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

Fumel-arathor · August 9, 2019, 3:43am

Here is an excellent post from another thread in response to the Q&A request for feedback:

This is what I want from the guild management interface

In your recent Q&A, you requested concrete, specific suggestions for changes in the guild management tools. As a guild leader for 11.5 years, I can speak to what I, and my officers, would like to see.

I want the ability to add more ranks. Nine is not enough. Players have a sense of attachment to a guild when they feel longevity is rewarded. I don’t care if I have to cough up 10k gold per new rank but I want the ability to reward people for being here. I can see this could get out of hand, but how about “up to 15 ranks”, for instance.

I want an interface that is the size of the calendar. I want a panel which can display up to three columns. One column is “currently online”, one column is the entire roster, and one column is professions. The type size is too tiny. I need to be able to see my roster. For the average player, they would be able to select – via a button – how much of this interface they wish to see.

I want a typeable search panel that allows me to sort the roster by class, race, name, server, rank, and have ONLY those names I’m looking for show up. I want to be able to type a name and have all that person’s toons show up. This would require labeling on our part, something we do when a person joins.

Speaking as the leader, I want that “Guild Permissions” box to be double the size. It’s hard to read.

When I invite an alt, I want a box where I can attach an alt to a main.

The two notes sections of player panels – general and officer – need to be larger and allow more characters to contain more information.

Guild Event specific calendar. Instead of a drop down menu, it should be a clickable button which allows you to set repeated events as either “event”, “guild event”, or “other” and it needs to be larger.

The Guild Message of the Day needs to be loaded in AFTER all the other things that show up when you log on. OR…and I would prefer this…give us a guild bulletin board where there is a message of the day as well as any information officers need to give to people. Plus, people could use this in addition to in-game letters, to post notes like "I’m going to be on vacation.” All messages should age off the bulletin board at two weeks and the board would only hold 10 messages at a time.

Attendance tracking for those guilds who monitor attendance. Have a panel on the roster where you can just check who actually shows up at an event. Also a line to add names of people who come but did not sign up.

A button to click if the person has an authenticator. (We use this demarcation for bank permissions.)

A log of guild activity with date and time stamp, just like the bank log. When a toon is added to the guild, there should be an automatic date, time stamp, and the name of the person who invited.

If someone gets kicked, I want a way to flag them so they don’t try to rejoin under another name. It’s only happened to us once, way back in Wrath, and it may not be an issue, but as long as we’re talking about things which would make guild maintenance better, I would like this.

So, here you have Spectacular Death’s concrete, specific list of items we’d like to see which would improve guild management. I need to note, the tools I’m using now are the exact same ones I used when I formed my guild 11.5 years ago. There hasn’t been much change other than the recent consolidation of guild leader permissions.

I hope this is a start in getting much needed change for managing guilds. I feel that the sense of community found with guilds has been gutted in the last three expansions. We need support from the developers to enhance the experience we provide to players.

Fumel-arathor · August 11, 2019, 5:02am

More March feedback:

Lucyclawless:

The Guild Roster needs to be restructured. GMs and officers need the ability to manage the roster more efficiently.

Currently the roster is limited to 999 characters, with notes that only the officers can read and/or change and no transparency is allowed to even the player whom the note is intended for,

Personally I am using a Spreadsheet to echo details that I feel are crucial to maintaining the roster. This should not be necessary if they could just make some changes.

1). Instead of individual characters, we need a player profile. While some have only one character in the guild, many of our members have many more than one. My server is connected so a player could potentially have up to 31 alts in our guild. Perhaps allow the player to select which character will be their main. Or give the guild master the option of locking it so they can’t change it without permission. Within the profile, give the officers the ability to promote/demote/kick all characters within the profile or to select specific characters within the profile to manage.

2). Bump up the character cap on guilds. Currently the restriction is 999. Either bump this up or perhaps change the limit to 999 player profiles, with no limit to alts, aside from the server limits.

3). Notes on characters / profiles should be bigger. Preferably long enough to include a log. (i.e. Joined 3/16/2011, promoted to officer 12/25/2012, retired 8/14/2014, returned 8/25/2018.) I would also like there to be an option so that notes may be transparent to the player and/or the guild while they are still restricted on modification to just officers.

