Guild Wars 2

lunawisp.2378:

Namu.5712:

Well I would expect my guild leader to be a leader and not make simple mistakes such as this, YOUR IN TIME OUT!

But how are we supposed to know that making a change like that has such far reaching results? Good interface design doesn’t allow mistakes like this to occur without, at the very least, asking for confirmation.

Your right it is Anet’s fault for not having a confirmation confirming that you are ranking yourself down from guild leader. Further more most games when you go to make someone the guild leader they have to accept it.

I was however being a bit sarcastic in my reply though lol.

Tiger Ashante.1792:

Harro.6391:

WoW thats a long post Tiger. My sincere condolences and I really hope Support can/will help you.

SHORT VERSION
I’m the player that requested my guild leader to make some new ranks, so I feel really bad about this. The Idea was to theme the ranks, new member (Mortal), Standard Member (Ascended), Officers (themed ranks) and Leader (godess)

WHAT HAPPEND
Tiger Ashante.1792 the Guild founder/leader of Guardians Of Divinity [GOD] created a new rank and placed herself into the new rank without realising she had to add all permissions. By default a guild member, DancinWookie.5246, whome has not played for months is the new leader and can’t be contacted to re-enstate Tiger Ashante.1792 role as guild leader. Basically making the guild HEADLESS and if it can’t be rectified will render the guild permanently disfunctional.

FIX Request to ANET support
1. Ingame GM tool (if such a tool exists) re-enstate the guild leader; or
2. Email DancinWookie.5246 on our behalf and ask him to log in if at all possible; or
3. Request a DEV to look into fixing the issue. ( change a value in the file data base for the Guild : Guardians Of Divinity giving Tiger Anshante.1792 All Permissions.

Patch Request for Guilds UI
1. Guild Founder can-not be Kicked or Demoted by other guild leaders
2. Guild Founder/leader can not be Demote them self without Warning: “Are you sure” cheak box.
3. Default Leadership goes to Most active/Highest ranked Member
4. In game members roster “last active timer” so you can see how long ago some one in the guild last logged in.

Hey Harro thanks for your input. Great post! Yeah sorry about my long post, I’m not good at summarizing things, but lets hope the devs take note before it happens to someone else.
The funny thing is, had I discovered this flaw during beta, I would have been praised for reveling such a fundamental flaw in the guild design, instead, I feel like I’m being penalized for it.

Many of us did notice this flaw during beta, many of us reported the lack of real controls over “leadership” in the guild in beta. Many of us also wanted “last log in” and other tweaks to the Guild interface.

This never happened and you, unfortunately are the glaring example of “Never put off til tomorrow what you SHOULD do today.”

You are the roof that collapsed from the pebble.

Well, I made an accidental double post then tried to delete the second post and ended up in an infinite loop of being faced with nothing but a blank box for the entire thread. Entering something in an attempt to get the rest of the thread back. Think the forum software needs some work as well…

hamsteak.1368:

why didn’t you just edit the rank of guild leader rather than create an entirely separate rank?

Hindsight is 20/20…

I sympathize with the OP but unfortunately I don’t think you’re going to get any help from Anet CS. Whether or not they can restore your guild rank is irrelevant, they have shown great reluctance to intervene in situations that occurred due to user error. Whether it’s accidentally removing yourself from the guild or destroying your legendary weapon, it takes CS reps time to research whether the player is truthful or trying to scam them, and there are potential legal consequences as well. So it’s not surprising that they should avoid such situations altogether.

I agree there should be error traps to keep people from accidentally doing foolish things like demoting guild members or breaking valuable equipment, but at the same time, many people are so used to the confirmation boxes that they click “yes” without even reading them, so these errors will still happen no matter what they do. And they cannot cover every possible situation. I’m sure the devs hadn’t considered that someone might accidentally remove their own guild rank, or they would have programmed some sort of safeguard, and the actual problem is so rare that it may be a while before a fix is done.

If you decide to start a new guild let us know, I’d be willing to rep your guild for a couple days to help you get your influence back. I’m sure others would too.

I have seen a lot of comments on people making mistakes by ‘quickly’ clicking confirm, almost out of habit. (Not meant for OP but instead for other’s comments on confirmation).

