div>What I would rather see is this.</div> <div> </div> <div>Currently EQ2players keeps track of your status if your a patron or not.</div> <div> </div> <div>If say patron X has become inactive or is not pulling his weight then the guild leader or officer can swap out that patron for another guild member that has applied or wants to be a active patron that will run writs.</div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div>When patron X is removed from patron status the guild looses the status of that patron but when the <strong><em>new</em></strong> patron applicant is promoted to patron status he keeps his current contributed status listed on eq2players to the guild instead of it resetting to 0.</div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div>This would allow more flexibality to current guilds and would eliminate any abuse that would take place. It would also alow for more motivation to current active patrons to keep up the work knowing that another member is applying and working hard to pass them up in contributed points to get the promotion.</div><hr></blockquote>I do not think the eq2players guild status number is accurate. It is calculated based on the number of patrons in the guild. So, if a guild has 12 patrons, and 24 non-patrons do an HQ, the GSP shown for the 24 non-patrons will be based on a GSP divisor of 12 or 13, not 36 as it would be if these folks were patrons. </span><div></div>

Kil

07-15-2005, 12:56 AM

<div></div>I am all for this change. Currently guilds are being penalized for having patrons that have left the game completely, as well as having members leave the guild for another. Currently our roster has 8 patrons that started in november, were solid contributors until may when those folks decided to leave the game. As the guild leader, I could not bring myself to remove them as our guild would lose a TON of status, yet I cannot add more patrons unless we wanted to take on the too many patrons penalties. I can't think of a good solution to avoid exploiting this, but frankly even if it was exploited, those people STILL have to do the work. Last i checked you couldn't press a magic button to finish a heritage quest quickly. Imposing guild debt seems like the best possible solution, but I don't believe a guild should be penalized because one of your members decided he/she no longer wanted to play everquest. While player debt is nothing but your own fault (you died, you are to blame 95% of the time) guild xp debt would more often than not be the fault of someone losing interest in the game, or deciding that they wanted to move on to a different guild. Why penalize the people that are still around working hard to level the guild? <font color="#6633ff" size="4"> Maybe just cap the number of patrons a guild can have, and remove the guild xp status bonus for having 12 or under patrons. That way, you gain the same amount of guild xp per writ / heritage quest with 28 patrons as you would with 10. Wouldn't that be the easiest solution? Large guilds and small guilds alike would be able to maintain their ways of leveling the guild while complety avoiding the one way to exploit this fantastic change that I hope goes live <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></font> Rint - Guild Leader - Monolith - Steamfont <p>Message Edited by Kilox on <span class=date_text>07-14-2005</span> <span class=time_text>01:58 PM</span>

Cecil_Stri

07-15-2005, 01:01 AM

<DIV>Problem about the current system is everyone in the guild is hurt cept the person that decided to leave.</DIV>

Smg1620

07-15-2005, 01:02 AM

<P>Like someone before me said, getting to level guild level 30 isnt a race and any guilds that exploited it wouldnt have any bragging rights because everyone would know they did. I started playing my necromancer in november and still havnt gotten him to level 50, if I was in a hurry or felt like being the first I would have tried, but i dont care so there are many lvl 50 necromancers already.</P> <P>The items you get with status at GL 30 still take a huge amount of point to buy, so its not like every person that is in one of these guilds will automatically have the sir, madam, etc titles and the flying carpet or undead steed. I dont think there should be any penalty for someone leaving a guild because you shouldnt be stuck somewhere you dont want to be just because you dont want to hurt your current guild.</P>

Paganst

07-15-2005, 01:04 AM

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Moorgard wrote:<BR> <P>While the concept of guilds losing levels when patrons leave makes sense in a practical way, it's also different from other progression models we have in game.<BR></P> <P></P> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR> <DIV>I have to disagree with this. Consider guilds as mercenary companies (technically we are that doing writs for factions in our city). The legend of a great mercenary company is not based on an individual but as the company as a whole. It would not be member X of The Company who was recognized but The Company itself. It is expected that new members will join a company and old members might leave but that does not diminish the history of what that company (guild) has done.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I do agree that there is easy enough ways to abuse this but still it will be a chore to get a guild up to lvl 30. As I have experienced losing multiple levels more than once (a few people hit 50 and leave for the server raid/power guild) I can say it is not fun to lose those levels.. and as this is a game having fun is the point right?</DIV>

SkySava

07-15-2005, 01:09 AM

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Homeslice wrote:<BR>I mentioned this elsewhere but if you decide to keep the change of guilds not losing status you should just drop patrons altogether and allow all members to contribute at a /12 or maybe split the difference between 12-36 and use a /24. /24 would be a bit tougher on smaller guilds but still doable.<BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR>I'm sorry but when I hear people say this I just want to scream. Obviously you only play one character or you are in a guild where alts aren't allowed in (or there aren't many of them). If you feel this way then make all your members patrons and there you go. For those of us that like to have a ton of alts and have them ALL in the guild, we'd sure like it not to count against us. I've already had to take my alt out just to compete with the average guild rankings.

Straylig

07-15-2005, 01:10 AM

<P>It sucks for those of us in guilds that have made level 30 the hard way. Where's the benefit to all those hours of writs?</P> <P>With the proposed system, you can simply patron a group of 12...have them do all the heritages, depatron them, patron 12 more, have them do the heritage completions, etc.... It would be possible to level a guild to 30 in a matter of days.</P> <P>This change would be a slap in the face for -everyone- that has worked writs.</P> <P>In my mind, the only solution to this would be for heritage quests to ONLY count towards PERSONAL status and not city/guild status.....then, everyone would have to writ or kill epic mobs for status, and would eliminate the possibility of powerlevelling a guild to 30 in a very, very short time.</P> <P>It would still require hard work and dedication, and also remove the penalty from a patron leaving and be the best of both worlds. (in my opinion.)</P>

Tasaz

07-15-2005, 01:17 AM

<div></div>I love this change myself. I fail to see how being a patron and depatroning is really an exploit except for how the guild status is calculated with patrons. The work had to be done by someone at one point. It's not free guild experience. The only thing I can see that it really would mess up is how the contribution points are calculated (the status gained divided by the number of active guild patrons). In this case, depatron everyone until just before someone is about to complete an HQ or writ and then make them a patron and finish for max guild status. With no other patrons (or very few) they could get a lot of guild status really quick, could they not? The arguments about leveling alts up to do the lower level HQs doesn't really hold any water in my opinion. They still have to do the work. The reward was earned. In any case, with this change maybe they should look at how the whole status divided by active patrons things is looked at. Edit: A possibility to prevent such exploiting might be something such as: once someone depatrons, they can no longer re-partron or....once a person depatrons, they must wait 30 days before they are allowed to patron once again. This would prevent the on-the-fly depatron, complete HQ or writ, repatron exploiting to a great degree. <div></div><p>Message Edited by Tasazar on <span class=date_text>07-14-2005</span> <span class=time_text>03:21 PM</span>

Tobby

07-15-2005, 01:18 AM

Woot !! WTS - lvl 30 GUILD 0 members will make you leader on payment 50 plat. pst.. Other guilds available in levels 25 26 27 28 (2) 29 30 (<img src="/smilies/b2eb59423fbf5fa39342041237025880.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> prices avaible on request ! Guilds available on ALL severs /e me at -------- I think they need to re - think this one very very hard !!! <div></div>

Iustus

07-15-2005, 01:45 AM

<P>Look. My guild would have been level 30 by now, with the work we have already done, if I knew this change was coming. It is not a minor change.</P> <P>Instead of using 12 patrons, and leveling super fast (but instable), we choose to make everyone a patron, and level slow, but stable. I have about 3 million personal status, but my guild contribution is only 40k status. If we had only 12 patrons, instead of 70, and if you factor the same change to the top 12 contributers in my guild, you can see that we would easily be level 30 by now.</P> <P>But we did not want to go the route of instability, making 12 patrons who each held that large a portion of the guild level. Instead, months and months ago, we deliberately choose to make everyone a patron, knowing that it would take us much much longer to level, but that we were buying stability. That other guilds would get to 30 fast, they would not keep it, they would constantly have to earn it again as someone left the guild.</P> <P>If guilds are not going to delevel, then patrons should be removed entirely. Guild contribution should be a fixed percentage of status earned, <STRONG>and it should be recalculated for existing guilds</STRONG> so that guilds like mine are automatically promoted to the level they would have been, had we known this change was coming. It is only fair to do this, so as to not reward those guilds who min/maxed the system to 30, knowing they were risking deleveling.</P> <P>-I</P>

Screamin' 1

07-15-2005, 02:15 AM

<span><blockquote><hr>Straylight wrote:<p>With the proposed system, you can simply patron a group of 12...have them do all the heritages, depatron them, patron 12 more, have them do the heritage completions, etc.... It would be possible to level a guild to 30 in a matter of days.</p><hr></blockquote>Actually, what you describe is not all that bad at all. That is, IMO, how it should work. I don't think it is possible to level a guild to 30 in a matter of days this way, though. HQs can take quite a while. Unless dozens of patrons can work in parallel, it just will not go that fast. But, the reality of the new system allows just that: Simply setup ranks such that everyone can add or remove patron status (after all, there is no penalty if someone removes your status as long as you follow this procedure). Right before completing a writ, or hq, or selling new status loot (nice idea, at first glance, btw) set your patron status. Once status is received, unset patron status. You can have 100 patrons all doing writs and HQs and rarely will the GSP divisor be more than 12. 100 patrons x 3600 PS per writ / 12 is about 300 GSP x 100 or 30,000 GSP per writ! (math has been rounded because I am lazy <span>:smileywink:</span>) 100 people doing 100 writs each will get a guild to level 30 from level zero. Writs become much more attractive under this system because the divisor is always 12. 8 writs a night, per person, will get you to 30 in about 2 weeks. </span><div></div>

Dejah

07-15-2005, 02:49 AM

<P>I can't believe no one has brought up <STRONG>Reverse Writs</STRONG>, and factored that into their positions on this topic.</P> <P>Reverse Writs:</P> <P> <HR> <P></P> <P>From Test Update #12 notes: <A href="http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=tup&message.id=59#M59" target=_blank>http://eqiiforums.station.sony.com/eq2/board/message?board.id=tup&message.id=59#M59</A></P> <P>"Earn experience for your guild by collecting status loot! "</P> <P>From Ask SOE #37: <A href="http://eq2vault.ign.com/View.php?view=asksoe.Detail&category_select_id=43" target=_blank>http://eq2vault.ign.com/View.php?view=asksoe.Detail&category_select_id=43</A></P> <P>"These items can <STRONG>likely</STRONG> be traded to other players, so those who aren't guilded can sell them to other players who are interested in increasing their guild status. " <HR> <P></P> <DIV>Please note: Nothing is set in stone, that is why I bolded "likely", so please note that my thoughts are based on the current direction they are going, and if that direction changes, so will my thoughts.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Reverse Writs is a huge change and does give an advantage to large guilds, even if they only have 12 patrons. A guild with 60 players is going to bring in a lot more "status loot" than a guild with 20 players. Both guilds will be able to trade the "status loot" to patrons to turn in to earn status for the guild. The larger the guild, the larger their advantage will be, despite whether they go forward with the system to have guilds not lose experience ever.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>SOE can always change the amount of status reward for this loot, so they can in effect change how much of an advantage it will make. Only time will tell how good it is compared to normal writs. So it might not make much of a difference at all, or it might make a huge difference. But either way Reverse Writs are effectively a means for non-patrons to participate in getting guild levels.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>In light of this, I have to wonder, why have patrons at all? </DIV>

