Guild UI and Permissions, Redux Part II

From the original thread:
07/28/2018 10:34 AMPosted by Keiralynn
So the other day I sat reworking guild ranks and attempting to fix the mess and try to make the best of it all. I had to reach out to an officer, ask them to log in, and dictate who to demote, who to put notes on, etc because I was not physically able to. I spent 30 mins trying everything I could to be able to make public notes/officer notes and demotions stick. I relogged, completely exited the game, closed down the bnet app, made sure there were no updates, disabled add-ons, etc and was 100% unable to do ANYTHING I needed to do to fix things. I am assuming this is a huge bug. This is kind of scary because I lack the ability to even do what Officers can do as a GM. So really if no Officers are on to try to help me the guild effectively is able to run amok while I sit there helpless to do anything about it.

I have had to put recruiting on hold because of all this.

Beyond frustrating.

I do wonder if since the scaling system is broken so badly at 60-80 if their time and attention is going to that as priority number 1 and this will follow after they figure that all out. It would seem to me the sharding problem for RP realms isn't as involved as this problem is and that is why they were able to handle it. I know things take time to pour through billions of line of code. I have seen one "if then" hidden away be a problem that can make or break a code.

I prefer they take their time to actually fix this right. While incredibly frustrating I would be more upset by them not taking their time, rushing things out, and being stuck with something.

It would be nice to have some form of validation that we are being heard and they have this on their to do list. Anything but silence would be appreciated.
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From the first Redux thread:
10/30/2018 08:23 AMPosted by Fumel
So, I've been thinking about guild halls and how a guild might be able to open theirs up. (Yeah, maybe jumping the gun since we don't have guild halls, but I'd rather think positively--I've had too much negativity regarding guilds already.)

I wanted to come up with something that even a tiny guild like mine could accomplish, but still make it a significant investment in one's guild. What I've thought of is an achievement where guild members complete X-number of instances (dungeons, raids, and/or BG's) whether in a group or separately. Counting individual runs (rather than requiring a guild group) allows small guilds to earn their halls, while making it faster for larger, active guilds. If five guildies run a dungeon, they'll get credit for five runs at once.

I was originally thinking only on-level and Timewalking instances should count, but that punishes players who really just like to go to old instances for transmogs, mounts, or pets. However, since it's easy to spam a lower level dungeon on a high-level character, I would say count only one run per day for low-level dungeons and one per week for raids.

How many instances required for the guild hall would of course be up to Blizz, but I was thinking around 500. That's a significant amount, but not so many that it can't be done by a guild like mine (with really only two active members currently).

Anyway, I'm still going to continue my read-through of the original thread, but I wanted to put some new thoughts in this one as well. I have some other ideas for guild halls, but I'll save those for later. I hope other posters will add their own ideas for more improvements they'd like to see for guilds.

Of course, we all still want the permissions separated and removed from under the "is-officer" heading.
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Another from the first Redux thread:
10/28/2018 10:39 PMPosted by Mceuan
A simple way to invite offline players would be for the GM and/or officers (there's that pesky permission issue again) have a token they could mail to the character requesting the invite. The receiving character has the option to accept or decline the invitation associated with the token.

Solves the problem of people needing to swap around the GM of their bank guild, or when you finally have someone who wants to join your guild, and they are never on when you are.

Guilds need to have more incentives to do things together, and it needs to accessible by all manor of guilds, not just raiding ones. In MoP, running scenarios together was part of the weekly challenge, so why can't we do the same for Islands? Why aren't Timewalking dungeons part of the weekly dungeon challenge?

While we're at it, why can't I mass mail everyone in my guild on the same day? Why am I stuck with a roster that tracks Achievement points instead of ilevel? Why does the MotD load before system messages? Why don't I have some means of communicating with my guild ingame, instead of relying on Discord or Facebook or something else? Why can't I see several days worth of bank activity on the logs? Why can't I have an ingame means of tracking alts of people I've kicked? Crazy as it sounds, sometimes those people want to come back and be disruptive.

