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

Community General Discussion
3245

Here is a slightly different take on the permissions (I found this back in October still):

So, this poster appears to be okay with the all-in-one permissions, but doesn’t want his “caretakers” to be able to dethrone him.

While I understand the reasoning behind allowing guild takeovers, I have to say it doesn’t seem to have worked out all that well in reality. GM’s wanting to prevent a takeover have to “waste” ranks to create a barrier. Creating a barrier makes it impossible to dethrone an inactive GM. I have several characters in dead guilds where this is the exact case. Their only option (if they want an active guild) is to leave and find another guild.

It seems to me that the best solution would be to restore the granular permissions, but also add a permission to dethrone. A GM could then select a trusted member of any rank and give them this permission (which would only be usable when the GM is inactive, just like now). That way GM’s don’t have to waste ranks creating placeholders to prevent a dethroning, but the option can still exist if the GM chooses to assign the dethroning permission to someone and then they become inactive for an extended period.

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3246

In July, nobody picked the Blazers to sniff the Postseason.

Now they’re in the WCF.

They’re giving me something to believe in.

Now it’s your turn, Bliz.

Update the PTR patch notes with the fix.

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3247

I have mixed feelings about this. In some ways, I like it. I’m generally in favor of more permissions. In other ways, I’m not sure.

Thinking out loud below. My opinion is very much subject to change.

I’m GM of my guild by dethroning. The GM before me also dethroned. The GM before that was the original. Both of the previous two “took a break” for a couple months, and never returned. So…if dethroning wasn’t an option, my guild wouldn’t exist.

The GM before me had a lot of good qualities. But being generous with permissions was not one of them. He had everything super locked down, including running a recruitment drive while not letting other people invite. (Which didn’t make sense to me then, and continues to not make sense to me now.) So I’m reasonably certain that he wouldn’t have provided a permission to dethone.

I told him that I dethroned him when I did it, and he was okay with it. But I didn’t have a sub when he left, so he couldn’t have just turned the guild over to me. He didn’t know that I was going to return, and I didn’t know that he was planning to leave.

Sometimes stuff happens. Life distractions. Car accidents. Illness. And I don’t really see a good reason why a guild like mine, with years of history, should have to end just because someone wasn’t willing to give out a permission. If a member is willing to step up and continue the guild, they should be able to do so…regardless of the GM’s trust level.

After all, the GM in this hypothetical is now gone. So…do we actually care about the opinions of an absent GM? I’m not sure that I do…

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3248

I was thinking that GM’s who don’t want to be dethroned now just make buffer ranks that they assign only to their own alts, so things wouldn’t be that different with a permission to dethrone, but I see now where I was wrong. The current way, you have to do something to actively block dethroning. My suggestion makes dethroning blocked by default and you have to actively assign the permission. That’s a pretty big difference.

Mostly I was trying to think of a way to avoid “wasting” ranks to make a dethroning prevention buffer. Perhaps there could still be a dethroning permission, but it’s checked by default for the three highest ranks. A GM would have to actively uncheck the permission to prevent dethroning. That would still allow GM’s to block dethroning, but they wouldn’t have to create empty ranks to do so.

Also, with it being a permission, the GM has more leeway on which specific characters they want to grant the power to regardless of rank. They wouldn’t have to demote someone to remove their ability to dethrone; they could just uncheck the box.

In any case, the idea’s a non-starter without granular permissions to begin with. I’m still hoping we’ll be getting our original granularity back before much longer.

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3249

Yes! Exactly!

This would help. My personal opinion is that dethroning is an option for the benefit of the guild, not for the GM’s benefit. Having a way around it is…odd to my way of thinking. The possibility I came up with is to modify the system so it is always active, but staggered by ranks. So like, rank 2 can dethrone after 3 months. Rank 3 after 4 months, rank 4 after 5 months…etc. By the time that filters through the whole guild, a GM would have to be absent for a year. That way, buffer ranks would simply buy time rather than completely blocking a dethroning.