A good fix for guild leader transfer is to make sure that the current guild leader has to type in the name of the next guild leader and then confirm that choice.
Having to type in the name of something/someone makes for a much more solid choice and less room for errors.

That really sucks, OP.
I’m also a Guild Leader of a very small guild and we all worked pretty hard building it up. I’d be upset if something like this happened to me.

I hope Anet can fix it for you ASAP!

Fanboys feeling they’ve earned extra benefits; nothing to see here.

Tiger Ashante.1792:

Yea i guess my post is too long and u probably didn’t read it fully but i have submitted support ticket, why else would i say support refused to help? And when people say its my fault, I think anet has to take at least partial responsibility for not putting some safety net in here before making such a dramatic changes. Nothing told me this change of title would alter my guild leader status.

Don’t assume I didn’t read etc, that’s trolling. I did read and it’s your fault.
It’s pretty common sense that giving leadership privileges to other people makes you lose leadership, be a man, take your own responsibilities and deal it with Anet.

I am really sorry OP but

LMFAO

I do agree on your proposition.

As somebody else pointed out there is an ‘EDIT’ ranks button, before even starting recruiting you MUST check out what is what. Also, as horrible as this may sound.. Personally, I do not think this is something for support considering that they could be helping people who had/have been hacked.. Besides, I actually do not think they could change ranks in guilds.

I wish more people would look at the screen while playing, stuff like this wouldn’t happen..

When you make a new rank, all the permissions are right there.

I really hope Anet fixes this for you. The guild ranking system is pretty confusing and unclear. This demonstrates how unforgiving a mistake with it can be as well. Kind of like the ‘Kick from guild’ instead of ‘Kick from party’ problem times 100.

People can say ‘Oh pay attention then’ but seriously humans make mistakes, it happens. It’s easy to be distracted or not really thinking it all through and in regards to the guild ranking there’s nothing there to really explain it nor obviously any warnings.

That it’s a human mistake is no excuse not to fix your problem. Saying ‘oh wait for this inactive person to come back who may or may not give it back to you’ is unacceptable.

Also for the people saying start a new guild, 6 months worth is a lot of influence gain, queues build. For your guild to be recognized by name. It’s a huge loss even for a smaller guild. A human mistake does not warrant this kind of punishing. Not when it’s something of this scale.

I can understand not fixing things like buying the wrong item or salvaging it (except maybe a legendary) but loss of a guild must be devastating and is too big a mistake for it to be ignored.

I personally fully support you and hope it will be fixed for you.

Olfinbedwere.5049:

If you decide to start a new guild let us know, I’d be willing to rep your guild for a couple days to help you get your influence back. I’m sure others would too.

Thank you, but unless you are guild leader you wouldn’t realise just how much work is required to upgrade your guild, especially a small one, to any reasonable level. I really appreciate your offer, but I will not be starting a new guild. If this doesn’t work out, I’ll be staying guild-less for ever more. I’ve lost my faith in the system and the support I’ve been offered.

The latest update from support suggests this may well never be resolved. It’s a ridiculous set up which I’m being told is the only option available to me now. I don’t think I’m breaking any rules by quoting what support told me here since it’s only quoting the ‘official’ system that’s in place for this kind of situation and I think it may be worthwhile information for people to be aware of it.

Quote: “If a guild leader is inactive for 60 days (2 months) from the last login, as shown in Guild window, they will automatically be demoted to officer, and the most senior officer who was active in the past 60 days will be instantly promoted to leader. If there is no active officer in the guild, the most senior member who was active in the past 60 days will be promoted instead”.

How many people would actually know this is how it works? I didn’t. Well we don’t have last log in information anyway, so I’m not sure how this will work. In my view, this system is all very well if a leader has left the guild, or has gone inactive, but I’m still here, asking to have my guild back and I think there should be something in place to facilitate my situation. It seems unreasonable that I have to wait 60 days and what happens if the next senior officer logs in just for one day during the next phase, the 60 day counter would restart yet again and this could just keep defaulting perpetually?

In any case, even if this defaults to an active officer, no rights have been give to them to change the leadership for obvious reasons so the whole point is moot. I guess I really have lost my guild and unless Anet decided to do the right thing I fear I will never get it back.

