Forums » Suggestions

Mini-RFC - Guild Structural Changes

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Sep 14, 2015 incarnate link
We've had some guild drama lately. A guild was unfortunately disbanded because of some timing issues, and another former-guild Commander has been bending my ear about a perceived issue that turned out to not be.. actually real, in any way. So, this has been on my mind a little.

For starters, we're swamped right now. Like, more than usual. I don't know when we'll get to this, or if we might do stuff piecemeal over a lengthy period, or what. So, be aware that, despite an elevation in priority, it's behind a lot of other priorities.

Still, I would like feedback on this. Particularly if there are obvious holes, or missing things you want, or tweaks, etc.

The goals here are multi-fold:

- There are a lot of guilds based around trial-account alts and BS, which is annoying, especially when people start yelling at us (the devs) about whatever internal politics are going on, because someone used said alts to take some kind of action or whatever. So, there are some changes here to minimize trial-alts on councils. If people want to make real guilds, awesome, if not.. meh.

- At the same time, it can be pretty hard to make a legit guild. The number of people, the timing allowance, etc. So I'm relaxing some of the requirements, while at the same time (above) making it more likely for the people to be.. real.

- Guilds have a lot of problems with inactive leadership, both Council and Commanders. The disbandment rules are pretty harsh. This will at least lengthen the window, while also providing some automated options to hopefully keep the "average case" guild a little healthier.

- The degree to which people have to regularly ask Whistler to help them is obviously silly, and a problem. This will mitigate some of that. It does not handle the website/URL/image stuff, as that has more direct security ramifications that we need to evaluate.

- There isn't nearly enough communication about what's going on in guilds, either for leadership or whomever. We need to send out emails in some cases. At the same time, I don't really want to spam people a lot, and sending emails is annoying. But in some minimal cases, it's fine.

Possible changes:
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- Change "48-hour" creation/disbandment period to 7 days.
- Require Level 3 in any License, to be Council or Commander.
- Council members and Commanders may not be Trials or F2P.

- Only 5 Council members required to create a guild (up to 9 allowed).
- Voting still works on simple-majority rules. If you have an even number
of council members, and fail to get a majority (deadlock), the vote fails.

- Add "Promote" to command to Commander:
- Promote council: Promote a regular member to Council, to fill a vacant spot.
- Promote replacement: Flag a member as a replacement Commander, if the
existing Commander should resign or be removed by a non-voting reason
(such as character deletion, administrative banning, etc).
- If a commander does not log in for 60 days, email said commander
with a warning to either log in or resign their position within the next
7 days. If no login within 7 days, either the designated Replacement, or
if not available, highest-level member of leadership (Council or Lieutenant)
is promoted to Commander.

- If a Commander has been voted out of office, email-notify them.
- If a guild has impending disbandment for some reason, email Commander, Council and
Lieutenants (if any) immediately, at the beginning of the 7-day period.
- If a guild does not have enough council members after the 7-day disbandment period,
and risks being disbanded at the end of that period, then auto-promote the
highest-level regular-members to council.
- Email-notify any member who has been auto-promoted to Council or Commander.
- If there are not enough regular-members to promote to council, then disband the
guild.
Sep 14, 2015 yodaofborg link
tl:dr

sorry Inc, the current guild system is only flawed by people dropping back to f2p, or lite after being promoted on full sub accounts. When they next log in on f2p or lite, they lose the title.

Never mind the email bollox, simply put is this.

If you are F2P, you cannot create a guild. If you are F2P you CANNOT be promoted to a position above member. If you are F2P you cannot help found a guild.

If you join a guild as F2P but later sub for 1 month and get promoted, the promotion should stick even if you fall back to F2P/lite.

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The problem isn't that new people cannot create guilds, it is that they cannot maintain them if the few invited P2P players jump ship after helping them start. I like the idea of auto-promotion, but what happens if these people lite sub for a month? They lose council/ltnt positions the second they log in. I think you could simply fix this by not removing unsubbed/lite subbed/F2P players from office positions if they let a sub lapse.

Once you have been promoted, make it stick. Problem goes away.
Sep 14, 2015 greenwall link
I'm fine with all the above so long as every effort is made to clearly inform existing guild leadership of what situations would trigger automatic disbandment. Some guilds (coughs *PA*) have gone almost entirely inactive, yet still have a significant portion of credits in their bank which should be able to be safeguarded prior to disbanding.
Sep 14, 2015 VikingRanger link
I like your solutions Incarnate. Guilds are an awesome part of any game and the easier they are (to some extent) to manage the better. Also, the more the merrier, hopefully we see more successful guilds coming from newer players.
Sep 14, 2015 Death Fluffy link
Good solutions. I'm sure there will be a few tweaks needed as real game situations occur, but definitely a good move imo.
Sep 14, 2015 Kierky link
Sep 14, 2015 abortretryfail link
Does the game nag council members to vote when there's an ongoing vote? That seems like it would be useful.
Sep 14, 2015 Savet link
1. The whole "no lite/free" on council is 90% of the problem.

