Well better late than never, but seeing as the weekly rankings seem to have a link to the thread it's fair to assume the topic isn't a dead one just yet and after reading through the posts so far... understandable.
Firstly ill be paraphrasing at times what some have already been saying and because its going to be quite a few times and different people you'll all have to excuse me for individually quoting.
So this week currently using top 500 of the last 7 days active to determine the rankings, ok.
Well lets go back to the basics and ask what is the purpose of the guild leaderboard/ranking in the first place.
The simplest answer would be, to show a, as fair as a possible representation of which are the top guilds in the game.
We can then ask, why bother even showing it then?
Well the top guilds will usually consist of the more experienced/top players.
Why is that useful?
Well as a new or inexperienced player knowing where you are more likely to find knowledge or help is essential towards getting better at this game. Even if you're just going to throw money at the game to get to the top... rather pointless if you don't even know where to actually know the best places to throw that money and get there.
It can also serve as a goal for new players along with different communities within the game for players to find themselves in, chill with one they enjoy also provides longevity for a player as they end up coming online for not just the game itself but the community they've grown attached/created bonds with.
Now, are the guild leaderboards a "fair" representation of the top guilds in the game?
Well, let's look at the old system that's been in place for a decade. Seems only a small amount of people actually understood how it worked so I will try to explain it to make it easier to understand.
To get into the Top 50 guild rankings a guild needed to achieve a total number of APs overall with all its members.
There are 2 ways to really do that,
1 - gather lots of people with lower APs individually
2 - have fewer people but higher APs individually
After that, what number a guild was in the top 50 was broken into 16 different factors.
6 for PvP (CTF&TDM)
5 for Activity(1,3,7,15,30)
2 for PvE (KvD&KpM)
2 for Age (Player+Guild)
1 for APs (Just because guild got enough APs to be in LB still might have a low amount compared to others)
After that the numbers of players in each guild is counted and an average number is found. Based on that average number is a guilds overall number for each factor.
Then to get the Overal score (the bit we see on the LB in game) is worked out by removing a guilds... Ill use my own guild as an example
So the guilds Overall Aps was ranked 48th out of the top 50 however because the majority of the players in HS have high PvE kills it is ranked 1st in the top 50.
That 1st ranking is removed by the 48th ranking, and this carrys on until the guilds Overall Ranking is found.
16 factors to count is quite a few... tho having so few factors deciding a guilds rank based on APs/PvE is what's really out of line with the game being more geared towards those aspects of the game instead of PvP which has the highest amount of deciding factors.
Just looking at the numbers the old way, you can usually work out which guilds most likely have the more experienced players that are also active and with lower numbers, the guilds that have large numbers but less experienced, the guilds with players who aren't as active, etc.
Taking into count a guild and player account age is also something important however, as can be seen, it actually counts for a small fraction towards the overall rankings as mentioned in a previous post.
Also, the activity factors account for having people being offline at different intervals which worked nicely in being able to determine how active guilds are looking at the rankings which can be a deciding factor when choosing a guild to venture into.
So based on all those factors id say with confidence the "old" ranking system was a pretty fair representation of the top guilds in the game. Tho this is also assuming everybody understands how to read and truly understand the old rankings which is why if you really did then not only would know what to do to make your guilds climb the ranks also realise it isn't actually that easy and just having gathered every new player in game wont amount to jumping right into being a high ranking guild because of all the different factors also involved.
Imagine being a new player, looking at the leaderboard rankings seeing the top guild and finding after joining its mostly filled with players who are also in the same boat of being new players to the game.
Its the "blind" leading the "blind".
Which is why knowing where your more likely to find people that are not "blind" helps navigate better when you cant "see" yet yourself.
Now lets go with what we have today.
To become a #1 guild is rather simple. Just loads of APs/People who have recently enough been online.
Total number = 12,000,000 APs
Lets do some quick math...
If we have a guild 1 with 500 players all with at least 24,000 APs each... well 500 x 24,000 = 12,000,000 APs...
But wait...
We can also have a guild 2 with 250 players all with 48,000 APs each... well 250 x 48,000 = 12,000,000 APs...
Now both guilds have 12m APs so with today's current way of doing it both represent being #1...
Now we have to ask ourselves out of the 2 guilds which one is more likely to have players that will be helpful towards getting better at the game...
The guild where most of the members have low APs or the guild with the members with high APs?
Rather an obvious choice would be guild 2...
That's not to ever say you wouldn't find someone helpful in guild 1 and find someone useless in guild 2... there will always be exceptions...
Exceptions don't make the rule.
The general consensus would be those with higher APs are more likely to be able to more helpful in helping you get more
Also, the players from guild 2 tho less of them, worked to gain x2 the amount of APs guild 1 members have gotten... so would the current system in place which would put guild 1 and guild 2 at #1 spot be truly a as fair as possible representation of a #1 guild and its players...
In my opinion, I would strongly say No.
By no means was the previous way of guild rankings flawless. It could do with some adjustments to be more in line with current times or the direction of which the game is trying to go (which can say at least is away from PvP)
So introducing more AP/PvE factors instead to the previous system such as quests completed, badges/titles earnt, and level capped, are just a handful off the top of my head whilst writing this but hopefully, that's enough to get the idea across.
IN regards to making guilds more relevant of course more management tools would always be great! People asking for badges when yeah would be cool tho be I have been suggesting guild Banners concepts multiple times in the past even custom coloured titles!
But to really make guilds more useful to players besides the cheaper pot and place for members to have a private space to gather...
Why not introduce locations guild master can apply to a guild hall where the effects are given to all its members similar to how a player can buy a house and get locations for the buffs (and APs)... could even just be different buffs guilds can choose out of like 10 but can only pick 3 even if its the same so different guilds might have different buff benefits of being a member...
Say a guild picked 25% MS buff 3 times so all members got additional 75%ms just for being part of the guild
Same with gold loot or damage mana reduction for smaller pvp guilds...
But that's all another topic just thought it would be rude not to put my take on the rankings whilst the topic is still open at least
1 <3
Originally Posted by BaronB
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