Guild Successor: Allow for automatic appointment after 3 months.

[rahubby]

If the "leader" of a guild doesn't log in for 3 or more months, you should make it so a "successor" is chosen from among the guild's officers (by default the one that logged in the most recently when the 3 month "abandonment" point is reached) or members (if no officers exist) so a guild in which the guild leader didn't select a successor doesn't become an unrecoverable waste of renown grinding.

[ssgcmwatson]

/signed, kinda

I'm not sure of the details at the moment, but some system for dealing with missing guild leader should definitely be looked at.

Our guild leader needed to leave the game due to Real Life issues, and appointed a successor and we worked things out. Had something truly bad happened in RL (i.e. death/jail/etc.), we could have been up a creek without a paddle.

[WarReaver2010]

/signed, we may well have this problem soon

[Kromize]

Also, if nobody inside the guild logs in for more than 3 months, disband the guild. They don't use it, they lose it.

[Dysmetria]

There are lots of reasons people might leave the game for more than 3 months. Military deployments comes to mind.

It would be rather unfair to allow players to steal someone else's guild because the original guild leader was off protecting their country.

[Joseph]

/signed - as follows

Add Additional Leadership Ranks...

Just like the military uses a rank system, if the person in charge is no longer able to lead, then the next person appointed to do so leads, all the way down the chain.

I can not imagine DDO needs more than five such persons, but it could default to the last most active player, in the event all five persons failed to log on and also failed to have appointed another person to lead.

Also - the 'timer' should be able to be turned on or off, and it should be MUCH shorter (one month).

In this case, a guild with Leader and Successor would have the three month time limit.

A guild with Leader, Successor, First Officer, Second Officer - down to Fifth Officer - would have the timer automatically activated to go to Successor, then First Officer, etc. (EDIT: on the one month timer)

A guild with no Successor would have no time limit. Pretty straightforward and easy.

[azrael4h]

1 - I hope this is account and not character bound. My guild leader hasn't logged on in months either... but he's on the Wizard of his which is an officer in his guild.

2 - Why? There's very little management or 'leading' necessary as it is. At most, you need someone to organize a raid. Unless there's something about the guild airships and so forth that I'm not aware of (since I doubt we'll bother with that ****).

[rahubby]

There are lots of reasons people might leave the game for more than 3 months. Military deployments comes to mind.

It would be rather unfair to allow players to steal someone else's guild because the original guild leader was off protecting their country.

And what stopped him from appointing a successor before being deployed? I literally logged on one day to see a GMOTD that said "Sorry, but I'm leaving and I'm probably not coming back" - literally 4 days after the guild upgrades had happened, and apparently the leader had never bothered to look up how to appoint a successor at all, and one by one the other guildies left until it's just MY characters and the "leader" character...in the intervening time I've ground the rep of the guild up to 16 practically solo, but without a guild leader, and only one officer character (and no way to promote or edit the settings so nonofficers can even invite) there's pretty much no way it's ever going to grow again.

[Durion]

1 - I hope this is account and not character bound. My guild leader hasn't logged on in months either... but he's on the Wizard of his which is an officer in his guild.

2 - Why? There's very little management or 'leading' necessary as it is. At most, you need someone to organize a raid. Unless there's something about the guild airships and so forth that I'm not aware of (since I doubt we'll bother with that ****).

1. And he can't bother to (A) log onto his "leader" character to reset the timer or (B) appoint the character he is using (his wizard) into the lead position.

2. Yes, the guild leader/officers deal with purchases. You're going to refuse the rest of your guild very good buffs because YOU don't like the system? I'm not saying this is wrong, to each his own, but I'd expect people will be jumping ship when they learn what they could have available.

[Durion]

There are lots of reasons people might leave the game for more than 3 months. Military deployments comes to mind.

It would be rather unfair to allow players to steal someone else's guild because the original guild leader was off protecting their country.

Yes, things do come up in RL that come before video games (for most of us anyhow).

The system they are suggesting PREVENTS anyone from stealing someone's guild. I'd hope that the guild leader has reasons more than "just because" for appointing a successor. Hopefully this is someone he can trust to run his or her guild in their abscense.

[Kinerd]

If the change is announced, guild leaders would know that their guild may be led by one of their officers. It would follow that guild leaders would not make officers out of people who they did not think capable of even temporarily leading.

Nothing bad can come from this change, and it will be very helpful in certain situations, rare though they may be.

[Impaqt]

If you are an Officer, or even a Member of a guild that does not have a Successor named you gotta ask your self WHY?

