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

Community General Discussion
1706
10/05/2018 02:12 PMPosted by Roguewit
there exists a PR machine--the sole goal of which is to keep customers apprised of what is being done to resolve issues. Even when zero progress has been made, customers just need to know they aren't being ignored. It's good business.


This is something I've been thinking about a lot, and it makes sense. I know Blizzard has made promises in the past, that they are unable to keep, and they've avoided doing that now, but I am sure that everyone within this thread would be satisfied with a simple, "We see you, and we are trying". If those who have suspended recruiting, or have allowed their guilds to disintegrate knew that their Devs were at least doing something, they may be able to hold on a while longer.

Because right now it feels like we are being ignored, and that without a petition with 1000 signatures, Blizzard is comfortable letting this fall into the background. Perhaps if everyone utilized their Message of The Day feature in their guilds, to invite their guildies to this thread, and have them speak their minds as well, we could get a response of some kind.

Anything...
1707
I'm getting more and more annoyed when I log in, to find people have changed guild notes (because you allowed that to happen), from carefully crafted, non-offensive notes to what ilevel they have or other things, instead of their alt/toon names.

This is just a huge CF, in the whole guild UI that sucks. I don't really feel like reduxing what i've said other times, but the fact it's still broken and clumsy is bad.

And I still don't understand why taking ML away from a guild of raiders was productive either, but that's another thread.

You want communities, you want guilds, but you don't want to support us.
1708
I'm trying real hard here bliz, not to turn this thread into a "Sing-along-with-Venjin about the bad guild controls".

Suggestion: Let Ythisens have some tangible insight into any processes that may or may not be taking place in response to this issue. That way he can actually have something to say and not have to worry about my terrible songs.
1709
07/17/2018 11:43 AMPosted by Kaiyeri
Why the hell would they take away options??
Like everything else since WOD going forward. So its easier for them.

Not because its for the players.
1710
10/05/2018 01:29 PMPosted by Fumel
My daily read-through is getting more and more depressing. Post after post describing how the permission changes are tearing apart guilds. Since I'm still on posts from July, the posters are hopeful this is "temporary" and "will be fixed soon", and that they have "stop-gap measures" they're using in the meantime. Reading these when I know it's not fixed more than two months later is what's so disheartening.

This post from page 30 isn't a complaint or suggestion. It's explaining how (the poster believes) Blizzard does things, and why having responses here really isn't useful or necessary. I don't know if the poster's right, but it's a perspective that makes me feel more hopeful, so I'm quoting it.
07/26/2018 05:03 PMPosted by Ningdorei
The issues with the legacy loot transmog farming shows this is how they act. They donā€™t answer until they have a solution. It took a long time for the transmog farming issue (which was possibly larger in terms of posts) to get a response but when it did they fixed it in 1 fell swoop.

I think one thatā€™s difficult to remember is that any fixes for this would not be a collaborative effort between devs and the playerbase. Itā€™s just the devs trying to address our concerns. So the value of a back and forth conversation isnā€™t that high at all.
Here's hoping the devs truly ARE working on a fix, and that it'll be done sooner than later, in "1 fell swoop."


The old posts function as a time capsule of sorts to see how long this has gone on with only an equally confused MVP and 2 blue extensions as a response. So very sad to see how hopeful we were.
1711
BUMP!
1712
10/05/2018 07:49 AMPosted by Roguewit
My guild has dwindled down to three mains, and a couple of friends with alts. I was set to launch a recruiting effort with BfA's release.

As of the new permissions, I have abandoned that effort.

I cannot expect to breathe new life into a guild that cannot offer a set of rewards, goals, or solid management structure. Formerly, I had ranks and permissions for exactly that.


This isn't exactly my guild's situation. But it's close enough.

My guild isn't dead yet. After over a decade, I refuse to let her die two months into a new xpac.

However: Much like Roguewit, we have suspended any attempts to recruit as we have pretty much no easy / reliable ways to:

1} Weed out undesirables
2} Establish trust through advancement in rank and guild permission rewards.
3) Show who really WANTS to advance and become an officer / leader

(In our guild at least this would be fairly obvious once people know that taking part = rank advancement and rank advancement = more and more responsibility and trust)

Please bare with me:

A very brief "Reader's Digest" history of my guild "BloodOath"

Late Vanilla: BloodOath formed.

Although small, we flourished because we treat people like people with respect and advance them if they show the inclination and trust needed to do so.

