Coming Soon: New Warlord Ranking System

Greetings Everyone,

So in an effort to streamline a really confusing system and make the transition into Guild Wars 2 a bit easier we will be revising the Warlord Ranks and structure. 

Currently:

Warlord Ranks are limited to 5 and are based around how many raid groups you lead. Being Guild Wars 2 does not use or need a raid group system. This will make leading utterly confusing and a huge time waste.

Coming Soon:

Warlord Ranks will be increased to 10 ranks and be a suffix to your Family Rank. For Example if your a Lorgair with level 3 Warlord Rank you would be "Lorgair na Faolchu". Your ranks will follow the following format:

[Family Rank] na [Warlord Rank]

The warlord ranks will be calculated by the number of victories you've lead the family too. The more victories you log the higher up the Warlord Ranks you will go.

The Conversion process is going to take a bit so if things seem weird I appologize. I have a lot of area's i'll need to convert including rebuilding the Leadership engine once again. I built the Adventure system with this change in mind so It should remain the same.

Each of the Warlord ranks we're modeled after totems in celtic mythology. These creatures were used as symbols throughout the celtic mythological cycle to represent certain characteristics.

See the new Warlord Ranks

We will also be launching a Hall of Warlords section that will list any member who tops 500 victories. You can see this page at:

Hall of Warlords

Enjoy!

» Edited on: 2012-05-14 10:32:40

» Edited on: 2012-05-19 21:16:32

» Edited on: 2012-05-19 21:16:54

great idea

Ben, been thinking about this last night. You should probably lower the amount required for griffon and dragon. Why? Because after DAOC, Warhammer, and Rift, you're not even halfway. And no one else is EVER going to surpass your numbers. Each ranking should be possible, albeit tough, to get. The Dragon ranking simply isn't feasible for anyone but you and even then may not be achievable by yourself. Maybe make Griffon 7500 and Dragon 15,000?

Vamp, if people get to the end of the road they have nowhere to go. The idea is to allow everyone to chase after something. Even me. And for the record daoc isn't in this system. We started logging jan 2009. Before that there was no leadership\fellowship system. My numbers are 3 years of leading. I aimed the mark at 5 years. Remember this system has to be challenging for the next decade. Someone could easilly obtain dragon rank in 5 years. Lace is #2 atm but non gaiscioch with only 6 months of leading.

Man, I gotta stop being the assist lead or I'm gonna be at the bottom forever. JUST KIDDING!!!! Don't mind being the assist at all. I actually finally got my 10th lead and out of the 5 man into raid level this past winter. ::chuckles:: Only took me about 2.5 years to do it! Looks like 10 years for the next level if I go at the same rate. HA! =D Here's my enjoying being an assistant lead in bigger events and a helper in other groups. Like helping more than leading, as well as, helping with mundane behind the scenes stuff. Still think this is an awesome set up because I know people who love leading crews on adventures.

It is also the foundation for another idea I was discussing with Bloodburner to get more event leaders involved :). This makes them obvious :)

Updated Warlord Titles on the Family Tree. You should all be able to see where you'll be when this thing goes live.

Will this require warlords to try leading different types of events instead of just the same ones over and over. I guess what I am asking is, do all the victories count the same number of points. Does leading one raid group count the same as leading two raid groups, etc. Seems like one type of leadership is harder than the other.

Each objective you complete counts as a victory. 10 Crafting Rifts = 10 Dungeon Bosses = 10 Raid Rifts. Now that said in the new leadership system certain types of objectives you'll have to unlock. Rank 0-1 = Single Group Objectives Rank 1-2 = Raid Group Objectives Rank 3-4 = Multi-Raid Objectives Now running multi-raid events will complete objectives faster. The idea behind the whole thing is to create a list of "action makers" so that participants will know who to talk to to get involved. Valor points can be deceptive because coleads earn the as well. Even if a colead never runs their own event the can earn leadership by helping run an event.