What happened to our guild/raid leader forums here? Why did we have to flee to Reddit and Facebook and Discord to chat with other leaders? When are you going to address the purpose of guilds and what their future is? Do you even have someone on staff who can speak into the needs of guilds and their role?
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From the first Redux thread:
10/29/2018 07:07 AMPosted by Druunah
10/28/2018 10:39 PMPosted by Mceuan
While we're at it, why can't I mass mail everyone in my guild on the same day? Why am I stuck with a roster that tracks Achievement points instead of ilevel? Why does the MotD load before system messages? Why don't I have some means of communicating with my guild ingame, instead of relying on Discord or Facebook or something else? Why can't I see several days worth of bank activity on the logs? Why can't I have an ingame means of tracking alts of people I've kicked? Crazy as it sounds, sometimes those people want to come back and be disruptive.


Great ideas.

Let me list them for Blizzard:

As Guild Leaders we need:

A mass mail System so we can mail everyone in our guilds on the same day.

Why does the guild roster track Achievement points instead of ilevel?

Why does the MotD load before system messages?
This has always been but should not be.
Few read it, because many don't see it

Why don't I have some means of communicating with my guild ingame, instead of relying on Discord or Facebook or something else?

THAT! Seriously! I made several guild sites before settling on creating a Facebook group for our guild. (My reason for Facebook? I could never get many guildies to check out the amazing guild pages I made for us. It occurred to me however, that most people had Facebook pages. So a FB group it was. An in-game alternative would still be much more preferable.

We need to be able to see several days worth of bank activity on the logs,

Why can't I have an ingame means of tracking alts of people I've kicked?Sometimes those people want to come back and be disruptive.

For that last one, perhaps a way to not only ban toons from our guilds, but accounts as well. As a Guild leader I have often had those who were booted from the guild attempt to return days, months, even years later. Some people can get major chips on their shoulders. Several times over the years I have had to open tickets to Blizz because either myself or guild-mates were being harassed by someone with a grudge. A couple of times, the person being harassed knew nothing of the person doing the harassing. They were being targeted simple for being in the guild.
Wouldn't it very likely save Blizzard time and money to create a feature (ie: account bans / blocks) for guilds eliminating this issue?

"Guilds need to have more incentives to do things together, and it needs to accessible by all manor of guilds, not just raiding ones."

Agreed.

One idea: Guild only quests. A series of quest chains that are accessible to those in guilds and / or guild groups only. (I know, it's not all inclusive. Not everything needs to be)

Rewards could be gear both practical and cosmetic.
Pets
Special abilities (mostly for show-off / bragging rights) or access to elixirs / potions for the more practical.
Achievements (duh)
How about the ultimate prize maybe being a guild hall?
We as a guild still have guild meetings the old fashioned way. We gather our toons together at a specified location, and have a meeting. We usually meet in an out of the way place, but there isn't really any place in the open world there isn't someone doing something, and sometimes we get interruptions. Especially from the noobish and the annoying. A guild hall would be a nice place to gather, maybe show off awards and guild achievements in some way. A "display case" of sorts for guild rewards comes to mind, but there is probable a better way. How about a readable in-game "history of your guild" tome in the guildhall? Open it and read: "Your Guild" was created on xx/xx/xx by "Toonytoon" a warrior of great renown. Long ago during the great Cataclysm, "Your Guild" reached level 20 (before Blizz took away such things as guild leveling) Etc...etc... (Silly? Maybe)

(Blizzard! You could also throw on that long promised dance hall next door! Hint hint) uh huh..

These quests and rewards should be accessible to all guilds including the small ones so this would require scaling.

Also: Restore our guild permissions please.
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From the original thread:
11/01/2018 06:23 PMPosted by Fumel
11/01/2018 03:17 PMPosted by Mceuan
Guilds should be able to fly banners from every faction they're exalted with, hang heads of raid bosses, display older legendaries (yes, even Thunderfury), etc. In other words, in game displays of guild achieves and it's cosmetic stuff.
I like these ideas.

I was thinking a cool thing for a guild hall would be a "Leader Board". It would display guild member rankings in various categories. Maybe about a half-dozen categories. I'm thinking along the lines of things on the statistics tab that apply to guild achievements the guild is actively pursuing. Critters killed. Flasks made. That sort of thing.