I would also like to thank you all for your input and support, I really appreciate it and there are some very good suggestions in this post, please keep them coming. I have given the link of this post to support and I can only hope they and the devs can use some of the feedback here to improve their services and the game in general.

Edit: I just realised i said something wrong there, if the system defaults to an active officer, then that officer would become a leader and would be able to restore my leadership, if they’re willing of course.

Wow, I feel for you Tiger. I am the leader of a small guild and I had no idea it would be that easy to lose it all. Thank you for sharing your story and hopefully preventing others from having the same issue.

Remember the Karka event? The event was glitchy and even after like two months they were able to go through all of those records, every player on every server, and determine who was logged in, who opened a chest, who had something mailed, and who didn’t. That amazed me. From the discussion postings following the resolution I got the impression that they did a pretty accurate job.

I would like to think that somewhere in that big think tank at Arenanet there is at least one individual with the savvy to restore GoD to her rightful place. We just need to locate that individual and make them aware of the situation.

Am I the only one who reads the title, and think this is a thread complaining about thieves?

lunawisp.2378:

Namu.5712:

Well I would expect my guild leader to be a leader and not make simple mistakes such as this, YOUR IN TIME OUT!

But how are we supposed to know that making a change like that has such far reaching results? Good interface design doesn’t allow mistakes like this to occur without, at the very least, asking for confirmation.

Absolutely agree. That’s sloppy programming that should never have made it past the BWE’s. I am super curious why they won’t help the OP. It’s not like they couldn’t just verify the story and then change the Guild Leader back.

Tiger Ashante.1792:

Olfinbedwere.5049:

If you decide to start a new guild let us know, I’d be willing to rep your guild for a couple days to help you get your influence back. I’m sure others would too.

Thank you, but unless you are guild leader you wouldn’t realise just how much work is required to upgrade your guild, especially a small one, to any reasonable level. I really appreciate your offer, but I will not be starting a new guild. If this doesn’t work out, I’ll be staying guild-less for ever more. I’ve lost my faith in the system and the support I’ve been offered.

Edit: I just realised i said something wrong there, if the system defaults to an active officer, then that officer would become a leader and would be able to restore my leadership, if they’re willing of course.

yw, hopefully you’ll be fine in 60 days. A long time to wait, but better than never, I bet it’ll get fixed in 60.

Maybe you shouldn’t have tried to make your title “Goddess”. That’s just tempting fate.

There is a warning in the panel to change titles that says " To change a member’s rank, open the guild roster, and right-click their rank icon. Use caution when editing ranks or promoting people; it is possible to accidentally remove leadership privileges from your rank." http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild There isn’t a popup, and I agree it would be a good idea. But there is that warning there and a help function for changing things. Sorry to hear you had to go through this.

The guild system uses a fairly typical role-based security. There is no such thing as titles; they are simply named security categories. So, when creating one for yourself you need to make sure it has the permissions desired.

That said, I believe a warning dialog should be displayed when changing something as significant as guild leader. And, picking a member at random or otherwise as guild leader should not be the province of the software, it should require a human to make the selection. I wish you good fortune with the support folks at Anet. I know it must be a very uncomfortable position to be in.

Chuo.4238:

Absolutely agree. That’s sloppy programming that should never have made it past the BWE’s. I am super curious why they won’t help the OP. It’s not like they couldn’t just verify the story and then change the Guild Leader back.

There was loads reported and suggested during BWE’s that weren’t changed/fixed and still haven’t over all this time. So us beta testers did try to suggest and report all problems best we could. Guilds, overflow and parties were barely functional during and after beta.

Luckily we are now seeing some improvements on various fronts I’m waiting to see what happens in the upcoming patch although I doubt there will be more added than what they have already revealed going by last patch which barely added/fixed anything that was truly important, only a couple of major things.

UI and Guild improvements are for me some of the major things that require some changes now a few of these things will be implemented. I’m very happy to see they’ve been listening in regards to that.

I just hope they will fix OP’s problem, They should have the evidence to see she is telling the truth or not and this is definitely one of those unique times where they should intervene. The current protocol they have in place for this situation with the ‘deal with it, your own fault’ is just…no

Quote: “If a guild leader is inactive for 60 days (2 months) from the last login, as shown in Guild window, they will automatically be demoted to officer, and the most senior officer who was active in the past 60 days will be instantly promoted to leader. If there is no active officer in the guild, the most senior member who was active in the past 60 days will be promoted instead”.