Find a way to monetize it. Mobile users are our future and treating them as 2nd class citizens does nothing to help the game.

If a person has full-subbed they should retain their position if they drop back to lite/free for a while.

2. Allow more diverse guild structure. Shared command. More LTs. Etc.

3. Remove the silly voting thing and have top-down commands.

4. Members should be auto pruned after 12 months of not logging in.
Sep 15, 2015 csgno1 link
If the commander and both LTs are MIA for long enough, will this auto-promote idea replace them with active members so that the people actually playing can invite new members once again? I see guilds with only council and regular members active and they are forced to jump to a different guild or start another.
Sep 15, 2015 Whistler link
What about "Promote" to Lieutenant?

Otherwise all good so far as I'm concerned. I don't mind helping out on a daily basis, but I'm sure it's unwieldy for commanders to have to wait for me to make their changes.
Sep 15, 2015 Kierky link
Promote to LT is called "appoint" by the game. It's already a feature.
Sep 15, 2015 Faille Corvelle link
I know its tangential to the OP, but I'd like to see more options in the guild ranking system too. I think VO guilds are missing a rank, either "Senior Council/Member" or "Recruit", (or both) as well as allowing the commander to assign recruiting rights. I see a lot of "I want to join [guild A], but there are no LT/CEOs online" situations.

My suggested "Ranking" would be:

Commander
LTs
(possible) Senior Council
Council
(possible) Senior Member
Member
(possible) Recruit

Mostly to give more freedom in deciding who can do what within the guild. For instance, Guild A may decide that council and above may recruit, or allow varying daily withdrawals based on rank (eg, Recruits get the least, if any, council and up get the most)

Secondly, I'd like to see Commanders/LTs be able to assign guild specific titles: Eg: PVP Instructor, Mining Ops Co-Ordinator, etc. Just for added guild "fluff".

EDIT: Incarnate, you mentioned "F2P and Trial alts" regarding council positions. Did you mean Lite subs, or the free, time limited trials?
Sep 15, 2015 yodaofborg link
Promote to LTNT only works if you have less than 2 LTNTS already EP, and you cannot demote them as commander. Council need to call a vote for demotion, and all council must vote - so if any are away from the game - you can have a hard time replacing inactive ltnts.

I guess that could use a change too, as its probably the most requested thing for whistler.
Sep 15, 2015 The_Catman link
Some randomish thoughts - maybe go for 10 days disbandment rather than 7 - if Commander is afk for a week, three more days might enhance the chance of maintaining the guild.

Agree with Kierky's suggestion for in-game application, in whatever form it could be best implemented, but NOT by plug-in.

I am not clear as to what happens to guild funds if a guild collapses - as a Commander I would feel guilty if the guild folded and members contributions disappeared. (High withdrawal limits would help honest people withdraw what they paid in, but I understand that there are some outrageous thieves who have plundered guild banks).

If Commander can promote to Lt. (which seems fair enough), then should be able to demote as per yodas comment above.

Agree with all of Savet's comments, but would auto-prune after 6 months at longest
Sep 15, 2015 bojansplash link
Although I would like to see some big guilds inactive members auto-pruned and reduced to what they really are I have to disagree.

Some guilds are part of the vo history and some members who have formed and led them in the past deserve to be remembered.

I for one would not like SOR to disappear just because nobody is active except mr_spuck. People who formed that guild and were once valued members of this community deserve to be remembered.
Same with all other long lasting guilds.

Same thing with automatic demoting and auto-pruning of commanders, Lts and council members. In old guilds those are more of a honorary positions and assigned to people who made things happen - created and promoted the guild. They might not log back in for years or ever but... they deserve their place in guild and vo history.
Sep 15, 2015 Pizzasgood link
That is what history books are for. Dead people should not hold limited-occupancy positions of power, blocking people from actually getting things done.

But that only goes for the positions of power. I don't mind inactive members sticking around in a guild forever. I do mind those inactive members counting toward the number of people in the guild on the guild list though. That number should only count active players (say, over the last month or two).
Sep 15, 2015 greenwall link
lol Rin
Sep 15, 2015 CrazySpence link
These are good ideas!
Sep 15, 2015 Savet link
DIT: Incarnate, you mentioned "F2P and Trial alts" regarding council positions. Did you mean Lite subs, or the free, time limited trials?

No, he means that people have used trial accounts to help establish guilds because the guild create system is so broken that to create a guild with real people risks it folding in days due to free/lite second class citizenship.
Sep 15, 2015 Faille Corvelle link
I mean his suggested changes prevent "f2p or Trial" from council positions. Did he mean "f2p and Lite" or does the Lite sub allow council positions (assuming min 3 in a licence is also met).