Guild Bank Wiped. Still No Withdrawal Caps.

Furyous · March 23

Preface before anyone else repeats the same assumption:

Yes, we already have restrictions on who can access the guild bank.
We do not give bank access to new members.
We do not give bank access until someone actually shows up, joins guild activities, and joins our Discord.

This has been pointed out to me over and over, and at this point it has been repeated ad nauseam.
Please do not be the 438th person to post the exact same blaming recommendation that we are already doing.

The issue is not a lack of restrictions.
The issue is that once someone finally earns access, there is no system level way to limit how many items they can take. That is the entire problem.

Why is this still not fixed?

This has happened to us multiple times now and it is getting old. Someone joins the guild, empties the guild bank, and immediately quits. That is it. Gone.

How is there still no way to limit how many items a new member can take from the guild bank?
Even a simple per day withdrawal cap would stop this entirely. Right now, if a rank has bank access, the system allows them to take everything in seconds with no restrictions at all.

And on top of that, can I even post the player's name to warn other guilds
or is this another case of protecting the guilty at the expense of the victims? If naming them violates policy, fine, but then give us actual tools to prevent this behavior in the first place.

Guilds have no real protection. This needs to be a built in safeguard.

Edit – PS for those trying to blame the victim here:
We do not allow new members any access to the guild bank.
This player was promoted to full member and still waited 13 days before deciding to click on the crazy, take everything he could carry, and run. I have no clue what triggered him. The point is simple. We need withdrawal control.

There is no way to predict who will do this next. Without system‑level limits, my only options are:
• Act as a middle man for 500 people every time they want something from the guild bank (which would require a whole team of volunteers that of course no one will step up for),
or
• Keep getting ripped off because a very basic feature like limiting the number of items withdrawn per day is not implemented.

This is not a guild problem. This is a system problem. We need actual withdrawal limits.

freespirit · March 23

Just don't give new members bank access.

Have a rank that all new members have to remain at for a certain amount of time.

If they require an item from the bank let an officer get it for them.

One of my Guilds has worked like this for years now, bank robbers seem not to be willing to wait and often join, then leave immediately.

FlameDark · March 23

You could make an "probation" roll that does not have guild withdrawal bank privileges. Then just keep it on them for a period of time until they are proven to not just be there to take everything from the bank. After the time period is over they get bumped up to a regular guild rank.

SaffronCitrusflower · March 23

The guildmaster can set permissions based on guild rank. Low ranking members can be barred from withdrawing from the guild bank. Check your guild member permissions and you'll see the settings there. Normally guilds don't let new recruits have bank withdraw permissions.

I know it's not what you want to hear, but this is a case of the guildmaster not taking advantage of settings already in game to keep this from happening, so it's not a ZOS issue. The framework for limiting access is already in place. The guildmaster just needs to set permissions so only they and other high ranking guild members can withdraw from bank.

ruskiii · March 23

Furyous wrote: »

How is there still no way to limit how many items a new member can take from the guild bank?
Even a simple per day withdrawal cap would stop this entirely. Right now, if a rank has bank access, the system allows them to take everything in seconds with no restrictions at all.

You answer your own question here. Guilds already have protection against this, the rank system. If its happened multiple times, why are you still giving new members bank access?

Soarora · March 23

Pretty sure this was mentioned as part of guild upgrades in the stream that introduced this year.

But yes, first thing is to not let low ranks withdraw. I don’t think people with good intentions would withdraw anyway, as they don’t know what the expectations are.

Orbital78 · March 23

katanagirl1 wrote: »

The guilds I am in don’t allow access to the guild bank until you reach a certain rank. I thought that was pretty common.

Seems like common sense to me.

wolfie1.0. · March 23

If everyone has guild bank access then you should expect this rype of behavior.

CameraBeardThePirate · March 23

"A stranger emptied my bank account after giving them my password!"

I don't disagree that there could be more measures to prevent this, but the simplest one you should probably be employing is not allowing unrestricted access to every member of your guild. The ranking system exists to prevent this exact scenario.

(Edit: I don't say this to belittle your situation at all, rather to highlight that yes, there are bad actors and you need to dole out permissions accordingly)

valenwood_vegan · March 23

Guild updates are supposed to be coming in a patch this year. Unfortunately, we have to wait until they've finished them, so in the meantime it seems reasonable to protect the guild bank using what's currently available.

I've actually never been in a guild in eso that grants all members immediate, full access to the guild bank. Many larger trading guilds even restrict it to officers and the GM only.

