Let's talk about dead BR in guilds

[NME13]

The guild I am in started on an already established server. We were told upon our creation that we were stupid for starting a new guild at the time, and that we would never see guild battles and just be a failure in general. While when talking about most new guilds those folks would have been right, in our case they were not. We quickly built up our ranks and strength and within a month we had reached the top 16.

We made it to the guild battles and one short week later, patch 1.5 was implemented and knocked us back out of participation. I have heard that the reduction of participants was due to there just not being enough people on most servers to actually make 16 guilds worth participating. I believe that statement is true on our server, pretty much everyone that wanted to just do guild battles at any cost would fit into the top 8 guilds.

So what is my problem you may ask? Well since being knocked back out of guild battles our guild has continued building it's self up to rank 9 and we will eventually make it to top 8, but my problem is this.... We are the second most active guild on our server, with over 80 daily players and literally the only reason we are not in the top 8 is because many other guilds have held onto every point of inactive Battle ratings they can hold.

We have guilds on our server with 40 active players and 160 accounts that are there doing nothing more than propping up those 40 peoples ability to access guild battles. This is obscene, that a very active and capable guild is not able to participate in guild battles simply because other guilds use the fact that old accounts never get removed to clutch on to top 8 status when it is no longer deserved.

Yes we could just give up on our guild and go join one of these top 8 guilds, but we have a history together as a guild through other games that probably goes back further than r2 games existence its self. We have a bond that is strong enough to allow us to make it this far, and we will continue to do so, but seriously the lack of pruning of dead accounts is barring new people from paving their own way, or achieving on their own. You either join the guild that is abusing this and go with the flow, or you don't get in guild battles.

While I understand that deleting an account always comes with a serious risk regardless of time spent inactive, perhaps something could be done about these inactive accounts (aka dead BR) being milked by guilds to boost their standings.

For example, something along the lines of removing an account that has not logged in for a month from guild. Yes they would lose contribution and contribution records, but it is definitely not as bad as losing your whole account if you were to take a month long vacation (seriously who does that though?)

Or an even lower risk option, if an account has not been logged in for a month, it no longer counts towards the guilds battle rating until logged in again. That would provide 0 set backs to the owner of the account if they were indeed just away for an extended period, and solve this milking of dead BR problem.

Lets make the playing field a little bit fair here, lets not make a mockery out of the top 8 guilds by creating situations like this.

[dwmedia]

I think this game should keep players frome leav this game, if them not build it impossibol for non payers to get itmes.
And lower the balans price becouse 12 000 balans for one lvl 50 purb itmes is over $39,99 * 4 = $159,49 dollar for 4 pice of lvl 50 pur gear some man coming sell later for gold wen man get 60 its not worth.

And its should allways take 100-250 days for collect something people want. People become boring do samething and never keep get progress in this game everything go slow.
So its more people some quit play this game that its new players coming to this game.

And i think soon its GB become only Top 2 guild coming play GB and only one day a weak man play GB so man not have afford to buy medalion after that this game coming end to die out.

[Rex_Typhoon]

I understand your pain NME13 - I just purged 23 inactives from our Guild because I'd rather not rely on this.

One thing you may look forward to is that if your server is anything like ours, a few of the Top 8 Guilds might implode when the suck of their egos becomes too strong for them to manage. So far we've lost two of the Top 4 Guilds to ego; I can only hope the same thing happens on your server.

It would be nice if people could delete their characters, but I think R2 is hoping that by keeping the characters forever, people will return and eventually resume spending money.

[NME13]

indeed rex, implosions probably will happen.

Yesterday I was talking to another Guild master about this situation, and he told me a story about one of his former guild members. The guy had hacked the game or used a stolen credit card and was caught and banned from the game, BUT his character was NEVER removed from the server. Eventually that guild had to just kick the banned player out of the guild to get rid of him. That seems pretty pathetic that R2 wouldn't even remove a banned character. It is like they WANT people to ride on dead BR.

Like I had said in my original post, if they did something as simple as once a character has not been logged in for a month they no longer counted towards the guilds total BR, then all inactives can hang around without causing any harm, and if those inactives were to return they would have lost nothing while they were gone.

[Zaaqen]

I am assuming you are the NME13 of Banned on Kong 2 (if I'm wrong, sorry for the assumption). Unfortunately, because R2 has so many servers (as does 7road's direct version in china) it actually makes sense that only the top 8 get in, because only those have enough people to matter. That said, on Kongregate there's only a handful of servers, where the top 16 all have enough active members to participate (not necessarily competitively, but the numbers are there)

It's really these offsites that were punished by this (I would guess Kabam has the same issue, but I could be wrong). Inferno and Divinity merged, so that's a top guild. However, although they 'merged' inferno still exists with enough members to be in the top 16. Ethereal and Vortex are both the result of top 16's merging to become top 8's .

Ascendant and Banned are both struggling with the same issue, trying to get enough BR to make the top 8. Dead BR is certainly an issue (like I pointed out with Inferno still existing, and being in the top 16) - But with all the top players flooding to the top few guilds to maintain their top player status, it makes it even harder to catch up.