Bewts

07-15-2005, 03:20 AM

I like the idea of guild debt for losing patrons to a de-guilding. A percentage of their total guild status must be re-claimed at a penalty before you can resume garnering your guild xp at its normal rate. Guild Member X leaves the guild, they had 40k guild status The guild recieves a penalty for status obtained from this point forward of 10k guild status. The guild must obtain 20k guild status before resuming normal return rates for guild status. I like the idea of lockout timers on changing patrons. It would be a great tool to rotate those responsible for doing writs instead of laying the bulk of the work on a select few people. Essentially making it feasible to rotate groups within the guild through patron status for doing writs or heritages. As a person is made a patron, they cannot be removed from their patron status for 7 days (or 14 or whatever you want) or you recieve a penalty like above. (25% of their total guild status) This would essentially keep people from trading out people online for status kills of raid targets, or just moving people in and out of patron status for heritage completions. PS who is to say its wrong that person X of Guild Y shouldn't have their heritage applied to the guild but person Z of Guild Y should? Honestly I think heritages should not be part of the patron system and that all members of a guild should be able to apply their heritages to the guild status regardless if they are a patron or not? <div></div>

Wrapye

07-15-2005, 04:14 AM

I'd like to propose a 'patron debt' system rather than the 'guild debt' system that many have proposed. It works as follows: Guild member is promoted to patron, and earns XP for the guild. At some point, either they leave the guild or for some other reason, they are no longer a patron of the guild. The guild retains the XP. The character's contribution to that guild is reset to 0. At a later time, that same character is made a patron of that guild again. Until the character earns more guild XP than they had before, none of it goes to the guild. Once they have exceeded the amount that they earned before, the excess goes to the guild. For example: A guild patron earns 2000 XP for the guild doing writs. For whatever reason, the character is made a follower. Their personal guild XP contribution is reset to 0. The guild still keeps the 2000 XP that they earned in the past. At a later date, the character is reinstated as a patron. Until they earn more than 2000 XP, using the equations now in place, none of it goes to the guild. Once the character earns more than 2000 points, anything over 2000 goes to the guild as XP. Should they be removed as patron again, the same process would occur, at their new level or their old level, whichever is highest. This will prevent promoting/demoting patrons at will, as there is a penalty for doing so. This wouldn't prevent a guild from rotating patrons, promoting and demoting them once, never to repromote them again, but I honestly don't see that as a common scenario. This could be extended as a penalty to the leaving character, so that they cannot contribute to a new guild till they have done more for the new guild than they did for the old guild. They built up the reputation of the old guild, and until they put even more effort into the new one, the city still sees what they did for the old one as the more important, more notable work. <div></div>

OrenWolf

07-15-2005, 04:41 AM

<span><blockquote><hr>Moorgard wrote:<div></div> <p>Keep in mind that this change is currently just on Test. That means we want to test it a bit in practice and see what it means before sending it live.</p> <p>There are other changes to the patron system were are considering as well, so this change may or may not go live in and of itself.</p> <p>It's certainly a somewhat controversial move, with benefits for a lot of people but also the potential for abuse. But then, we're often faced with the choice between doing nice things for players and facing the likelihood that somebody is going to abuse it in some way.</p> <p>While the concept of guilds losing levels when patrons leave makes sense in a practical way, it's also different from other progression models we have in game. Your character doesn't lose levels when you die or fail a crafting combine, so it seemed strange to have the same thing happen to a guild, especially when guilds in our game are intended to advance just like characters do.</p> <p>At any rate, please keep the comments coming so that we can continue to review the pros and cons of this potential change.</p><hr></blockquote> I always assumed the purpose of the patron system was to offer a level of equalization between smaller and larger guilds. Perhaps I am mistaken. However, there's little doubt that in terms of raw XP, this benefits larger guilds more than smaller ones. Why? It is much easier for a larger guild to have a "heritage" day, where sets of 12 guildmembers finish heritage quests, then rotate out of the patron slot. In fact, you could have 48 guildmembers complete all but the last step of a quest, only to rotate four times, and have 48 heritage quests worth of xp added to your guild. This isn't possible in a smaller guild, obviously. I suppose it doesn't matter however, if the patron system was *not* added to give equality between smaller and larger guilds, then it makes no difference that large guilds can gain level 30 at a vastly unbalanced rate.</span><div></div>

Iustus

07-15-2005, 05:40 AM

<P>If you incurred guild debt, equal to the amount you lost, so that although you do not actually delevel, your debt is enough that you have to gain that back to go any higher, that would be a partial solution.</P> <P>I would suggest doing that under level 25, and guilds over 25 just lose levels, to avoid people selling level 30 guilds that are 100% debt.</P> <P>-I</P>

Rashaak

07-15-2005, 08:09 AM

<DIV>K, skimed thru this again...still no comments from anyone from Test server, on the current "new" proposed patron system....Would like some solid insight on those that are using the new update on how its working out</DIV>

Tockl

07-15-2005, 08:51 AM

<DIV> <P><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">NOTE: I am using the number instead of 12 merely for simplicity.<SPAN> </SPAN>The practical system would more likely use 10, 12, or 15 for each level.<SPAN> </SPAN>It is late - I hope I explain this well. </FONT></FONT></SPAN></P> <P><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Patron flags are gone, and every guild member has the opportunity to contribute in tiers of effectiveness based solely on contribution.</FONT></FONT></SPAN></P> <P><SPAN><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3></FONT></SPAN> </P> <P><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Tier A: <BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Top 5 patrons<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Calculated contribution is set to 100% of contribution.</FONT></FONT></SPAN></P> <P><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Tier B:<SPAN> <BR></SPAN></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Patrons 6-10<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Calculated contribution is set to 40% of contribution.</FONT></FONT></SPAN></P> <P><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Tier C:<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Patrons 11-15<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Calculated contribution is set to 15% of contribution.</FONT></FONT></SPAN></P> <P><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Tier D:<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Patrons 16+<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Calculated contribution is set to 5% of contribution.</FONT></FONT></SPAN></P> <P><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">EXAMPLE</FONT></FONT></SPAN></P> <P><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Guild has 17 members total, status points from all sources as follows:</FONT></FONT></SPAN></P> <P><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Tier A:<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">1 has 200,000 status points.<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">2 has 180,000 status points.<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">3 – 150,000<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">4 – 150,000<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">5 – 120,000</FONT></FONT></SPAN></P> <P><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Tier B:<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">6 – 115,000<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">7 – 110,000<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">8 – 110,000<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">9 – 100,000<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">10 – 85,000</FONT></FONT></SPAN></P> <P><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Tier C:<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">11 – 83,000<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">12 – 80,000<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">13 – 70,000<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">14 – 50,000<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">15 – 15,000</FONT></FONT></SPAN></P> <P><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Tier D:<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">16 – 5,000<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">17 – 0</FONT></FONT></SPAN></P> <P><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Now, the actual calculated status would be as follows:</FONT></FONT></SPAN></P> <P><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Tier A:<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">1 – 200,000 * 100% = 200,000<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">2 – 180,000 * 100% = 180,000<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">3 – 150,000 * 100% = 150,000<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">4 – 150,000 * 100% = 150,000<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">5 – 120,000 * 100% = 120,000</FONT></FONT></SPAN></P> <P><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Tier B:<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">6 – 115,000 * 40% = 46,000<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">7 – 110,000 * 40% = 44,000<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">8 – 110,000 * 40% = 44,000<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">9 – 100,000 * 40% = 40,000<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">10 – 85,000 * 40% = 34,000</FONT></FONT></SPAN></P> <P><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Tier C:<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">11 – 83,000 * 15% = 12,450<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">12 – 80,000 * 15% = 12,000<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">13 – 70,000 * 15% = 10,500<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">14 – 50,000 * 15% = 7,500<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">15 – 15,000 * 15% = 2,250</FONT></FONT></SPAN></P> <P><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Tier D:<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">16 – 5,000 * 5% = 250<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">17 – 0 * 5% = 0 </FONT></FONT></SPAN></P> <P><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Now, let’s say patron 6 finishes two heritage quests in one evening, and goes from 115,000 – 125,000 status, but patron 5 has been offline for a couple weeks.<SPAN> </SPAN>6 would move into the #5 spot, and 5 would move into the #6 spot.<SPAN> </SPAN>Although 6 had only 46,000 sp COUNTED towards the guild level, he actually had 115,000 CONTRIBUTED.<SPAN> </SPAN>Once he moves into Tier A, his full amount is counted, and Patron 5’s calculated amount reduces.<SPAN> </SPAN>He keeps his same numbers though, the game is coded to update based on tiers and percents.<SPAN> </SPAN>Maybe 5 was once the top, but has been offline for months.<SPAN> </SPAN>Slowly others pass him, and he moves down the list.<SPAN> </SPAN>Keeping his points don’t hinder leveling, and when/if he comes back, he can start where he left off.</FONT></FONT></SPAN></P> <P><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Number 17 starts off very small, but as he moves up tiers, his contributions become worth more.<SPAN> </SPAN>He gains sp [expletive ninja'd by Faarbot] for tat with everyone else, so with some grit and bleeding eyes, he can one day become the top contributor if he sets his mind to it.<SPAN> </SPAN></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P> <P><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">If a patron leaves, there are a couple options:<BR>1</FONT></FONT></SPAN><FONT face="Times New Roman"><SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3>)</FONT><SPAN> </SPAN></SPAN></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3>His status remains, and he slowly gets bumped down the list and others pass him.<BR></FONT></SPAN></FONT><FONT face="Times New Roman"><SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3>2)</FONT><SPAN> </SPAN></SPAN></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3>His status is lost, but others move up the list immediately and overall guild xp loss is negligible.<BR></FONT></SPAN></FONT><FONT face="Times New Roman"><SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3>3)</FONT><SPAN> </SPAN></SPAN></SPAN><SPAN><FONT size=3>A portion of his status reverts to an invisible pool of status, never to be lost.</FONT></SPAN></FONT></P> <P><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Personally, I like number 3.<SPAN> </SPAN>It makes losing a patron painful, but not excruciating. </FONT></FONT></SPAN></P> <P><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">A massive guild WILL gain faster, but not at exponential levels.<SPAN> </SPAN>I’m in a guild with few members, and I’m ok with that.</FONT></FONT></SPAN></P> <P><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Healthy in-guild competition is encouraged, and EVERYONE has a chance to get to the top.</FONT></FONT></SPAN></P> <P><SPAN><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3></FONT></SPAN> </P> <P><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Ok, I think I’m done…. <img src="/smilies/69934afc394145350659cd7add244ca9.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P> <P><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Gipp Hedgehogg<BR></FONT></FONT></SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman"><SPAN>Wizard and Officer of The </SPAN><SPAN>Chosen</SPAN><SPAN> Clan<BR></SPAN></FONT></FONT><SPAN><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Crushbone Server</FONT></FONT></SPAN></P></DIV>

Tockl

07-15-2005, 08:55 AM

<DIV>I should add, that with tha talk of guild ststus debt, I VERY much like the idea of patron debt as well. Someone who leaves a guild and leaves them with ststus debt, should also recieve the sting of contributing to a new guild at a slower level. Maybe this can be based on raw time, maybe on SP.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>For example:</DIV> <DIV>Bob leaves guild, and had contributed 20,000 status points. For 2 weeks, be earns status at 90% the normal rate until the 20,000 is paid off (LONG time).</DIV> <DIV>Or maybe he gains at 90% for 20,000 minutes = 13.9 days...</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Whatever... :p</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Gipp</DIV>

sliderhouserules

07-15-2005, 09:34 AM

<span><span><blockquote><hr>Quasicroako wrote:<p>All that needs to be done is to implement an over time guild vestment approach. In otherwords for every week that the patron stays with the guild X% of their current earned status permenantly gets absorbed by the guild. After a certain set time the guild obtains 100% vestment of that patrons Status including all future status. </p><hr></blockquote></span></span><span><blockquote>Jan Itor wrote:How about this approach: The longer you´ve been patronized the more points the guild will keep, e.g. no loss of status points after 100 days as a patron. For every day less you loose 1%, so leaving after 50 days will leave 50% of the status points to the guild, leaving after day 20 will make the guild loose 80% of the points. Quiet solid IMO. <hr></blockquote></span>This is a very good idea. Please do not continue the trend of dumbing this game down and making everything a cake walk with no penalty. Guild status is supposed to mean something. You take away the penalty, you dumb down the system, you take away the meaning. <div></div>

Jindris

07-15-2005, 11:04 AM

<P>This will be a short post. Everything I have to say about the new patronage system has already been said. If the changes on the test server go live, you will have to change the title granted to patrons, because the meaning of the word wont hold true anymore to the duties that define this role.</P> <P>Maybe something to consider would be "lessening" the loss of guild status when losing patrons? By 25% to 50%?</P>

Carryne

07-15-2005, 11:19 AM

I would like to see this change go to live but with some restrictions such as not being able to become a patron again for a month if you stop being a patron and restricting the number of patron changes a guild can make over a given period. I have a character that used to do writs but who I now just occasionally use for tradeskilling. I don't like being caught between the guilty feeling of not being able to drop the patron flag because of the guild xp loss and not wanting to play her as a main character at the moment.