Vanilla ends. BloodOath "dies" This is typical although we do not know that as yet because we don't have a pattern to recognize.

BC launches: Those of us remaining decide to recruit.

Although small, we flourished because we treat people like people with respect and advance them if they show the inclination and trust needed to do so.

BC ends: BloodOath "dies" This is typical. We now start to realize that this 'dying' will likely be the norm, and we will probably have to recruit at the start of every new xpac.

Wrath launches: We recruit. Although small, we flourished because we treat people like people with respect and advance them if they show the inclination and trust needed to do so.

Wrath ends. BloodOath "dies" This is typical. We know the deal and plan to recruit once Cata launches.

Cata launches: We recruit. Although small, we flourished because we treat people like people with respect and advance them if they show the inclination and trust needed to do so.

Cata ends: BloodOath "dies" This is typical. We know the deal and plan to recruit once Cata launches.

MoP launches: We recruit. Although small, we flourished because we treat people like people with respect and advance them if they show the inclination and trust needed to do so.

MoP ends: BloodOath "dies" This is typical. We know the deal and plan to recruit once WoD launches.

WoD launches: We recruit. Although small, we flourished because we treat people like people with respect and advance them if they show the inclination and trust needed to do so.

WoD ends: BloodOath "dies" This is typical. We know the deal and plan to recruit once WoD launches.

Legion launches: We recruit. Although small, we flourished because we treat people like people with respect and advance them if they show the inclination and trust needed to do so.

Legion ends: BloodOath "dies" This is typical. We know the deal and plan to recruit once WoD launches

BfA launches: Because we were not treated with respect by Blizzard, we cannot recruit. For one, we have nothing to offer new folks.

Our guild structure (what's left of it) is in ruins. We have had to rebuild BloodOath many times over the years as you can see. That really just isn't very likely this time. Other than myself, there are only a few people leftover from the old days and as of two xpacs ago, no one left from the beginning still playing. There are still a few of my "officers" left over from the last few xpacs, but there's really no one interested in remaining in the officer position. (They no longer want the responsibilities) That also happens and it's fine with me. I would normally simply find new people (by recruiting) to fill the former officers shoes while they stand down and become just another spear carrier (ie: grunt)

This is no longer possible with the way our guild is structured and always has been structured and with the way Blizzard's new "permissions" are set up. "Is officer" does not cover it in any way shape or form.

BloodOath is not dead yet.

I wont let her die without a fight.

How many other guilds are in this same boat?

How many have already succumb and gone under?

Come on Blizz, through us a line here.

At least let the sick and dying know if your even working on a cure!

We need some hope to hold out.

Thanks.
1713
10/05/2018 02:58 PMPosted by Venjin
Suggestion: Let Ythisens have some tangible insight into any processes that may or may not be taking place in response to this issue. That way he can actually have something to say and not have to worry about my terrible songs.
I don't think your songs are terrible (though I can't speak for Ythisens). I do wish the devs would tell him something that he could pass on to us besides "give us more feedback" (which was never actually communicated to us through this thread).

I just want to know that they're working on fixing the permissions so we have more options of assigning them again. Whether it's an "advanced" tab or a simple reversion, I don't really care. And if it's truly "working as intended" and they have no plans to ever separate the permissions again, we need to know that, too.
1714
It'd be insanely disappointing if it was set in stone. I only run a few small RP guilds, and it's annoying not to be able to delegate certain things to friends. I can only imagine (quite vividly now, with some of the prior posters' woes), how dishearteningly useless it is for larger guilds that raid progressive mythic plus super hard plus hardmode face stuff, that have lots of members and teams and need on-the-spot MotDs and invites things and all that.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. It wasn't broke, and they broke it. Badly. Really need to come off of this "Our Vision" thing a bit and listen to a large portion of the playerbase telling you how things are disintegrating right in front of your face.
1715
Continuing my read-through.

I found this post on Page 31. The main reason I'm bringing this one up is the poster has some great guild management ideas. He's quoted himself from another thread, so the re-quoting it here is a little awkward. (Had to leave that odd "[/quote]" at the end, otherwise his name got left off.)

07/26/2018 06:14 PMPosted by Hathlo
This is from the Mob Scaling thread, https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20766196849?page=34#post-678.

07/26/2018 12:56 PMPosted by Watcher
If any of the communication thus far, or the lack of visible action, has given the impression that we don't consider the issues raised in this thread and others like it to be a problem, I'd like to emphatically state that nothing could be farther from the truth.


