The new Guild UI and Permissions...yikes (Part 1)

[Fumel-arathor (Fumel)]

There’s also the thinking of “Well I mean, there’s already a thread with tons of posts that explain what is wrong, so why do i need to add yet another post to it? Every piece of information that they need is in that thread already.”

This is pretty much why I’ve been going back and pulling up posts from earlier in the thread. We got told by Blizz that they wanted more feedback, and I thought, “Haven’t we given enough already?” I figured they must have skipped many of the posts in this thread (much like Che-whoever seems to do), so I go back, read through (I skip nothing), and quote posts that really strike a chord in me.

[Fumel-arathor (Fumel)]

This is sort of cheating, but this post from August 9 seems relevant to me:

08/09/2018 11:32 AMPosted by Beteljuice

4. The proposal was OKed because the people who should have analysed the ramifications in much more depth were busy with the thousands of other changes in BfA, and didn't think of all the scenarios where the granularity was necessary.

^This is what I'm sure was the source of the problem. Not fully thinking through the ramifications of the change.

And I'm equally sure you're absolutely right about this not being an easy, quick fix. They can't simply "revert" it; they have to write new code.

So, what we have to continue to do with this thread is to point out why the current changes don't work, and highlight changes we'd like to see.

I personally would like separate permissions that can be given out by the guild masters as they see fit to as many different officer ranks as they need. A tiny guild like mine doesn't need a bunch of officers, but a large guild with multiple raid and/or PvP teams most certainly does.

Every guild has it's own personality and way of doing things, so we need flexibility on how to manage them. It might seem more time consuming to have every permission require a separate checkbox, but once a GM has set up their ranks and associated permissions, it's super easy. Certainly far easier than the complications the current one-size-fits-all permissions have caused.

Note: The first paragraph is quoting an earlier post by Beteljuice, but it kinda looks like the whole thing is from me. I don’t want anyone to get thrown off by the quote not showing up as an obvious quote.

[Venjin-bronzebeard (Venjin)]

Blizzard:

You know what happens when you put in a single checkbox that gives a ton of power under one umbrella?

Baron Corbin. THAT’S what happens.

C’mon, be better than this.

Give us the deets on the fix, yo!

[Nêlsôn-greymane]

At least Alexa got her concussion cleared,

But yeah, why is this still unanswered.

[Holliday-lightbringer (Holliday)]

What’s this… another week gone by with no communication from Blizzard???

Who would have thought it was possible… they’re certainly doing their best to ignore the problem till it goes away.

[Bassets-whisperwind (Bassets)]

We are still having to deal with this mess! Perhaps a fix in the patch? Yes, No? Maybe?

[Merridae-aerie-peak (Merridae)]

We are still having to deal with this mess! Perhaps a fix in the patch? Yes, No? Maybe?

Unlikely as there isn’t one on the PTR.

[Beteljuice-kargath (Beteljuice)]

I find it astounding that Blizz has still not made any official statement on their view of the state of the guild interface. Whether it is the all-encompassing Officer flag, the bugs with new UI, or all the great suggestions for improvement, there is more than enough material here for them to at least tell us what they think about the future. We are almost at the next content patch, continued silence does not bode well for how important Blizz thinks guilds are to this game. At this point it appears that most people (rightly) have stopped insisting that the changes be “reverted”, and have simply asked for a reasonable set of changes (with compelling arguments) to allow their guild to be run in a safe, reliable and fun way. Please Blizz, do not make the same mistake you made originally and suddenly release a “fix” on us without sufficient testing and comment from us. But please do let us know that you intend to fix things because being a guild leader should be rewarded, not punished.

[Fumel-arathor (Fumel)]

I came across this post (from Aug 10) with some really good suggestions that I feel could use additional exposure. I only quoted part of the post, so feel free to go back and look at the original.

Something that I would like to see in Guilds or even Communities, is the option to link characters together if they are from the same account. This would make managing Alts a lot easier on the roster instead of just having players put a Public Note in. This would be quite useful as well for Guild Leads who may swap Mains and not change over the Guild Leadership to that character. Thus risk loosing the guild cause they haven’t logged on to one specific character.

6. Something that was said earlier in this thread that upset me was the potential loss of the Last Online. This needs to remain for active rosters. I’ve stated this much before in my earlier posts. However, this needs to be cleaned up in the new GUI. There is no way to currently sort players by this and their rank. Please fix this as well.

7. Something that was removed from guilds a while back and understandably so because it was being abused was Cash Flow. I would like to see this reimplemented but in a different way. I personally don’t offer guild repairs. This is because it can drain your coffers faster than you can blink, particularly if you have a larger guild. Instead we use the money to buy materials for flasks, food and whatnot to support our raiders in a more effective way. What I propose is to have a separate gold counter for the guild, that it’s sole purpose is for guild repairs, and it can’t be withdrawn from by the Guild Lead. This way you don’t have people starting guilds and mass inviting players for the purpose of gold hording/farming.

On this topic as well, the Guild Challenges, the money reward needs to be increased to stay in pace with the inflation of the economy of the game. 3.4k per week with the current rewards is honestly a joke.