Smitt

07-15-2005, 11:41 AM

<P>The easiset way to prevent exploiting would be to make it impossible for someone to become a patron in a guild that they were de-patroned in. </P> <P>Other wise there are guilds out there w/ 300+ people. Thats over 6000 potential hq's that could be counted towards the guild total. The avg the sp payout is about 35,000 per HQ. Thats just under 3k contributed if they keep the patron total around 12. That makes a total of 17.5 mill guild xp. It took us just around 3mil to hit 30, and that was w/ 14 dedicated patrons doing writs like crazy. Granted by now most people have done a handful of Hq's but a very large guild can and will do this to lvl fast.</P> <P>But the in the end it doesnt really matter. There really isnt a lot of incentive to hit 30. Sure you can get a title. Sure you get some bragging rights. Sure you get some formal wear. And sure you can spend 60+ Plat and sp on a rug/spirit steed. But thats it. There isnt even a raid instance at 30.</P> <P>Now the reverse writ idea is great, this alone lets non-patrons contribute to the success of the guild. Sure it would be nice to have a sysytem to make everyone feel involved. Maybe make the xp the guild earns scale to the member total. Or make it so that being a patron is on a timer or even a 1 time deal. </P> <P>There is an issue w/ Patrons who have become inactive and then nerf the guild xp process. What if they made it so if someone hasnt logged on in 30+ days there would be no penalty? Or if someone leaves the guild the guild loses no xp but that person is locked out of the guild for 30 days. How hard would that be to program?</P> <P>If this hits the live servers it will get abused. Just another way to make the game easier which may be the intention.</P>

wr4ithd0

07-15-2005, 03:03 PM

<P>All good points....</P> <P>This is how I have always felt: There are two types of status, personal and guild. A Patron goes out and does X quest in the name of the guild, thus earning respect from the NPCs for both himself and the guild. It doesn't make much sense that if that patron were to leave that the guild name would suffer. From a RP standpoint, Guard Bob is still going to remember that a member of GuildX did the task he requested and now Guard Bob likes GuildX a little more. Guard Bob is also going to remember that PatronX is quite the swell guy, the two status types being illustrated here. (Example) If i were to go out into my community and say do all sorts of things for the community in the name of the Boy Scouts, so much that the town simply begins to love the Boy Scouts....if I were to all of a sudden disappear, it doesn't seem to reason that the town would all of a sudden drop their favor with the Boy Scouts.</P> <P>I understand the arguments that there is a recipe for exploitation as well. However, it hurts all guilds to lose a patron big or small. We are by no means a small guild, but we also have a ton of patrons, some contributing alot more than others. Over time we have lost all types of status from people leaving for 'End Game' guilds, personal conflicts, and even one case of the second highest contributor of status accidently unpatroning herself (she's my wife so I know it was an accident and occured 3 feet from me). It sucks to see that bar drop so quickly when it takes so long to move up. Another person brought up a good point: I sure would like to unpatron a few folks with a ton of status who are now playing alts. As is, we are just kinda waiting for the average status of those active to be near that of the inactive patrons, so we can begin unpatroning them for less impact and one less number to divide by.</P> <P>Someone said let the exp be a loss if the guild unpatrons them. That seems fine, almost like the guild has disavowed all of their actions and therefore, no status was gained in the name of the guild. But as people leave, I see no reason for a loss. I doubt a guild is going to constantly be in a 12 person boot/reinvite cycle, and if someone would do that, put a lockout timer for any guild invite for any person who leaves a guild. That would help stem the problem as well. You leave a guild or get booted, you can't get into any other guild for two weeks. I know it sounds extreme, but guilds arent something to be taken lightly to begin with, even if the guild is just for fun.</P> <P>Ladies and Gentlemen, I'm about to travel through time. I bid you adieu... <THUMP></P>

Kendricke

07-15-2005, 04:09 PM

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> lenspin wrote:<BR><BR> <P>There is a Dev that has already replied to this thread, so they are definately aware of it, if it goes live this way it would not be an exploit, rather it would be "Working As Intended". No exploit there. </P> <P>They would be naive to think that guild leaders would not figure this out in under a minute and use it to the best benefit of their guild.</P> <P>I would not want to be part of a guild whose guild leader would choose (for example) to receive 2000 GS instead of 10000. If the difference would be only 10 or 20 or even 100 clicks, he better do it.<BR></P> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><BR> <DIV>...and this line of thinking is going to spread like wildfire. Because it's an "intended change" that has methods for which the developers are fully cognizant of, it will be used for what is currently known as "abuse".</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>By the way, the Test Chapter of the Legion of the White Rose will be paying good coin (Platinum or more) to anyone with 20,000 or more contributed status worth of Heritage Quests ready to turn in who is willing to join the Legion long enough for our guild to gain the status. We're currently level 18 on Test (23 on Guk) and have plenty of platinum to spend. Please send tells directly to Kendricke on Thursday Nights or Saturday Mornings, or send a private message through these forums. We'll require all takers to join groups first to prove Heritage status, and then negotiate final payment based upon qualifications. Full payment upon delivery of services.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV><p>Message Edited by Kendricke on <span class=date_text>07-15-2005</span> <span class=time_text>05:09 AM</span>

Kendricke

07-15-2005, 04:12 PM

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Rashaak wrote:<BR> <DIV>K, skimed thru this again...still no comments from anyone from Test server, on the current "new" proposed patron system....Would like some solid insight on those that are using the new update on how its working out</DIV><BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P><BR>Look again. Wuphon's Reach/Snabbik has posted.</P> <P> </P> <P> </P>

Ethelwo

07-15-2005, 04:34 PM

<P>To much time is spent on guilds by the SOE development team. Guilds = just more choirs for a player to deal with. Whatever happened to just logging on to play and have fun? I simply can't understand why people dedicate significant play time for status points. Just one more level of tedium added to a game that has so little real content that everyone gets to L50 and has nothing to do but earn status points. This whole guild thing as developed by SOE is designed to keep everyone busy so they can wimp out on real content. No matter what SOE adds to, or subtracts from guilds it wont change the fact, that as done in this game, guilds are just more roach choirs for the masses.</P> <P>Look at Joe Bob he is L50 but spends all day, every day doing crafting writs for status. Man that sounds like real fun. Wow I am so impressed with SOEs idea of fun.</P>

tek2

07-15-2005, 05:08 PM

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Carryne wrote:<BR>I would like to see this change go to live but with some restrictions such as not being able to become a patron again for a month if you stop being a patron and restricting the number of patron changes a guild can make over a given period. I have a character that used to do writs but who I now just occasionally use for tradeskilling. I don't like being caught between the guilty feeling of not being able to drop the patron flag because of the guild xp loss and not wanting to play her as a main character at the moment. <BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE>this is the easiest solution here please follow through with this one. if you are patroned and de-patroned you can not be a patron again for a week, 2 weeks, a month .....whatever. this would stop the abusers. no need to come up with these complicatd formulas i see everyone trying to build here to look smart.<BR>

Isa

07-15-2005, 06:11 PM

<DIV><FONT color=#6633ff>this is the easiest solution here please follow through with this one. if you are patroned and de-patroned you can not be a patron again for a week, 2 weeks, a month .....whatever. this would stop the abusers. no need to come up with these complicatd formulas i see everyone trying to build here to look smart.<BR></FONT></DIV> <DIV>Your view is narrow sighted. This only stops one type of abuse and only to an extent. It still does not stop a larger guild from abusing the system. They can just have 12 do as many heritages as possible in a week, then the next 12, and then the next 12. People are coming up with complicated formulas because they see more than just the one aspect of abuse.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Discussing ideas and fleshing out the different ways of best implementing a new system is how they are going to come up with the best scenario for all. Just cause there is an easy way out, simple solution, does not make it the best. I have seen them do that too many times already. One of the first being something that totally nerfed my class (monk), for the sake of simplicity. Oh, there is a problem with any class being able to buff up agility and become unhittable? We will just nerf agility across the board, seems simple enough. Instead of looking at the real issue and coming up with a better plan of attack (buff stacking). Then we go through months and months of fixes, because they took the easy way out and chose what looked to be the simplest approach...</DIV>

BloodSmo

07-15-2005, 06:13 PM

Simple, When a patron leaves your guild goes into status debt, similar to what happens when you die. How much debt is the only issue, i would think 50% of the amount of status the person had that is leaving would be fair. This way if you are a high lvl guild and one of your big contributers leaves you wont go down in lvl.

Jelrak

07-15-2005, 06:13 PM

I agree- it seems the most intelligent solution is to put a lockout on patron status - its just seems sad that as in real life, we have to adjust rulesets to protect the system from the lowest common denominator. The majority of folks do not play this game with the exclusive mindset of "lets see how we can exploit the current system". What is a good idea presented by the development team has to be adjusted for the minority of the player base. Perhaps necessarily, but nonetheless sill dissapointing. <DIV> </DIV>

Reality

07-15-2005, 06:36 PM

<P>my 2copper... </P> <P>This is a tough one for sure.. there are a few things that come into play. We had several folks that had RL stuff and had to walk away from the game within a 3 month period. Unfortunately they at the time were the highest SP holders in the guild. We held onto them for 3 or 4 moths before finally dropping them worried about losing the 2 or 3 lvls we worked so hard to gain from 19-22. Side note we have a ton of patrons atm. </P> <P> This is where I would like to not have the lvl drop. If someone hasnt logged in for say 30days then let us drop them with no penalty. We had to start going above our pre set limit of patrons in order to continue to grow seeing this dead weight was not doing anything. </P> <P>On the other hand, I really dont want to have a revolving door of patrons. It takes away from all the folks that worked so hard to get us where we are. Makes all those writs that some grind out daily trivialized and and for the ones that camped for endless hours just to complete a heritage ...not for the item upon completion... but for the guild SP. Why camp for 8 hours for a named or search for days/week for the shards in EF if the next guy can do Foombys in an hour (depending on chomper) then remove him. </P> <P>This also brings me to people staying in guilds they are not happy in because the guild lvl will drop excessively. Let alone the angry mob that signs on the next day to see the guild dropped 2 lvls .. without taking into consideration that the other party only left to be happy and enjoy the game that THEY pay for. </P> <P>I want to reach lvl 30 guild because we worked hard for it .. not because we can take advantage of a system that promotes all guilds to be lvl 30 in the matter of a month or 2. </P> <P>There has to be some happy medium I hope SOE finds it =) </P> <P> Lizabeth </P> <P>Officer ~ Lucid Dream~ Innothule</P>

Thicket Tundrabog

07-15-2005, 07:12 PM

As leader of a medium-sized, family type guild, I really like the changes on test. * Someone leaving the guild will not feel guilty about guild status lost. * Inactive players will also not feel bad. They can return and become active again if they wish. * Casual players can become patrons, secure in the knowledge that they are not making a long-term commitment to gaining guild status points. * Players with maxxed-out mains can de-patron them and play new alt patrons. The bottom line is that this will make the game more FUN for folks in my guild. It's still unlikely that we will reach level 30, but at least we will continue to move forward, even if only at a slow pace. I understand people's concerns about guild status exploits. I'm personally not concerned because it would have little impact on my gameplay (unlike botters/farmers which DO impact me). Nevertheless, I think a one month lockout preventing someone that lost patron status from regaining it, is a sensible and hopefully easy solution to the most serious exploit concerns. <div></div>