4). How difficult would it really be to include a link in-game to the WoW armory profile of each character. This way notes are not needed for things like “ilvl 406 tank, max alch” a quick link to wow armory shows this info already.

Brahmina-khadgar · August 12, 2019, 1:45am

Fumel’s not allowed to post more than three times in a row, so I’m helping him out. (Y’all are going to have to post something every now and then if you want this thread to stay alive.)

Here’s another response to the March request for feedback. You’ll notice that an update to the recruitment tool was one of the first things listed (after having the permissions restored).

Druunah:

Since we’re throwing out a few ideas, I’ll toss out one or two things I posted here months ago for the sake of anyone from Blizzard (maybe) reading this who cares.

First of course I’d like to see the permissions restored as they were.

I explained why a few posts above.

To add some functionality to the guild ui, (for me anyway) it’d be helpful to be able to send someone who’s requested to join the guild via the much outdated in-game guild recruitment tool (please update the recruitment tool) an offline acceptance so they can choose to join the next time they log in. If they’ve applied to more then one guild, perhaps the ability for said recruits to see the multiple acceptances from various guilds upon login, so they can choose among them.

I for one need more room to make both officer and general notes. Meaning, for me at least, I would like far more space to be able to write much more detailed notes. Also, maybe a place for GM only notes. Sometimes, (again, for me at least), I need to make a private note, reminder, etc… to myself as the Guild leader that I don’t necessarily need or want all (or any) of my officers to see.

Sometimes leaders need their privacy.

As a side note. A poster above had some great ideas, and I agreed with many of them. However, a “stopgap” fix for guild permissions is one idea I am not so sure of.

For me at least, I want the permissions fixed correctly, and for good. I for one am willing to wait a little longer for the proper fix instead of trying to deal with some clunky temporary “duct taped” fix that isn’t really a fix at all.

And now back to our show.

Many months ago, I posted the idea of a Guild Hall for ALL guilds (even the tiny or one / two person guilds)

I was a little more then shocked when I saw how well received it was. Someone even “borrowed” the post I originally made, and used it on another thread to promote the idea of guild halls. Unfortunately I have not checked back on it. I do however hope they do well with that.

So. Guild Halls:

Here’s what I can remember from my original months old post (Yep, I am way to lazy to go looking for the original.

(Fumal I am not)

With scaling, I’d hope that most of the following would be possible.

Imagine your guild hall. It’s instanced of course. Only members of your guild, or those invited by your guild can enter. For me, I’d have the entrance for the Guild Hall in a major city like Stormwind, or perhaps even an entrance in multiple cities. Perhaps each new entrance could be earned over time by the guild. There would be guild banners hanging outside the entrance that you and all of your guild would see as their guild colors / crest.

Inside you may find things like a “guild library” In said Guild Library is a tome of history. If you “read” this tome, you’ll be able to view the history of your guild and it’s members both older and newer starting from it’s very day of creation to the present. Who’s come and gone over the months and years, your adventures together as a guild ie: Your Guild took down The Lich King back in 2009 when Player B was still the GM etc…

Inside your Guild Hall will perhaps hang more Guild Banners of your own creation. You of course made them using the new and improved tabard / guild banner creator / designer.

(Blizzard, please improve the old tabard designer and include banners for our new guild halls…)

The new and improved tabard / banner designer has many many more crest designs, borders, and colors to choose from. Perhaps even the option to include the guild’s name (or an abbreviation thereof) can one day be included.

There could be several quest givers inside as well. These would of course be guild only quests. Some would always be available and some could be unlocked by doing certain tasks, quest lines, or achievements only doable by certain professions or even classes.

Example: A Blacksmith only quest-line to get the guild a proper legendary or three. These would be more like the old days of Wow, not the newer Legion versions. (Not that I didn’t enjoy those. I did) For me though, the fun and excitement of the challenge was missing …

There could be guild only quests to unlock guild rewards of all sorts. pets, weapons, vanity / cosmetic / xmog items, glyphs (Blizz, we need glyphs back as well please) enchants both practical and cosmetic for weapons and even armor. (Why not have an enchant to make my helm, cloak, and or shoulders I never show anymore drip blood or brew, or glow brightly with hideously awesome skulls / ghouls, smoke, feathers, etc… so that I might be more likely to show them off?