So it took you 3.5 years to get 11,962 victories. And Dragon rank requires a person to get 25,000 victories. We can forget I mentioned DAOC since that doesn't apply. Let's do some math. Realistically with those numbers in mind, it'll take someone (3.5 years/11,962*25,000=7.31483 years) about 7 years, 3.5 months to get Dragon rank. And that's IF they have multiple opportunities to lead multiple groups of people and never, ever take a break in playing with the family (because those are the reasons why your numbers are so high and for good reason). So even in the best of circumstances, you feel like having a goal that takes 7+ years to complete reasonable? Even with using Rshiel as an example, it still would take (0.5 years/2,705*25000=4.62) 4 years, 7 months, and 2 weeks to get that rank. Plus I'm guessing Rshiel may have played REALLY hard for 6 months and then stopped. Not the type of playing that anyone could maintain for 4 straight years. I'm just doing some critical thinking here, but I don't think anyone but yourself could ever feasibly achieve that. Now if you've made that rank so you, yourself, have something to shoot for, by all means do it, but I don't expect anyone else to ever make it that high. So if you want others to try to shoot for the Dragon rank, you may want to reevaluate the requirements for it (plus the Griffon rank as well). I'll be honest, I'm not being completely selfless here. I have myself in mind. When I look at those numbers, I don't think I could reasonably make it to 25,000 victories. And I'd like to at least make it to Griffon rank, a rank I have previously attained. On the flip side, you could lower those ranking requirements for the top two and if someone ever surpasses them, just add another rank or two. Another thing to keep in mind, there is nothing wrong with someone getting that top rank, especially if there's only one or two players in the entire guild to make it that high, to achieve that rank. I think those people would be perfectly happy not having something else, guild title wise, to chase after. Realistically, at this point in this guild, all the top ranks (you, me, the Draio's, or the Maitheans) really aren't chasing titles anymore (least I'm guessing you aren't, and besides Griffon I could care less), but rather doing our best to work on our future as a guild, a much more nebulus idea.

Vamp, if people get to the end of the road they have nowhere to go. The idea is to allow everyone to chase after something. Even me. And for the record daoc isn't in this system. We started logging jan 2009. Before that there was no leadership\fellowship system. My numbers are 3 years of leading. I aimed the mark at 5 years. Remember this system has to be challenging for the next decade. Someone could easilly obtain dragon rank in 5 years. Lace is #2 atm but non gaiscioch with only 6 months of leading.

Vamp your calculation is off. My Warhammer Victories: 5,673 for 2.5 Years My RIFT Victories: 6,250 for just over 1 Year Objectives come a lot quicker than you remember. A single T2 tower would take you the same time as it would take to close 3-5 rifts. There's no perfect calculation. Nothing I can do will ever make this bleed across several games flawlessly. Our system is set up to keep people going. I don't want people to reach the top. What happens in MMO's when players reach max level? They either quit, or reroll. Numbers motivate people. If your ceiling is not just out of reach you have nothing to strive for. It's the same way when your managing people, you set your goals just out of reach so that your employees push to obtain them. It is human nature to chase numbers. If that wasn't true then explain fantasy football, your paycheck, the number of things you have in your collection, your age, your mileage on your car, days you've been married, the years you've worked in your field, the amount of experience you have, the number of certifications you have. All things in life are numbers. Some have pretty words to denote them but at the bare root we are all chasing numbers. Even I want to have something to chase. Being at the end of the road leaves you with the feeling that theirs nothing left to accomplish. No goal to meet, no satisfaction to gain. Getting to the End Game is just that... The End of the Game.