Dajuuk

07-15-2005, 07:22 PM

<DIV>Please don't make it so there is no penalty for removing patron status. I like the idea of not removing the points they have already contributed to the guild. They should remain with the guild. Some ideas off the top of my head for allowing guild exp to stay with the guild but still discourage patron swapping. If somebody earlier in this thread all ready suggested any of them I appologize for not reading the entire thing before posting. </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <UL> <LI>What about an idea where if somebody leaves the guild or you remove patron status from somebody they still count towards the guilds total patron count for purposes of points allocated per quest for a lengthy period of time. You can remove them as a patron if you want but you wont see the benefit for 2-3 months down the road. This will effectively prevent people from being able to add and subract patrons everytime somebody is ready to complete a quest to maximize status. </LI> <LI>Taking that idea one step further, if you tie the counter to the last time somebody contributed points and only count patrons who have contributed status over a sufficiently long time period. So the exp per quest completion would be tied to the number of "recent" contributors rather than the designated patrons. Allow the system to work so that if somebody leaves the guild they still count as a contributor for the full time period and then drop off.</LI> <LI>Guild exp debt. Person Y leaves the guild with X number of status points. Rather than having the guild delevel or some such just give them a temporary exp penalty of Z to to work off over time. This remains consistant with the way that players level.</LI></UL> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Just my 2 cp.</DIV><p>Message Edited by Dajuuk on <span class=date_text>07-15-2005</span> <span class=time_text>08:25 AM</span>

Ruben

07-15-2005, 07:42 PM

<P>I really like the vested status approach.</P> <P>You must be a patron for a certain length of time in order for 100% of your guild status to stay with guild when you depatron. Maybe 10% at 1 week and increment it up to 100% at either 1 to 2 months.</P> <P>When you depatron, if you repatron then you must again become vested again. Even add a timer to how often you can repatron. Would love to see a timeframe where someone could revoke depatroning as long as they didnt leave the guild.</P> <P>Each person is only allowed so many amounts of repatroning with a guild, like 3 to 5 times maybe.</P> <P>This could be worked out to prevent massive powerleveling but at the same time prevent damage to guilds because a high level patron with mega status decided he needed to leave to join a power/raid guild. This seems to be the most commented reason I have seen.</P> <P>If you wanted to go one more step you could even add a lock timer to someone who deguilds before they could become a patron again.</P>

Stormdove

07-15-2005, 07:48 PM

<P>As the patron system now stands on the live servers guilds have to agonize over how many patrons should we have, should this person be a patron, and what if a high level patron stops playing or leaves the guild. This does not make the game fun. This is a really fun game to play and to all the people who say changing this would make our guild's accomplishments trivial I say--why?</P> <P>Do you measure your guild's accomplishments against other guilds? Or do you measure your accomplishments by how well you get a group together to take down that epic mob, how well you support each other in gearing up and finishing quests, or grinding out those writs to hit level 15 so people can buy that first pony?</P> <P>Our guild has worked hard to get where we are but we have run into problems with the patron system. We lost a high level patron to a raiding guild, we have high level patrons who have taken a hiatus from the game and may not be back so we have inactive patrons, and those of us who are patrons feel pressure to continue grinding those writs.</P> <P>Heritage quests are long difficult quests that often require help from guildmates, why the heck shouldn't every heritage quest done by a guild member not count toward status? What is really wrong with making someone a patron so they can contribute the status and then unpatron them so the writ grinders can still grind?</P> <P>It will not take away or trivialize the hard work already done. It will just make it a little easier and more fun in the future.</P> <P>Please take away the guild status xp loss when a patron leaves. Thank you</P>

Jelrak

07-15-2005, 08:07 PM

Don't know if this has already been suggested somewhere, but I feel it probably has - how about adding a personal penalty to status rather than a guild penalty- equivalent to the amount contributed to the guild. Sort of the equivalent of "losing face" so to speak. This would at least provide some penalty to folks attempting to exploit he system. If any penalty is executed to prevent exploitation perhaps it should be on the character level to be effective - not the global/guild level (as most posts I have seen suggest). It seems people are more hesitant to inflict a penalty on themselves, than on other folks, as we can see from general psychology and its patterns.

einar4

07-15-2005, 08:18 PM

<P> </P> <P> A compromise could be considered in which status is "Vested" into the guild over time. For instance: </P> <P> Initially, a patron's accomplishments add prestige to the guild, so that a commoner may say, "Clan Waka?" oh yes, that is the guild of Bruce the Fierce! </P> <P> But with time, commoners may say, "Clan Waka is a mighty clan, even the likes of Bruce the Fierce fought with them!" </P> <P> </P> <P> You see the distinction I hope. Over time the exploits of the individual add prestige to the guild itself. So you can't have a patron join on day 1, finish 5 heritage quests, then leave. But, a patron that has steadily added to the guild for months, then leaves for some reason does not negate the prestige he brought to the guild. </P> <P> </P>

Jelrak

07-15-2005, 08:31 PM

<P>I must say - I have seen many comments on the boards about the concept of "vested" status and the more I see it the more sense it makes as a solution for balancing the process as well as preventing an exploitation of the new proposed system. It allows contributions to have a meaningful and realistic impact on the status of a guild, without crippling the guilds by losing members. Realistically speaking it takes time for someones prestige for their accomplishments to gain recognition in a world without global on demand media.</P> <P> </P> <P> </P>

Ashlian

07-15-2005, 09:14 PM

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Jelrak wrote:<BR> <P>I must say - I have seen many comments on the boards about the concept of "vested" status and the more I see it the more sense it makes as a solution for balancing the process as well as preventing an exploitation of the new proposed system. It allows contributions to have a meaningful and realistic impact on the status of a guild, without crippling the guilds by losing members. Realistically speaking it takes time for someones prestige for their accomplishments to gain recognition in a world without global on demand media.</P> <BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P>As a member of a small guild, and when I say small, I mean like 10 actual members, though we all have a ton of alts, I would love to see some form of vesting. None of us are going anywhere, we're almost entirely RL family and friends, with a few long term friends from SWG and EQ1 in the mix. What hurt was knowing that once we hit the end of the heritage quests with our mains, we would have to grind writs into approximately 2008 to see guild level 30. We can organize occasional heritage weekends, where we work on one heritage quest, but most of us just don't have much time to play and being forced to do writs in very limited playtime was not the way we decided to go. Even with the guild earning heritage points for alts, we would still advance very slowly compared to a guild that has people who can be more dedicated to earning status, in one way or another. I fully expect tons of guilds to get to level 30 and beyond way before we do. This just allows us to put "eventually" into a timeframe not measured best by carbon dating. </P> <P>A form of vesting would allow limitations on repatroning, since it would be pointless for a guild to patron someone one week for a heritage quest and then depatron them the next week if they wouldn't vest the full status amount until they had been a patron for a couple of months. Even if they get a little added bonus by having levels of vesting, so that they could get 20% of the xp from a heritage quest within two weeks of someone becoming a patron, it would require five times as many people as the guild who just waited out the vesting periods for each set of patrons. So my little guild would only need 12 patrons for every 60 a big guild pushed through, unless they were willing to wait it out for the far greater potential status reward provided by full vesting. </P> <P>And for people who are willing to do something like all the quests requiring Everling over and over....MORE POWER TO YOU! I would rather have my tongue pierced with an icepick than do Everling more than the absolutely necessary number of times to get everyone's main done. If you're willing to masochistically endure doing the same thing 500 times, I think you should be rewarded. I'm not sure with what, but with something.</P> <P>Speaking of which, more nice, expensive in terms of money AND status guild reward items and titles would be one of the biggest ways to reward the people willing to grind far beyond the max heritage quests. Guild rewards as they stand are pathetically few, and I speak as someone obsessed with housing who sneaks into FP to buy their status items, too. For the people not interested in housing, there is nearly nothing.</P> <P>Ashlian Liadan, 42 Fury, 32 Tailor of Mistmoore<BR></P> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>edited to add a word I somehow missed :smileytongue:</DIV><p>Message Edited by Ashlian on <span class=date_text>07-15-2005</span> <span class=time_text>10:15 AM</span>

Baccalarium

07-15-2005, 09:35 PM

<P>A Premise:<BR><BR>A1) Having some crafting alts shouldn't effect the way the guild levels.<BR>A2) Guild level should reflect the guilds ability to attract and retain members willing to contribute to the guild level.<BR>A3) Players should be encouraged to contribute not discouraged from it.<BR><BR>B) Keep the patron tag<img src="/smilies/9d71f0541cff0a302a0309c5079e8dee.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" />or change it to a non-patron tag)<BR>The patron tag allows alts and crafters that won't be contributed to SP, to be not-tagged and not harm the guild.<BR>Not automatically patroning a player allows new members a trial time in the guild in which they can leave with no harm done.<BR><BR>C) To be consistent with manner of other advancements in the game, negative impacts to status should incur status debt. <BR> If a player leaves the guild, the status debt should equal to that players contibution to the guild should be incurred. The debt may be worked off at no quicker than a 50% factor, or decay over the greater of either 2 weeks, or 36weeks * (leaving patrons status contribution / sum of all current patron's status contribution). Thus a patron that contibuted all of the guild status, then it takes 36 weeks to recover, a patron contibuted less than 1/12 the status then just 2weeks. Note this is relative remaining patrons so in case of all patrons leaving the full penalty duration is incurred.<BR>If a player does not leave the guild, they cannot be depatroned. This requires the patron status formula not so highly count against having large numbers of patrons though.<BR><BR>D) Patron status formula<BR><BR>Currently after 12 patrons the status contribution is dived by the number of patrons. This tends to promote only tagging the most efficient 12 toon core.<BR><BR>If you wanted it to be useful to add a patron if that player would be at least 80% as productive as the existing patrons you come up with a chart something like:<BR>number of patrons/status contribution divisor<BR>12/12<BR>13/12.8<BR>14/13.6<BR>15/14.4<BR>18/16.6<BR>19/17.4<BR>24/21<BR>25/21.6<BR>30/25.1<BR>31/25.7<BR>40/31.6<BR>49/37.2<BR>50/37.8<BR><BR>So if you have 24 patrons and the 25 with be 80% as effective as the prior 24 or 60% as effective as the core 12 then its worth adding the patron. Yes a large guild with 50 patrons operating at 100%, would get a boost of about 30% to thier XP. The 80% number is just a guess at a reasonable number.<BR><BR>Still if a 12 man guild all patrons all swapped to alts they would be penalized by a hefty factor in building status with their new toons while their old toons sat dormant. I'd like to not see that penalty.<BR><BR>E) Tagging accounts as opposed to toons.<BR>If tag an account rather than toon, then the accounts highest status toon in the guild contributes to the guild status. An alt cannot contribute to status of the guild till it has built up as much effective status as the main. Probably show the status of the alt on the panel but precede it by an indicator that its an alt not yet contributing.</P> <P><BR><BR> </P>

RiotActer

07-15-2005, 11:24 PM

I don't think you should make the Guild Leaders job easier... There should still be some skill involved in the Patron system. Getting to the highest guild level should be feat, not something done on auto pilot. If a patron LEAVES the guild, all status stays. If a patron is removed from "patron status" by a guild leader, that status is gone forever. Said player joins another guild his/her guild status is now zero. This will avoid the "Let me log my alt in and complete the PGT quest... Unpatron my level 50 (who has 66,000 status) and patron the alt. That way we keep our 12 patrons, get max status for quest, then switch back my main as a patron." No timers, cause again that will just lead to abuse. (Yes, I have alts that I haven't played for a month or two, and yes they have herritage quest stated. I have no problem leaving a alt logged out for a month.) AND: No blindsides by 10 patrons leaving at once. <div></div>