Hopefully the guild updates will provide more functionality when that patch arrives. Perhaps they will talk more about it in the upcoming stream.

DenverRalphy · March 23

The guild bank system in ESO has been nortoriously horrible from the begining. Bank slot partitioning would be a huge help. But even that would still be limited to the capabilities of a rank based guild structure instead of an assignable role based structure.

A little over a year ago there was a dev survey available to gather information about improving guild mechanics in ESO. Some months later there was a guild summit to discuss it (not much seemed to come of that though). And we are supposed to see some improvements to the guild system this year. But details have been pretty light on if/when we can expect to see anything related to it.

Tandor · March 23

How long was he in the guild before you promoted him?

Furyous · March 23

Soarora wrote: »

Pretty sure this was mentioned as part of guild upgrades in the stream that introduced this year.

But yes, first thing is to not let low ranks withdraw. I don’t think people with good intentions would withdraw anyway, as they don’t know what the expectations are.

For everyone saying "just restrict access for new members":

Why is it that so many of you immediately assume the worst possible case?
Of course we restrict access for new members.
That is the very first thing any serious guild does.

And do we really need eleven people repeating the exact same thing? One reply would have been more than enough to make the point, but instead I get a wall of people parroting the same line over and over.

Why do you think a 500 person guild only has this happen a couple of times a year?
Because we already have restrictions in place.

The point is simple. You never know who is going to snap, get offended over something trivial, and leave in a huff while taking everything they can carry on the way out. There is no way to predict it, and without system‑level withdrawal limits, there is no way to prevent it.

This is why we need actual withdrawal control built into the game.

Furyous · March 23

DenverRalphy wrote: »

The guild bank system in ESO has been nortoriously horrible from the bigging. Bank slot partitioning would be a huge help. But even that would still be limited to the capabilities of a rank based guild structure instead of an assignable role based structure.

A little over a year ago there was a dev survey available to gather information about improving guild mechanics in ESO. Some months later there was a guild summit to discuss it (not much seemed to come of that though). And we are supposed to see some improvements to the guild system this year. But details have been pretty light on if/when we can expect to see anything related to it.

Thank you for actually adding something constructive to the discussion.

I appreciate that you took the time to talk about the real issue with the guild bank system instead of repeating the same assumptions that have already been posted a dozen times. Your reply was the only one that addressed the underlying problem instead of blaming the victim.

You are absolutely right about the long‑standing issues with ESO’s guild bank design. Slot partitioning and real withdrawal controls would solve so many of these problems. It is good to hear that at least some of this was discussed in the past, even if we have not seen much movement yet.

Hopefully the improvements they hinted at actually include meaningful changes. The current system leaves every guild vulnerable, no matter how careful they are.

Emeratis · March 23

First off, sorry that happened to you. It's really unfortunate. I'm pretty sure in the original January stream it was promised that those would be some of the guild updates we would see later this year (u51-52ish most likely) but they only spoke of it briefly.

As for what others mentioned, restricting ranks works. My guild has had a communal bank for almost ten years and we've never had it stolen from. We have an introductory rank in the guild to welcome new guildies that cannot withdraw from the communal guild bank with the caveat to ask an officer or member who has withdraw perms to get something if they need. Anyone who's been active in the guild for a time or shows participation in the community/trustworthiness gets withdraw perms eventually and we've never had a theft incident. For now this is sadly your best option for this sort of situation until we get an update.

Finally, if nobody else has mentioned it, going to customer support over this in the past has led to pilfered guild banks being restored and/or action taking against the thief. Take screenshots and have detailed logs of what was taken.

freespirit · March 23

Another option.....

Only give bank access to long term trusted members based on their sales and their donations, that then gives you.....

1:- A large group of willing and trusted members able to help facilitate any bank requests from members without access.

2:- A way of mitigating losses when someone gets "upset", "leaves" and "empties the bank", as these trusted members have probably invested way more in to the Guild than the bank's content is worth!!

If you have valuable items in said bank I would have to say WHY??? You know this is an issues don't put valuable items in a bank that 100's of people have access to!!

Also but sorry, if handing out items would fall to you, you need a better management team!