Ben, I'm just going to agree to disagree with you at this point. One big thing that I'd like to point out is the number of players in your guild that haven't quit since reaching Draio or Maithean. Those are both top ranks. A ton of us are still around. Sure, some have left, but ultimately most of us high ranks are here for one thing, the guild. Not some random title, not a silly point here or there, but for the guild. I feel the same way about Warlord ranks. Sure the lower ranks are probably going to be carrots for young leaders (and they should be), but honestly, who in their right mind is going to go for 25,000 victories and be selfish about it? I don't think anyone who can make it to 25,000 victories can honestly say that they did it 100% for themselves. Let us allow a few more players get "Dragon" rank than one or two and keep that carrot stationary. Once you're a Dragon, you're always a Dragon. I'd be willing to bet most folks who make it to Dragon would continue to lead despite having no more Warlord titles to chase after. I know I would (I did it when I had made it to Griffon rank, the cap last time) and it's because at that point, it's not about getting the next title, you're there to help everyone else have a good time. It's ok to have a rank that players can achieve (and not be concerned with a higher rank), but rank/titles are very different from a top level gear set (which is what you're ultimately alluding to, the RR80 gear set in Warhammer for example, where once players got it, they all quit.) The gear carrot is more game internal, not guild internal and conceptially that gear carrot always has to be out of reach and/or moving. I don't think a rank carrot, in as far as our own ranks are concerned, needs to keep moving. If that were to happen to the Draio, Maithean, Laoch, etc rank system, I'd probably stop paying attention. Thankfully you've never added a rank past Draio (ignoring the guild master rank of course). Do what you will mate. I wanted to voice my difference of opinion. I just think the Dragon rank (and Griffon) requirement should be lowered a bit so more than one or two players in our entire guild of 3,000+ people could reasonably achieve it. I think you forget how much of a loyal and dedicated mmo playing machine you are. You don't take many breaks (hell I don't remember you taking hardly any). I can't imagine many other players being able to rack up the victory count you have. Overall, changing how the warlord system works is fine with me, I'd just alter the last two ranks a bit. Something like this (it still resembles a exponential function like you had previously): 0 None 10 Stag 40 Bear 100 Crow 200 Hawk 400 Wolf 1000 Hound 2000 Raven 4000 Eagle 7500 Griffin 15000 Dragon Thanks for doing all this work.

» Edited on: 2012-05-16 09:08:42

» Edited on: 2012-05-16 09:10:47

hmmm...was crow, now bear...going backwards

don't worry it will fix itself. still chasing down all the areas that use the stage variable. Lots of hide and seek. I have a warlord rank sync script running every 3 hours until I find them all.

I made some modifications and reordered several of the ranks. I removed Crow and replaced it with owl. Next up i'll be working on some special achievements warlords can earn for their profiles.

Vamp this is what I'm looking at: Played 27 Months in War and achieved 5368 Victories from 305 events or an average of 11 events per month for 3 hours a time. That's an average of 199 Victories per month or 18 victories per event. Played Rift 14 Months and achieved 6074 Victories from 203 events or an average of 14 events per month for 3 hours a time. That's an average of 434 Victories per month or 30 victories per event. Based on our current Rift cycle it would take approx 58 months to reach Dragon rank or 4.8 years. This is why I placed the points so high. This was meant to be a 5 year achievement for a player that commits 6-9 hours week toward leading family events. Now I've lowered it to 15,000 for the Dragon rank which should take 35 months to obtain at the same progression. The idea of this rank was to give everyone even myself something to reach for. I don't believe it was out of reach, but I did take your advisement and lowered it. When setting up point structures it's much harder to raise the bar... see the past year worth of blowouts every time I had to touch it: Family Structure, Artisan Points, Progression Caps etc... It causes a huge amount of heartache any time I have to raise anything. So I've been trying to over compensate and when I get real data i can reduce it as needed. Everyone celebrates when I lower the bar, most cry when I raise it. I try to do more lowering that raising these days.

It could be a BIG headache trying to balance out the rates you gain victories in RIFT vs GW2 as I imagine RIFT's victory rate will FAR exceed that of GW2. Any ideas on how to do that? Would we have to have different weights for a RIFT victory vs. a GW2 victory? Require RIFT players to achieve more victories per rank (higher ratio)? Or two separate systems to gain a single victory point? To my knowledge, we've never ran/hosted two separate mmo's at the same time for an extended period of time (more than 6 months) and that may be part of the problem. Part of where I was coming from was the assumption we'd move almost completely into GW2 at some point, but that may not happen since most of our PvE raiders will probably remain in RIFT or in both games. If the point layout you have now doesn't work, just send the folks that don't like it to me. I will gladly take the blame, especially since I gave you so much grief on it already. (IE use me as the scapegoat...."Don't look at me.. it was vamp's idea.")

» Edited on: 2012-05-23 12:52:58

But we are not Quitting RIFT when we go GW2 vamp. We have to hold the bar on RIFTS level not GW2's level. Thats the big issue here. It doesn't matter how slow victories are. This is a Multi-Game system that will endure several generations of gaming. It was built that way. Again, we are NOT leaving RIFT when GW2 comes out.