It takes literally 2 seconds to name a successor. THe button is right there in the guild tab.

If the guild "Leader" is so lazy, disorganized, or doesn't actually trust anyone to be a successor, what the heck are you doing in that guild in the first place?

[Mr_Ed7]

I agree mostly.

What I would really like to see is the SUCCESOR appear below the LEADER when organized by rank.

Whatever happend to the other ranks we were suppose to get?

[Bradik_Losdar]

If the "leader" of a guild doesn't log in for 3 or more months, you should make it so a "successor" is chosen from among the guild's officers (by default the one that logged in the most recently when the 3 month "abandonment" point is reached) or members (if no officers exist) so a guild in which the guild leader didn't select a successor doesn't become an unrecoverable waste of renown grinding.

Very good idea, especially with all the time and effort going into building guilds (and associated airship amenities) with the new renown system.

However, there probably should be a warning that pops up on account log-in during the last (3rd) month letting the absentee guild leader know that he is about to lose his status unless he logs in on that character.

[Veriss]

I agree mostly.

Whatever happend to the other ranks we were suppose to get?

Originally Posted by Phax
Nope, currently only the Officer rank has permissions. We will be changing it so other ranks can have officer permissions in the future.

Phax posted that over a year ago, well before the recent guild updates.

I was really surprised that there is only one rank other then officer that can recruit and has expel powers. Would be nice to be able to appoint recruiters to more people and restrict expelling and changing airship amenities to a smaller group of folks.

[ssgcmwatson]

If you are an Officer, or even a Member of a guild that does not have a Successor named you gotta ask your self WHY?

But even with a Successor in place, if something unexpected happens to the Leader in RL and s/he can't play, then the guild has no one who can use those functions which only appear in the Leader's guild board.

[articwarrior]

/signed lemme be teh leader! I promise lots of lewt and good times! we also provide satellite and cookies and pie and cake and other good things that you know you'll love!!!!

[Lorien_the_First_One]

But even with a Successor in place, if something unexpected happens to the Leader in RL and s/he can't play, then the guild has no one who can use those functions which only appear in the Leader's guild board.

If there is a Successor they can userp leadership if the leader is absent for a while. They can then even appoint a new successor.

You only run into a problem if you didn't both to appoint one, or both people left at the same time.

[Skirmish]

If the "leader" of a guild doesn't log in for 3 or more months, you should make it so a "successor" is chosen from among the guild's officers (by default the one that logged in the most recently when the 3 month "abandonment" point is reached) or members (if no officers exist) so a guild in which the guild leader didn't select a successor doesn't become an unrecoverable waste of renown grinding.

/signed.

This method worked really well in City of Heroes/Villains/Neutrals/Pedestrians. If you didn't log in for 30 days, leadership either went to the longest standing officer in the group or the last highest rank to log in. Can't remember which. The only bad thing was, the clock started at zero for the new leader so if both your leader and successor left then you had to wait 60 days to get to the third, etc. But, if your leader was in a car accident, lost their house in a fire, Died in their sleep from Central Sleep Apnea, The guild could continue to function on. (whether they knew why their leader was AWOL or not)

The usual 'reason for my thoughts' spam. feel free to skip to bottom:
Most of the guilds on DDO that were "large" either before or when I joined them fell to the wayside during the long dead devlopment time before the DDO:EU launch. Almost all were setup where the officers were either friends with the leader at formation or had become close while running the guild. So when the leader took off for another game, so did his successor and most of the officers. With only an officer or two that weren't capable of booting the dead weight of the leader/other officers and unable to promote anyone to officer status, things just... died.

Many of the guilds still had a couple active players, at least, holding off closing the doors and turning out the lights until the renown system was announced/activated. I know that the last few remnants in one of my old guilds said their goodbyes within a day or two of the renown system being announced so they could try to build a new core group before they had to start earning renown. That way they were established and building up numbers before the mass surge of insta-guilds that came with the systems activation instead of earning renown for the guild full of dead weight that may or may not have active leadership again some day.

Personally, I solved the problem by simply being the only member of my own guild. I won't ever reach the point where I can place the Shroud crafting stations on my ship. But, I am still well on track to have my own ship before Festivus. And if the leader quits/gets hit by a truck, so does everyone else in the guild. Thus, no one gets screwed. Though, personally, if I ever decided to quit, I'd give it away/sell it off to some worthy group of players so that all that renown work didn't go to waste.


If this system were in place, I might actually consider joining someone's guild and earning renown for the 'greater good' rather than for just myself.

[h4x0r1f1c]

Make it 1 month.