The new Guild UI and Permissions...yikes

Venjin-bronzebeard · February 20, 2019, 6:51pm

Revert the permissions!

And…here comes the boss…

Fumel-arathor · February 20, 2019, 8:42pm

In case anyone was wondering about the “in person at Blizzcon” comment, here is the post by MVP Xakopane talking about his meeting directly with Blizzard employees:

Xakopane:

While at Blizzcon I was able to have a nice, mostly private discussion (those halls are loud and busy!), with a Blizzard engineer and a couple other Blizzard folks. I expressed the collective displeasure of the changes to the guild interface, most importantly the permissions. I walked them through how the current settings violate basic security thinking in how one provides permissions to a varied group. I also described/reported the calendar sorting bug (sorts on level but no secondary sort on rank).

While I said I understood these changes came about because of the new Community feature, I opined the community feature, as implemented in game, is a thorough pain to use as you must invite individual characters and not via battle tags. While for groups set up outside the game you can use battle tags, the whole thing was set up not to accidentally allow horde into in-game alliance communities and vice versa. I suggested there must be a way to set a flag while using a battle tag in game to not invite horde toons into an alliance community and vice versa.

I also suggested that while the community feature was nice, Blizzard should just have bought Discord

I was absolutely listened to and I suspect some items may be acted upon. Some of the fixes we want are running into resource constraints, I expect. Time will tell on if there are fixes or changes.

I want to be very clear that my conversation was not ignored. I even think notes were taken. Blizzard does listen. What they do not have is unlimited time and resources to tackle every problem. Sometimes you have to rack-n-stack.

I have never felt it was the “rank and file” employees who are ignoring us, and I fully understand that tasks must be prioritized. However, this many months after launch, I feel it’s time for our particular problem to be moved off the back burner.

Blizzard, fix the guild permissions.

Delirium-bronzebeard · February 21, 2019, 7:27am

Late night bumpy bump…Blizz please give us some kinda response on the guild UI.

Venjin-bronzebeard · February 21, 2019, 11:22pm

Did one of y’all figure out who I am in RL? Seriously, he NEVER walks by my desk this much! Somebody busted on me!

btw Fix the Permissions!

p.s. WTF is Delirium wearing on her head?!

Brahmina-khadgar · February 22, 2019, 1:39am

Petrified Ironbark Crown transmogrified to Greathelm of Rezan’s Bladeguard (though it looks like a Roman Centurion’s helmet to me).

Meanwhile: Blizzard, fix the guild permissions!

Lucifearial-emerald-dream · February 22, 2019, 1:48am

what?

plus a few more characters.

Grimmox-wyrmrest-accord · February 22, 2019, 1:50am

People have already asked this to be fixed at Blizzcon. They do not care.

Bearfu-dalaran · February 22, 2019, 3:22am

Quoting this because I still believe these changes are helpful/necessary, especially number two. What’s the point in being able to make additional channels as a guild leader if you have no control over who can actually access those channels except whether or not everyone with access is an officer?

Further, who thought it was a good idea to make officers automatically have every permission? What if we have different tiers of officers with different responsibilities, who don’t need every permission to do what’s expected of them?

Fumel-arathor · February 22, 2019, 5:05am

Continuing my read-through.
Here is a very relevant post from Irannia where she broke down the one response we got on a Q&A. (This is the one where Ion asked for more feedback.)

Irannia:

Okay… So, I think it’s time for another TLDR.

I just got done listening to the Q&A, and reading some of the responses here. Lets not bash and be constructive. I know I’ve participated in my fair share of "I don’t like this, and bleep aren’t listening."

The following was stated regarding this thread.

_________________________________________________________________

Question posed:

Are you going to put guild permissions back to how they were before? The current system is very restrictive and makes it harder to run a guild, which is arguably the back bone of all communities in WoW.

Note: These are not exact quotes.

Ion’s Response:

So, I don’t think it’s arguable at all. Guilds are absolutely the back bone of communities in WoW.

We’ve made a couple of changes already based on feedback. Players in guilds again have the ability to edit their own public notes by default. We’ve added the ability to change rank permissions for guild leaders to have someone that can’t speak in guild chat, if you want to have a rank that’s just muted. If people are getting into an argument, or if someone’s being super annoying and want a way in de-escalating that situation without kicking them from the guild, you can once again do that.

We are still listening and looking for feed back on specific things that are missing, that are helpful in running and/or moderating your guild, and we’ll add functionality where possible.

The question is, why did this change at all? Why mess with something that wasn’t broken?

Well, in order to make communities work and in order to make guilds work on the community infrastructure, this whole system is actually going through the battlenet back bone for battlenet groups, and the way that’s constructed has a lot of upsides. Including: voice chat integration seamlessly, persistent chat history. So, If you log into a middle of a conversation you can see what people are talking about before you logged on.