(Feathers? Eh, ok)

These should be made to be doable with both large, medium, small or even one person guilds. Although in my opinion it should be a bit harder for the smaller guilds to accomplish these things, just not impossible.

The quest givers in the guild halls should be able to have many new quests for a great many variety of in-game interests, Proffs as mentioned, fishing, pets, guild perks, treasures, mounts, toys, titles, etc… (perhaps some quests thrown in to help speed up some of the harder reputations to gain, even from older content)

I’m pretty sure there was a lot more stuff mentioned in my original post, and a few of these things in this post (for better or worse) I came up as I was writing.

(Feathers? Eh, ok)

I know not all of these things are good (Feathers…?) or even practical ideas, and maybe most, or even all, are not ever going to happen. But since Blizzard asked, and we’re throwing out ideas…

At any rate, that’s what I could remember from my old post plus a few new ideas that popped into my head. I’m sure many of you reading this can come up with some great suggestions if you feel like adding anything to this.

Thanks for reading.

Takoda-kul-tiras · August 12, 2019, 3:08pm

Apologies for my silence. I intended to post a couple of days ago, but I was distracted by my cat. She recently had an encounter with a car and ended up with a badly broken leg. Her vet expects her to make a full recovery, but they did have to remove her foot. I’m spending a ton of time trying to keep her from doing anything stupid, like jumping to her favorite perch or tearing her stitches.

Anyway, I did have a bit of time to hop on the PTR and look at the guild finder from the perspective of an unguilded person. Sadly, I did not have time to create a guild and look at it from a GM perspective.

In terms of usability, it is a big improvement over the current guild finder. It is more searchable, and was quite easy to use on the PTR. However, when it goes live, there will be many more guild entries. (On the PTR, there were only 6 guilds listed.)

It’s pretty easy to imagine that if I’m looking for a raiding guild (for example), and I search “raiding,” its going to give me dozens and dozens of results. In its current state, I didn’t see a way to filter down to the guilds that represent a possible best fit. The only option is to manually go through all the guilds that meet the search criteria. Maybe they are planning to add more filters soon - I hope they do.

Also unknown is if guild listings time out. I have mentioned before that I’m in favor of recruitment listings expiring after a while, and I’ve previously suggested 30 days. I stand by this as it is very easy for me as a GM to relist if we’re still recruiting. It’s much less easy for recruits to wade through dozens of inactive guilds.

My impression was definitely that the guild finder is unfinished. I’m not sure exactly what about it made me feel that way. It’s missing something. (Other than filters.) I’ll keep thinking about it and see if I can figure out what it’s missing.

Rajia-galakrond · August 12, 2019, 5:20pm

Ahhhh! Nooo! I’m so glad she’s going to be ok, but poor fuzz face!

Sorry I’ve been absent of late, I got wrapped up in summer stuff - houseguests, yardwork, getting irritated by my lack of guild control, you know, the usual.

My guild is deciding right now where to roll as Horde (!) for Classic. (Curently 57% for PvE, 29% for PvP and 14% for “zero f*cks given.”) Personally, I’m just excited to start a guild there… and be able to organize it properly!

Thanks for keeping the thread alive, I am undaunted by the lack of care shown so far and am here for keeping our “feedback” going until someone turns off the lights!

Druunah-ravencrest · August 12, 2019, 10:07pm

I am so glad to hear kitty will be ok!

We decided as a guild months ago to do the same (except we are rolling Alliance)

We too are looking forward to a functioning guild. No guild bank however.

Oh well.

It’s a trade off I for one am ok with…

You see that Blizz?

Classic has functional guild controls!

We just knew that you knew how to do this…

Delirium-bronzebeard · August 13, 2019, 12:14am

I am still here and still hoping for change. My guild was thinking of going horde for classic but id like to play with good peeps like u guys no matter the faction, what servers we u all thinking of playing on? We were thinking Pagle cuz we like to fish =).

Takoda-kul-tiras · August 13, 2019, 3:03am

Aww, thanks. You guys are so nice.