Ben, I think you misunderstood my post. I stated in my post that I didn't think that we'd be leaving RIFT since there's a good chance a large amount of our players will continue to play RIFT. And for good reason, TRION is a fantastic mmo company. One of the best, if not the best, as far as customer service. I'll put the rest of this discussion in tells.

What about those people that don't lead? I'm trying to figure out the point of all of this? There are some that are leaders and those that aren't. Where in the system does it allow for other ways for people to advance? I think leaving it to those that lead events leaves out crafters, people that help relentlessly and other areas. I'm a crafter and you can see that I have filled many orders. I do so to help other people. I'm broke but I don't care. Without the crafters as the foundation, especially the gathers and those that make and supply the raw and refined materials the better equipment isn't as easy to come by. I understand you are focusing on those that lead events, however there are other important aspects of gaming that supply the whole so that people can raid and do whatever they do to need the higher end equipment to accomplish the goals they choose to accomplish. Kittara

Kittara, this system doesn't effect the family structure. It is purely designed to make those that lead more noticeable so that those who follow know who to talk to to get involved. your rank within the family doesn't change through this system. You merely get a suffix based on how much you lead. Our family structure continues to be based off of leadership, fellowship, discovery, lore, and artisan. That's. Not changing.

Also Kittara, there's a couple things at play that help show the importance of crafters. 1st off this warlord system Ben is working on does include crafters that set up crafting events that require victories to occur. The crifting event comes to mind since don't you have to destroy a rift to get the mats you need for crafting later? The crafter(s) that led this event would get some visibility by earning a victory point from that. This is assuming I understand how the process works. On the other hand, artisans like yourself also get visibility from the "Top 25 Artisans" and "Top 25 Treasure Hunters" lists. Granted the Treasure Hunter doesn't necessarily include crafters, but a crafter would have an advantage over regular dungeon crawlers because they can pump out many more items. This Warlord system is help promote and encourage leaders in our guild...something we always need to do since our size demands a good set of leaders otherwise it just becomes a huge mess of players led by just Ben (Fog). And that would be really, really hard to manage as a single person. I know I sure couldn't do it. I can manage maybe 100 on a good day. Don't ever feel like artisans in our guild get the short end of the stick. We couldn't survive or at least couldn't be near as effective without you guys. I'm of firm belief crafters will become ever so important in Guild Wars 2, perhaps even more crucial to our guild's well being. Lakshmi is your Draio crafting lead and her supporting Draios are Dargron, Laochan, and Jexia. All 4 are great contacts for crafting related concerns. I'm the WvW Draio lead and I'd be happy to help you out, but I know very little about crafting in general and next to nothing about crafting in RIFT. If you still have concerns that I didn't address, I'd contact any of those 4 folks.

Thank you Ben and Vamp for the replies. I do understand where you are coming from and will contact those that you've mentioned for more information. I have noticed that the d-side really does need more help with leadership. Kool and Eeers have done such an awesome job. Kudo's to everyone. Without everyone working together as we do we wouldn't succeed as we do as a family. Fog you're doing so much! Wonder if you ever sleep... LOL Kittara

I've been making a pretty hard push to get more Defiants exposed to our family. Almost all of my warfront efforts are on defiant side and I've been doing the bag handout 4 times a day on the Dside and only once a day on gside. I'm hoping we can find some more Kools and Eeers out there. But as you said, there are people who lead, and people who dont, and then theres the people that think they should lead and really shouldn't. With the various systems in place eg: Leadership Ranks, Tokens of Valor, Warlord Ranks, all help filter out the self focused bad leaders and cause the ones that really should be leading to shine. The biggest issue we have on Defiant side is activity. We have from 5 - 18 people on at any given time whereas on guardian side it ranges from 40 - 100. Without an active school of followers, leaders wont have means to shine. It's a tough balance to obtain and unless we can grow our defiant side it's going to be a constant uphill battle. With Kool and Eeers leading events the majority of the Defiant raiders are taken care of. We dont usually have people sitting on wait lists. But having more people for them to pull from would also help encourage more leaders to rise. It's all a careful balance. ATM I think we need more Guardian Raid leaders than we do Defiant. We just don't have the population defiant side to fill those raid groups.