Warm greetings to you, Godville gods!
There are a lot of good news today. Let’s start with guild-related ones.
Guilds in Godville are self-sustaining amorphous substances and nobody really knows how they all work, which sometimes could be confusing. It’s time to bring a bit more order to this anarchy. From now on, the guild members will be able to elect a leader via newly created page. All prominent candidates can nominate themselves and fight for the mindshare of the fellow guildmates with mind-blowing campaigns in the Guild Council, forum topic, etc. It’s assumed that the leader will do things for the greater good of the guild, but in case he won’t, the guild members can always impeach him before the end of his term.
So, what a leader can do? In the ZPG spirit of Godville – probably not too much, but enough to bring a bit more order and fun to the guilds. A leader can set a daily topic for the Guild Council and setup a quick link to the guild’s forum topic to improve guild collaboration. For the high-ranked guilds the leaders will also be able to setup their own high-level guild rank and pick a known monster as a guild totem which will sure come in handy in the future. But enough words, let’s get to voting!
Meanwhile, the spirit of upcoming holidays is slowly but surely descending upon Godville. A pop-up settlement, also known as Laplandville, has opened their doors right next to the capital and began disrupting its business with bargain sales, overly generous traders, and extra efficient praying chapels. Heroes’ diaries are full of snow, and their sacks are full of gifts, while overcharged Holiday monsters are festively running around. Satan Clauses and Santa Clawses are also back in town and they look happy and quite tamable.
Happy holidays! Ho-ho-ho!
Yes, even though we are a medium-sized guild, and active in both Guild Council and Forum, I’m actually not sure that 35% of our voting members even know we’re having an election. As active as we are, it’s really just a small number of people who speak up at all. Glancing over our member list, we have members who’ve been in the guild for 2+ years who have never spoken in GC or posted on the forums.
Having sent an alt to join various guilds on a goodwill tour last year, I think we’re above average on participation. So I really don’t know how this 35%/5 votes thing will work out.
I second what Azz said about seeing who voted for whom. Not only that
-I haven’t voted yet, but I can already see what the vote totals are. Shouldn’t it be like the ideabox, where you can’t see the results until after you vote? I didn’t click through to see who voted for whom, but if that can be seen prior to voting as well…… that doesn’t seem right either.Earlier I thought the system seemed fine. If a guild had someone they called leader, they could elect them. If they didn’t, they could just choose one, and if they didn’t want one, they could all agree not to nominate themselves and if anyone did, refuse to vote and depose them if they got elected. And as for the reset to cardinal, if you are worried your guildmates will bump you back to cardinal, that says more about your guildmates than the system. However, then I saw the voting system.
You’ve done voting systems before. You got it right in the ideabox. It’s entirely anonymous. Nobody knows who voted for what. Only how many voted. That’s good. Why isn’t that the case here? If people want to tell everyone who got their vote, fine, but voting should by default be anonymous.
Secondly, the rule of:
Okay, I understand you want to make sure a vote can’t be won unless there are a significant number of guild members participating, that’s good. However, this system could mean in small guilds that nobody gets elected. If a guild has 6 eligible voters and 2 candidates, then it’s possible that 2 people may vote for one candidate while 4 vote for the other, meaning that neither is elected, despite all voters participating and there being a clear winner.
On the flipside some guilds have over 100 eligible voters. In most guilds only a small fraction of members use the guild council, let alone vote. In these guilds merely getting 35% of eligible voters to vote let alone all vote for one person would be an achievement!
So what should be done? I say:
Artosian You can retract and change your vote. (Presumably so that if a debate in the council sways you you can change your mind) So the thing of only being able to see the totals once you vote wouldn’t change much. People could vote, see the totals, retract their vote and revote based on knowledge of the totals. In a way, I think it isn’t so bad that you can see the totals. If you realise your first choice has 0 chance of getting in, you can vote for your second choice instead.
Ditto to what Brinjal said. Another possibility could be to lower the voting (not running) age. After all, to some extent, investment in the guild is shown by the need to continuously cancel guild-change requests. And, especially in people’s first guilds, that’s when they’re really getting into the game and the guild. Sure, they may not have the experience to be in charge, but surely after 45 days in a guild, they should have some sense of things enough to have a voice. That would also help the numbers side of things — even if it were “X number of the votes have to come from cardinal and up”.
The vote-revoking reason makes sense, although I still think the first vote should be a “blind” vote, so that you don’t end up with “well, everyone else is doing it” from those who don’t care. If it’s “my guy won’t win anyway” then the election comes down to whoever got the early votes. In my classroom, any time I give the kids a preference/choice, I make it an eyes/close/raise hands blind vote. Even the ideabox makes you vote before you know the impact of your choice.
Or, why not keep all numbers hidden until the end? You can still change your vote if you’d like, it’s just that you won’t see any totals until voting is over.
*tl;dr…. my suggestions 1. Everything in Brinjal’s list below 2. Lower the voting age to maybe 45 days (don’t remember the ranks at the moment) 3. Hide vote totals until the end.
I agree with the proposition to hide vote totals until the end, or at least not show them until after you initially vote.
Artosian At 45 days you’d be a Chief Master (and would have been for 10 days) It might be arguably more suitable to give it at day 60, or lower to day 35, since this would coincide with a rank. (Advisor and Chief Master respectively)
Cool
Our guild has a leader and a long established procedure to elect him or her. I’m sure we’ll adapt, however, if I might offer a few suggestions to any devs who might be listening – most of our guild would consider it unseemly to nominate ourselves. How about giving us the ability to nominate each other as well? Also, please consider an option for the leader to resign and maintain their rank. In Wild Seven when a guild leader resigns he is automatically a leader emeritus and retains that title for life.