Now i'm not trying to take anything out of context here, but I have faith that folks see these threads.

I tweeted @WatcherDev a few days ago about some changes I mentioned in another thread, i'll quote them here for the heck of it:

07/19/2018 03:13 PMPosted by Hathlo
I suggest the following changes to guild/community rank management:

0.) Guild Logs should be improved across the board. Please allow us to look back at actions such as membership changes, public and officer note changes/edits, guild calendar event changes/audits, motd changes, chat messages and chat message deletions, as well as bank access. The basic logs should still be kept available to all players, and the advanced logs should be available to the guild master and designated ranks. The advanced logs should be searchable and filterable up to 7 days, regardless of the number of logged actions taken within that time span. Currently, actions can be hidden in the basic logs by performing actions to "push" certain actions out of the viewable log.

1.) All permission controls should be individually controlled and toggle-able, not grouped together. This should be a given for any system with permissions; it is impossible to account for every situation when permissions are forcibly granted or denied as a group.

2.) Access to officer channels should again be split to it's two previous controls: View officer chat, and speak officer chat. There are many situations where I might want to bring a non-officer rank into officer chat in a temporary manor without simultaneously granting access for that rank to make changes to guild information. With the addition of voice communications, this could be expanded to access to voice officer channels, and access to officer chat channels.

3.) There should be new permissions for guild notes as follows:
- Edit Own Public Note
- Edit Others Pubic Note (Implies Edit Own Public Note)
- View Own Officer Note
- View Others Officer Note (Implies View Own Officer Note)
- Edit Own Officer Note (Implies View Own Officer Note)
- Edit Others Officer Note (Implies View Others Officer Note)

4.) Additional Ranks, and Customizable Permissions should also be added to communities. Specifically, it would be nice to set notes or change the community message of the day without also granting permission to remove members, or vice versa.

I'd love to hear some developer feedback about these ideas, thank you for your time.

[/quote]
1716
We are still waiting for a response on this.
Bump
1717
Hmm...

I recently saw this post titled "Apology for Absence"

10/05/2018 02:25 PMPosted by Itzali
Hello Everyone,

Just wanted to write a quick note to apologize for my absence on the forums. I've recently been very ill and although my team had been researching issues, they were unable to post about the status of research. I'm doing better and have been able to return to work so over the next few days I will follow up on reports but please bear with me as I handle many aspects of WoW QA responsiblities and may not always be reply right away. Know we are researching many issues at any given time.

Once again, I apologize but hope to start going through reports as soon as possible.


EDIT: I went ahead and posted this on his thread:

https://us.battle.net/forums/en/wow/topic/20769696779?page=1#post-6
1718
Why do I get an error about an authenticated required for an officer rank when the account in question (my own alt - this char is guild master) definitely has an authenticator?
1719
10/05/2018 06:34 PMPosted by Fumel
I just want to know that they're working on fixing the permissions so we have more options of assigning them again. Whether it's an "advanced" tab or a simple reversion, I don't really care. And if it's truly "working as intended" and they have no plans to ever separate the permissions again, we need to know that, too.


Truth right there Blizz.

I could not agree with the above statement more.

I NEED to know.

Why?

Simply put: The information requested above will be the deciding factor on whether of not my guild (BloodOath) will remain in the land of the living, or if it's your intention to kill us off by not reverting / restoring / improving the currently unusable guild ui / permissions.

If there's no plan to fix it, I'll hang it up as a guild leader after approx 12+ years.

Please understand, I DO NOT wish to hang it up after all these years.

We had plans for our guild in BfA

Those plans are on indefinite hold right now.

We as a guild aren't dead yet, but we're certainly sick. Perhaps mortally so.

If you Blizzard intend to fix our guilds, we as GM's need to know (in my case anyway)

I (we) need to know so I (we) can either keep our guild's on life support for now until the "cure" is released, or so we can just pull the proverbial plugs and move on to...whatever.

In my case at least, the answer will literally be a huge game changer.
1720
I've generally been doing only one of these "blast from the past" posts a day (bringing up posts from earlier in this thread) but this one from page 32 has too many great ideas for me to wait until tomorrow:

07/27/2018 03:06 AMPosted by Carthorinn
And also I see several people complaining about the extension not being an answer. Giving the one blizzard rep that has commented so far a hard time is not exactly appealing and it needs to stop before this thread becomes toxic. Lets keep moving forwards instead of backwards.