8. Something that Guild Leads and Players in general have been crying for years now. Better Guild Finding and Recruitment in the game. I’m sorry but lurking the forums, spamming trade chat, and going into the social tab looking for unguilded players is not my idea of fun. Not to mention the “Recruitment” in the game does not alert you if someone has put there name in. Nor does it show if that player is on or offline. It’s a huge waist of code in my opinion.

9. Guild Message of the Day… More like never seen message of the day. This gets lost in addon spam. You almost never see it. I use it but I have to go back into Discord to do announcements so people know what’s going on. It would be nice if this was a little more prevalent.

All of these things would be a QoL as a Guild Lead.

I have one other thing that I would like to mention but is not related to guild controls completely. This is the Master Looter/Personal Loot systems.

Guilds generally use Master Loot, not because of wanting to horde loot for certain special people, (not saying this don’t happen, and it’s a shame when it does), but to appropriate gear out a bit more evenly. With the changes made to threat in the game, there is a real potential for one person to get a lucky steak and get completely geared. This is not a bad thing in essence, but if that DPS player all of a sudden out gears the tanks by a large amount, there are going to be some serious threat issues.

I played back in TBC as a tank, and tanks and heals were geared first just because of the threat game. I can see some serious problems with this if things are not dispersed evenly, if we are bringing some of these older systems back. What bothers me is that IF you are in a guild environment then you know what loot system is being used, and you go into a raid team understanding this. As a player if you didn’t agree with it, then you wouldn’t be raiding what said team/guild. If you pugged 4-5 people anyway it would revert to Personal Loot anyway. I really don’t know why we moved to Personal Loot, but I’m not a fan of this.

We went to Personal Loot in LFR that could be traded freely….
To many people complained about other players harassing them about not trading gear….
Gear now that is received, if it’s a higher ilvl or part of a set that you don’t already have it auto binds……
Personal loot forced even on premade groups……
Not able to trade gear to players that could use said item when the original recipient DOESN’T need/want it.

This is not good… not good at all.

[Draconiom-senjin (Draconiom)]

I have unsubbed partly due to this issue, combine it with the lack of legit reasoning behind changing racial motivations I am out.

[Draconiom-senjin (Draconiom)]

The real answer is that Bliz is earnestly trying to kill off guilds.

[Wretchedmist-thrall (Wretchedmist)]

Checking in again to make sure my voice is heard. Everyone contributing to this discussion needs to keep doing so. So far we’ve been ignored.

As of right now, I haven’t assigned anyone in our guild with the “Is Officer” box since there are certain permissions I will not assign to anyone in the guild, regardless of rank. As a result of this, nobody in the guild has access to any of those eight privileges since they’re all lumped together in a one-size-fits-all definition of “an officer,” as defined by some Blizzard employee.

Please give us the individual permission customization we had prior to patch 8.0. That’s it. That’s all I’m asking for.

For further recommendations to help guild management, add a complete log/record system for the guild bank so the guild master can keep track of cumulative records on gold deposits, gold repairs, gold withdraws, item deposits, and item withdraws. If WoW developers can create and maintain a statistics tab with all kinds of totally useless information for my character, they can add a simple feature that lets me keep track of a few guild bank records. That would actually help guilds and their leaders. Many other recommendations have already been made in this thread.

Please address this problem sooner than later. This thread began on July 17. We’re now at December 8. I’m not asking for an apology. Just revert the permissions change. That’s it. Many people have already given detailed explanations and feedback here over these pages. Last time I posted this thread in October it was over 98 pages. Now I don’t see a page count.

You have what you need, and the “discussion” has already occurred. Read it, and pass the information along to the next group of people who need to make the correction. Failure to do so will just further the stereotypes of poor communication at Activision Blizzard.

I will continue to check in here until the change is made. Everyone else needs to do so, too.

Wretchedmist
GM of Obsidian Spur
2004 Horde launch guild

[Smadinker-moon-guard (Smadinker)]

As crazy as it sounds I almost believe it. Blizzard hasn’t done anything positive for guilds in ages, they have done plenty of taking reasons away from being in a guild though.

[Anareiel-moon-guard (Anareiel)]

Agree!.
Not only have I never seen so many unguilded players before Blizzard started 'fixing’cough things but most of them seem to prefer it!

[Fumel-arathor (Fumel)]

Another detailed post from August 10. This was before some changes were made. I also don’t 100% agree with all the suggestions presented here–but I do think they deserve another look.

It is now about a month since these changes have been made and we are still struggling with these issues, these fixes are needed to strengthen game play.

• 01. Please revert the permission changes to the guild controls it is damaging our ability to manage our guilds the way we want.
  The “Isofficer” setting is too broad and doesn’t allow GM’s to manage their guilds the way we want.
  -
• 02. Bring back the “MUTE” players guild chat ability without it we have no way of controlling an argument in guild without kicking people.
  Freedom of speech is grand but even in these forums people do not get to say everything they want. Its basically the idea that you do not have the right to yell “FIRE” in a place where no fire is happening without consequences.
  -
• 03. Fix Community UI panel, place all the Guild Control functions into one button on the bottom of the panel called “Guild Controls”.
  Please simply use the old Guild Control panel, we do not need the extra fluff, the original panel presents more information in smaller footprint and also is more elegant than the abomination that you current created which splices two different things together.
  
