Save Our Guilds

[DeletedUser112745]

Please note: I am sharing this idea as a regular player, not a game mod.

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Introduction:
Imagine this.
You are in a very well established guild that each member has put a decent amount of their time and energy into expanding and making its presence known across the world, whether by peace or by war.

• The treasury is full to the brim of goods that have been painstakingly produced, farmed, won and plundered by members.
• Guild members spent goods, forge points and even diamonds on building and improving Observatory and Arc great buildings for the guild's prosperity.
• You have made a lot of new friends in the guild, people brought together by a common cause and bonding over common personal interests.
• The guild level/power is high thanks to the generous guild members who built Hall of Fames, their efforts in GE and GvG.
• Dozens of 1st, 2nd and 3rd place trophies earned from the member's hard work in GE decorate the guild's profile page.
• There are also dozens of hexes held on the GvG map, fought for, watched over and defended by guildmates for countless hours and days.

And then one morning you log in to collect your goods and see how you can contribute to your guild or help guildmates today - only to see that, without a warning, the guild you put so much effort and time into no longer exists.
How would you feel? Upset? Angry? Betrayed? Frustrated?

Once a guild is deleted, it cannot be recovered in any way, shape or form. Once gone it is gone, scattered into the cosmos. All that hard work, all that time, all those diamonds - gone. Irreversibly. Irretrievably. And it is scary to think that at the press of a button, as easy as snuffing out a candle, all of that just vanishes into the void.

In this thread, I would like to make two proposals that could potentially prevent this from happening so often. Why two? Because I am unable to decide which of the two is the better idea, which is why we need this excellent forum community here to discuss and contribute to suggestions to improve them.

I have used spoilers to reduce the size of the thread, especially for those reading this on mobile devices with smaller screens. Click/tap the spoilers to open and close sections.

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Proposal 1 - Unable to disband while members are present

Spoiler: Click to view proposal 1

Proposal:
My first proposal is to make it impossible to disband a guild that has other members in it. In order to disband the guild, the founder needs to remove all the existing members from it first.

I believe this may help in four ways:

• Prevents accidental deletion where the founder doesn't quite realise what they're doing (it happens)
• The founder probably can't be bothered to remove everyone from the guild one by one, so they assign a new founder and just leave
• The founder, while in the process of removing members, might have had those few minutes to reconsider, for example, if the decision was made in a moment of anger.
• Other members may notice the guildmates dropping like flies and reason with the founder, possibly preventing the disbanding by some means or other (talking sense / electing a new founder, etc).

Details:

1. Guild founder, for whatever reason, decides they want to disband the guild.
2. Goes to the relevant page and chooses the option to disband the guild.
3. A warning message pops up informing them that the guild cannot be disbanded because there are still other members in the guild (or just have the button greyed out - but they'd probably want an explanation why).
4. If the founder still wants to disband, they will have to remove all of the members of the guild one by one.
5. Only when the founder is the last remaining member of the guild can it be disbanded.

That is proposal 1. Or, proposal 2 is below.

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Proposal 2 - Countdown and re-assignment

Spoiler: Click to view proposal 2

Proposal:
Admittedly, this one is slightly more complicated than the first proposal.
Allow me to start off by mentioning that when you delete a city in the game, you have to wait a few days for the deletion to be finalised. One reason for this is to give you the opportunity to change your mind.
The second thing I'd like to mention is that when a guild's founder is inactive for 30 days, the game automatically re-assigns the founder role to another member of the guild.

Likewise, instead of disbanding a guild straight away, there could be a countdown timer activated - say for between 5 to 7 days - visible on the guild page for guild members.

During this time:

1. If there is another founder, they can stop the countdown (and assuming they don't want the guild deleted, can remove the founder who started the countdown).
2. If there is no other founder, the leaders and regular players who have been in the guild for 6 weeks or more can elect themselves to become founder by pressing a button on the guild's member list next to their name. If the countdown reaches 0, the player with the highest guild position/rank with the highest score who pressed the button becomes the founder and the previous founder who started the countdown is automatically demoted.
3. If nobody in the guild at all elected themselves by the time the timer reaches 0 (ie - they're all inactive or none have been in the guild for 6 weeks), then the guild is permanently disbanded as usual.
4. Of course, the founder who set the countdown can also cancel it before it reaches 0.