MRRX

07-15-2005, 11:59 PM

<P>The only problem I see is the eventual "Every guild is level 30". Maybe it's time for guild status decay, where you need to earn a certain amount in guild status each week to stay at the current guild level. </P> <P>Or maybe they will simply implement that in the future if too many guilds reach level 30.</P> <P><A href="http://eqjournal.blogspot.com" target=_blank>http://eqjournal.blogspot.com</A></P> <P> </P>

Kirotaan

07-16-2005, 12:02 AM

See though people will still do quests that give them SP anyways to maintain houses, horses, buying habits etc so i dunno. <div></div>

Allurana

07-16-2005, 12:27 AM

<DIV>I would like to know the original intent of the patron system. Why was it designed the way it is currently? Not the losing the points for depatronizing or guild removal but the part that everyone has talked about forever, the math formula used.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I think that we could learn alot about this new proposed change if we look into why 12 patrons is the "sweet spot" and more than 36 is very damaging to point progression. I believe in the "strength in numbers" concept in general but the way the math formula works currently it is very determental, aka not fun.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>So I would like to ask, "what does it mean to be a patron?" in terms of the original system design. Was it really intended that 12 people in a guild are "better" or "more valued" than the rest????</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Although I really like the idea of the proposed changes (it will help our guild of 300+ members immensely), I also believe a more balanced changed would be to leave the guild point loss in place if someone leaves the guild BUT make everyone in the guild a patron by default and use the math formula that is used for 12 patrons no matter how many guild members are doing guild status activities.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>The guild status earned per guild member will still mean something. There will still be an inter-guild politics piece to the equation since if you lost members that contributed heavily there would be a penalty. And a big guild like ours would no longer have to choose between leveling up VERY slowly and essentially wasting a lot of heritage quest points (which we are doing right now with 70+ patrons) OR choosing to alienate most of the guild by limiting the number of patrons and basically sending the message, "if you are not uber hardcore committed to grinding these points then you are not as valuable to the guild as somone that will do it".</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Thanks,</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Allurana</DIV> <DIV>Founder and Guild Leader of Casual Alliance (6th largest guild in all of EQ2)</DIV> <DIV>Blackburrow</DIV>

Hermex D'illusionai

07-16-2005, 12:36 AM

<P>You'll forgive me if this has been posted elswhere in this thread but I did not read the whole thing. </P> <P>Anyway, I was thinking about the issue of people just patronizing folks who are finishing HQ's and then depatronizing them after to allow the writ grinders a lower divisor on their gxp and it hit me. Maybe it should be that anyone who completes a Heritage Quest while in a guild should garner some GXP whether they are a patron or not. I don't think it should be nearly as much as is currently being handed out when one is completed but perhaps a set percentage of the total status gain whether you hold patron status in your guild or not. </P> <P>The HQ's are clearly huge status but they are finite where writs can be done indefinately. It would also stand to reason that completing one should get "some attention" from the powers that be as they are quite lengthy and difficult. </P> <P>I'm thinking allowing everyone in the guild to contribute, at least partially with respect to doing HQ's, would be a good thing and it might help instill the need to only patronize those who are sincerely interested in gaining extra GXP for the guild by writs. </P> <P>/shrug Just a thought.</P>

iro

07-16-2005, 12:44 AM

Great now every guild will be lv 30 in a few weeks.... so much for challanging gameplay. Soe please dont change the status system. It was fine before. Stop bending over for crying noobies and ruining the game. I forsee a massive abuse of this new system and even not what it is doing it making it easier for everyone to get guild xp. THIS GAME DOESNT NEED TO BE ANY MORE EASIER... <div></div>

CoebyWu

07-16-2005, 01:11 AM

<DIV><BR></DIV> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Allurana wrote:<BR> <DIV>I would like to know the original intent of the patron system. Why was it designed the way it is currently? Not the losing the points for depatronizing or guild removal but the part that everyone has talked about forever, the math formula used.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I think that we could learn alot about this new proposed change if we look into why 12 patrons is the "sweet spot" and more than 36 is very damaging to point progression. I believe in the "strength in numbers" concept in general but the way the math formula works currently it is very determental, aka not fun.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>So I would like to ask, "what does it mean to be a patron?" in terms of the original system design. Was it really intended that 12 people in a guild are "better" or "more valued" than the rest????</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Allurana</DIV> <DIV>Founder and Guild Leader of Casual Alliance (6th largest guild in all of EQ2)</DIV> <DIV>Blackburrow</DIV> <BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <DIV>The original design was to even the playing field, for guilds of any size.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>All status is divided by the amount of patrons. This means that regardless of size, all guilds had the same opportunity to increase guild level. 12 is only a minimum, meaning if you have under 12 patrons, it is still divided by 12. If you have 50 patrons, it is divided by 50.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Basically, what this means is that all patrons should be contributing as much as each other. If you have 20 patrons that contribute 20k, then you have 20k that goes to guild level and everyone feels like they helped. If you have 20 patrons, and only one patron contributes 20k, then 20k/20 or 1k goes to guild level.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Now, most people will say that having fewer patrons is better, but that's not technically true. It doesn't matter how many patrons you have, what is better is the higher percentage of patrons that equally contribute. But because of this, it is easier to manage fewer patrons to make sure they are contributing. For example, it is easier to make sure 15 patrons are contributing compared to having 100 patrons contributing. It's almost guaranteed that having 100 patrons will be inefficient because it's harder to make sure they are all contributing.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>In your example, of using 12 as the divisor in all guilds, it is completely unfair and makes it much easier for larger guilds to increase status and guild level.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Regardless of how they change it, it should be equal for guilds of all sizes. Guilds with 20 members should have as much opportunity to increase guild level the same as a guild that has 75 members.<BR></DIV>

Vega Brimsto

07-16-2005, 01:21 AM

<P>Hail to all of our fine Qeynosian guilds (and to the hard working guilds from Freeport as well OOC),</P> <P>Vegalas Brimmstone here, Guild Master of the Shadow Slayers (Antonia Bayle roleplaying server, guild level 23, approaching 24), humbly requesting to be heard by our city’s administrators (Game Developers) and guild members from across our great city.<SPAN> </SPAN>Posting is a rare occurrence for me, but I visit here daily.<SPAN> </SPAN>The news of there no longer being guild decay in our city, however, is something that I must speak on publicly or else I will regret not doing so.<SPAN> </SPAN>I will post my thoughts on multiple boards, and I apologize in advance if this is not the proper venue.</P> <P>The Shadow Slayers have been in Qeynos since the city gates were opened, focusing on balance and stability within our Patron system, just as others have mentioned above, for we wish to be standing and thriving long after other guilds have diminished and left our lands.<SPAN> </SPAN>We do our best to teach our members dedication and loyalty to not only our guild but to Norrath (EQ2) as well, which I’m sure our city administrators can appreciate.<SPAN> </SPAN>We have endured the tough times of patrons leaving to seek other endeavors, and yet we press on for our Queen, regaining any ground that may have been lost, wishing to prove ourselves worthy of any prestige (guild level) that she might so graciously bestow upon us.</P> <P>It came as a shock today when I heard the news that the prestige of guilds would no longer fluctuate within our city to accurately portray those guilds with successful leadership and proper patron retention.<SPAN> </SPAN>I completely respect all of the opinions of others, but I speak now as a guild leader who has poured his heart into building something (something that I very much wished to be meaningful in gaming terms) now for the better part of a year (since before launch), taking every precaution to ensure its success and stability for those who choose to put their trust and efforts into the Shadow Slayers (about 50% of our membership are currently Patrons).<SPAN> </SPAN>We have therefore been in no hurry to gain prestige (we spend countless hours in storyline roleplaying and roster very few powergamers), but rather have been enjoying each step of the journey, knowing with full confidence that our persistency and longevity would ultimately shine in the end, and that it would all have been achieved under a solid foundation that would not be broken with time.</P> <P>Guild decay and progression is a natural part of a healthy, living, breathing, city society (an immersive world, something crucially important on our particular server), and it rewards those guilds who are able to sustain and maintain membership at a high level long term.<SPAN> </SPAN>We have seen guilds thrive and then crumble, just as would be expected, and we continue to press on.<SPAN> </SPAN>Am I now to hear that no guild, regardless of member retention, can EVER be reduced in status or rank in our Queen’s eyes?<SPAN> </SPAN>That we can now just mindlessly reduce our Patrons down to a dozen without care, or I could even simply remove my entire Slayer roster all together without my guild’s prestige suffering any effect from this abhorrent decision whatsoever?<SPAN> </SPAN>That now I can just de-patron, patron, and re-patron any member at will as heritages and writs are about to be completed by whomever in the guild, just making sure that at the precise moment of completion our patron number is “12” for optimal progression?<SPAN> </SPAN>Surely I have been misinformed, friends.<SPAN> </SPAN></P> <P>Halcyon Affinity, a guild that I have limited knowledge of, but for whom I have much respect, recently was the first to obtain level 30 where we are located.<SPAN> </SPAN>Last I checked they had a roster of approximately 100 members, 50 of which were patrons.<SPAN> </SPAN>They are stable, they worked very hard to achieve this milestone, and I salute them for their efforts in doing it the smart way.<SPAN> </SPAN>With this upcoming change, however, a level 30 guild could completely implode from the inside (may Tunare forbid this from ever happening of course), with everyone but a few members leaving for other endeavors, and they would still be considered a level 30 guild in Qeynos while other guilds are perfectly healthy and in active service to our Queen?<SPAN> </SPAN>Qeynosians, this cannot be.<SPAN> </SPAN>There must be a system that accurately represents and rewards guilds consisting of patrons who have careers of loyal service, not simply a system that basically generates a list of high level guilds whose hard-working membership has long since come and gone.</P> <P>I urge those in power to reconsider this monumental change to our world.<SPAN> </SPAN>I have praised you in every decision you have made in a positive manner to those of my number, never complaining, always supporting.<SPAN> </SPAN>Now I must ask that you please fully consider the impact of this change prior to implementing such a drastic alteration.<SPAN> </SPAN>The legitimacy of our entire guild society depends on a proper decision being made on this matter.<SPAN> </SPAN>As always, the Shadow Slayers will support you in your judgment and continually strive to "Shine On" for all of Norrath.</P> <P>Respectfully, for the Light and the Queen,</P> <P><IMG src="http://www.faullen.com/vegalas.gif"></P>