I would like to hear from people who don’t like dethroning. Maybe someone that has their guild set up with buffer ranks could explain the reasoning there? Why did you choose to structure your guild so you can’t be dethroned? I’m genuinely curious.

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3250

I can’t answer for others, and I don’t have a buffer on my guild (since there’s no chance I’ll be dethroned), but I can think of at least one scenario where a GM might not be able to be on for 3 or more months but not want to lose their guild: Deployment.

With granular permissions, a GM who doesn’t want to give up their position could arrange for various guild “caretakers” to keep things running while they were away. Buffers would make sure they didn’t lose their guild to anyone unscrupulous. And yes, one would hope that wouldn’t be necessary, but in a perfect world, divorce wouldn’t be a thing, either. Of course, with buffers no one could take over the guild if the worst should happen.

With an assignable dethrone permission, a deployed GM could give that permission to the guildie they most trust and not worry that just anyone of a high enough rank could take over.

But again, I’m seeing this from a Guild Master’s perspective, not from a perspective of what might be best for the guild. And I agree that:

So it comes down to whether you think of a guild as “belonging” to the GM or the guild members. I think there are players in both camps, and a GM with the belief that they “own” their guild isn’t going to want to be dethroned for any reason.

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3251

While nearly everything I do is for my members’ benefit, I’ve invested so much into my guild that I would be upset beyond words if I were ousted. For me to be inactive for that long would have to be something pretty serious, and short of medical emergency I don’t see that happening.
I will be the first to admit my blatant selfishness when it comes to my guild, as a structure that I built and put thousands of gold and hours into. Much as I love all of my members, nobody has invested even half of what I have in what we’ve built. Then, 70% or more of what’s in the bank, I put there. Sure, for my members… but if it’s not needed/used then I feel within my rights to take it back/sell it/whatever… if I were dethroned and someone else took all that for themselves (not just leaving it there for everyone)? I couldn’t express how irate I would be.
Though I will say, when I created a rank to stash my alts into, the intention wasn’t a buffer. If I knowingly would end up needing to leave the game long enough to risk being dethroned, I would be handing it off to a trusted officer anyways. One that would give it back when I return.

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3252

Yes, I want to see current iLevel in-game on the guild roster. That would be far more useful than Achieve points, IMO. I hate having to do an armory crawl to see iLevel on someone, or use an addon.

Guild leadership (GMs as well as officers) generally put in a good amount of time outside of game to run their organizations. If Blizzard could make our lives a bit easier, that would be a solid acknowledgement of what we do to better the game.

And feathers for the Tauren. Let’s not drop the ball on that request. My Horde main is a Tauren, so I have a vested interest.

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3253

Thanks for the explanation. :smiley: My view of dethroning is very much colored by my own history with it. So it’s really good to see it through someone else’s eyes.

A temporary hand-off to someone trusted is my preferred solution to a situation like deployment too. In my experience, a guild tends to fade rather quickly when the GM is gone.

I completely agree that the system needs to be designed so someone dethroning to take off with all the guild’s stuff is rare or never happens. My bank and the guild’s bank don’t have clear lines either. I use Tak’s reagent bank as gbank overflow, and a lot of times, I just plop my stuff directly in the guild bank.

I think you nailed it here, Fumel. I’ve always viewed my guild from more of the “caretaker” lens. I didn’t create it. I’ve invested a lot into it over the years, but I don’t feel like I own the guild. I’m continuing a legacy, and doing my best to honor those that came before me by continuing to maintain our shared WoW home.

Someone that doesn’t share that background will understandably have a different way of approaching their guild. I think it’s important to have a system that works well for both types of GM, and for the benefit of all guilds.

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3254

Definitely.

And that’s also the same reason we need the permissions separated. The system needs to work for all types of guilds, which means it can’t be a one-size-fits-all solution.

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3255

Staying strong, staying the course, and still trying to create customized ranks with varying permissions.

This Common Core approach to guild management sucks.