  Players can then continue to use /groster command or the Guild Control button to call up the old panel.
  
  This does two things it basically ensures devs/players in the future will not conflate Community UI panel issues and Guild Control panel issues, and also ensures that Guilds continue to prosper.
  -
• 04. Fix the LOOKING FOR GUILD utility so that it mimics the LINK ability in the Community UI.
  Basically when a user asks for an invite to guild a guild recruiter / officer can send the user a LINK to get invited to the guild even if the user is OFFLINE.
  -
• 05. Fix the bugs that are associated with the Community UI, especially if you do not modify it like I am requesting above.
  For example being unable to invite if your guild has already given you permissions to invite. Seeing everyone who is OFFLINE in the CHATLOG window when you should show only those who are ONLINE maybe add a toggle for this.
  -
• 06. Fix the GUILD CHAT LOGS so that as guild master you can set the privacy level of it. Give users a privacy level toggle as well.
  Basically a guildmaster should be able to make the guild logs record all the time, be privately recording for officers only, or be in full view all the time.
  
  Also you should allow players to set their privacy level as well - record or not - when chat logs are in full view setting. Something they can change on the fly. Example: User doesn’t want to be recorded text in guild chat: BOB: User has set privacy on his chat.
  -
• 07. Fix the LOOT MASTER setting to allow FULL GUILD GROUPS to still use loot master if they so choose, however once the PUG limit on a group has been hit (I believe its 3-4) you can no longer use the option.
  Again this is for guilds not pug groups, this will stop bad apples from ninjaing gear/mounts but will ensure that people still have a choice in a guild. Also make all mount drops BOP untradeable this will ensure that you no longer receive tickets about people stealing mounts.
  -
• 08. Fix the AUTO-INVITE function its a detriment to smaller guild groups that it has been removed.
  If you are doing a transmog run you basically can setup a minimum ilvl and auto-invite people for it, by removing auto-invite you basically are making it a more selective system and making it harder for players to find groups. It might seem like a no-brainer but honestly when you are going through trash quickly in a run and just want to fill your ranks to have that “CLASSIC” big raid experience having to piece-meal invites is slow. Also it ruins the ability to invite while afk to the guild garrisons which many people still like to do for pet battles and what not.
  -
• 09. The Community UI can be used to build communities cross server but basically its a new way to CREATE AND CONTROL CHANNELS, however it fails to read OLD CHANNELS that you have created and ADD them to the Community UI.
  So if you have an old channel called “HEALERS” it will not create a community for that channel unless you actually make that with the new UI. This means older channels do not get merged into the new channel that you create. Please add a button to allow channels to be merged.
  -
• 10. Stop removing functionality that does not effect the game other than to help players play the game.
  All of these fixes will not help you win a boss fight you still need to be able to do mechanics or understand your character to do so.

These are utility issues in the game and while they maybe they seem like they need to be “updated” many times updating something means breaking functions that people rely on.

While WOW is Blizzard’s property and can be changed in any way they deem fit doing so in a haphazard manner can damage the player relationship with the game, therefore damaging the player communities, and even losing players.

After a 1000+ posts it should be clear that this game has grown since it was first introduced and that players expect a certain measure of respect for tools that they are constantly using throughout the day and the lifetime of the game.

Changes to the game itself is expected such as Warmode, and stat squishes, and balance changes and talent changes, we expect the Devs to do these things to continue to refresh the game and make it feel new for everyone.

However you don’t remove basic tools like the ability to chat to other people or group up with other people because these are in effect changes that damage the game play and hurt the players.

The guild tools which have been changed do the same thing they are basically items that guilds rely on constantly and therefore are items that players rely on constantly, by changing them you hurt not just a guild, but the player base.

Yes its your game and you can make the changes you want to it, but do you really want to disenfranchise users who are loyal and WANT to continue to play the game.

[Lekneve-ragnaros (Lekneve)]

I keep looking for a blue answer on this issue.

Blizz, we still don’t like this changes, please revert them.
Also, this:

Fix the LOOT MASTER setting to allow FULL GUILD GROUPS to still use loot master if they so choose, however once the PUG limit on a group has been hit (I believe its 3-4) you can no longer use the option.

(i know that is not main topic on this thread, still worth to mention it)

[Druunah-ravencrest (Druunah)]

its your game and you can make the changes you want to it, but do you really want to disenfranchise users who are loyal and WANT to continue to play the game.

I for one would like to see this poster’s question answered.

[Draconiom-senjin (Draconiom)]

Bliz’s lack of response to this issue is one of the reasons I unsubbed yesterday. Their NOT paying attention is more than I can take anymore.

[Nêlsôn-greymane]

Oh they know this thread is here, they’re just hoping we give up and it dies off.

[Delirium-bronzebeard (Delirium)]

Well im not going away!