Allurana

07-16-2005, 02:00 AM

<DIV> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Allurana wrote:<BR> <DIV>I would like to know the original intent of the patron system. Why was it designed the way it is currently? Not the losing the points for depatronizing or guild removal but the part that everyone has talked about forever, the math formula used.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I think that we could learn alot about this new proposed change if we look into why 12 patrons is the "sweet spot" and more than 36 is very damaging to point progression. I believe in the "strength in numbers" concept in general but the way the math formula works currently it is very determental, aka not fun.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>So I would like to ask, "what does it mean to be a patron?" in terms of the original system design. Was it really intended that 12 people in a guild are "better" or "more valued" than the rest????</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Allurana</DIV> <DIV>Founder and Guild Leader of Casual Alliance (6th largest guild in all of EQ2)</DIV> <DIV>Blackburrow</DIV> <BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <DIV>The original design was to even the playing field, for guilds of any size.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>All status is divided by the amount of patrons. This means that regardless of size, all guilds had the same opportunity to increase guild level. 12 is only a minimum, meaning if you have under 12 patrons, it is still divided by 12. If you have 50 patrons, it is divided by 50.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Basically, what this means is that all patrons should be contributing as much as each other. If you have 20 patrons that contribute 20k, then you have 20k that goes to guild level and everyone feels like they helped. If you have 20 patrons, and only one patron contributes 20k, then 20k/20 or 1k goes to guild level.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Now, most people will say that having fewer patrons is better, but that's not technically true. It doesn't matter how many patrons you have, what is better is the higher percentage of patrons that equally contribute. But because of this, it is easier to manage fewer patrons to make sure they are contributing. For example, it is easier to make sure 15 patrons are contributing compared to having 100 patrons contributing. It's almost guaranteed that having 100 patrons will be inefficient because it's harder to make sure they are all contributing.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>In your example, of using 12 as the divisor in all guilds, it is completely unfair and makes it much easier for larger guilds to increase status and guild level.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Regardless of how they change it, it should be equal for guilds of all sizes. Guilds with 20 members should have as much opportunity to increase guild level the same as a guild that has 75 members.<BR></DIV> <P></P> <DIV><A href="http://www.bideancaer.com/" target=_blank><FONT face=verdana color=#c8c1b5>Zengrok• BideanCaer(30)• Warlock(50)• Sage(50)• Innothule</FONT><BR></A></DIV></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>What you wrote makes 100% complete sense. I was asking those questions as to bring to light the real reason why SOE is proposing this new change.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>That reason is that guilds, typically, do not play the system the way it was designed as you eloquently described. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Most guilds either stayed small OR kept the patrons to the bare minimum and burned through the levels because they maximized thier status points by making sure their patrons "worked" hard at the system as it was designed.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>So I would like to SOE give the subscribers the reason/s that they are proposing this change.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I suspect the reason has something to do with the many posts already in this thread, "we lost some key people and we lost lots of levels and the guild disintegrated" posts.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I think SOE made a fatal flaw when they made the Heritage quests give so many guild status points. Read the previous posts and it is painfully obvious this was the major contributor to this problem, if this truly is the reason. I don't blame high level people if they get very bummed out with the game if they committed so much to one guild, then see it fall apart on them, have to start up with another guild AND then not really have an honest opportunity to contribute to that guild because they are out of heritage quests to complete and their new guild is doing the 12 patrons maximization game.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Trust me I know about this in great detail, my guild has lost many good players and lost many levels because we made a CHOICE to be a guild of equal opportunity and let everyone contribute if they wish to.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I think the real fix Sony should put in place is simply this.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>MAKE EVERYONE BE A PATRON!!!! Do not let the guild choose and play games with the math formula.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Patron system as implemented is silly in regards to what a lot of people see it as. Guild members choosing to be patrons to further the efforts of the guild to improve that guilds status with city and such. So that means the actions and activities of all the other guild members don't mean anything? Think about it in regards to a roleplaying aspect, the city just ignores those other guild members? The city factions are blind to it somehow because those members aren't wearing their official guild patron badge on their chest?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Sony you made a good system and you almost got it 100% right. Make it easy on yourselves, just remove the patron checkbox and make everyone be a patron. Problem solved. If a guild falls apart because one or two people leave, it sounds like that guild wasn't too stable to begin with.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Thanks,</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Allurana</DIV> <DIV>Founder and Guild Leader of Casual Alliance</DIV> <DIV>Blackburrow</DIV>

Jink

07-16-2005, 02:48 AM

<span><blockquote><hr> <p>Keep in mind that this change is currently just on Test. That means we want to test it a bit in practice and see what it means before sending it live.</p> <p>There are other changes to the patron system were are considering as well, so this change may or may not go live in and of itself.</p> <p>It's certainly a somewhat controversial move, with benefits for a lot of people but also the potential for abuse. But then, we're often faced with the choice between doing nice things for players and facing the likelihood that somebody is going to abuse it in some way.</p> <p>While the concept of guilds losing levels when patrons leave makes sense in a practical way, it's also different from other progression models we have in game. Your character doesn't lose levels when you die or fail a crafting combine, so it seemed strange to have the same thing happen to a guild, especially when guilds in our game are intended to advance just like characters do.</p> <p>At any rate, please keep the comments coming so that we can continue to review the pros and cons of this potential change.</p> <p>===========================Steve Danuser, a.k.a. MoorgardGame Designer, EverQuest II </p> <div></div><hr></blockquote> Good changes, maybe bring down the reward in status for heritage quests to cut down on potential abuse. Instead of 5k or whatever it is, based on 12 patrons. Maybe make it 1k. The idea being people wont bother exploiting heritages if they dont find it more effecient than writs.</span><div></div>

Yomarbalthas

07-16-2005, 02:50 AM

<P><FONT color=#ffffff>I will add the most important comments I made on the Guilds Forum, to make sure the devs won't overlook this:</FONT></P> <P><STRONG>Concrete questions about the new Patron System:</STRONG></P> <DIV><STRONG>1.</STRONG> <STRONG>Hiring status point earning services </STRONG>How will you prevent that people hire the services of others to get their guild level up? I'm talking both in-game plat and real-life money here. Has your EULA taken this into account? How does this work on Station Exchange Servers? How does this work on non-Station Exchange servers?</DIV> <DIV><STRONG>2. Rendering planning of number of patrons useless </STRONG>Please explain why a guild should have more than 12 Patrons if there are no risks or whatsoever involved in depatronizing a member? What happened to the careful planning of the right number of Patrons?</DIV> <DIV><STRONG>3. Sky-rocketing sales of temporary guild memberships </STRONG>What are you going to do about guilds that sell temporary membership just to enable people to buy a nice level 30 magic carpet, only to leave the guild right after that again? How does this work on Station Exchange Servers? How does this work on non-Station Exchange servers?</DIV> <DIV><STRONG>4. Sky-rocketing sales of guilds </STRONG>How will you prevent people selling entire (dying) guilds that have a high status? How does this work on Station Exchange Servers? How does this work on non-Station Exchange servers?</DIV> <DIV><STRONG>5. Rendering past accomplishments useless </STRONG>How do you explain this enormous change to guilds that have deliberately chosen a long-term policy of stability, slowing their leveling on purpose, while it now turns out all their carefully planned policy was in vain and they could as well have went for a short-term policy of speed? This is not a nerf. This is a super nerf! You are effectively nihilizing all efforts of guilds like ours, that have continuously focussed on long-term planning. Had we known this a few months ago, we'd have been level 30 for a long long time...</DIV> <DIV> <DIV> <DIV><STRONG>6. Favouring zerg guilds</STRONG> Larger guilds obviously can put more people on patron rotation than smaller guilds. Wasn't one of the basic concepts of EQ2 not exactly the opposite (hence the maximum raid size being 24)? Quantity above quality?</DIV> <DIV><STRONG>7. Downgrading the epic scale of the game</STRONG> Now everybody can reach guild level 30. So when all guilds are level 30, what's so special about being level 30? How can we prove the loyalty factor of our members and the guild's general stability to the outside world?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> <DIV><STRONG>SOE's argument (raisen by Moorguard):</STRONG></DIV> <DIV><EM><FONT color=#ffffff>While the concept of guilds losing levels when patrons leave makes sense in a practical way, it's also different from other progression models we have in game. Your character doesn't lose levels when you die or fail a crafting combine, so it seemed strange to have the same thing happen to a guild, <U>especially when guilds in our game are intended to advance just like characters do.</U></FONT></EM></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ffffff></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><EM><STRONG><FONT color=#ffffff>This way of reasoning is totally incorrect. What you conveniently forget here, is that guilds are a group effort per se, while a single player is a single player effort per se. You are now treating a group of people as one entity (a single player), which is a contradictio in terminis, as a group of people consists of more than one player by default! </FONT>Guilds are inherently dynamic, and this should be reflected in their level.</STRONG></EM></DIV></DIV></DIV></DIV><p>Message Edited by Yomarbalthasar on <span class=date_text>07-15-2005</span> <span class=time_text>03:59 PM</span>

Tatali

07-16-2005, 02:57 AM

Personally, I don't like the change as its presented. I like the idea that they're making the guild exp system more forgiving, but from what I read this is the worst way they could do it. Honestly, as this is written they should just scrap patrons all together and make every writ done give its full value in status to the player and a fixed % of that status to the guild. If you can and and subtract patrons at will without any penelty there is nothing to stop you from only ever having 12 flagged patrons to get the maximum exp towards your guild. Get patron flag, do a writ, give up flag. Rinse and repeat. Even adding a timer on flagging and reflagging of patrons would be just a crude bandaid to 'balance' the system. Much like the whole combat engine, just scrap the entire current guild exp system and rework it from the ground up in a more logical and forgiving manner. I'm not against doing something to fix the awful patron system as it stands now. I'd really like to see it made more user friendly and remove the griefing elements, as well as getting that UI display for writ factions that were were promised months ago. Throwing clumsy workarounds into the system isn't going to be the best solution for the long run. <div></div>

MirageKnight

07-17-2005, 12:36 AM

<DIV><FONT color=#ffff00>Personally I like the idea of less penalty than now, but I believe it's fair to say there should be some penalty.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ff9900><STRONG></STRONG></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><STRONG><FONT color=#ff9900></FONT></STRONG> </DIV> <DIV><STRONG><FONT color=#ff9900>I come of with some idea of how penalty should be implemented than no penalty on changing patrons around.</FONT></STRONG></DIV> <DIV><STRONG><FONT color=#ff9900></FONT></STRONG> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ff9900><STRONG>Idea 1</STRONG></FONT></DIV> <DIV><U><FONT color=#ff9900>Percentage Distribution and Personal Capacity</FONT></U></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>All of standing point earned wont turn into guild xp immediately, but % of it.</DIV> <DIV>Rest of "excess" standing point earned is manually transfered into guild xp with cap.</DIV> <DIV>1000 standing point cap per week, as example.</DIV> <DIV>Longer he/she been patron, larger the capacity. (to avoid keep changing patrons for only doing Heritage Quest)</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>pro</DIV> <DIV>Guild can not switch patrons in short run.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>con</DIV> <DIV>Guild can be lazy and just give point little by little only doing HQ in long run.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><STRONG><FONT color=#ff9900>Idea 2</FONT></STRONG></DIV> <DIV><U><FONT color=#ff9900>Status Personal Capacity</FONT></U></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Longer he/she has been patron, larger size of capacity.</DIV> <DIV>This capacity allows how much of standing of he/she hold won't be penalized and removed from guild xp if he/she demoted from patron.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>For example,</DIV> <DIV>60,000 standing char holding 50,000 capacity because he has been patron for long time.</DIV> <DIV>IF he quit being patron, only 50,000 of his standing point stays with guild, 10,000 gone, instead of entire 60,000 pt as is now.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>pro</DIV> <DIV>This wont allow Heritage repeating to get guild xp unless that guild want to wait long enough to make each patrons status capacity incrased to be able to remove without penalty. Probably wiser to get some profit and get new active patron should give more xp than waiting.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>con</DIV> <DIV>Personal status capacity should be counted and increased accordingly from when he/she become patron, not the day of patch implemented. Now, I am not sure this has been recorded. Probably fair to say when he/she joined the guild if this hasnt been recorded for 1st time.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV><STRONG><FONT color=#ff9900>Idea 3</FONT></STRONG></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ff9900>Guild Exp Vitality</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Unlike normal vitality, this only works as when patron demoted, then it uses Guild Exp Vitality matched the loss.</DIV> <DIV>Guild vitality regen very slowly.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>pro</DIV> <DIV>This avoid guild that do mass number of easy HQ and remove all at once.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>con</DIV> <DIV>In long run, it still allows repeating HQ but loooong run.</DIV>

Nature

07-17-2005, 12:49 AM

Why not just make it simple and have a 7 day lock out when changing patrons? Seems this would get ride of the notion people are having about hotswapping patrons for heritage status. Maybe even make it 14 days. This will give the guilds a way to axe dead characters without losing the status in a resonable manner.

