With the next update around the corner, some....ideas.

[Caspeen]

I realize it's probably too late to give suggestions for the next update since Test is already out, but figured that now is as good as any time to talk about GUILD specific things I'd love to see....

1. Please create a way to see contributions to the guild. Even if it's just the leader(s), there really should be a way to see what members have contributed. Everyone can see when a player last logged in and currently that's the only way to see "active" but of course that's a terrible measure of contribution. Ideally there could be a screen where the leader(s) could see azoth donated, items donated, items placed in the guild, etc. Since there's a cap of 50 members it's essential to be able to differentiate those who contribute to the guild from those who are just...there. If they don't want to give the leader(s) this info, maybe there could be some rating, worn as a badge or at least show up as a stat somewhere, that could take all those things into consideration. Might not be everyone's idea of fair but at least it would be better than what is in place right now which is nothing!

2. Improve the decorating experience. There has to be some way that when an item is placed by Player A, only Player A (or leader(s)?) can move that item. Sometimes items get moved intentionally because Player B thinks they are "improving" what Player A has done but sometimes changes are made unintentionally. Ideally items wouldn't just be locked but anyone who tries to move it would get a pop up like "this item is locked by Player A". That way if someone does want to make changes they know exactly who to talk to. I think this is something that most guilds struggle with and there are a few strategies to prevent chaos, but even if guilds had a "lock item" option that could be checked I think it would prevent a lot of frustration.

3. Improve the Guild Chat tab. Love the idea and it's great when people use it but there really should be a time stamp on chats and when there is a chat on the guild tab then it should be super obvious to anyone who has main or group chat tab open. People rarely check the chat tab because messages there are almost always old or else are easily missed.

4. Improve the Guild Message system. The current message system is so flawed it is practically unusable. You can make a message to meet for Beastmoon but for the where your options are Krok, or Marlybone, or...what? How can you do Beastmoon anywhere else but the Arena in WC? The where should include Realm, not world, for activities that happen in a fixed location (Arena, Beastmoon, etc) and World AND Realm for vague activities like Questing.

5. Raids. Don't even know where to begin on Raids. I'm all for a challenge but when the activity is so complex that players practically MUST participate in Voice Chat....too much. But since I don't see KI making them MORE easy, maybe KI could make a practice mode? Some way that smaller groups - the Vanguard, the Outside fighters, the Drummers - could practice their specific part without A> the challenge of gathering 12 people together and B> without potentially wasting a Raid key that is NOT cheap to make. The learning curve for the "average" guild is so steep that giving us a chance to practice would be a huge help reduce the number of guilds that fail then permanently give up in frustration.

6. Make an Anvil for a Raid Keys. To craft a raid key you need 650 Azoth plus 10 montrology TC. How many people can hold 650 TC PLUS all the rest of the TC they need? What a PAIN. But if they made Keys craftable via the Anvils like how upgrades are done - where all players can contribute Azoth instead of one players holding 650 TC cards at once - then it spreads the burden around. And then the key sits there and gets used only when the 12 players doing the raid show up to collect the key.

7. A shared TC Vault. Yes, this request has been around a long time but with Azoth being so crucial it's time KI gave us a place to store TC. Of course, a TC Vault for home would be great too, but a Guild vault would be so helpful so that we can pool Azoth.

Overall I think Guilds have potential and I can't wait to see what the future holds but hopefully it will include all of the above. Or as much as possible!

Think we'll see any of this, @Arthur Wethersfield?

Casp

[Dylan Windwalker]

About 2) If a change happens and the decorating looks better than it did before to everybody else but the original decorator, then who's right and who's wrong? The rest of the Guild or the person who originally designed the decoration? Decorating is so subjective and I think voting is necessary to make it fair what is locked and not locked? If somebody decorates something and they're unwilling to change something (not implying players in our own Guild at all, just in general philosophically), they lock their decorations so they cannot be changed by anybody else, but nobody likes what they've done, what then? What about when in the eventuality, everything is locked? Is decorating over then (though at this moment, how does the Guild look such that it doesn't need any changes)? I don't think there's any real solution to this because it's so subjective and thus without an answer, I wouldn't suggest implementing tools that would only add complexities to this problem. The best solution to the problem in which Locks attempts to fix is trusting your Guild Members.