Malyore · March 23

@ZOS_Hadeostry can some of the copy & pasted replies in here be removed? It makes it difficult to follow along with what's actually being said.
Unless it's a glitch on my end. I'm seeing the same message 4+ times.

scrappy1342 · March 23

Furyous wrote: »

And on top of that, can I even post the player's name to warn other guilds
or is this another case of protecting the guilty at the expense of the victims? If naming them violates policy, fine, but then give us actual tools to prevent this behavior in the first place.

no, you'll be in more trouble than the person who robbed you. if you are in discord servers that have large communities or you want to post it on reddit, those would be better options

Furyous wrote: »

• Act as a middle man for 500 people every time they want something from the guild bank (which would require a whole team of volunteers that of course no one will step up for),

this is how every guild i have ever been in does it. ONLY the officers have access to the bank. i can't think of a scenario where someone needs something SO BADLY that they can't wait 24 hours for an officer to take care of it

FlameDark · March 24

Furyous wrote: »

FlameDark wrote: »

You could make an "probation" roll that does not have guild withdrawal bank privileges. Then just keep it on them for a period of time until they are proven to not just be there to take everything from the bank. After the time period is over they get bumped up to a regular guild rank.

[snip]

Ummm I was offering a solution to help with the problem... No need to throw "victim blame" in my face, and accuse me... or anyone else trying to help. If you just wanted to complain rather then have people give advice to try and help, then maybe next time just submit a ticket and not post on the forum.
[edited to remove quote]

bmnoble · March 24

Guilds I have been in only the GM and officers are able to withdraw stuff from the bank, everyone else don't matter if they are brand new or been in the guild for years can only deposit stuff.

If someone needs something specific from the bank or accidentally deposit something they contact an officer and resolve the situation, there is no reason to allow all members to be able to withdraw stuff from the guild bank.

Only time that guilds I have been in open the bank up for everyone is after they have removed the high value stuff and left behind the stuff they want cleared out to free up space, that anyone can make use of as they see fit, they keep the guild bank open for a few days then put the restrictions back in place.

Furyous · March 24

Malyore wrote: »

@ZOS_Hadeostry can some of the copy & pasted replies in here be removed? It makes it difficult to follow along with what's actually being said.
Unless it's a glitch on my end. I'm seeing the same message 4+ times.

Not a glitch, the first 10 replies were copies of each other to I replied in kind

Annoying I know but I was pretty ticked at getting ripped off and to have the first ten replies all blame me because I didn't do what I did do.

AScarlato · March 24

As a former GM, I always hoped for something like OP suggested.

We are fortunate that no one ever cleaned out the bank, though as a RP guild there wasn't too much of value anyway so it was mostly a way to share a few motifs / house items and the like. In a group of adults one would hope guild members could share with one another without the need for officers to have to micromanage every request.

A system where as people go up the ranks, a GM/Officers can select a the number of items at each rank members can withdraw in a day or week would be great. This would prevent a severe betrayal that sometimes comes at the hands of a very trusted guild member who due to some issue decides to pillage the bank and leave.

Every time I saw something like this happened, it was a trusted guild member who got bank access who did the stealing. It's not always so easy as "don't give new members bank access."

Furyous · March 24

FlameDark wrote: »

Furyous wrote: »

FlameDark wrote: »

You could make an "probation" roll that does not have guild withdrawal bank privileges. Then just keep it on them for a period of time until they are proven to not just be there to take everything from the bank. After the time period is over they get bumped up to a regular guild rank.

[snip]

Ummm I was offering a solution to help with the problem... No need to throw "victim blame" in my face, and accuse me... or anyone else trying to help. If you just wanted to complain rather then have people give advice to try and help, then maybe next time just submit a ticket and not post on the forum.

I appreciate the advice but due to the first 10 replies telling me to do what I was already doing, got pretty old, they were practically copy and pastes of each other.

Like I mentioned before, we have had these restrictions and roles and still people decide to go stupid on us. The ONLY real solution is to allow us to limit the number of items people can withdraw, instead the whole thread seems to be cutting off access to the whole thing, then the question is, why bother to have guild bank?
[edited to remove quote]

SolarRune · March 24

As a GM I too would support this type of withdrawal limit. After the GM call with ZoS a couple of years ago we were promised a load of new tools and capabilities for guilds, so I am hoping this will be one of those new capabilities.

frogthroat · March 24

What is it that the player took that was worth the effort? Most guilds I'm in have a lot of stuff in the bank that are helpful mainly to new players but have low sell value.

Gold I would understand, but that is controlled separately.

I would guess that some more serious guilds (trial progs, hard core PVP guilds, or even top end housing guilds) could have things that benefit the guild. Weapon power potions, parse foods, siege weapons, rare and/or commonly used furnishings. Those might be something you don't want to lose all in one go because it would be pain to restock. Haven't been in such a guild where the bank is used for something serious so I don't know, just guessing, but that would be the only thing I can think of why whatever is in the guild bank is worth the worry of losing it.