Danedori

07-17-2005, 01:57 AM

<DIV>Another way that would prevent swapping patrons just to maximize status would be to make it so that the guild loses any status earned by a patron in the last 30 days before he leaves or loses patron status. If someone is added as a patron just before finishing a heritage quest, they would have to stay a patron for 30 days in order for the guild to hold onto the status, preventing quick swapping of patrons. But it wouldn't penalize a guild severely if someone left the guild.</DIV>

Feaw

07-17-2005, 09:11 PM

<DIV>While I agree guild levels should take hard work and I dont like the idea of and exploit being available here at the same time I hate that patrons hold something over a guild's head. If we keep the current system then patrons need to be made to see the responsibility of their position and perhaps they should have a penalty of some kind for removing them selves from a guild once they have taken on the roll of patron. I see so many newbies in the guild chirping oh I wanna be a patron! Heck even give them a warning box and an are you sure you want to do this box but something has to be done about the manipulations by patron players over guild leaders.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV> </DIV>

Kizzmet

07-17-2005, 10:11 PM

<P>This only thing this change is going to accomplish is making the guild level, something that all of us (the patrons) has up to now (when they implement it) <STRONG>worked our butts</STRONG> off to achieve and felt<STRONG> great pride</STRONG> in our guild level mean <STRONG>NOTHING </STRONG>but cosmetic value. </P> <P>If this is to be implemented, then perhaps consider re-instituting guild decay to balance it. This way patrons need to keep working at attain the level. Only issue would be repeatedly losing level 30, since once you hit level 30, you can not bank any xp into the level.</P> <p>Message Edited by Kizzmet on <span class=date_text>07-17-2005</span> <span class=time_text>12:48 PM</span>

Tankpulle

07-17-2005, 11:14 PM

I'm not sure if anyone has said this yet but 7 pages of replies is just too much to read. I've been thinking of ways to prevent easy/unfair guild leveling with this patch, and the only thing i can think of is to cancel status being gained from heritage quests. This way guilds can't quickly patron any player who is about to turn in a HQ and then depatron him. We wont have to confuse things with timers on players who were already patroned and stuff like that. If a guild wants to patron someone when HQ's don't count as SP, then "so what." They can go do writ raids as a "whole guild" and gain status, then return to their regular every day 12 patrons and keep the status from the writ raid. Writs are the #1 way to level up a guild anyways, HQ's are just a consilation prize. Siddasyo Tankpuller Highkeep Server Co-Leader of Moonlight Raiders <div></div>

Kutark

07-18-2005, 12:58 AM

<DIV>Frankly i'm rather annoyed with the whole system as it stands.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>There are other problems which i dont think will be addressed in this patch.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Frankly, I think that someone who has acquired guild status points should be able to transfer them to a new guild. I don't think its the persons responsibility to the guild, i think its the guild's responsibility to keep the person. Why should i be penalized because i joined a guild and either the guild's direction changed, or they weren't able to provide me the content i would like to pursue?</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>Maybe im on the other side of the issue. But, i think the guild should be judged on its current members, if someone left your guild to pursue other interests, deal with it. If you want a level 30 guild you shouldnt expect it to be a casual members guild, its most likely going to be an active raiding guild. If you're so lucky as to have a group of friends that stay to the end, then by all means, keep your casual level 30 guild.</DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV>I'm glad that you at least can keep your personal status points if those didnt transfer i probably wouldnt be in a guild.</DIV>

themysterious

07-18-2005, 06:26 AM

<span><blockquote><hr>SavinDwarf wrote:<div>*sigh* .....</div> <div> </div> <div>I have read through as many of the posts as I could and, I have to admit, I'm very disappointed. It looks like almost everyone read the patch notes and, despite the fact that the patch notes are very sketchy at best, jumped to the conclusion of how it must work and how it could be fixed.</div> <div> </div> <div>Could we possibily have someone on test make a post of how the change actually works. I suggest that most of the posters in this thread go and read the notes again, I think you will see that it tells us almost nothing except :</div> <div> </div> <div>"<font size="2">- Guilds no longer lose status or levels when a patron leaves the guild or ceases to be a patron. Thus, guilds never lose the levels they have already earned. "</font></div> <p>that is all we have been told. BUT we also know its on test. So if this is important to you, LOG ON TO TEST and see how it works.</p> <p>For instance, some of the threads have talked about the potential exploits of having players patron and depatron... how do you know that a player can be returned top patron status? You don't, it doesn';t tell us how it works. So 90% of these threads are almost pointless discussions because none of us knows how it works.</p> <p>SO.... PLEASE!!!! can some one on test who has tried the new system tell us how it works. Then we can start discussing what's wrong with the idea. Or perhaps even a SOE rep can explain this in a bit more detail.</p> <p>The questions are: </p> <p>1) What do we mean by "leave the guild". Does that mean the character is no longer a member of the guild? I assume it does.</p> <p>2) Can a character that has left the guild rejoin the guild?</p> <p>3) Can a player that has "left the guild": rejoin and become a patron again? are there any restrictions?</p> <p>4) If a player is "de-patroned" does it still work the way it does today? or is it the same as "left the guild"?</p> <p>i bet there are a lot more questions....</p> <div></div><hr></blockquote> I quite regularly test on test, and I am an avid bug reporter on live. But something like this is incredibly hard for most people to test on test... its not like you can just up and create a guild... magically suck in some status points, and then disband yourself. Even established test guilds would be hesitant to start disbanding/de-patroning people just to test...</span><div></div>

ryno

07-18-2005, 10:36 AM

I just really see no way that this can go live as is... I agree that it is frustrating to lose patrons with alot of status BUT being a patron has got to mean something. We are a small a guild who has fought through many high level patrons leaving the guild and still continue to be the highest level guild on lavastorm due to the hard work and dedication of our current patrons... If this goes live all of the hard work will mean absolutely nothing because now any guild on the server will have a much easier and expoitable path to 30. Not having the roster to raid alot, guild level is something we took pride in, even though SOE has really provided NO viable reward to level 30 guilds, it was still something we could be first at and something to work for. Yes, you now have the opportunity to sink tons of money into a mount that is largely just for show, but other than that nothing.... and now all of the hours doing writs and HQs wont mean much. I sincerely hope that SOE implements some sort of checks and balances to the system. I think it is a great idea to not delevel the guild upon losing a patron but there has got to be SOME penalty whether it be debt or limitiations on patroning/ depatroning people. IMO the current system was based upon the fact that being a guild patron required more responsibility and more work. If this is taken away then why have the system at all? This change would be incredibly demoralizing to our guild and i would implore SOE to listen to the many great posts and ideas in these threads. here's hoping all our prior work wont be meaningless. <div></div>

Culann Heartsto

07-18-2005, 11:38 AM

Was thinking..can give you a excellent reason for this system to go through, based on my own guild as a example.. Got 2 members of my guild who have worked very hard to add status to level the guild up..and both have done a SIGNIFICANT amount of Heritage quests...however..they DO still have some to complete...least 6 per person. Guess what? They're BOTH corpsmen in the US Navy, serving as combat medics to a contingent of Marines. Guess what else? They're being DEPLOYED to Iraq in under a month. Why does this system help? A) The guild is not stuck with 2 members who cannot contribute status while they are off. B) The hard work and effort they put into the guild doesn't get lost if we depatron them to replace them in their absence with 2 current ly active players. C) Their status as Patrons can be reachieved simply by rePatroning them once their 7 month ToD is up, without resorting to having more than the optimal number and having to take the hit in optimal gain. (Optimal number is 12 -- my guild has 13 total, and one is slated to be removed ASAP since they have a relatively minute amount of status contributed in relation to the other 12) Ergo it's a very good thing in this example, for us to be able to DePatron those 2 corpsmen, allow them to leave their status in the guild, and come back and be rePatroned later on, without hurting the guild, OR the hard work and effort they put in accruing the status they did to help us gain guild level 20. With the vast number of guilds out there, across multiple servers..I'm sure my guild is not the only one with similiar circumstances, or situations in which similiar concepts rise and require something like the forthcoming change to concisely and adequately meet the need. As I have said many places so far, I'm extremely glad to see this change coming, and I cannot wait for it to go live...the absolute sooner the better IMO.

Jan It

07-18-2005, 12:55 PM

Another idea, maybe mentiones above already, but didn´t want to check it all again: Charge the guild 10k or so status points for every patronizing act. That would be very easy to implement and would stop excessive patron hopping. <div></div>

Ashlian

07-18-2005, 08:18 PM

<P>I honestly love the idea of vesting. That takes away the need for penalties, because no status is ever taken away, you just won't get the full benefit unless you leave the patron a patron long enough for all their status to vest. And a new patron would have to be a patron just as long to provide the full benefit, too. Lockouts on new patron naming is fine, too, though I'd just prefer we be allowed to change patrons whenever we wished without penalty, as long as we didn't get the vesting for a long period. No one would be changing patrons in and out very quickly if they didn't get more than a fifth or less of the status they earned unless they stayed a patron for weeks.</P> <P>By the same token, I am against removing heritage quests from status. For a small guild, it can take just as long to run a group through heritage quests (barring a few of the very easy ones) as it does to do an equivalent number of writs. I mean truly small guilds here, a guild with over 30 actual people (not characters) isn't large, but neither is it that small. We don't mind being way behind the larger guilds in gaining a reward, but we would like to be able to get there someday, and heritage quests are a heck of a lot easier for our disparate schedules to organize than churning out writs are. A once every week or two weeks commitment to six or seven hours of heritage quest walkthrough is the only way we really advance at the moment, and we've been well aware that that will come to a screeching halt around level 20 when our 12 patrons finish most of them. Being able to run another set of patrons (alts) through the heritage quests is the only way we'll get past that, given how hard it is to get several of us in the same place at the same time right now. We don't mind taking a long time to go further, and vesting would keep us from advancing faster than we would anyway, but still allow us to advance at all.</P> <P>Ashlian Liadan, 42 Fury, 32 Tailor of Mistmoore</P>

Big_Wayne

07-18-2005, 08:22 PM

Bah. Who gives a crap. Make the changes and everyone will still be addicted. It's just a game!!!

Tankpulle

07-19-2005, 03:56 AM

If every patron did all 22 HQ's your guild still wont reach guild level 30, you'd probably be around level 25 or so. From lvl 25-30 is equivelant to 1-25. So i think SOE had implemented writs to be an important factor to leveling up a guild. <div></div>

Ashlian

07-19-2005, 04:19 AM

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Tankpuller4 wrote:<BR>If every patron did all 22 HQ's your guild still wont reach guild level 30, you'd probably be around level 25 or so. From lvl 25-30 is equivelant to 1-25. So i think SOE had implemented writs to be an important factor to leveling up a guild.<BR> <BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <P><BR>Then my guild will never see 30, as simple as that. I think they might have actually realized writs just aren't that fun if you have limited time. It wouldn't be the first time they came to a realization that an implemented game mechanic was excruciating. I don't think that guilds should have no advantage if they're willing to do writs, but allowing further use of heritage to progress still requires a casual guild to spend time leveling those alts up and doing the quests. Heritage quests are just more concentrated applications of our time (and more enjoyable to my guild) than killing the same mobs over and over. But yes, that was my point, that allowing us to advance with alts doing heritage is the only way my guild will ever get past that point. By which time I fully expect there to be a level 40 guild, or whatever the upped level will be for DoF.</P> <P>Ashlian Liadan, 42 Fury, 32 Tailor of Mistmoore</P>

Kizzmet

07-19-2005, 06:47 PM

<P>You all have to admit though. Many people complained about losing the status when they lost a patron.</P> <P> </P> <P>At least they listened, and although everyone may not agree with their solution, at least they are trying.</P> <P> </P> <P>Thanks Devs!</P>

Straylig

07-19-2005, 07:56 PM

<P>Here's a solution:</P> <P>Make the current proposed changes...</P> <P>...but allow anyone regardless of level or guild membership to purchase every single status perk in the game from the onset and totally remove 'special perks' for guilds that level up.</P> <P>...or better yet, totally remove the functionality to level guilds up...</P> <P>...because these changes will nullify the vast majority of work that is required to get a guild to 30.</P> <P>Also, set up booths around Norrath where members of guilds can go to get a swift kick in the [expletive ninja'd by Faarbot] for all the hard work and time that was put into doing mass writs and heritages that we weren't even interested in or couldn't use because all of that work will essentially be null and void by a system that's easily exploitable.</P>