This will not only prevent guilds being disbanded on a whim, for example out of anger or drunkness, which will probably be regretted later, but it also ensures the guild lives on if people want it to.


Details:

1. Guild founder, for whatever reason, decides they want to disband the guild.
2. Goes to the relevant page and chooses the option to disband the guild.
3. A countdown timer begins ticking down on the guild page and members of the guild receive a notification in their town hall to inform them of this.
4. At the same time, those eligible to become the next founder will have an additional button beside their name in the guild member list. Members can use these buttons to elect themselves to become the next founder.
5. If the countdown reaches 0, a new founder is assigned according to the criteria in the proposal and the founder who set the countdown is automatically demoted (to regular member or leader?)
6. If the countdown is cancelled by the founder, nobody becomes the new founder and the disbanding process cannot be activated again until a 3, 5 or 7 day cooldown period has passed.

While a countdown is in effect, the founder who set it cannot leave a guild until it reaches 0. In order to avoid this if they want to leave the guild immediately, the founder has to set a new founder in the guild before they can leave.

Why not just skip this self-election thing and just give the founder right straight to the next highest ranked player? Or allow players to elect another player other than themselves? Because that chosen player may not be active or may not even want to be the founder.

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Spoiler: Checked other ideas / Reason / Balance / Abuse Prevention / Problems

Have you Checked the Ideas section?
I did a search and I could not personally find anything similar to the two proposals.

Reason:
These proposals are necessary to prevent the loss of fantastic guilds that have taken so much time and effort to build from the ground up. A disbanded guild negatively affects players in so many ways. They lose traders, aiders, GB donators and town hall bonuses. It's not fair on these players when one person just decides to drop everything at the press of a button instead of assigning a new founder.

Balance:
I personally don't believe the proposals will have an impact on any other game features.

Abuse Prevention:
Proposal 2 will need some measures in place to prevent abuse:

• Prevent the founder from altering the rights of other members while the countdown is in effect. This will prevent them from affecting the outcome of the self-election by, for example, removing another founder who could stop the countdown.
• Similarly, the founder cannot remove any members from the guild while the countdown is in effect, for the same reason as above.
• If a countdown is cancelled, it cannot be re-activated until a cooldown period has passed. This does its part to prevent spam and also discourage "meddling".
• In order to prevent the founder rank being assigned to someone who is probably likely inexperienced in the guild's practices and so forth, only players who have been in the guild for 6 weeks or more can elect themselves. This could also lessen so-called "guild-hopping".

I can't currently think of any abuses for Proposal 1. That doesn't mean there aren't any which I just haven't identified.
Please do share any other possible abuses you can think of, as well as potential solutions for them.

Problems that need to be resolved:

• With proposal 2 - what if there is another founder in the guild, but that founder is inactive or on vacation and therefore unable to stop the countdown on time?

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Summary:
Proposal 1 is a simple and probably very easy change to make. It will not 100% protect guilds from being disbanded, but it should lessen the chances.

Proposal 2 is much more complicated than the first and likely more difficult to implement into the game. However, it also protects guilds from deletion more than the first proposal does.

Either way, I do personally believe that the way guilds are disbanded needs to be revised. It is currently far too easy to flush away years of dedication, hard work, time and diamonds down the drain.

If I had to pick one of the proposals, I'd choose the first one, simply because the second is a tad more complicated. But some people might prefer that.



Please feel free to discuss these proposals, whether you agree or disagree with them.

• Which, if any, would you prefer to see?
• Do you have anything to add that could improve the proposals?
• Have you identified a possible abuse or problem that wasn't covered and also have a solution for it?

Let's discuss this together as a community and hope that we can prevent excellent guilds from going extinct.