That meant that affectively reconstructing every bit of the old guild logic on these new foundations. So, in doing that we looked at statistics and data on how often these different customizations and options were used. Many of them were used very uncommonly, and so in the interests of simplifying and stream lining the whole process, so there aren’t a million checkboxes when you are looking to set up your guild permissions, we consolidated a few of those under the general umbrella category of are you an officer, this is what an officer can do.

The right way to get this changed, we are open to re-adding functionality where it makes sense. I think it’s just a question of getting us feedback, helping us understand what value you were getting running your own guilds, your own communities, and we’ll see what we can do.

Lore:

And one of the things we like to do. It’s kind of an opportunity to do stuff like this is… a lot of times there’s a feature or a function that people were using to accomplish something in a round about way. We can find out what was reason you needed this before… Oh, wait we can just give you a direct way in a feature that does just that. So, that’s something we can consider as well.

Ion:

Totally.

Let us know the problems that you’re having, and we’ll do what we can to solve those problems.

___________________________________________________________________

Okay… time to break this apart.

We are still listening and looking for feed back on specific things that are missing, that are helpful in running and/or moderating your guild, and we’ll add functionality where possible.

Really? There are 67 pages of feedback. That is approximately 1,300 RESPONSES. How much more do you want? What is it you are wanting from us? I myself have added… 3 or 4 posts of very long detailed descriptions of what I would like to see and what has affected my guild.

The question is, why did this change at all? Why mess with something that wasn’t broken?

Well, in order to make communities work and in order to make guilds work on the community infrastructure, this whole system is actually going through the battlenet back bone for battlenet groups, and the way that’s constructed has a lot of upsides. Including: voice chat integration seamlessly, persistent chat history. So, If you log into a middle of a conversation you can see what people are talking about before you logged on.

That meant that affectively reconstructing every bit of the old guild logic on these new foundations. So, in doing that we looked at statistics and data on how often these different customizations and options were used. Many of them were used very uncommonly, and so in the interests of simplifying and stream lining the whole process, so there aren’t a million checkboxes when you are looking to set up your guild permissions, we consolidated a few of those under the general umbrella category of are you an officer, this is what an officer can do.

Thank you for clarifying this. I honestly figured this is what happened, based on how the changes to GuildSpeak and Public notes effected both Guilds and Communities alike.

I can only speculate on this, but I think the intent here is to make it so Guild and Community features may be available outside of game, in a new app. Again this is speculation, and this feature would be nice considering the old app has been retired.

Separately, I can also respect the K.I.S.S. philosophy (Keep It Simple Stupid, for those that don’t know). Honestly, you got the two S’s backwards, because it’s stupidly simple. I’m not bashing, this is just a honest truth.

“The Umbrella Of”…

Well, this is a problem. Not all guilds run under an umbrella. Not all officers and officer types fall under this umbrella. Thus the problem.

Many guilds run like a business. I’ve stated this before. You have the owner, managers, team/shift leads, and standard employees. You would not give the same access to a team/shift lead as you would your manager. Although some information that is given to a manager may need to be accessible to a team/shift lead, and some things as an owner you don’t not want your Mangers to have free access to.

This is why the “Umbrella” that is “Is Officer” just plainly stinks, and why you have 67 pages of people asking you to delink these permissions.

Perhaps with your “Data” and the uncommonly used features are because the people that are in these roles are far less than the many in a guild?

I understand that you are now rebuilding the Guild logic from the ground up on a different system, and that means time is needed to make changes. It also means that not all changes are feasible since the new system may not allow for one aspect or another. I respect that… but for heaven’s sake, when this thread got extended for the SECOND time, could this not have been told to us???

Can you not just let us know if something can or can not be done on the new system?

You have essentially told us how we can and can not run our guilds.

The right way to get this changed, we are open to re-adding functionality where it makes sense. I think it’s just a question of getting us feedback, helping us understand what value you were getting running your own guilds, your own communities, and we’ll see what we can do.

Again 67 pages. BUT if that’s what you want, fine. I’ll put up my “feedback” in a different post.

AGAIN I will outline how it is affecting my guild.

(Translation: You asked for feedback, but you are not telling us how you want this feedback, or what you want specifically feedback on.)

I know this is a long post, but it’s worth reading. We get a rundown of Ion’s and Lore’s comments, plus Irannia’s response to those comments.

Merridae-aerie-peak · February 22, 2019, 12:36pm

True enough as far as that statement goes. However, one has to wonder why they did not have a backout plan in place in case UAT (thats us when this code went live) went pearshaped as it most assuredly did. Yet here we are 2829 posts later.