I'll add my takes on the rest later lol

Edit:

3) Guild Chat only works if people use it and right now, there's no incentives in using it because whenever we're doing Guild Activities, we're together anyways and we'd be using Main Chat. Guild Chat only works if players are not close to one another, which doesn't happen often and when it does, it's usually one person whispering to another. We need to think of reasons we should be using Guild Chat before we're jumping into conclusions where we think it should be improved before we conclusively see the utility of what it is now. Time Stamps are alright but it's ultimately information that's going to be ignored. I don't think it's going to be likely we would be able to see who is looking at Guild Chat, but the updating of the messages is working fine. Well I'm not sure actually, have people talked a lot on Guild Chat while I'm not online and it isn't updating? From what I'm seeing, people are not and I don't suspect people are because Guild Chat is not popular, but I am seeing the update of previous messages I've said in Guild Chat without any problems. Though I think it would help if those messages, in case we do have a long conversation on Guild Chat that's important like Guild Meeting follow-ups, that it stays as long as it can so players who didn't attend the meeting still know what's up.

4) I think you're talking about the Guild Messaging. I know there's a bug about scheduling time periods but honestly I couldn't care less, it's just something to get used to and if the problem isn't fixed who cares. I think there should be more specificity like Realm and Area, but I also wish more people would even check the Guild Message in the first place. Right now in Guild Chat, we get something like "1 New Guild Chat Message", I think it would be useful to just have that Guild Meeting message spelled out instead so people don't have to make the effort of checking Guild Messages. Guild Messages only works out if the thing the Guild Message is trying to get us to do, ends up being done. Only a couple of people even showed up to the Meeting yesterday even though the Guild Message was up this entire week and that's because nobody bothers to check or care. You will need to, as leader of a Guild, to make sure everybody gets down into the Rhythm of checking Guild Messages. At the same time though, the Guild Messages are often something people feel as though were private events for a select few people rather than for the entire Guild itself, which is why some Guild members may see it and do nothing about it. A lot of the problem also stems from who is being invited to the Guild in the first place, if a person invites somebody who's not in going to be active in the Guild much less check Guild Messages, that's a problem you will have to address (under the assumption, you want them to stay rather than you checking in under assumption you're going to kick them out if they don't comply. I'm just saying here you should at least get them to try and not give up on people).

5) Honestly, whatever Ki does that replaces the need for Discord in Raids is going to be worse than simply using Discord for Raids. If anything, Discord is helping their brand because it gets players to be more committed to their game and anyhow Discord is the new normal and there's nothing wrong with taking advantage of something that is going to happen regardless. I do think there should be a Practice Mode for Raids, one that doesn't give any drops or badges or anything, similarly to how there's a Practice Mode in PvP (Derby and Arena). The fact that there isn't one yet Raids is high stakes at a high cost for 12 people, yet there's no way to actually get the feel of what to do without spending a key a player worked to get, especially when activities with much lower stakes and only account for one person's time, is ridiculous. I don't know why they didn't even consider this, is Ki that shortsighted to not understand that other players don't have the same experience with Raids that they do? Did Ki not see the learning curve because they made Raids in the first place? We're not asking for a lot here, Ki has all the resources to do this, copy-paste map with removed rewards, that's it.

6) Maybe turning Azoth into a Reagent could fix this problem. I don't know why it's in the form of a Treasure Card in the first place. But at the same time, that prevents the ability of effectively sending Azoth to other players which happens a lot as a lot of players who are not in any Guild still get Azoth but have no use for them, so there's nothing to lose from simply donating it to Guilds in need of it. I mean, who even has space for 650 Treasure Cards? Azoth isn't even a spell that could be used in Combat! I don't know why Ki thought that was a reasonable idea. However if there was a way for the Guild to chip into a mechanism, so they don't have to have 650 Azoth at once for one single player, but rather have it scattered in varying amounts between multiple members chipping in what they can carry into this one place, then that would lessen the burden of that single player. I know Ki is going to argue that the 350 space left is good enough and treasure cards are supposed to be used instead of being saved. But honestly there's not enough situations where those treasure cards would be used effectively and the treasure cards are being kept for situational circumstances in anticipation that they will be used in the future. If a player needs a particular tc in the future, but they sold it for space, then that person encounters the struggle of getting back what they couldn't have already saved.