But really, the list should be as flexible as possible because each guild has its own style. Some may want to post PvP rankings. Others may enjoy seeing how many times their fellow guildies died this week. Of course, the guild master chooses the categories, but they might do so based on a vote of the guild, or the executive officers, etc. And the categories should be easy to change, especially if they're being used to track who's contributing most to a particular guild achieve. Once an achieve is earned, there's no point in tracking it--unless the guild wants to.

Because choice and customization should always be a priority.
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From the original thread:
07/30/2018 05:01 PMPosted by Unclescar
I'm not an officer in my guild and this is still very frustrating. Our GM is pretty meticulous about who he trusts with what, including officer chat, inviting new people (or alts of people already in the guild) editing notes, promoting active members or alts to specific ranks etc.. and now no one can do any of that unless they are an officer. It's not just watered down, it's essentially removed and a huge step backwards.
Please, revert this poor decision. This has a negative affect on a GM's control over their own guild's hierarchy and individual rank's allowances.

If you really want to revamp something that could help guilds, revamp the looking for guild tab. It is over saturated with hundreds and hundreds of guilds of 1-10 inactive members that posted their guild years ago and have since stopped playing. I'd suggest a 30 day duration of a post and if a guild want's to keep recruiting they can repost their guild. Also, a second tab that shows individual characters that are guildless and looking so actively recruiting guilds can reach out to specific people without having to search /who or be in the same zone.
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From the original thread:
11/02/2018 03:22 PMPosted by Fumel
11/02/2018 09:36 AMPosted by Venjin
Okey doke, had food and am thinking clearly. I see some drama, but will ignore it because that's not what I'm here to address.

Lets toss a suggestion into the pot to keep it legit:

After reverting Guild Permissions to their former functionality, howzabout a Guild Artisan NPC (That Ideally can be placed in a Guild Hall *wink* *wink*).

This NPC (Or NPC's, split by profession) will allow you to access the highest level of crafting profession available to your guild and will know all available recipies/plans/designs etc. currently known by guild members. Any guildie with appropriate permissions could visit this NPC to produce desired items, with the mats for said items drawn directly from the guild bank if available OR if the person has the mats, they can use an interface similar to the scrapping one. GM's and/or officers with appropriate permissions would be able to set limits as desired. This eliminates the need for "that dude who always makes pots/feasts/flasks" to be on all the time. Would also be a hell of a boon to alts and people uninterested in leveling production professions. AND....you could even put in an option for the GM to set a fee for usage of the Artisans, which will go straight to a Guild Repairs-Only fund...
This is an amazing idea!

Yes, the NPC(s) should only be able to produce items already known by one or more guildies, and only using mats available in the GB or owned by the character accessing the NPC. As you say, this eliminates the need for a guild member who can make these things to always be online.

This NPC (or NPC's) should, of course, have some sort of requirement to make them available in the guild hall, but it shouldn't be so onerous that only 50+ member mythic raiding guilds can manage it. Maybe one or more simple quest lines related to professions. Your Herbalist guildie has to pick some herbs, the Alchemist has to make some pots, the Scribe has to make some glyphs, that sort of thing. The resulting items to be placed in the GB, of course (but the quests reward gold and/or xp to the character completing them, like any other quest).
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From the original thread:
07/30/2018 07:06 PMPosted by Æthelwulf
The granular permissions (Please see my or others quite lengthy posts on why lumping them all together is a bad idea) are a tool that allows a guild master to divide up the work of managing the guild. This gives the various ranks something to do to help the guild (other than game related content) which effectively increases both morale and esprit de corps, gives lower ranks something to aspire towards in the guild, and takes what is usually a benighted task out of the gm or officers hands and performs a task like recruitment that brings new blood to the table. By placing all of that functionality in the hands of officers and gm's only you effectively relegate it to only being done when the gm or an officer is online.

In this way Raid Leaders can concentrate on progression, Recruitment officers can concentrate on reviewing resumes and or advertising to the realm or across realms, Class Leaders can concentrate on their classes just to name a few. It does not make sense to lump all of those permissions together and it causes gm's like myself and others unneeded pain in the realm of a task that is already pretty darn thankless . That of running a guild.

Until you have that job, assuming that everything is okay is likely a mistake.
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From the original thread:
07/30/2018 09:24 PMPosted by Wretchedmist
Posting here again to express my disdain with the changes. I've already made a few posts. I've been the guild master of Obsidian Spur since TBC and have been an officer in the guild since Vanilla.

