You and you're guildmates are having a great time. Rumbling, Chatting, exploring and having fun. After awhile you notice your Captain has seemingly disappeared. Now what? Starting over will be a mess. Everyone else is active. Maybe the Captain will come back. You wait. Some guild mates start to drop and then it just falls apart. This has happened to me more than once. We need a solution. Proposed solution: A configurable Guild setting initially set by the Captain. "Captain auto-demoted after X days". Max of 30 days (or whatever). Once the Captain's inactivity exceeds setting the title goes to the latest active Quarter Master (or some reasonable calculation). Demoted Captain not auto-kicked but drops a rank. After that, the rest of the game functionality can deal with it. Open to better ideas...
I love it. This is a great compromise which gives us the ability to salvage an old guild whose captain has gone AWOL, without setting up a framework that could encourage abuse (letting members vote to oust a sitting captain). Just a few notes: 1. The developer tendency would be to give captains the option to disable this feature, but I think that would be a bad idea. If this feature is added, it should be forced. Nobody ever *expects* to quit playing, it just happens. And if they forget to enable the feature, then it's essentially useless. 2. Instead, I would have it force you to choose a range of 30-90 days. Default being 30. I say extending the range to 90 because I've seen quite a few players who have had to be offline for well over a month. 3. If added, there would need to be a secondary check for whoever gets auto-promoted. Generally, I think it goes to the longest-serving First Mate, but what if that FM is also MIA? The guild would then have to wait 30-90 days for that new Captain to get demoted. So, I think it should either give the Captaincy to the FM who was on most recently, or do another demotion if the promoted FM doesn't sign on within 7 days or promotion, or so. Love the part about demoting them to First Mate. Probably can't do Quartermaster, since that reportedly only allows limited number in a given guild.
I agree Up to 90 days? If that's what it takes to get it approved, fine. Think about that though. 3 months of inactivity for a Captain? They can login 4 times a year? And I am not talking about kicking them. I know. Not a perfect solution. I am just trying to start a conversation.
I know I am in the minority...but if the captain created a guild with a specific idea or reason in mind and is then forced to abdicate it would be problematic in my mind. I still think the best solution is for the active members to form their own guild. For example if a guild is created to avoid rumbles and the new leaders decide that it would be 24 hour rumbles guild. Then this change over would alter the intent of the guild. (Thread hijacking comes to mind as a parallel example.)
You're right. In retrospect, 90 days is probably too high of a cutoff. I was just thinking that in my guild, we've had people who've had to take 30+ day leaves of absence, and while it's not happened to me personally, when it comes to work or life stuff, it's conceivable. If this feature existed, I'd probably set it at 30 days, just to avoid inconveniencing the members longer than necessary. Actually, I think your idea is by far the best solution I've ever seen for this problem
Whenever this has happened to me the Captain wasn't the original. For example, the last guild we had a process when the Captain wanted to pass the hat whomever got the most points in a particular rumble was the winner. Eventually we had a Captain who just disappeared and broke the chain. The guild stayed intact for a month waiting for him to come back. He never did. Not good for the other 49 of us.
With respect...although it seemed like a good idea at the time. The hat or chair, should only go to those members whom both you and the guild members can trust. Also by giving then the opportunity to be the Captain, it gets them ready for their own future command..