Fallnangel

07-19-2005, 08:20 PM

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> Sonnyjim_Grumblestump wrote:<BR>Hi Devs! Hope you're reading. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> <BR><BR>I am the guild leader of a small, casual guild.<BR><BR>As it happens, that small, casual guild has <FONT color=#ff6600><I>busted it's beer-drinking butt</I></FONT> to get to level 22 (so far) with a dedicated, hard working group of patrons. None of whom have left (so far). I have to say I can see both sides of this coin. <BR><BR>While I think it's great that what SOE is proposing protects us in case one or more of our Patrons hears the call and decides to leave, I share the concern that trivializing guild progression is something we have to be concerned about. Speaking personally, we are proud of our accomplishment thusfar, and take a good amount of pride in the achievement. 'Breaking' the Patron system so that guilds with more members doing more HQs can hotswap patrons and trivialize what we've done would be a bigger hit to our morale than us losing a couple patrons and having to regain a few lost levels. <BR><BR>While I accept that there is no simple, easy way that I can see to protect people from loss while also protecting the system from exploitation, I would feel greatly reassured to hear that SOE is working on, or has found a way. Please -- choose to allow for guild to retain their status or at least their level if you wish, but consider some form of defence from exploitation. Status debt, limited depatroning timers or counters.. or ?<BR><BR>In short:<BR><B><FONT color=#ff9900>Protecting guilds from level loss = </FONT><FONT color=#ff6600>good</FONT><FONT color=#ff9900>. Preserving the integrity and challenge of the patron system.</FONT> <FONT color=#ff6600><I>Also</I> good</FONT>. <img src="/smilies/3b63d1616c5dfcf29f8a7a031aaa7cad.gif" border="0" alt="SMILEY" /> <BR><BR>Thanks for reading! <BR></B> <BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE><STRONG><FONT color=#ff0099 size=3>I agree with everything Sonnyjim said. We too, have leveled due to hard work and are a small guild. While I don't mind not losing status, I agree that if it is too easy to level to 30, then it will no longer be an accomplishment. Not once has our guild cried about being small and having it too hard. We've just squared our jaws and buckled down to work. I would hate to see all our hard work be trivialized. </FONT></STRONG><BR> <p>Message Edited by Fallnangel13 on <span class=date_text>07-19-2005</span> <span class=time_text>11:24 AM</span>

Fallnangel

07-19-2005, 09:37 PM

<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE> <HR> ryno wrote:<BR>I just really see no way that this can go live as is... I agree that it is frustrating to lose patrons with alot of status BUT being a patron has got to mean something. We are a small a guild who has fought through many high level patrons leaving the guild and still continue to be the highest level guild on lavastorm due to the hard work and dedication of our current patrons... If this goes live all of the hard work will mean absolutely nothing because now any guild on the server will have a much easier and expoitable path to 30. Not having the roster to raid alot, guild level is something we took pride in, even though SOE has really provided NO viable reward to level 30 guilds, it was still something we could be first at and something to work for. Yes, you now have the opportunity to sink tons of money into a mount that is largely just for show, but other than that nothing.... and now all of the hours doing writs and HQs wont mean much. I sincerely hope that SOE implements some sort of checks and balances to the system. I think it is a great idea to not delevel the guild upon losing a patron but there has got to be SOME penalty whether it be debt or limitiations on patroning/ depatroning people. IMO the current system was based upon the fact that being a guild patron required more responsibility and more work. If this is taken away then why have the system at all? This change would be incredibly demoralizing to our guild and i would implore SOE to listen to the many great posts and ideas in these threads.<BR><BR>here's hoping all our prior work wont be meaningless.<BR> <BR> <HR> </BLOCKQUOTE> <DIV><FONT color=#ff0099 size=3><STRONG>I couldn't have said it any better, Demaratus. While we are not as high a level as you guys, we too have taken pride in our work and that of our patrons. </STRONG></FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ff0099 size=3><STRONG></STRONG></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#ff0099 size=3><STRONG>Again, while I agree that some sort of improvement is needed regarding the loss of guild level, I'd hate to see leveling become far too easy.</STRONG></FONT></DIV><BR> <p>Message Edited by Fallnangel13 on <span class=date_text>07-19-2005</span> <span class=time_text>03:18 PM</span>

Dazzler_Twodir

07-20-2005, 12:27 AM

<P>How about adding something in that lets the player decide how much of thier SP they earn goes to the guild?</P> <P>If they want to dump all thier earned points in let em.</P> <P>They'll have no points to purchase anything for themselves if they go 100% tho.</P> <P>Guild level 30 practically has no point anyway the items are very expensive as it is.</P> <P> </P> <P>Has anyone bothered with the 5 room houses at all?</P>

Byzanth

07-20-2005, 02:47 AM

<DIV><FONT color=#99ff00>I can see both sides of this and the Pros and Cons to the system change.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#99ff00></FONT> </DIV> <UL> <LI><FONT color=#99ff00>The people that understand how fragile a guild is, taken a big hit, are for this change.</FONT></LI> <LI><FONT color=#99ff00>The people that are working very hard and keeping their guild together are against this change because their existing hard work will be dilluted if this gets pushed through.</FONT></LI></UL> <DIV><FONT color=#99ff00>Any kind of organization or civilizaton in real life wasn't meant to last forever. But the organizations that know how to keep it together last a very long time. </FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#99ff00></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#99ff00>In the future, I see the fractured reminents of lots of level 30 guilds with only 3-4 members left if this goes through to the live servers as is.</FONT></DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#99ff00></FONT> </DIV> <DIV><FONT color=#99ff00>However. I do think there should be a penalty to patrons who leave a guild. I would love for them to wear a tag that says:</FONT></DIV> <DIV> </DIV> <DIV align=center><FONT color=#ffff66><Swore Allegience to yet Another </FONT></DIV> <DIV align=center><FONT color=#ffff66>Guild,became a patron,</FONT></DIV> <DIV align=center><FONT color=#ffff66> then Left Cuz I was Bored ></FONT></DIV> <DIV align=center><FONT color=#ffff66></FONT> </DIV> <DIV align=left><FONT color=#99ff00>Maybe <EM><U>some kind of penalty</U> </EM>for quitting guild for both the <U>patron as well as the guild taking some kind of hit</U> is the answer here. Makes recruiting for this position a little tougher, but you will have less patroning and de-patroning going on.</FONT></DIV> <DIV align=left><FONT color=#99ff00></FONT> </DIV> <DIV align=left><FONT color=#99ff00>I am for a chunk of Status xp debt on both sides.... Big pain when x-patrons can't pay their status upkeep because they quit their guild and a big pain for the guild when it has to deal with trying to recover from the patron leaving. It should be a lose/lose situation. Right now patrons don't lose a thing and they can ride off on their Guild Ponies wearing their Status Garb into the sun-set.</FONT></DIV> <DIV align=left><FONT color=#99ff00></FONT> </DIV> <DIV align=left><FONT color=#99ff00>Give folks an incentive to stick together and a penalty if they don't work out any problems. But Again, you have people that just get bored or have R/L issues and quit the game all together as patrons. I believe the guild shouldn't suffer because of that.</FONT></DIV> <DIV align=left><FONT color=#99ff00></FONT> </DIV> <DIV align=left><FONT color=#99ff00></FONT> </DIV> <DIV align=left><FONT color=#99ff00></FONT> </DIV> <DIV align=left><FONT color=#99ff00></FONT> </DIV> <DIV align=left><FONT color=#99ff00>The guys who built these lasted a long time... but their organization didn't last forever...</FONT></DIV> <DIV align=left><IMG src="http://www.spacetoday.org/images/SolSys/Earth/EgyptianPyramidsArt1.jpg"></DIV> <DIV align=left> </DIV> <DIV><SPAN class=time_text></SPAN> </DIV> <DIV><SPAN class=time_text></SPAN> </DIV> <P><SPAN class=time_text></SPAN> </P><p>Message Edited by Byzanthei on <span class=date_text>07-19-2005</span> <span class=time_text>05:00 PM</span>

Breed

07-20-2005, 04:37 PM

<span><blockquote><hr>Yomarbalthasar wrote:<div></div> <div></div> <div></div> <p><font color="#ffffff">I will add the most important comments I made on the Guilds Forum, to make sure the devs won't overlook this:</font></p> <p><strong>Concrete questions about the new Patron System:</strong></p> <div><strong>1.</strong> <strong>Hiring status point earning services </strong>How will you prevent that people hire the services of others to get their guild level up? I'm talking both in-game plat and real-life money here. Has your EULA taken this into account? How does this work on Station Exchange Servers? How does this work on non-Station Exchange servers?</div> <div><strong>2. Rendering planning of number of patrons useless </strong>Please explain why a guild should have more than 12 Patrons if there are no risks or whatsoever involved in depatronizing a member? What happened to the careful planning of the right number of Patrons?</div> <div><strong>3. Sky-rocketing sales of temporary guild memberships </strong>What are you going to do about guilds that sell temporary membership just to enable people to buy a nice level 30 magic carpet, only to leave the guild right after that again? How does this work on Station Exchange Servers? How does this work on non-Station Exchange servers?</div> <div><strong>4. Sky-rocketing sales of guilds </strong>How will you prevent people selling entire (dying) guilds that have a high status? How does this work on Station Exchange Servers? How does this work on non-Station Exchange servers?</div> <div><strong>5. Rendering past accomplishments useless </strong>How do you explain this enormous change to guilds that have deliberately chosen a long-term policy of stability, slowing their leveling on purpose, while it now turns out all their carefully planned policy was in vain and they could as well have went for a short-term policy of speed? This is not a nerf. This is a super nerf! You are effectively nihilizing all efforts of guilds like ours, that have continuously focussed on long-term planning. Had we known this a few months ago, we'd have been level 30 for a long long time...</div> <div> <div> <div><strong>6. Favouring zerg guilds</strong> Larger guilds obviously can put more people on patron rotation than smaller guilds. Wasn't one of the basic concepts of EQ2 not exactly the opposite (hence the maximum raid size being 24)? Quantity above quality?</div> <div><strong>7. Downgrading the epic scale of the game</strong> Now everybody can reach guild level 30. So when all guilds are level 30, what's so special about being level 30? How can we prove the loyalty factor of our members and the guild's general stability to the outside world?</div> <div> </div> <div> <div><strong>SOE's argument (raisen by Moorguard):</strong></div> <div><em><font color="#ffffff">While the concept of guilds losing levels when patrons leave makes sense in a practical way, it's also different from other progression models we have in game. Your character doesn't lose levels when you die or fail a crafting combine, so it seemed strange to have the same thing happen to a guild, <u>especially when guilds in our game are intended to advance just like characters do.</u></font></em></div> <div><font color="#ffffff"></font> </div> <div><em><strong><font color="#ffffff">This way of reasoning is totally incorrect. What you conveniently forget here, is that guilds are a group effort per se, while a single player is a single player effort per se. You are now treating a group of people as one entity (a single player), which is a contradictio in terminis, as a group of people consists of more than one player by default! </font>Guilds are inherently dynamic, and this should be reflected in their level.</strong></em></div></div></div></div><p>Message Edited by Yomarbalthasar on <span class="date_text">07-15-2005</span> <span class="time_text">03:59 PM</span></p><hr></blockquote>You post in what I'm sure you think is a logical and very intelligent fashion. It's not, though. 1. Yes, this will happen. So what? It could have happened before "Paying 10 plat for someone who can earn my guild 10k status per week!" 2. Guilds will still level slowly if they have more than 12 patrons. That hasn't changed. The only change is in what happens to a guild when someone leaves. Those two parts of the guild system are not connected as you seem to imply. 3. Yeah...so? 4. What's with this constant poking at station exchange? 5. How do YOU take into account losing guild level 25 over and over again because people are bored with EQ2? I've got a horse I shouldn't ride anymore because we lost that level. 6. I hate to break it to you, but bigger's inherently better. That's just the way of the world, and the way things work out even despite the best planning. 7. Oh I dunno...probably the same thing as when all players are level 50? Rant at the end: What you seemed to not notice, while underlining it (!?!?) is that guilds are intended to level like characters. Them being different, even at an inate level, is irrelevant. Even though you used latin, you're still wrong!</span><div></div>