So it’s good to know that there is a system in place. However a couple of questions remain.

Where does it show the last login?
Why was an inactive member promoted in the first place? (might be a different system or the member indeed logged in at some point when no one else was on or no one saw him?)
When does the counter start when an automatic promotion takes place?

Perhaps they did double check it and perhaps this officer indeed logged in in the past 60 days.

Suggestion – have the system allow the leader to name a successor manually.

Rouven.7409:

Quote: “If a guild leader is inactive for 60 days (2 months) from the last login, as shown in Guild window, they will automatically be demoted to officer, and the most senior officer who was active in the past 60 days will be instantly promoted to leader. If there is no active officer in the guild, the most senior member who was active in the past 60 days will be promoted instead”.

So it’s good to know that there is a system in place. However a couple of questions remain.

Where does it show the last login?
Why was an inactive member promoted in the first place? (might be a different system or the member indeed logged in at some point when no one else was on or no one saw him?)
When does the counter start when an automatic promotion takes place?

Perhaps they did double check it and perhaps this officer indeed logged in in the past 60 days.

Suggestion – have the system allow the leader to name a successor manually.

There isn’t a last log in as far as I know.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Guild-Managment
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Better-Guild-tools-for-leaders-and-guildies

Heartbroken because of downgrading yourself in a guild?
Involving Anet as the badboy then?
???
Excuse me, really?

leman.7682:

Heartbroken because of downgrading yourself in a guild?
Involving Anet as the badboy then?
???
Excuse me, really?

It’s not Anets fault no, well it is in that they didn’t program in a warning message but ultimately it’s the OP’s fault for making the mistake.

That said I feel it’s a large enough error that exception for such occasions should be made or a better system put in place since the game allows for these big mistakes to be made far too easily, without warning. This is only something Anet can fix and/or improve which is what people are requesting.

Same with salvaging legendary items/destroying them there should be an additional warning message, a more obvious one. As well as remove right click ‘kick from guild’ from party frame/roster or at least add a warning/confirmation box when clicked.

Rouven.7409:

Quote: “If a guild leader is inactive for 60 days (2 months) from the last login, as shown in Guild window, they will automatically be demoted to officer, and the most senior officer who was active in the past 60 days will be instantly promoted to leader. If there is no active officer in the guild, the most senior member who was active in the past 60 days will be promoted instead”.

So it’s good to know that there is a system in place. However a couple of questions remain.

Where does it show the last login?
Why was an inactive member promoted in the first place? (might be a different system or the member indeed logged in at some point when no one else was on or no one saw him?)
When does the counter start when an automatic promotion takes place?

Perhaps they did double check it and perhaps this officer indeed logged in in the past 60 days.

Suggestion – have the system allow the leader to name a successor manually.

Hey Rouven, thanks for your input. I’ve been told that since there’s an ‘issue’ with “last login” in the guild window, the 60-day counter would start when I first lodged my support ticket. As far I know, there’s been no checking of when the members logged in last.
I think. they not only need to add " last login" information, but also make sure that the information doesn’t get reset every time the game is patched/updated, as it does currently and where it then shows any members not logged in since the patch/update as “unknown”.

Raine.1394:

The guild system uses a fairly typical role-based security. There is no such thing as titles; they are simply named security categories. So, when creating one for yourself you need to make sure it has the permissions desired.

That said, I believe a warning dialog should be displayed when changing something as significant as guild leader. And, picking a member at random or otherwise as guild leader should not be the province of the software, it should require a human to make the selection. I wish you good fortune with the support folks at Anet. I know it must be a very uncomfortable position to be in.

Totally agree and what a lot of people seem to forget is that many players in gw2 have never run a guild before, myself included. In most games, including gw1, it was complicated to start your own guild and that made people think about it before going for it. In gw2 they have made it very simple and easy so lot of novices decided to try it. Perhaps a person with prior experience in leading a guild may not have made the same error?

But imo, if you create a system that so readily lets u change names/titles/edit ranks or whatever, then a preventative system should also be in place to help people avoid making such silly errors that have extremely dire consequences. We’re all humans and even devs make mistakes sometimes. To expect an average person to never do so is unreasonable. It’s so easy to push a wrong button when you’re being distracted or whatever and the system as it stands is terribly unforgiving and intolerant of any errors.