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3256

So, here’s a post from October that doesn’t actually offer any suggestions or priorities, but I think it’s relevant to what I’ve been doing and so I’d like to answer it:

Why do I keep reading through the thread, quoting old posts, and thus keep the thread going? Because I believe this is one of the more vital and important issues ever to hit the WoW community–even if the majority of players aren’t even aware of it.

Guilds are WoW’s lifeblood. Without them, this might as well just be a single-player offline game. And this change has done a huge amount of damage to guilds while giving nothing in return. There are players who use the Communities feature, certainly. But Blizzard missed the boat if they wanted players to use their Communities instead of Discord.

Though there are numerous issues with BfA, I still love this game. I still think it’s worth fighting for. So I’m not going to roll over and just pretend everything is A-OK with guilds. I’m not going to let this issue go until Blizzard either fixes the permissions or closes the thread.

We have gotten some feedback from Blizzard (though not in this thread), and they’ve said they understand the issue and are working on a fix. Ion asked that we give specific feedback about how these changes have affected our guilds and what we’d like to see done about it. He also asked that we “prioritize” our needs, which strongly implies the reason nothing has been fixed yet is because Blizzard has yet to allocate the resources to the issue.

My guild hasn’t been directly impacted by the changes except in the sense that I’m not going to try to grow it into a “real” guild with the permissions as they stand. I want to be able to assign different permissions to different ranks and thus spread responsibility around. I can’t do that with these all-or-nothing permissions.

Separating the permissions is what I see as the priority. We’ve had lots of other terrific suggestions regarding the roster, recruiting, and guild perks. I wouldn’t object to having some or all of these implemented as well. But the permissions are still the main thing we need fixed.

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3257

Here I am quoting someone else from earlier in the thread. Since the change to the new forums it’s hard to find these old posts and quote them fresh. Yes, this thread is so old it predates the forum revamp.

This GM gives some very specific feedback, just like Ion asked for:

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3258

Here is another GM posting (from back in October) with what looks like very specific feedback to me:

I do like the idea of incentives for players who are exalted with their guilds and for GM’s who maintain active guilds with active rosters–though I know most GM’s who work hard on their guilds don’t do it for any sort of reward beyond that of having a great guild. Right now though, I bet most GM’s would feel very rewarded to have the permissions broken up again so they can assign various permissions however they wish.

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3259

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, or at the very least not engaged with in a constructive dialogue.

As of now, I haven’t assigned anyone in our guild with the “Is Officer” check box since there are certain permissions I will not assign, 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 someone on the Blizzard WoW team. I’ve been playing WoW since 2005, raiding since 2005 MC, and leading our guild as guild master since 2007. I know our guild and how to effectively run things better than some stranger on the WoW team.

Please give us the individual permission customization we had prior to patch 8.0. That’s all I’m asking for. That’s the most simple, starting recommendation.

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’s entire history, they can add a simple feature that lets me keep track of guild bank records. That would actually help guilds and their leaders manage things like donations rather than have to make Google sheets and such.

Please address this problem. This thread began on July 17, 2018. We’re now at May 21, 2019. That doesn’t reflect well on Activision Blizzard.

Many other recommendations to help guilds have already been provided in this thread. This information can be gleaned from some eager, hard-working interns and would make a good Summer project. Get to work now. 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 corrections. Failure to do so will just further the stereotypes of poor communication and the apparent growing disregard for the gaming community 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 - Thrall realm
2004 Horde launch guild

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3260

Blizzard:

This is just me reminding you that I have not gone away.

My guild’s permissions are still broken.

Fix them please.

Thank you.

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3261

Almost a solid year later…

You guys just aren’t giving them enough feedback.

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3262

:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:

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3263

Also starts to laugh; it soon turns to weeping that echoes down the empty, empty halls

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3264

crawls out of hole

squints and sees the sun

Hiss!

scrambles back underground

Too bad I didn’t have a customized officer rank with just the right permissions to help me deal with this situation.

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