Bago alone is 59k+ BR unbuffed. That's over 20% of the number 16 guild on the server. One character. Now, imagine that amplified by the top 50 on the server being in only the top 3 guilds. Very hard to catch up without some of those heavy hitters jumping ship, dead BR or not.

I think it sucks you guys worked that hard to not even be able to compete, but unfortunately the best route to attain top 8 now is complete guild merges.

[Serrin]

Honestly, it's up to the guilds as to whether or not they purge inactive accounts. Some are kept for sentimental reasons, like being the first gm of a guild, others because you know they will come back. But yeah, some hold on to accounts of players they know have quit to keep the guild rating up there. The proof is in the pudding.. how many show for guild events.

[Rex_Typhoon]

I think it sucks you guys worked that hard to not even be able to compete, but unfortunately the best route to attain top 8 now is complete guild merges.

Normally I'd agree with this 100%, but I think that a Guild that busts it's collective *** to climb is less likely to merge and rightfully so. On our Server, we did exactly that - we busted our butts and made it into the top 16 for Guild War, and then busted our butts some more to make it into the Top 8. We were approached about merging, but turned it down; we were a sizeable guild and didn't want our lower level players being left behind (which was guaranteed to happen).

For smaller guilds, this is definitely the answer, but all too often you have one ego that won't relinquish god-hood for the betterment of the guild and will persuade the rest to remain, which invariably costs the rest of the players in the long run. Our push to be in the Top 8 had me run into any number of these - you would contact the Guilds that were in the top 15-25 about merging and invariably I got "Oh, you want to merge with us? Well, we can discuss this." I usually bite my tongue to keep from saying, "Why yes, I want to move DOWN in the rankings and have LESS as a Guild than I have now, all because I want to pad YOUR ego."

That said, I like the idea of having BR only count if the player is active; I think a 1 month+ absence should result in the BR not counting towards Guild Strength - definitely +1 that idea.

[NME13]

I am assuming you are the NME13 of Banned on Kong 2 ....
Bago alone is 59k+ BR unbuffed. That's over 20% of the number 16 guild on the server. One character. Now, imagine that amplified by the top 50 on the server being in only the top 3 guilds. Very hard to catch up without some of those heavy hitters jumping ship, dead BR or not.

I think it sucks you guys worked that hard to not even be able to compete, but unfortunately the best route to attain top 8 now is complete guild merges.

I am so your assumption is correct, as for the top 50 being in the top 3 guilds, that is all fine and dandy to me. We aren't trying to be the number 1 BR rank on the server ( at least... not yet) our focus is just getting back into guild battles in general so that our lower members can have the benefits of the honor and insig from them.

As rex pointed out in his post after yours, we could merge up, and leave out the majority of our guild from guild battles..... which is something we will not do. Or we could merge down and take our nearly completed guild down to feed a stubborn dying guild leaders ego.

But that is all semantics........ While i believe my observation on this subject to be completely valid, we aren't relying on any changes to be made, just it would be nice if they were.

As for the future, we will keep on keeping on, and play the game within the allowed mechanics.

[Serrin]

Normally I'd agree with this 100%, but I think that a Guild that busts it's collective *** to climb is less likely to merge and rightfully so. On our Server, we did exactly that - we busted our butts and made it into the top 16 for Guild War, and then busted our butts some more to make it into the Top 8. We were approached about merging, but turned it down; we were a sizeable guild and didn't want our lower level players being left behind (which was guaranteed to happen).

For smaller guilds, this is definitely the answer, but all too often you have one ego that won't relinquish god-hood for the betterment of the guild and will persuade the rest to remain, which invariably costs the rest of the players in the long run. Our push to be in the Top 8 had me run into any number of these - you would contact the Guilds that were in the top 15-25 about merging and invariably I got "Oh, you want to merge with us? Well, we can discuss this." I usually bite my tongue to keep from saying, "Why yes, I want to move DOWN in the rankings and have LESS as a Guild than I have now, all because I want to pad YOUR ego."

That said, I like the idea of having BR only count if the player is active; I think a 1 month+ absence should result in the BR not counting towards Guild Strength - definitely +1 that idea.

I agree. We have had one of the top guilds ask us to merge with them recently and we declined. We earned our rep as the helpful guild and we are staying true to our mission. Has it hurt us? Turning down merger after merger offer? Some would say yes, but we are still here and we are still growing and we are still kicking butt in the GB. We pushed the number one guild almost a full hour the last two times we met. Sometimes it's not about what guild rank you are it's about the heart and the drive and the willingness to actually work together instead of shooting for the moment of glory on the top of the GB ranking list.

[NME13]

well spoken serrin.

I just wanted to add quickly here before I leave for work.... To put things into perspective for those that don't understand my concern or wants here.

Our number 1 guild on my server could all quit or be banned from the game tomorrow (this is a hypothetical, I have no reason to believe that would actually happen) and 6 months from now that guild would still be in the top 8 despite having absolutely no one logging into it, always blocking an actual guild (however small they may be) from gaining access to guild battles.

Obviously once put that way I would like to think it is pretty clear that this is not the way to handle things, any system that could possibly allow a completely empty guild to still hold a top 8 position permanently is broken.