[Arthur Wethersfield]

1) We could track item and azoth donations and display that in Guild Roster (perhaps as tooltip)

2) I’m not sure about locking items. Would a placement history help? We could track and display who did what to which items (for some number of items, say the last 100 changes)..

3) With time zones, a time stamp could just be more confusing. Perhaps we could add the time since last message was sent when you log in?

4) We’ve talked about improving the Guild Message System. How many guild members only have menu chat?

5-7) I’ll send this post to designers working on Raids.

We’re actively planning and working on guild related things for both the Summer and Fall Updates. We know that we need to improve a bunch of guild related things. It’s a struggle to balance new things with fixing problems in existing things (and fixing bugs.) In the Spring Update 99% of my time was spent on Rate My Stitch. I only had time to fix a few small Guild related bugs.

Arthur (Gary)

[Dylan Windwalker]

1) We could track item and azoth donations and display that in Guild Roster (perhaps as tooltip)

2) I’m not sure about locking items. Would a placement history help? We could track and display who did what to which items (for some number of items, say the last 100 changes)..

3) With time zones, a time stamp could just be more confusing. Perhaps we could add the time since last message was sent when you log in?

4) We’ve talked about improving the Guild Message System. How many guild members only have menu chat?

5-7) I’ll send this post to designers working on Raids.

We’re actively planning and working on guild related things for both the Summer and Fall Updates. We know that we need to improve a bunch of guild related things. It’s a struggle to balance new things with fixing problems in existing things (and fixing bugs.) In the Spring Update 99% of my time was spent on Rate My Stitch. I only had time to fix a few small Guild related bugs.

Arthur (Gary)

I think Displaying Azoth donations would be a nice touch. I wonder what other players think though.

As a decorator though, I make hundreds of changes on some housing items in order to get an item in the right direction (using Advanced Movement). I think having a log of changes is a good start but if it logs every change in an item, it might get clogged up such that other players checking updates to items will only be able to see that one item change rather than the bigger picture. Maybe if the list consulates everything, it'd be easier to read.

I have personally never seen any Menu Chat players ever being any Guild. We certainly don't have one in our Guild. We have a couple of Text Chat players.

I'm excited to be the ultimate fashionista when Rate My Stitch comes out live!

[ValdusWildheart]

A lot of good points in the thread. Communications will likely be a work in progress for a while. It's just difficult to reach people in game only when you aren't friends and don't know them otherwise. That makes putting raids together difficult. It also makes just reminding people they are in a guild (that they signed up for months ago and forgot about) difficult.

The one point I would strongly disagree with is converting azoth TCs into reagents. I think the developers had the right idea there when they made it TCs. For me, the solution for gate keys would be maybe more around maybe making an interim reagent, like harmonic/spiritual/elemental azoth that condenses/converts tcs meant for keys (maybe IDK 100 tcs > 1 keystone, key needs 6 keystones). Just spit balling, I can think of others as well. I would really, really hate to see the transferability of the TCs removed. Guild leaders and gate managers have enough additional overhead. Being able to collect azoth after the raids helps mitigate some of that a bit. There are other reasons as well but it's still a similar idea.

In terms of counting contributions, I would hope that 1 storm azoth would count more than 1 azoth TC, unlike the caltrops do. While some guilds have kept a tally offline, some have purposely not. I would be interested in more robust feedback if that tally were to be made public.

[1234]

About 2) If a change happens and the decorating looks better than it did before to everybody else but the original decorator, then who's right and who's wrong? The rest of the Guild or the person who originally designed the decoration? Decorating is so subjective and I think voting is necessary to make it fair what is locked and not locked? If somebody decorates something and they're unwilling to change something (not implying players in our own Guild at all, just in general philosophically), they lock their decorations so they cannot be changed by anybody else, but nobody likes what they've done, what then? What about when in the eventuality, everything is locked? Is decorating over then (though at this moment, how does the Guild look such that it doesn't need any changes)? I don't think there's any real solution to this because it's so subjective and thus without an answer, I wouldn't suggest implementing tools that would only add complexities to this problem. The best solution to the problem in which Locks attempts to fix is trusting your Guild Members.

My take on this: It's hard to get people to vote, especially if you don't have a prominent place for members to even discuss this. I think it should be up to guild leaders to decide on decorating protocol, and it seems like tools to track changes would be useful to them. I'm not sure everyone needs that info though. If decorators had a locking function, it would make sense for leaders to have an overriding lock control.

