Guild participation and Absences

[Demonitus]

I’ve noticed that when you’re in a guild, there really is no good way to deal with a player who is absent and not able to make their contributions for the week (due to legitimate reasons), other than kicking them out of the guild and replacing them.

By this, I mean when a guild member is not able to make their contributions because they’re on vacation, having surgery and recuperating, having to work a lot of extra hours, etc. I don’t mean for players who just simply haven’t bothered to make their contributions.

It’s an unfortunate situation because if a player is away for a legitimate reason (like vacation, surgery, etc.), it can actually end up penalizing the ENTIRE guild, as goals like chest seals and tasks cannot be reached. I know that this is not necessarily a problem for some guilds, but for others that are JUST able to make certain goals when everyone is participating, it can be quite detrimental.

What I’m wondering is, could a way be created to “pause” membership in a guild? Like, say if there is going to be a member away, the GM can “pause” that member, without having to kick them from the guild, in such a way that other guild members don’t feel penalized by it.

Something like : If 1 guild member is paused, the guild seal requirements (and maybe subsequent statue task requirements) for each level go down by 1/30th of the cost. The “paused” guild member does not gain any further resources (as they aren’t contributing), but they don’t end up losing membership in their guild (as the GM has other options than simply kicking them to replace them with another player who is able to contribute), and other members of the guild don’t feel penalized by a member being away.

And while I know that many will say that this should be accounted for ahead of time and expectations adjusted (we might not reach certain goals for the week), sometimes things just come up : like if a person has an accident or sudden ailment that requires them to be off, family emergency, unexpected extra work hours, etc. and can’t necessarily be planned in advance. Perhaps it could come at a small cost to the person who asks for a “pause”, like for example, all the seals they have donated so far that week can be counted towards final contribution levels, but they will not receive the benefits of them (since they’re paused), so the situation can’t be abused.

I’m just throwing out an idea here as it can be quite detrimental to a guild if a couple of players are away for a week and it can feel like it penalizes everyone in the guild for their absence.

Would love to hear thoughts/suggestions/changes on the matter.

[Annaerith]

its hard to make cheating-proof,

for example:

• what happens to guilds who dont have all 30 members? will they get the task costs lowered for all missing members? should they rather keep an inactive member and just permamently “freeze” them to get the costs lowered? For how long can they keep a “frozen” member to keep the benefits?

• lets assume its tuesday and the guild wants to “freeze” one member, a yellow task is already lv7 and donated xx gold towards next level - lets assume if the task cost is lowered by 1/30 immediatelly that will mean:
  a) the task will become auto-completed immediatelly as it was enough of the gold donated in to meet 29/30 of its gold cost - the guild gets task rewards, new task unlocks and then boom! guild decides to “unpause” the member immediatelly! - is that fair?
  b) task gets auto-completed but there was extra gold in it above the 29/30 of task cost, what happens to that gold? does it go towards next task? if not, does it go distributed towards all guild members? including “frozen” members or not?

• how many times per week or day a certain member can be frozen/unfrozen?

• how many members of a guild can be in frozen state in total?

• who decides to freeze a member? can member freeze themself or can guild leader feeze a member without their approval?

• shouldnt feeze have a cooldown/delay before the task costs are lowered, for example 1 day delay? or should the lowered cost only apply for next tasks after the member got frozen? maybe it should apply for entire weeks only?

• shouldnt freezing/unfreezing have a cooldown/delay? should a member be frozen/unfrozen immediatelly after the member is applied to freeze or after 1 day delay or how? maybe 1 week?

• how will unfreeze work? do you get automatically applied for unfreeze instantly the moment you logged in or do you have to follow some procedure or even get guild leader approval?

• what happens when a member gets unfrozen? do the task costs immediately jump up by the 1/30 or will the next tasks after them update?

• what happens if a frozen member leaves? and re-joins guild?

in overall its gonna be very complaicated and hard to make everyone happy. if someone gets frozen without their approval they loose the resources, imagine how many unhappy ppl will it be? One day you are in a guild, next day something happens and you cant show up for few days without a word, you come back for sunday evening finally thinking you will make it up only to find out you were frozen and you missed 90% of guild rewards…

[Annaerith]

if i was gonna propose such feature i think the most optimal way to make it happen would be:

• freeze/unfreeze changes get executed only during weekly sunday-monday reset depending on last week applications

• members can apply/ cancel-application for freeze/unfreeze any time they want to

• guild leader can apply for members freeze/unfreeze only if the member was inactive for last 5 days (should leader be able to cancel application? i dont know, im guessing not)

• if a member is applied to freeze/unfreeze for next week they get a persisting warning icon on the main screen to remind them about that

• a frozen member is stuck with the guild and cannot leave or be kicked out for as long as he/she is frozen

• guilds with less then 30 members do not get advantages of task lowered for the missing members - however they can “hire” a number of “ghost npc members” for enitre week which would count as a frozen member lowering the task costs, the ghost would lock a guild member slot making it impossible to invite a real member in their place

• guild is allowed to have only total of 5 frozen / ghost members during each week, it is impossible to apply for freeze if 5 applications/ghosts have already been applied for next week

• inactive (offline) member who has been frozen so far will not get automatically applied for next week to keep being frozen without logging in - however guild leader can apply for them

• ghosts get automatically applied for next week unless canceled

but im still suspecting its rather better left out without such absence feature…
guild wars are coming soon and this absence system is not gonna work with it