Suggestions for New Guild Management Features and Enhancements
Those of us who manage or have managed guilds in Pocket Legends know one thing for sure: That the guild management tools and features are limited to the most basic levels of adding, removing, promoting and demoting members. And that's about it. At least we have guilds, but how much better would guild management life be with these features?
- Have you ever wanted to search for a specific member or scroll through the member list with ease?
- Know when a member joined, who invited them, when they were last logged in and how many times they have joined your guild?
- Enjoy the convenience of a Guild Ban List with the ability to ban a user from the guild for a given amount of time, see who banned them, why, and be able to unban them at will?
- Know who invited a user when it is announced that they joined the guild?
- Know why a user was removed from the guild when their removal is announced?
- To have the availability of a guild log which is both viewable and searchable that includes information such as the date and time of members joining (and who invited them), leaving, who was promoted or demoted and to what rank, who was removed from the guild (by whom and why) and who was banned from the guild, for how long and why?
This was the basic layout of suggested improvements. If you want the finer details, they can be found below.
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Here are some ideas for new guild management features and enhancements that would be fantastic to see added in a forthcoming update to PL:
1. Guild Roster - Member Search by Name + Adding Scrollbar: Without a scrollbar or the ability to search by name, the scrolling through the guild roster is tedious to locate members. The larger the guild, the more tedious it becomes. The CS already has the ability to search for items by full or partial name. Why not add similar functionality to the guild roster to enable both guild members and management to search for guildies by full or partial name? And a scrollbar for the guild roster would be great as well for general browsing. Both would be huge time savers and greatly appreciated.
2. New Guild Roster Fields - Invited By, Date Joined, Last Logged On, Number Of Times Joined: Who invited them? When did they join? When were they last on? And very importantly, how many times have they joined your guild? Information is empowering and this basic information, viewable by only the GM and officers, would be highly useful for guild management.
3. Guild Ban List: Allow the GM and officers to add player names to a guild ban list. Presently members can get removed from the guild, only to be re-invited by any guildie with the ability to recruit - a source of frustration for many to say the least. Each player already has the ability to add any other character to their personal Ignore list, by the same token, having a similar yet centralized feature for guild management to manage the banning and unbanning of characters from the guild would be a fantastic and long overdue tool.
- The banned name should be a variable and not static (just like the Ignore list), so if a player changes their name, it stays current in the guild ban list and their ban survives a character rename.
- Present members, officers and the GM should not be able to be entered into the guild ban list, only those who are not presently in the guild should be able to be added (an easy way to prevent unwanted situations, such as the GM or officers from being banned, or the accidental banning of existing members).
- Banned users could be removed from the ban list by the GM or any officer at any time.
- Add Ban Types, Banned Until: Ban Types - Eternity, 1 Year, 6 Months, 3 Months, 1 Month, 1 Week and 1 Day as well. Banned Until - And it's useful to know when their ban ends (Never? Or the date and time). Example: Ban Type: <type>, Banned Until: <date and time>.
- Other very useful fields should include Banned By, Banned Date and Reason Banned (such as, Inappropriate Language/Behavior, Trolling, Spamming, Scamming, Not Meeting Guild Requirements). Knowing who banned a user, when they were banned, for how long, and the reason why is all very good information for the management team.
- An announcement should be sent to the guild when a player is banned, such as:
<Name> has been banned from the guild for <Ban Type> for <Reason Banned> by <Name>.
(Johndoe has been banned from the guild for Eternity for Trolling by Janedoe.)
- Obviously, once banned, a user could not be invited by anyone to the guild, until such time as they were removed from the ban list.
4. Guild Announcement Update - Name has joined the guild, but who invited?: Presently when someone joins the guild, the announcement is:
<Name> has joined the guild!
How about we add who invited them to the announcement? Example:
<Name> has joined the guild and was invited by <Name>!
5. Removed from the Guild Reason: When guild management removes a player from the guild, the first question everyone asks is: Why? Add a step to the removal process that prompts for a reason - make it a short text field, or better yet, for consistency and to save space on the database, a drop-down list with the most common reasons (such as: Inappropriate Language/Behavior, Trolling, Spamming, Scamming, Not Meeting Guild Requirements). Example:
<Name> has been removed from the guild by <Name> for <Reason>.
6. Guild Logs: Not the first to request this. Useful information logged and viewable by the GM and officers could include the following, all with date and time stamps, similar to any common log file.
- Joins (<Date> <Time>: <Name> joined the guild, invited by <Name>)
- Departures (<Date> <Time>: <Name> left the guild)
- Promotions (<Date> <Time>: <Name> was promoted to <Rank>)
- Demotions (<Date> <Time>: <Name> was demoted to <Rank>)
- Removals (<Date> <Time>: <Name> was removed from the guild by <Name> for <Reason>)
- Bans (<Name> was banned from the guild for <Ban Reason> for <Ban Type> by <Name>)
The guild log should:
a) be displayable within a selectable date and time range (the last hour, 6 hours, 12 hours, day, week, month?)
b) and be searchable for a single text search field (such as, a player name, or other words commonly found within the log)
Most of these feature enhancements to the guild management system should be fairly easy to add to PL -- and to other STS games as desired. And once in place, they could easily be expanded upon to include additional features and flexibility that may come into popular demand. This is a good start, for certain. And one could imagine that everyone who is actively managing a guild, both GMs and officers, or will at some point, would be eternally grateful for these valuable new guild management features. Thank you for your time and consideration of these suggestions for Pocket Legends.
Kind regards