We have 3 candidates so far for StA leader, and each will get nary a vote. One candidate was chastised in the GC and ended up leaving the guild. The candidate still appears as a viable candidate, so if nothing else, we have exposed a bug. And the bot that keeps posting in our GC is becoming very annoying! Go bother some other guild, we want no part of this! Power to the Slaves
If I may take the liberty of quoting our Lady Elfen, “The culture and flavor of our fellowship reflects this guiding principle: Armok is our Lord and we are his Slaves. We need no leader- dwarf, human, or elf.”
Leave us be
For bigger guilds getting the 35% is undo-able either. In Blue Feather we have 300+ cardinal or higher. That means more than 105 votes are needed. But most of the high ranked players are afk. Currently some 25-30 votes have been cast (on three different persons). No way we’re going to reach 35%. 35% of the voters would be better (but then I’d say it should be 50%). Also voters should have the option to vote blank (so they are counted as actual voter).
I don’t like that only a Cardinal or higher ranked hero are allowed to vote when they are either a too small or to large majority of the guild. Most active players are lower ranked (at least in my guild) therefore we should have a say in who leads us. We have a about three out of the five votes we need but those three votes are the only active members I’ve seen in the higher ranks. What if they don’t magically pop up by the the end of the week? Do we go through the nomination process again? Does the one canidate who was nominated banned from running again? There are a lot of question they didn’t answer that bothers me.
Vorpal I don’t want to sound mean or disrespectful, because I think you’re a great guy, and don’t want to upset you, but you really seem to be overreacting here.
In that case, no 35% and no guild leader for you, your problem of not wanting a guild leader is solved!
If my guild council and my alt’s are anything to go by then you’ll have had two messages, seven days apart. Unless for some reason the bot is much more active in your guild, it’s not worth complaining about.
If you don’t want a part in this, don’t take part. Don’t nominate yourself, don’t vote, and if anyone gets into power, kick them out. You, the slaves, already have the power!
Now don’t get me wrong, I acknowledge that the system here is far from perfect. It doesn’t let the newer members (who are often the more active ones) have a say. It has a harsh punishment for being deposed, the voting is not anonymous and lets you see totals prior to voting, the 3/35% rule makes getting someone elected extremely hard for guilds on both ends of the size spectrum, and those guilds have it even harder because even if they do get someone elected, they’ll have to do it all again in three months! Without a doubt, the system has plenty to complain about. But aside from the bug you found, none of the things you mentioned are worth complaining over.
I really don’t want to seem like I have anything against you in particular. I don’t, I respect you. And I don’t want to start a flame war either. I’ve just become more and more annoyed by the many silly complaints I’ve seen since this update and wanted to vent my annoyance. I’m sorry if I have upset you or anyone else with this rant.
Brinjal- The purpose of having threads such as this on the Game News is for players to be able to express their opinions and concerns regarding the updates and enhancements. I personally rarely post in these Game News threads, but this is something I feel strongly about. I am personally not against this update, in general. But, guilds like ours that want no heirarchy of any kind should have been taken into consideration before the release of the update. If my postings here have offended you that was not the intent. You may think I’ve overreacted, but I will back down from nothing I’ve posted here.
The only candidate remaining in elections on the StA guild page is the player that is no longer in the guild.Vorpal I know the purpose of these threads is to allow players to express opinions and concerns. I’ve been doing just that.
I assure you that your postings have not offended me. So no worries about that.
As brinjal has pointed out, you can just choose not to participate in the leadership. The game literally hasn’t changed for you. One could say that your shunning of hierarchy only becomes even more pronounced when you have a hierarchical system you are actively avoiding.
On the whole I think a great many people are viewing this much too seriously. This is not supposed to be “Oh I’m Lord and master of this guild listen to me and hear me roar”. This isn’t supposed to replace the guild founder or actual leader that any guild has. Lady shadows will always be the head of hidden shadows in heart if not in actuality. This is supposed to be a silly feature where people take turns being leader, creating silly guild Council topics and making mascots and whatnot. That’s why it’s a temporary position. And everyone is so worried about losing their guild rank. I understand it takes a long time to get to heirarch and above and I would be upset if I were a prophet and lost that, but the deposing of the leader isn’t suppose to happen very often if even at all. Again some clarity on the devs part regarding how much it takes to depose a leader would be good, but the fact remains that at the end of the day it’s just a game. While constructive criticism is good and even complaining can be useful. It feels like people are upset without actually considering everything.
Side note:
I agree voting should at least be anonymous if not hidden entirely. You should be allowed to change your vote, but having it show who voted for who doesn’t really serve a purpose. I foresee more positives than negatives from showing the percentage, but I’m mostly indifferent to those.
All candidates gone from StA GC! That’s just the way we like it….
Hurrah for the Slaves, Vorpal!
We’re voting in the GV-approved election, mainly just to see how the new features work, but it’s not looking like we’ll be getting 35% total votes, much less 35% for a single candidate. We have a suggestion to wait one more day, then ask everyone to shift their votes to the lead candidate—even then, unless we get several more voters, we will not be able to make the 35% mark.
However, we’ve decided to make the best of it and use this period of political interest to hold a fresh election of our Inner Council. And that’s going just fine. Differences with the “official” election:
If we do elect a leader, it’ll be someone who is on the Inner Council anyway, and that person will basically be working for the Inner Council, and thus the guild as a whole.
My guild has one vote cast so far in total for the two candidates. What happens then? Just no leader? Also, why can’t I vote for myself? It doesn’t let me vote for my hero!