I’m super obsessed with classic too! We decided to roll on Mankirk horde. It was not my first choice, but if you’re going to be a troll, I guess you might as well be a troll. It should be an interesting experience at least. LMK if any of you do the same - I will definitely want you guys on my friends list!

Brahmina-khadgar · August 13, 2019, 3:14am

So sorry about your kitty. I certainly hope the vet is right and she recovers completely. A kitty I had a while back got shot in the eye with a BB. The vet saved the eye but not her vision. Still, she adjusted. My current cat broke her hock. (That’s what you might think of as her hind “knee” but it’s really the equivalent of our ankle.) Her leg is crooked, but she’s otherwise fine. Cats are remarkably resilient.

On topic: It annoys me a tad that Classic will have better guild functions than we do. I’m not particularly interested in playing Classic (I shudder at the thought of ammo and having to keep my pet fed). I’m happy for the folks who are looking forward to it, but as I said, not so happy that the current guild controls aren’t as good as 15-year-old controls.

I hope that the Classic launch goes smoothly and gives the devs lots of time to work on our guild controls.

Venjin-bronzebeard · August 13, 2019, 9:21pm

Since I’m west coast I’ll be on Atiesh, but I’ll go reserve some names on Mankrik for kicks.

BTW Bliz, I heard there’s a functional example of how we want guild controls in a game called World of Warcraft: Classic. You should check it out, take it, and build upon that foundation.

Takoda-kul-tiras · August 13, 2019, 11:48pm

I was going to write up a quick comment about how I hope that Blizzard is capable of improving on a 15 year old system. But then I remembered that shaman used to have totems, and I got scared that I was going to lose my ability to turn into a bear.

Nothing is sacred! I feel like I should launch into a Shakespearean soliloquy. To be a game with 15 year old guild systems, or to be a game with “improved” guild systems! This is the ultimate question.

I hope they are working on some actual improvements. In the meantime, I’m going to have fun in classic and tell Chuck Norris jokes in Barrens chat.

Actually, I don’t know any Chuck Norris jokes. Maybe I should tell guild permissions jokes.

Knock, knock!
Who’s there?
Edit public note.
Edit public note who??
You know, that thing you couldn’t do when you invited your friend for over a year because Blizzard broke permissions and you had to ask an officer for help to get your friend’s character marked so they are properly settled into their new home instead of just doing it yourself because it’s so important to add new features into the game to make things easier for the end user? I’m baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack!!!
That wasn’t funny.
I’m sorry…

Druunah-ravencrest · August 14, 2019, 5:15am

I thought it was funny…

Fix the permissions Blizz!

Please.

Fumel-arathor · August 14, 2019, 8:42pm

I think I’ve waited long enough and can post again. Thanks all for keeping things going in my absence.

Here’s more March feedback. Again, a recruiting overhaul was mentioned, so at least we got that one covered.

Mceuan:

They want details? As if this thread hasn’t been concrete and detailed and respectful for how many months?

Okay.

Revert the guild permissions, and have it fully restored by 9.0. If a stopgap is necessary to improve by 8.2, I’m okay with that, but I want permissions back to where they were prior to 8.0.

Roster Management. In addition to the fantastic suggestions above, I want a search bar and iLevel as a sort function instead of Achieve points. Also, I’d like to be able to ban accounts when I have to remove someone. I don’t want them sneaking an alt back in.

Chat channel improvements would be fantastic. With multiple layers of leadership, having multiple ‘officer’ chats would be handy.

Recruiting. The in game tool is outdated. Let us have a ‘token’ to mail to an interested party, and if they want to join the guild, they click the token. GMs can set permissions on who can send tokens, and the receiving player has the choice on destroying it or clicking it.

Guild perks. Please make guilds relevant again. Master Looter needs to be an option for guilds only. Please review the perks (they are currently rather underwhelming), and guild halls. All I need is a feasting hall, banners from every faction we’re exalted with, and trophies of legendaries and raid bosses. Bonus for having it something that can be upgraded and tweaked over multiple expacs.

Feathers. Takoda needs them.

I think the Tauren heritage armor includes feathers, does it not? So Takoda got her feathers, too. See, they are listening! There’s just a bit of lag in the response time.