*Drops microphone, kicks away soapbox, hops on the back of his giant raven and flies away into the night*

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[Shad23]

+1 but i think other founders or leaders should be involved in decision of desolution

 

[Agent327]

Proposal:

My first proposal is to make it impossible to disband a guild that has other members in it. In order to disband the guild, the founder needs to remove all the existing members from it first.

It will take me less than 5 minutes to do that.

The same for Proposal 2

I demote the other founders and am in total charge, so I will just let that counter run.

Maybe you should look in to what it takes to dissolve a guild first.

Nice you try it with these proposals, but if I really want to delete a guild they will not stop me at all.

 

[Shad23]

Maybe you should look in to what it takes to disolve a guild first.

that is the true problem here

 

[Agent327]

So learn what it takes before you start comming up with suggestions. It does not help a bit to start discussing ideas that do not help in the first place.

As a founder I can not delete other founders, but I can demote them and after that I can delete them. I can also delete every member I want to. It takes less than 5 minutes to be the only member left and after that I do not even have to delete the guild.

 

[Shad23]

at least he's looking for a solution to problem

 

[Agent327]

Yes, and I praise him for that, but in order to come with a solution you at least need to know how the system works.

 

[Shad23]

lol for sure

 

[Hippycracker]

I would say to Agent327, that it seems to me these prposed measures are simply meant to make it HARDER for the founder to delete the guild, at least this way it would require more effort to actually make deletion possible by 1 person, thereby making it less likely that someone can delete the guild immediately after a split second 'moment of madness' as that person has to 'jump through hoops' to actually do it, leaving them more time to think before acting.

I'll put a vote in for option 1 because "The founder, while in the process of removing members, might have had those few minutes to reconsider, for example, if the decision was made in a moment of anger."

 

[Emberguard]

In regards to number two:

Allow members below Founder to elect themselves even if there is already other Founders. If the other founders do not click the stop counter button then the member below founder becomes the founder.

To stop this from happening too regularly perhaps a period of 6 months before a guild can be dissolved again

 

[Shad23]

all i have to say on this is there must be a change in how guilds get desolved

 

[DeletedUser113033]

As a founder I can not delete other founders, but I can demote them and after that I can delete them. I can also delete every member I want to. It takes less than 5 minutes to be the only member left and after that I do not even have to delete the guild.

lol..hmmmm, yeah, looks like we overlooked this part
well, anyway, think we can all agree now that the founder absolute power is the main issue here, so my suggestion is just a smaller limitation of their rights: he cannot delete all members!
my first thought was there is a number of people depending on guild lvl that can't be kicked out (guild lvl14 - 14players can't be erased, and so on) but there are guilds with higher lvl nmb than members........
so maybe a half of overall member number should become undeletable (or unkickable if u like).....?.....it's a minor change that wouldn't affect anything (he can still kick out pain-in-the-ass-players), but current absolute power should become the thing of the past.......
maybe it isn't 100% bulletproof solution, for people's stupidity and the wicked will always find their way, but it's a start.......

 

[Emberguard]

That gets complicated. You'd be better off saying a max 7 members per 24 hrs can be kicked, any number can leave at their own initiative

 

[Agent327]

I would say to Agent327, that it seems to me these prposed measures are simply meant to make it HARDER for the founder to delete the guild, at least this way it would require more effort to actually make deletion possible by 1 person, thereby making it less likely that someone can delete the guild immediately after a split second 'moment of madness' as that person has to 'jump through hoops' to actually do it, leaving them more time to think before acting.

It doesn't make it HARDER. If I am determined to do it, which I am after a split second 'moment of madness' , it will take me only a few minutes.

I'll put a vote in for option 1 because "The founder, while in the process of removing members, might have had those few minutes to reconsider, for example, if the decision was made in a moment of anger."

Then I would still have removed a number of members and hurt their gameplay.

lol..hmmmm, yeah, looks like we overlooked this part
well, anyway, think we can all agree now that the founder absolute power is the main issue here, so my suggestion is just a smaller limitation of their rights: he cannot delete all members!
my first thought was there is a number of people depending on guild lvl that can't be kicked out (guild lvl14 - 14players can't be erased, and so on) but there are guilds with higher lvl nmb than members........
so maybe a half of overall member number should become undeletable (or unkickable if u like).....?.....it's a minor change that wouldn't affect anything (he can still kick out pain-in-the-ass-players), but current absolute power should become the thing of the past.......
maybe it isn't 100% bulletproof solution, for people's stupidity and the wicked will always find their way, but it's a start.......