I personally would like to see the Rank permissions separated from where it is and have it assignable by toon. This way we can promote people without having permissions tied to it and gives us a bit more freedom when setting up rank structure. I know this would take another massive overhaul but we need freedom with rank so we can give guildies a sense of progress within the guild.

I would also like to see the ability to make more channels for the guilds with a custom name so GM's can set up several chats for their guildies preferences. I would also like to see the incentives to run in a guild group increase for dungeons / raids. Both for the guild and it's members. It's like you killed the first boss in the raid ok guild is almost done with the reward ok you got the achievement for completing the raid ok cool. It unlocks nothing but you have a nice shiny achievement. Than thats it for 6 months till the next raid comes out and rinse and repeat. It's dull.... There is little sense of accomplishment.

I would also like to see the return of some perks the ones we have now are "OK" I guess but they just feel completely lacking. The gathering one was cool and I understand why you got rid of it to a degree but is there any way we can get a perk that SLIGHTLY increases the chances of getting soulbound mats from scrapping gear?

As far as recruiting goes. Is there anyway you can implement a change where if a request is pending and said person isn't online we it can just send them a mail with an accept invite button kinda like the guild charter? It is so hard sometimes to send someone an invite because we aren't online at the same time. Can we please get a better interface for that system too the current one is lacking utility. Like can you make it so we can inspect the player requesting look at their gear. Check their raid progress etc without having to look them up on the armory. We also need an overhaul for the looking for guild interface... It also lacks utility and does not offer good sorting options.

We need our logs extended they are too short and sometimes things get buried unless we stalk them. Can we get a check box for permissions that distinguishes if someone has the ability to move things within our tabs or not. The way it is currently if you put 20 stacks of 5 in there and said person can take out 3 items.... they combine the stacks to 20 and than take it out and it counts as 1. In the meantime this is not what intended that permission to be. Please fix it.

Also please give guild masters the option to turn off the tattle features if we have to demote someone or kick someone that is simply a matter between the GM/Officer and that person. It shouldn't be broadcasted. Also for editing the chats and deleting messages. If the GM does it it shouldn't say anything to the lower ranks. Unless you add a check box for us to allow those ranks to see them. When an officer censors a chat message it should be sent to a report to the GM. With the original message attached for review. Guild masters need more tools to keep us informed of whats going on when we aren't online. I trust all of my officers with my life but this should be a feature.
All these ideas are terrific, but I'm personally really wanting a few more guild perks back. Better incentives for guild runs is a close second for me.

Of course, recruiting changes are necessary--especially some sort of off-line invite ability. That's definitely been requested more than once in this thread (and others).
1721
10/03/2018 06:49 AMPosted by Raicolette
Please, everyone that has been a Guild Master, Officer, or even just a member of a guild, we need your comments on this thread.


I know that there are more people reading then posting.

That's fine, but we really need all the help we can get here on this thread to get Blizzard to not only listen, but understand as well.

Several people in this thread have posted the current state / condition of their guilds since the new permissions were implemented. (Myself included)

It would be great if those people could give everyone (Blizz included) an update on the status of your guilds.

Please don't feel like you have nothing to add even if you've already posted or if your story is similar (or the same as) others you've read about here.

We need to hear from EVERYONE

If you have rarely or even never posted on the forums, now is a great time to start!

Most of the people posting here have been guild leaders.

It's been nice to see guild leaders from both Horde and Alliance working together for the same goal especially during an xpac specifically designed to bolster player animosity.

So whether your a guild leader or a guildie, an Alliance or Horde player, please help us all out by chiming in and letting your voice be heard.

Thank you.
1722
The lack of response is infuriating
1723
I wonder if Venjin does requests...

Hmmm....."Dragula" by Rob Zombie!

8D
1724
EDITED: Thanks to anyone who read my long post. I am removing it as it contains more personal information than I am willing to leave here. I'm sure Blizzard can read the previous version if they have any interest.
1725
10/07/2018 06:24 PMPosted by Polgara
Forgive the length of this post, but I decided to share a few thoughts before my time runs out on Tuesday. No, I am not quitting, Iā€™m just going to take a little break before I buy more time. I know this is so long that it is possible that no one will read it, but, I will have my say, if for no other reason than to know I triedā€¦
I read your post in its entirety, and found it to be exactly as long as it needed to be to say what needed saying. Not a word was out of place. If I could give you 100 up votes, I would.

I hope when you come back to WoW, you're able to enjoy it as you always have--and that this issue with the permissions has been solved long before.