Venjin-bronzebeard · August 14, 2019, 9:33pm

Am I weird for looking forward to the totem quests?

And shout-out to barrens chat:
Blizzard, In Chuck Norris’ guild, you can ignore all our suggestions. Chuck Norris needs no permissions from anyone for anything.

BTW for the rest of us we still need that fix kthx.

Fumel-arathor · August 15, 2019, 4:03am

How do I get Chuck to join my guild? Oh, wait, Chuck Norris doesn’t join guilds. The guilds join him.

So, how do I join up with Chuck so I can have my permissions back?

Dlaciabia-sisters-of-elune · August 15, 2019, 6:58pm

Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker is a Chuck Norris manscaping accessory.

Fumel-arathor · August 16, 2019, 1:41am

Quoting a post from September that I quoted before, but it’s a good one and bears repeating:

Beyzen:

I’m sure all of the points I am about to make have been made at some point already in this massive thread, but as a WoW-Player who focuses on running an effective guild, these changes simply blew me away. I understand the new permission “Toggle”, as a baseline feature, possibly to assist guild-leaders who don’t want to do the extra permissions work, BUT why take away the additional permissions, as at least an option?

I think it goes without saying that many guilds used the individual permissions, and the definitive features they control, for far more than their original purpose. For example, my guild used Public notes to set certain guild-wide status updates like “Do Not Kicks” and “House sortings” for RP, while using officer notes to be like twitter/facebook statuses, allowing the individual guild member to set their own to whatever they’d like. It was fun!

Furthermore, the permission to “Create a guild event” has been removed ENTIRELY which is just insane to me. Every single member of my guild, can post an event. So now, my upper tier ranking members, who had to earn the right to run a guild wide event, are without purpose or any sense of “Power”.

In Conclusion, the simplification of guild permissions, meant to make things easier for GM’s (I think) has actually increased my stress, and work level. Because if I want a officers to share some of the duties between me and my Co-GM, I have to let them have JUST as much control as the Co-GM.

And I don’t know about you, but letting your officers have control of message of the day, is a mess waiting to happen. and allowing your mid-tier members to be able to delete chat messages, just so they can change or see officer notes, is such a huge step backwards.

/sigh, why did this even get changed.

P.S: I did not even mention that my officers can now edit Guild-Info, which was an exclusive feature to me, as GM, I used it for reasons other than strictly intended by blizzard, which I am sure many other guilds can agree with. As for the members of my guild, who stay subbed for an entire expansions because of the events and progression systems I put in place for them, parallel to RP etc, they are not pleased with the direct decrease in permissions they can “earn”, creating too many ranks which are identical, and take away from the fantasy I’ve been supporting for almost 4 years. Please Blizzard, this is one feature that needs to be looked at once more, or at the very least, returned to normal.

/BEG

Takoda-kul-tiras · August 16, 2019, 9:59pm

I did get my feathers. I feel absolutely resplendent in them.

Now to get permissions too.

Mgann-stormrage · August 19, 2019, 1:54am

/thread

Fumel-arathor · August 19, 2019, 4:12am

More specific description of how (and why) the permissions were used by this poster’s guild. From September:

Takoda:

Over the years, my guild has adjusted permissions specifically to respond to certain scenarios. This guild was founded in 2006, so there have been a lot of scenarios.

For example, back in Wrath, the GM was hacked. Officers and officer alts were able to withdraw enough flasks/feasts before the hacker kicked them to make sure the raid group was largely unaffected. After that happened, we added an authenticator requirement for promotions. But we also modified permissions to help mitigate the damage should something like this happen again.

More recently, when I took over GM in early WOD, the guild had a solid base of players, but few events planned. I expanded permissions to empower people to create more events. As a result, the guild became more active and more social.

My guild had 12 years worth of experiences and thought put into who needs what permission and why. There have been three GMs in that time who have each modified permissions according to the guild’s needs, and built on the work of the previous GMs. All of that work is rendered invalid by the IsOfficer box.

Maybe we don’t need to keep harping on our reasoning, but since the permissions haven’t been fixed yet, I’m going to assume Blizz still wants “feedback”.