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

08/02/2018 07:57 AMPosted by Trilliam
So I've been using the new guild interface (not on this character). I have a couple of family banking guilds, one for each faction, that all my other characters belong to. I often pull up the roster to remind myself who is my enchanter ot whatever on the realm I happen to playing on (because I can't remember all the details about my every alt). I used to just click on the guild and pull up the roster which was ordered in the way I'd left it. Now I have to mess around multi-clicking to get to the profession list every time. This is really annoying when I'm going through various alts working on professions.

Summary: I still hate the new interface! I hate it more every day. It's a mess.

Why do computer programmers think it's an advance to make something more complicated and give it a bunch of features that nobody wants while either deleting old and useful features, or fixing things so that you have to do one heck of a lot more clicking to get at the stuff you want.


Some people think that fixing problems that don't exist is how you earn your pay.
Others like to remake something to make it more efficient.

I can understand that I mean you wouldn't run cars on wooden wheels like chariots but at the same time you don't fix something with something that has less quality.

When you do something like that you are actually only doing so to guarantee your job. Its being underhanded and its shameful because it hurts your consumers and your product in the end.

If we are are a form of quality control since we are a part of their development process through ALPHA / BETA / PTR then in reality someone should lose their job for what has happened here, because it slipped through all the stages of Q&A just to make a pretty interface.

Please revert the changes and fix the horrible Community UI.
There are many great posts in this thread, lots of excellent reasons as to why Guild Masters need to control guild permissions and how those permission settings improve the guild experience for non-officer members. I don't really have an issue with the UI, although is could use some refinement, but the control of permissions needs to return.

At this point we'd really just appreciate a post acknowledging the feedback and letting us know whats going on as this wasn't communicated in the patch notes as a feature that was changing.
Please do something!
The most annoying thing so far is seeing CM's / Blues respond to fluff threads and pet charm issues but not one even saying, "We are aware of the issue." After 800 posts and 45 pages.
08/02/2018 07:57 AMPosted by Trilliam
Why do computer programmers think it's an advance to make something more complicated and give it a bunch of features that nobody wants while either deleting old and useful features, or fixing things so that you have to do one heck of a lot more clicking to get at the stuff you want.

This is actually my job. I'm a member on a systems integration team that supports our engineers and developers in a software company - my job is to look at what developers are creating, and tell them "Yeah that's a cool, powerful feature. But our customers will be confused by x, y, and z. Currently they're using our software only to do this, and if we make it more complicated to achieve that..."

It's a balancing act of working with a team that for the most part is isolated from the concerns of the customer and is solely focused on creating more efficient, powerful code and software... and to the balance of keeping customers happy and engaged with the product we're selling them.

It's an art, because giving our devs free range to push and make changes has had some fantastic results... but the growing pains that are involved, and keeping them informed of the actually customer needs is just as important.
The silence on this topic from Blizzard is honestly astonishing. I have been playing this game since launch and never received such horrible customer service before with being flat out ignored.

Our communities that have kept this game alive through all the new "wow killer" games are now not running properly and we are plea-ing for a resolve so we can continue day to day functions of running guilds (the orginal in game communities).

Please, please reinstate guild permissions.

I know how grueling this time is around a game studio with the patch not being smooth and the stresses of an xpac launch (not to mention the months of pre patch stress), but leaving your player base in the dark like this is really starting to be unacceptable.

Toss us a bone and say "we hear you and have more pressing fires to respond to and will be working on your issue sooon" or something along the lines. It will honestly ease our fustrations while we struggle to make it work.
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.


QUOTED.

and daily bump. This is embarrassing for you, Blizz. You haven't even told us why you did this awful change.
07/30/2018 12:22 PMPosted by Mezilrin
Page 40... still silence. Why?


Because they don't care. it's rather clear that the changes are staying.
08/02/2018 10:53 AMPosted by Draical
07/30/2018 12:22 PMPosted by Mezilrin
Page 40... still silence. Why?


Because they don't care. it's rather clear that the changes are staying.
I don't believe this at all.

I know they have their hands full with the patch and upcoming expansion launch. We're getting hotfixes nearly every day because of one bug or another. Just yesterday, everyone who zoned somewhere had their quest logs wiped. You can bet Blizz pulled over everyone they could to fix that--including anyone who might have been looking into this.

The Communities feature is new and complex. Because Guilds are integrated with it, I don't think fixing the guild issues is a slam dunk. It's going to take time. And, as I pointed out, right now Blizz has a whole pile more bigger dumpster fires on their hands.

Now, should they still post something here to let us know they're looking into the issues? You're darn tootin' they should. And I don't have a good explanation why they haven't, beyond "policy". Which is bull pucky as far as I'm concerned.
Previously, if guild members were interested in raiding or doing anything in a group, I would ask them to keep their public note updated with ilvl, preferred role, and class. We could then sort them and find players interested in grouping.

For example:
Imaplayer 221 Tank Paladin
Youronetoo 218 Healer Druid
Nonotme 197 Damage Mage
Illmissu On vacation

Now, the only way to do that would be to make them all officers or send their info to officers.
Bump
Still waiting to see if this lump-age of controls under an "is Officer" option gets reverted... please. It's horrid.
Still dealing with this mess, love all the dev feedback...
Yeah this really needs to keep getting bumped to the front page. I'm SO surprised that 46 pages have come and gone and Blizz is ignoring it.

Who could possibly think limiting guild notes to officers is a good idea?????????
08/02/2018 03:04 PMPosted by Stryg
Yeah this really needs to keep getting bumped to the front page. I'm SO surprised that 46 pages have come and gone and Blizz is ignoring it.

Who could possibly think limiting guild notes to officers is a good idea?????????


I think someone else said it, and very articulately, that their intention seems to have been to twin guild permissions now to community permissions; their "good idea" being an eye to later using that leverage to enforce use of their "Discord killer".

As usual, I suspect the decision is driven by marketing and whatever we want is, by definition, wrong*.

*Honestly, what I want isn't worth listening to anyway, because it usually has to do with sandwiches, and I don't buy $30 sparkleponies.
Blizzard, I have nothing better to do than post Trumpish Sylvanas posts until you fix this.

I think I'm getting pretty good at it. Its scaring me.
08/02/2018 03:12 PMPosted by Soulsinger
As usual, I suspect the decision is driven by marketing and whatever we want is, by definition, wrong*.

*Honestly, what I want isn't worth listening to anyway, because it usually has to do with sandwiches, and I don't buy $30 sparkleponies.


If that's all it takes I'll buy a 30 dollar sparklepony to get this !@#$ changed back.

Blizzard you hear me?!
So still no word from blizzard on whats up with this?
Please immediately revert enough of the changes to restore granularity in guild permissions.
Daily bump. Also, something I have done is create an invite rank that I have promoted people I trust to and they pm me or an officer in discord with all the information so I can add notes when I or they log on to the toons. It has helped organize us a little and maybe it will help others until things can get fixed.