It is a start, but it does not solve it. I can take away everyone's rights and take absolute control. May take me some longer, but I can still delete the guild if I want to. Say I kick out half. What could the others do? Run to Support? It's my guild, I am the founder and I can do what I like. There is no rule stating I am not allowed to end a guild I started.

That gets complicated. You'd be better off saying a max 7 members per 24 hrs can be kicked, any number can leave at their own initiative

If I have 10 members inactive I hurt my chances in GE if I can not kick them all.

 

[Emberguard]

Nothing here would be an absolute solution without making it impossible to disband a guild at all. Setting a limit on how many can be evicted at a time and only allowing disbandment when there's no members would be to prevent abuse

If it were impossible to disband guilds then there'd need to be a way to recycle them once the last member has left. Perhaps as long as there are guilds out there that were abandoned, the next player to found a guild has to pick one of those guilds up becoming the new founder, able to re-name if they wished.

 

[Agent327]

Nothing here would be an absolute solution without making it impossible to disband a guild at all. Setting a limit on how many can be evicted at a time and only allowing disbandment when there's no members would be to prevent abuse

I am the founder. How can it be abuse when I disband my guild? Is it abuse when I order fair trade in my guild?

If it were impossible to disband guilds then there'd need to be a way to recycle them once the last member has left. Perhaps as long as there are guilds out there that were abandoned, the next player to found a guild has to pick one of those guilds up becoming the new founder, able to re-name if they wished.

That would mean a starting player can take over a succesful abandoned guild and will have a big advantage.

 

[DeletedUser114875]

I think the first solution is the better of the 2.
Two questions for the FOE Team.
1: Is it possible to reduce the number of players that can be kicked in a day (the same way you can only drop a few sectors in a day).
While this won't stop a determined person it will slow them down.
2: Is it possible to to structure a guild so that once there is 2 or more founders there can only be a minimum of 2 founders. This would stop any malicious intent. If one founder kicks another founder and does not appoint someone else, the next most senior person should get the gig.

This still won't stop the insertion of a secondary game run by the person with malicious intent.

Regards,

Barron Munster. Another 2 cents worth.

 

[Shad23]

i continue saying FoE should add somthing that looks like democracy to fix the problem , democracy is used in most contrys

 

[vikingraider]

It is a start, but it does not solve it. I can take away everyone's rights and take absolute control. May take me some longer, but I can still delete the guild if I want to. Say I kick out half. What could the others do? Run to Support? It's my guild, I am the founder and I can do what I like. There is no rule stating I am not allowed to end a guild I started.

This happened to me. Someone started a high ranked guild, then left, saying they would never return. A good while later they did return, and asked for founder rights which were granted, as it was 'their guild'. The original founder then removed all founder rights from other members and kicked. A low blow, but life goes on.

 

[Agent327]

1: Is it possible to reduce the number of players that can be kicked in a day (the same way you can only drop a few sectors in a day).
While this won't stop a determined person it will slow them down.

Possible, but like you say it will only slow someone down.

2: Is it possible to to structure a guild so that once there is 2 or more founders there can only be a minimum of 2 founders. This would stop any malicious intent. If one founder kicks another founder and does not appoint someone else, the next most senior person should get the gig.

There is no reason for more than one founder and what if you have say 3 founders and 2 leave. You have to appoint a new one, but what if there is no person in your guild you find suitable for that? You are giving someone a lot of power. And what is most swenior? Most points? Longest active?

This happened to me. Someone started a high ranked guild, then left, saying they would never return. A good while later they did return, and asked for founder rights which were granted, as it was 'their guild'. The original founder then removed all founder rights from other members and kicked. A low blow, but life goes on.

It happened to me twice. After that I gathered all guild members and became the founder myself. Had some co-founders, but they left, so now I am on my own.