From my own experience, I know that it's disheartening to put time and effort into a project only to go back later and find it changed or removed, and I have heard the same from others. I suspect that may be why decorating activity has tapered off since the early days of the guild release.

Again, a good communication system would really help.

[Dylan Windwalker]

My take on this: It's hard to get people to vote, especially if you don't have a prominent place for members to even discuss this. I think it should be up to guild leaders to decide on decorating protocol, and it seems like tools to track changes would be useful to them. I'm not sure everyone needs that info though. If decorators had a locking function, it would make sense for leaders to have an overriding lock control.

From my own experience, I know that it's disheartening to put time and effort into a project only to go back later and find it changed or removed, and I have heard the same from others. I suspect that may be why decorating activity has tapered off since the early days of the guild release.

Again, a good communication system would really help.

This sure puts a heavy burden on the Guild Leader, especially those who are not particularly have any strong standing on decorations. If I were a Guild Leader, I would be able to ultimately decide what looks decent and fine enough to stay because I have some experience with castle decorating but some Guild Leaders don't and to make them choose, might not end well for those who might have been chosen over the other. But then the Guild Leader could simply pass off this task to somebody who is objectively good at deciding which decorations fit better (somebody like a third party not involved in neither decorations), we would need to find somebody completely impartial but at least is keen enough to establish a decision (with an explanation). That might be too challenging for some Guilds. I'm just saying voting because it spreads that responsibility to more shoulders and opinions, but I agree if we don't have enough people who would be participating in the vote in the first place, then voting wouldn't be much of an option to pursue.

Maybe @Willowdreamer can enlighten us as to how their Guild has determined decorators and whatnot? I think they simply chose one person to do decorations for everything and they're simply ok with whatever this person does, but I'm not certain

[bluedreamer]

1) We could track item and azoth donations and display that in Guild Roster (perhaps as tooltip)

Arthur (Gary)

This would be a retroactive tool, correct? I'm asking because it would be unfair on those who donated a boatload of azoth before the tool tip, with only new donations counting.

[Willowdreamer]

Maybe @Willowdreamer can enlighten us as to how their Guild has determined decorators and whatnot? I think they simply chose one person to do decorations for everything and they're simply ok with whatever this person does, but I'm not certain

Our Guild had some initial hiccups with decorating, but not many. We have several members with decorating permissions, but none of our newer members has asked about it, so the initial decorating team has been responsible for our Guild House's look for quite some time. We have a discussion thread in our Central group for suggestions and discussion, which seems to have worked pretty well. For the most part, none of us seem to have very strong feelings about it. I think that tracking history would be very helpful in the event of problems, but communication is the key.

RE: Guild Chat - I think that knowing how much time has passed since the last comment posted would be great. It might also be helpful if the Guild Chat history could remain to be scrolled through later. If we needed to get 10 people online to cast cantrips for an Unlock, being able to post the question and solicit replies from members over the course of a couple of days would be awesome. Does the Guild Roster indicate which members are Menu Chat? I don't think it does, but that could be helpful for the other Guild Members to know.

Our Guild isn't focused on Raids or PvP or anything like that, but the Treasure Card Vault idea is a good one. Being able to store the cards for future use would be awesome.

[1234]

This sure puts a heavy burden on the Guild Leader, especially those who are not particularly have any strong standing on decorations. If I were a Guild Leader, I would be able to ultimately decide what looks decent and fine enough to stay because I have some experience with castle decorating but some Guild Leaders don't and to make them choose, might not end well for those who might have been chosen over the other. But then the Guild Leader could simply pass off this task to somebody who is objectively good at deciding which decorations fit better (somebody like a third party not involved in neither decorations), we would need to find somebody completely impartial but at least is keen enough to establish a decision (with an explanation). That might be too challenging for some Guilds. I'm just saying voting because it spreads that responsibility to more shoulders and opinions, but I agree if we don't have enough people who would be participating in the vote in the first place, then voting wouldn't be much of an option to pursue.

If a guild has chosen to decorate by vote, and they have a way of making that go smoothly, more power to them. But I'm guessing that many folks with decorator privileges would like to be assured that their work isn't going to be changed.

What if nobody has to decide what looks good? I think that's the nature of an interactive group space; if you're going to encourage individual participation, it requires tolerance for design choices that may not be everyone's cup of tea.