Guild rank

[Revrynn]

Should guild rank have a tie to guild rep?

Perhaps just Friendly, but... something.

[canonade]

I remember a lot of discussion when they introduced the guild rep. Guild Masters complaining that they were neutral and had to earn their rep (if I remember correctly).

I believe it has to do with in-game rewards.

[Darren Tereos]

Guild reputation also does not tie to the things necessarily valued by a particular guild. Strength of character, ability to connect with other members of Steadfast in a positive light, contributions to successful guild events from stocking raid materials to ensuring everyone in a random BG group is provided with advice for their class and/or the battleground at hand, etc. don't figure into guild reputation.

Player A spends all day crafting for guildies. Player B spends all day running quests solo. The latter provides guild rep, the former provides for the betterment of the guild. I'd rather the person who sacrifices his time for others be promoted than the person who just did their own thing.

The other way around (Guild rank lends itself to a certain guild reputation) would be a better situation, though nothing would stop people from creating guilds and promoting people to top rank to give them access to reputation rewards. I'm not sure I entirely like guild reputation being unrelated to guild rank, but I have trouble thinking of a way that would connect the two and not leave things open to exploitation or promotion without contributing to the ideals of the guild.

[Jadedinsc]

Not to mention guild rep is super easy to earn once you get the Illustrious Guild Tabard and poses little to no challenge at all.

I rather prefer we recognized people for what they do for the guild, anyway. It helps let others know what we stand for, and it's one more way of weeding out the people with undesirable traits.

[Revrynn]

I fully agree that actual contribution to the health of the guild is far more important as I hope I illustrate by example.

I did say "Maybe just friendly..."

[- Zentao -]

Being a prior GM of an RP guild, where the initial ranks were setup RP'ly and solely reflected 'status' of the RP'er... I quickly realized that was a huge mistake and rapidly revised them.

Rank is an important facet of guilds because it provides both a reason to strive and a feeling of satisfaction once obtained. But higher ranks also have to provide some type of benefit or they'er just a Red Herring.

And, where some people don't care about ranks, it is very important to others... and that needs to be both acknowledged and respected.

My learning curve took me from utilizing every rank as a status symbol to only using the minimum I could logically while also making them rudimentary in description: Initiate, Member, Officer, Guild Master. I ended up having to add Assistant GM for Ankhera's toons and my alts.

After time, this wasn't enough, since we ran it different than Steadfast: Officers were appointed permanently, rather than elected to terms. Which meant that as soon as most members passed the Initiate level, there was neither further hope of promotion nor distinction between 'active' and 'contributory' members that 'gave' and those that just showed up and 'took'.

So I added 'Veteran'. Well, with a new rank came the inquiries "How do I get promoted?" and "I want to be a Veteran, what do I have to do?" Ugh. But, I acknowledge that as human nature, but none-the-less it required me to write 'rules' or rank descriptions; thus putting it in black and white. The problem with memorializing requirements is that, no matter how flexible you try to make it, you limit yourself.

Long story short, the guild grew and so did the amount of ranks. But, as some of you may be able to relate to, in an all RP guild whose Guild Chat was IC, the 'drama' grew exponentially proportional to the number of members. It got to a point where we had at our highest, about 30 to 35 members all on at the same time with ages ranging from 12 to 58. With that many members we had to branch out into PvP and PvE End-Game content to keep the more casual-RP'ing members appeased.

Our rank structure evolved into a Steadfast-esk format, excluding different ranks for alts. After a time we added "Officer Asst." but the balance of the ranks were reserved to distinguish between membership levels. These didn't change between areas of focus either. A highly contributing and active RP'er held the same rank as a highly contributing and active raider.

Unfortunately though, there was always drama within the membership rank and file related to rank level in the guild. So, I decided to do some membership thinning, but rather than just kicking people, I got rid of all the member-level ranks except for Initiate and Member and made everyone the same rank to see how they'd react. Those that took it as a slight left, those that didn't really care and just enjoyed the guild for what it was, stayed; we lost about 50% of our membership which was a good thing at that point.

I then made a new rank "Founder" and promoted all those that stayed to that rank, it was then closed to additional members. Any new member after that change never got higher than the rank of Member, haha. My feeling at that point was, if your goal in a guild is to obtain a certain rank, then our guild wasn't for you. Well, because 'rank' is important and highly valued by some people... this approach resulted in a stagnant non-growing guild; so Veteran was added back... but...

Add a couple military deployments that had me gone and Ankhera not wanting to play, our guild eventually transitioned into a small 10-member guild. When I got back from the second deployment, I didn't want to be a GM anymore. We split up the bank contents amongst the remaining members, thanked them for their time, invited them to stay if they wanted, but the guild was essentially inactive and we shut down the vault after we distributed its contents, for use by only Ankhera and I. It took about 2 months for the final member to leave.

I know this is REALLY off-topic, but I just wanted to comment on my past experiences managing ranks; it's tricky business and I think Steadfast does it right and their structure is very similar to what mine evolved to over time and trial and error, with the only difference being we didn't have separate ranking for alts.:

Steadfast - Brotherhood of the Wolf
Guild Master - Guild Master
Guardian - Assistant GM
Officer - Officer
Officer Alt. - Officer Asst.
Champion - Founder
Veteran - Veteran
Adept - Member
Associate - (no comparable rank)
Pledge - Initiate
(no comparable rank) - Probationary (an RP punishment rank that had its usefulness, )

Ranks are important as a reward for selfless activity and contributions at the group level. But people play in cycles... a member that was deserving of promotion to Champion for the past 3 years, may just be coasting this year and really not doing much contributing. Compare that to a new member who is highly motivated, and if you only take a snap-shot of a single moment in time, it would look backwards. So there is historical activity as well that plays into it.

But, back on topic... the in-game mechanic of Guild Reputation should not influence guild ranking, in my opinion... Guild ranks are complex enough to manage without adding another dynamic. Although at initial glance there does seem to be some value... once you start to get into the logistics... it just adds a level of unneeded complexity to an already complex and critical subject.

[Revrynn]

On further reflection I withdraw the suggestion. The ingame benefits of higher guild rep should be enough of an incentive to go for it.

[Revrynn]

I am now, by game mechanics, exalted. I figure that IC this is because of my work on the flask project.

If I had no IC reason this achievement would be hollow.

Again, I agree with Darren. Game assigned guild reputation should not have a part in actual reputation.