This information I quoted from support is now wrong!

Quote: “If a guild leader is inactive for 60 days (2 months) from the last login, as shown in Guild window, they will automatically be demoted to officer, and the most senior officer who was active in the past 60 days will be instantly promoted to leader. If there is no active officer in the guild, the most senior member who was active in the past 60 days will be promoted instead”.

They now tell me what they quoted me here is the system in gw1, not gw2. It seems there’s NO system in gw2 that can re-instate leadership once lost! Yet they have a system that can take your guild leadership away and give it to a random member, without any checks if that member is even still playing the game!
Furthermore, it seems that the only option I have in resolving this issue, is to rely on a person that is outside the company, the very player whom the system promoted to a leader and who has been inactive for some time and may never come back. This truly is the most ridiculous situation imaginable.

I am at a loss why they will not assist me in resolving this issue. A dev could fix this in a matter of minutes. A support staffer could send a an email to the player in question in a matter of minutes, but the best solution they can offer me is to use the forums in hope a dev will see and take notice of my thread/post to have this matter resolved, or simply wait for this player to come back. I truly feel like I’m playing in a twilight zone here not gw2.

I for one would love to see some Dev comment in this thread. The guild system/ui is pretty shoddy in places and as a guild leader myself I’ve been waiting for quality of life improvements such as ‘last logged on’ and officer chat etc. for a long time now.

Reading the utter mess Tiger has got himself into as a result of what I see as an incomplete and buggy system and hearing that Anet isn’t able to help makes me think that they aren’t really focusing on improving this any time soon.

I was under the impression the goals for the first quarter or this year were suring up the core game. Getting the guild system to a point where it’s at least as functional as the first game has become far overdue. Please tell us what you’re doing, or not doing, about it Anet!

As I said before, and others have repeated; the best scenario for a fix is to have a guild leader who is demoting themselves (intentionally or not) type in the name of their successor and then confirm it.

@Tiger – since there is no recourse at the moment, here’s what I would try. Today’s patch is well known and the person may come back for a big update like today. Keep looking out for a login.
Reddit is a tad more popular than GW2 forums. Post there as a plea for the person or anyone that knows them to get in touch with the guild.
Use this at other popular mmo website’s forums.
Sorry I have no better suggestions. I would keep in contact with support as well as your other members. If anything this thread may get enough attention to be a catalyst for change in their Guild UI.
GL

OP – I HIGHLY recommend a TL;DR version for any moderator passing through. For anyone wondering… The OP made a custom rank for herself but forgot to give it all of the permissions of a Guild Leader. Thus when she switched herself to this rank, she was the lowest ranking member and it seems she can’t switch back.

IMHO- Confirmation of leadership change aside, the Guild Leader tag should never be able to pass to a member who is not currently online.

it is without doubt possible for anet to edit your guild properties, pretty disheartening if they would refuse to do it.

Dear Anet,

Could you please help this customer of yours, and a member of our community in this matter? As a member of this community myself, I ask that you show compassion and correct the situation.

Sincerely,
Pure Heart.

this seems wrong, and I am posting to hopefully keep this topic current. I hope a dev notices it; you might try contacting Gaile, as she has access to all the pertinent development teams…good luck

To have no system in place is a little disappointing. To have no system in place and not being able to help …

So we could disable the custom rank feature all together until some measures are in place. Either this happens often – in that case definitely, or it happens rarely – in that case Anet should consider being a little bit more lenient.

Compromise, manual process from Anet’s side to check after a month or two if the automatic appointed leader came online – if not – promote previous leader again.

I’m sure Tiger would be happy to send another ticket at that time to follow up.

I hope it works out for you and you manage to get your guild back! Hard to accept that ANet won’t budge on the matter. I think we all understand that at face value this is the OP’s “fault,” but I see no reason it can’t be resolved by a GM or whoever. All they have to do is verify the story for themselves, check the chat logs, changes in guild permissions, etc. From the sound of things, the new guild “leader” hasn’t even been online since the incident.