To summarize:

(1) Revert the guild system permissions back to the way it was, allowing guild masters to assign permissions individually.

(2) Add a complete log/record system for the guild bank so the guild master (and perhaps officers) can keep track of cumulative records on gold deposits, repairs, withdraws, item deposits, and item withdraws. You know, stuff that will actually help guild masters and their chosen leadership manage their guild. If you can keep a statistics tab with all kinds of totally useless information for my character dating back to the start of the stats system, you can add a simple feature that lets me keep track of a few total guild bank records.

(3) Guild masters will determine what it means to be an "officer" in their respective guilds, not some Blizzard employee(s). I don't need clumsy, one-size-fits-all, top-down interventions imposed upon our community. Give us customization, let us manage at the local level, and then get the Hell out. Let us do our business.

It's a simple UI change but it's a giant thorn in my side since patch 8.0. Please address this sooner than later and start by simply reverting the permissions system.
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From the original thread:
08/01/2018 12:30 AMPosted by Irannia
Okay, where to begin here.

I have read all 43 pages of this post. Yes, all 43 of them (at least that's how many pages there were when I started writing this).

Like the many of the people that have posted in here I'm a Guild Leader. I've also been an Officer in one guild or another over the years.

I'm going to do my best to summarize this long thread as best as I can so anyone just coming to the thread can read maybe one page and not... well 43 (so far). I will also be adding my two cents here as well, if it even matters.

For starters, I must say I'm extremely disappointed in only seeing one blue post on this, and it was to inform those actively on this, that the thread has been extended. This is disheartening to say the least.

If there is nothing that can be done about this change then at least have the back bone to tell us. Or at least that you made a mistake.

To say that you can't change it back because it got lumped in with the Communities, is a load of you know what. There is nothing stopping you from keeping the Guild Leaders privileges as they were and placing it in the Communities GUI to stream line it. That would have been a QoL, not this mess we have now. However, as with all corporations it's up to the suites, and in that regard we are screwed... thanks.

For years Guild Leaders have been able to modify and give privileges to whatever rank in the guild.

Case in point:

Officer Chat and Officer Notes:
You could give anyone this privilege. RP guilds use if for RP or for Non-RP conversation. My guild uses it during raid to discuss strategies, problematic teammates, or just vent when things aren't going well. In short conversations that should remain in the Officer Core.

Why is this an issue?
This does not allow a separation in chat for RP guilds. This is important as these players for the most part need to stay in character. However, there are times where they may need to drop character for a question, concern or whatever else may have you.

In Non-RP guilds, you may have a tiered Officer/Leadership Core. I'm one of these guilds. I have essentially two Officer ranks; Officer and Class Leads.

My Officers have roles/jobs in the guild. It's not just a rank to make people feel special. My Officers oversee Raids, PvP (in guild arena tournaments) events, Manage the Guild Vault, and so on.

My Class Leads are more the "Public facing" officers; they help with recruitment, and assist members of the guild with rotations and so forth.

My Officers have access to the Officer Chat and my Class Leads do not. However, my class leads have access to the Officer Notes, this is to allow them to keep track of whether or not someone needs to be promoted or if someone needs help.

Now I'm not able to do that without giving them full privileges when they don't need it.

Public Note:
In the new UI, only "Officers" have access to this. This one I do not understand at all. A player in an RP guild may put something about their character. In my case players would mark their Alts with their Main characters name, ilvl, spec, or professions.

Now because of this only I or my Officers can do this. I have a roster of 255 characters and growing. This makes this a nightmare for me because anyone in my guild can invite players. The only exception to this is Recruits "New Members" and Casuals (in sort lurkers). So if I or an Officer isn't on, a player would just be able to update this note and inform us if they were a Main or Alt, and we could promote accordingly.

This makes managing my roster take twice as long as it did before.

Access to Guild Chat:
This is kind of a silly one, in the sense of "Why would your guild members not have access to your guild's chat?"

Well in some cases, although rarer these days, is if someone gets hacked. Still happens, just not as often. Guild members would demote this person to a rank that would put this person on mute more or less without having to kick them from the guild. Some guilds also use ranks like this as a "time out" or just for giggles.