Venjin-bronzebeard · February 23, 2019, 12:43am

So our core is down to 4. Borderline unsustainable. Recruiting is yielding no hits.

We’re in maintenance mode now.

The least you can do is revert the permissions, so the remaining members in my guild can have rank-appropriate permissions in accordance to their preferred level of responsibility.

We tried so hard to keep people invested in your game, Bliz.
I wish you did as well.

It seems this will literally be the hill my guild dies upon.
Until my sub runs out though, I shall carry on the fight.

revert the permissions

Fumel-arathor · February 23, 2019, 1:31am

I am so sorry to read this.

My guild never got off the ground. There’s only a couple of us who are using it for the perks. Any incentive I might have had to make it into a “real” guild vanished with the separate permissions.

I truly don’t understand why Blizzard hasn’t addressed this. I understand why it happened. They were gung ho on their Communities idea and didn’t realize/care what it might do to guilds. But in the past when a blunder like this was made, Blizz would fix it. All they’ve done so far was reverse a couple of the most egregious issues (like setting one’s own public notes) and have studiously ignored the rest. They won’t ever freaking answer us.

It’s almost like they want to destroy their own game.

Dlaciabia-sisters-of-elune · February 23, 2019, 2:58am

Anyone got that horn from the Ricola commercials? Maybe if we fwoofmph on that thing for a while…Any you guys near a mountain?

Venjin-bronzebeard · February 23, 2019, 3:13am

Blizz, seriously, we’re asking you to do something that doesn’t involve class balance, gameplay changes, or loot tweaks.

It’s a functional UI change.

And you’re ignoring us.

Grunwulf-stormrage · February 23, 2019, 5:02am

It’s over, gang, but I will still pop in to bump the thread.

Brahmina-khadgar · February 23, 2019, 6:09am

I don’t know if this means anything, but the forums keep telling me the newest posts to this thread are “old posts” I haven’t read. You know, the number by the thread is grey, not blue.

Maybe it’s just a forum bug and not Blizz categorizing this thread as a necro (even though it’s been going nonstop since it began).

Edit: almost forgot–fix the permissions!

Dlaciabia-sisters-of-elune · February 23, 2019, 7:13am

Hmm, that’s odd…I’m seeing a blue counter, though. Maybe your browser is derping or something?

Fumel-arathor · February 24, 2019, 3:53pm

Here’s another good post from August that makes a case for not only fixing the permissions, but for making persistent chat optional:

anon70593351:

There doesn’t need to be any sort of “is officer” consolidated rank. Every rank should have the ability to be customized with any combination of permissions. This change should be completely reverted.

Also forced persistent chat is not a good thing.

I’ve said it again and again, it’s a bad idea to make guild chat into a public chat room. People who weren’t online at the time something was said shouldn’t be able to go back and read things. Even more so with future members.

If this had been implemented in WoW in the past I NEVER would have made the friends I have now because I’m not going to have personable conversations in a damn public forum.

Can we please get an option to have guild chat like it was before? And have an option for multiple chat channels in guild? One could be for persists chat. Announcements, people saying they’ll be missing a raid or taking a break etc…

But the guild changes are why I didn’t spend the prepatch recruiting and getting my guild up and going. I have more of my friends playing now than ever, but none of us want to be a part of a guild because of the chat changes.

Please give us the option to have multiple chat channels with OPTIONAL persistent chat. I’ve been posting this for over a month in addition to tweeting the devs. And it’s not like I’m
the only one that feels this way…

In short: Remove “is officer” rank consolidations, and let us have any combination of privileges for the various ranks. And give us the option for multiple chat channels with different settings for persistent chat.

I think making more options is always a good thing. Multiple channels with the ability to opt in or out of persistent chat seems like an excellent idea. But, of course, separating the permissions is still the priority.

Brahmina-khadgar · February 25, 2019, 3:56am

Weekends are always slow here, but I guess it doesn’t matter since there’s zero chance of anyone at Blizz looking at this thread outside of work hours. And during work hours it seems like there’s a better chance of Invincible dropping than of Blizzard looking in on this.

Oh, sure, I suppose they could be reading this diligently every day and just not replying. I mean how would be know one way or the other? This is the Twilight Zone of threads. Or maybe it’s a black hole. We drop our posts in, and they’re swallowed whole, sucked into a gravitational field from which they’ll never escape–and certainly where they’ll never be acted upon.

Separate the permissions, Blizz. It’s the only way to save the universe from this ever growing thread.

Venjin-bronzebeard · February 25, 2019, 6:54pm

The Wife and I have a few last-ditch plans for keeping things going, so I’m hoping we may be able to get something consistent going in-game. I refuse to die without a fight.

That being said,
Revert the permissions!

If they try to say it’s impossible, then well…