Who thought it was a good idea to allow the GAME to automatically appoint a Guild Leader? IMO, you shouldn’t even be ABLE to step down as leader unless there is currently another acting leader, or you manually appoint one, or you wish to outright leave the guild. Whether it picked that guy at random, or went for the next oldest guild member, it’s simply not a smart bit of programming.

I would advise you to keep at it, and see if you can’t get someone at ANet to help you. And if it doesn’t come to anything, don’t let it discourage you from starting up a new guild. I’m sure your old friends will go with you and help you out, seeing as how they’re currently stuck with no leader as well.

You need to go tot he support forums and ask for assistance there also. They tend to “try” to help there more then the ticket system.

With the new release today, renewed focus on guilds and functionality, getting some safeguards in place to prevent a recurrence really should be prioritized.

I have to believe they will reinstate your guild Tiger. It’s just the right thing to do.

And when you get your guild back . . . we do expect you to host a feast worthy of the title Goddess, with more food than a Char could eat and more drink than a Norn can consume.

Sowin.5187:

(…)

And when you get your guild back . . . we do expect you to host a feast worthy of the title Goddess, with more food than a Char could eat and more drink than a Norn can consume.

Hear hear!

See if Gaile can help you. It might be that she cannot, but it’s worth a shot. She has a lot of heart and a good dose of common sense. I believe if she reads this, and actually has the ability, she will help you.

It might be that you are forced to abandon your guild and start over. That would be bad. But it would be better than losing the circle of people that you play with and call friend.

Keep us updated. I’m interested in knowing how it works out for you.

im really sorry to hear this. i am a leader of a small guild myself and its been a lot of work, so i understand why youre upset. if you get your leader status back maybe you should have a co-leader incase anything happens again, thats what i did, but make sure its someone you can trust obviously. best of luck to ya mate

Not having a confirmation for stepping down as guild leader is epic fail. If anything needs a confirmation it’s this.

IF you are guild leader, and demote yourself, well darn it, you have it coming. You have the tool (ie read the permissions etc) before you do anything.

Don’t blame ANet. This is an user error and paid the price.

X The Manimal.5293:

OP – I HIGHLY recommend a TL;DR version for any moderator passing through. For anyone wondering… The OP made a custom rank for herself but forgot to give it all of the permissions of a Guild Leader. Thus when she switched herself to this rank, she was the lowest ranking member and it seems she can’t switch back.

Yes you are right, I will try to do that now, just not sure if it’ll let me ad it to my original post as it is already very long.

im hearing that this was all your fault, you deserve it and the violin thats playing couldnt be smaller.

BTW, someone seem to have sneakily changed my thread’s title! I’ve not been notified of this change. It was called “Heartbroken” before. Well my heart still feels broken over this issue, but I’m extremely heartened by your support and constructive suggestions. I sincerely appreciate it.
Edit: typos

Aye.8392:

See if Gaile can help you. It might be that she cannot, but it’s worth a shot. She has a lot of heart and a good dose of common sense. I believe if she reads this, and actually has the ability, she will help you.

It might be that you are forced to abandon your guild and start over. That would be bad. But it would be better than losing the circle of people that you play with and call friend.

Keep us updated. I’m interested in knowing how it works out for you.

That’s a good idea. I have written a PM to a dev (not sure if I’m allowed to mention names here, but I better not just in case). Anyway, I have received no response so far, that was about week ago, but I do understand they must be very busy getting ready for the patch update.
I’m keeping my fingers crossed someone in the company will at least respond to this thread and let us know what they plan to do about this, because this will happen again and probably already has but not reported. If nothing else, I hope this thread prevents other folks making the same mistake in the future.

I see lot of people refer to me as a he, it’s actually a she.
Thanks once again for your support.

Tiger Ashante.1792:

Thanks guys, I’ll keep trying with the support.
I’ve also sent a forum message to the member in question in hope he had email notification enabled for when he gets a message but since I haven’t received any rely from him I guess he hasn’t enabled that option. I also left him an in-game mail in case he comes when i’m not there, but I don’t think he’s been on since Xmas and I have no idea when and if he’ll come on.
I would actually like to know how long he can remain a leader if he’s inactive? It simply don’t make sense the leadership was given to an inactive member as opposed to an active one or even an officer. It all seems wrong somehow.

Did they made lottery for whom give rank? I think this is first game in my MMO history that can be happen like that. Some have to be genies to make guild system like this.