I don't mind loosing this option but I can see why it was used.

These are the biggest ones for me honestly, and seem to be the biggest gripe among other Guild Leaders.

Other Options Removed:
    Adding and Removing Guild Events
    Edit Guild Info
    Edit Guild Message of the Day


The latter of the two I don't mind overseeing or having my Officers look over this. However, I can see where other Guild Leaders would want those strictly as a Guild Leader responsibility.

Other issues that have come up is that the new UI does not exactly show "Last Online" very well. There has also been rumor that this may be removed. Please, do NOT remove this.

Everyone here who is a Guild Leader or Officer, or has been in the past, knows that keeping an active roster is a healthy roster.

I just want to say that you can still access this for now by typing /groster or /guildroster. This will bring up the older roster format and you can sort players as you would have in the past. Thanks be to whomever for at least that much.

Final Thoughts:

Any "Serious" Guild Leader will tell you that running and maintaining a guild takes real work. It's not something that you just slap together and boom you have a guild. Some people do that, but most do not. I spend hours out of my week doing just this. Specially right now when recruitment is at it's best with returning players, guilds that have "retired" to put politely, and many other factors.

We spend real time thinking about what we want out of our guilds, and what we want our members to be able to get out of it. We, promote people and give them roles to assist us. We give opportunities to our members to grow and opportunities to excel with in these small communities.

We as Guild Leaders know that an active roster is a healthy one. I've stated this much already. What this means is that we are constantly making sure that there is stuff for our members to do, participate in and keep them active. This means we keep them subbed, or at least spending money. This means the pocket books of Blizzard. (I know we are not supposed to call the company out but in this case it can't be helped.)

Why do we do this? Why do we essentially work for a company that we don't get paid by? There are many reasons, one is because we love the game, (mostly). Another, is because we have built a community of people that many of us would consider friends.

Why would you make our "jobs" more difficult? Please explain this to me.

I can understand the idea of Communities. For years I've said that the community in WoW is nothing like it used to be, and guilds have done their best to fill this niche as much as possible. The Communities has a lot of promise depending on how the gaming community utilizes it. At the same time you are essentially making cross server guilds.

I am completely okay with this idea, and I'm surprised that this hasn't started earlier.

However, if this is the actual case, your guild leaders still need the freedom to create the communities they wish as they see fit.

What happened to, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it"?

This change was made with no preamble, no way for the Guild Leaders to adjust appropriately. All this means is there is an addon developer out there that is going to figure out how to give us this control back. To that person, I say thank you, cause I already know nothing is going to be done with this by Blizzard themselves.

I can only hope to be proven wrong.
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From the original thread:
08/02/2018 08:02 AMPosted by Greenstone
Again the OP was very precise regarding what the issue is:

> New Permissions UI: https://i.imgur.com/v7WlrcH.png
> Old Permissions UI: https://i.imgur.com/Fi55wGh.png


The new permissions break the way guilds normally control ranks, promote people, give rewards, control raid teams, add notes, even control civility in the game, removing much of the said control a traditional guild has.

In this thread we have explained how this issue continues to cause problems for us, I personally have gone to Twitter and messaged multiple devs and found websites who have pointed out the flaws with the new system.

We still have not received one solid Blue / Dev response over this issue.

Although at least two MVP's in the forum communities have spoken for us.

Please Blizzard I understand you are very busy regarding the new expansion, I understand you have the big reveals coming before the release however this shouldn't be a problem that continues until that time.

The permissions need to be fixed and either reverted back to their original panel or changed so that we have more granularity in a new permissions panel.


The Community UI panel works but again its like an abomination with parts thrown in together for no real reason. The older panel presented more information about guild users, such as a complete list of who is exhaulted with the guild, how many users are on versus how many users are in the guild, in a smaller footprint. (Type /groster in game to see the smaller panel.)

Its true Guildmasters can have control over communities they create for themselves, and that is awesome, but in reality its meant for everyone to be able to use and create groups. Its basically a more visible form of channel creation in the game, which I illustrated earlier in this thread. This in essence makes it non-guild related interface, since players can create their own communities and do whatever they want with them.

Worse part is while communities seem related to guilds they can be used to undermine rather than support a guild. I illustrated this earlier by listing the abuses of such a system. So while the implementation of communities as they are works it does not work in conjunction with Guild Control so having them pushed together into one interface actually covers up the issues that come about.

For example: if I make people a leader / moderator of my community channel that does not necessarily mean they are leaders in the guild. Which is awesome, however the permissions that you guys set up in the guild controls seem to have wanted to tie up the two. You can't do that because not all players are officers in the guild.

So again please fix the permissions because it seems like the permissions were a jumble you had one way of thinking about communities and another about guilds and someone made a mistake or tried to implement the same set of rules for both and that doesn't work.

Revert the old permissions allow us to choose the old guild interface from a button at the bottom of the community panel and remove all the extra fluff of guilds in the community panel. Give us a solid separation between the two.

If later on you want to update the guild roster window you can do so but establish that communities and guild control are separate.
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From the original thread:
08/03/2018 07:18 AMPosted by Takoda
08/02/2018 11:09 PMPosted by Irannia
I personally would not have minded the change IF there was an "Advanced" option tab, or check box that unbundles the Officer privileges. So that way you can have a simple version and the original version with all the options.

The fact that I have to resort to addons to circumvent the change that was made is sad. I'd rather not run 101 addons if I don't have to.


I'm actually ok with an Advanced option too. My issue is that I don't want the loss of functionality that we're seeing in the current iteration of the permissions.

If it's easier from a technical perspective to revert, then I'd support reverting. If it's easier to just start over and restore what we used to have while adding in a few new things (like inviting offline characters), then I would support that.

I mostly just want the old functionality back asap. Improvements can be step two.
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Well, that's it. I did have other quoted posts, but they were basically saying the same things. There are, of course, many later posts that I never got around to quoting my first time around. I know I've seen some really great posts, but I just don't have it in me right now to go looking. Plus I really do have other things to do.

If this thread survives the forum purge, we'll have at least saved some of the conversation and ideas that were brought up in the original.

Of course, what we all really want is to have the guild issues addressed.

/sigh
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I hope I don't get in trouble for making a bunch of posts in a row (or get this thread locked because of doing so).


You (we) are only doing what Blizzard specifically asked us to do, in (apparently) the only manner that is left viable to us at this point.

I for one want to thank you profusely for taking the time to save all of those relevant and valuable posts from previous threads.

Blizzard:

As promised in the mega thread as well as in the redux post. I am still here. I am NOT going away.

We as guild leaders, would like guild permissions / control returned to us please.

For the moment, the mega thread is still there for your viewing convenience. After that is no longer true, the highlights from said thread are here in redux part II.

If that too become unavailable,

I'll be back...
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I definitely hope we will get the old permissions thing back. And another thing that really bugs me is how the news thing disappears all the time. It is very annoying to deal with because it makes the guild seem very inactive.
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.......well I feel rather stupid.

Because my wife has not mentioned it much, I completely failed to notice the whole "Guild News fails to populate" issue.

Welp, there's ONE more thing to toss on the pile for me.
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11/12/2018 02:11 PMPosted by Venjin
.......well I feel rather stupid.

Because my wife has not mentioned it much, I completely failed to notice the whole "Guild News fails to populate" issue.

Welp, there's ONE more thing to toss on the pile for me.
I thought it was because my guild is basically dead...
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11/12/2018 04:49 PMPosted by Brahmina
11/12/2018 02:11 PMPosted by Venjin
.......well I feel rather stupid.

Because my wife has not mentioned it much, I completely failed to notice the whole "Guild News fails to populate" issue.

Welp, there's ONE more thing to toss on the pile for me.
I thought it was because my guild is basically dead...


TBH I was coming to the same conclusion until I started looking at the last online readouts and comparing my screen to my wife's. The inconsistency is maddening because she sees a busy guild of people gradually gearing up while I see.....pleh. To be fair though, we have a few Florida guildies and I just figured the last Hurricane screwed their playtime.
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<- Stupid here.

I finally noticed the pending guild recruitment listing.

Hi Druunah :)
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11/12/2018 08:39 PMPosted by Venjin
I finally noticed the pending guild recruitment listing.

Hi Druunah :)


Looking forward to cookies! =)
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