But other than that, what was lost? I can't really think of anything anyone would miss in the guilds I am in. In one guild our guild leader constantly says go and empty it if you like. I mean, if you "steal" a whole bunch of recipes and gear that you can sell for 50g each, go for it. If you need gold that badly you are willing to sell items worth less than 1k I think you need it more than the guild.

Athory · March 24

Maybe the real issue is that guilds need to explain their rules in a way that everyone understands clearly.

When I joined my first guild, the guild bank rule was something like: “Take what you need, and give what you can.” Maybe not those exact words, but that was the idea.
So I did exactly that. I took crafting materials because I needed to level my crafting skills. I also took a lot of motifs and recipes I didn’t have yet, and I used them all.

A day or two later, the guild leader got really angry, and we ended up arguing. Apparently, "take what you need" actually meant something like "take what you need, but not more than 5 items." But how was I supposed to know that? That limitation was never clearly explained.
Then people started talking about the value of the recipes I used. But at the time, I didn’t care about prices, I wasn’t trying to sell anything. I used everything I took, exactly as the rules seemed to allow. If some of those items were valuable, then why put them in a shared guild bank where anyone can take them?

After that, I left the guild. I joined another one, and the same thing happened.
My view of a guild bank is simple: if I put something in there for others, I don’t care if someone takes one item or everything. Otherwise, I wouldn’t put it there, I’d keep it in my personal bank where no one else has access.

So I really don’t understand why the OP is so upset about someone clearing out the bank. If you make items freely available, you have to accept that someone might take them all. It’s like standing in the street shouting:
"Free eggs!" and then getting angry when you end up with none left.

CalamityCat · March 24

I think additional controls are always useful, however you will always get that occasional member who plays the long game and suddenly empties guild storage. Many years ago in a previous game, my guild had a player trusted for years holding a few (fortunately unimportant) buildings and supplies. He still went rogue and took the lot out of the blue. That can just happen. It's difficult to fully protect against a really determined thief.

If the loss has hit your guild hard, I think you need to really limit what you hold in that guild storage. Keep it to disposable stuff that isn't valuable. Store only what you're prepared to lose. Anything beyond that, if members know someone can provide say potions, plans or crafted gear; let them ask for what they need. Mostly in my ESO guilds I see players ask and offer materials or some trade. The same goes for plans/recipes etc.

Another option might be to use the guild trading system internally even without having a vendor placed; as in let players put their extra stuff on sale to other guildies at a fair price, and let them set whatever guild discount they want. Then it's available but can't simply be lifted out the guild bank.

CatalinaWineMixer2 · March 24

We are definitely in dire need of improvements to the guild system, how it works, how time consuming it is to manage, ect. Replying on others is currently about the only way and that's not always good or feasible. It is tiring and keeps GMs out of content because they spend all of their time on things like this

Artanisul · March 24

Athory wrote: »

Maybe the real issue is that guilds need to explain their rules in a way that everyone understands clearly.

When I joined my first guild, the guild bank rule was something like: “Take what you need, and give what you can.” Maybe not those exact words, but that was the idea.
So I did exactly that. I took crafting materials because I needed to level my crafting skills. I also took a lot of motifs and recipes I didn’t have yet, and I used them all.

A day or two later, the guild leader got really angry, and we ended up arguing. Apparently, "take what you need" actually meant something like "take what you need, but not more than 5 items." But how was I supposed to know that? That limitation was never clearly explained.
Then people started talking about the value of the recipes I used. But at the time, I didn’t care about prices, I wasn’t trying to sell anything. I used everything I took, exactly as the rules seemed to allow. If some of those items were valuable, then why put them in a shared guild bank where anyone can take them?

After that, I left the guild. I joined another one, and the same thing happened.
My view of a guild bank is simple: if I put something in there for others, I don’t care if someone takes one item or everything. Otherwise, I wouldn’t put it there, I’d keep it in my personal bank where no one else has access.

So I really don’t understand why the OP is so upset about someone clearing out the bank. If you make items freely available, you have to accept that someone might take them all. It’s like standing in the street shouting:
"Free eggs!" and then getting angry when you end up with none left.

You took what you wanted. You didnt only take what you needed. That was thievery.

SaffronCitrusflower · March 24

Well, the name checks out at least.

Just set your member restrictions accordingly and your problem is solved. Only give bank access to a handful of guild founding members or others who have been in the guild for YEARS, not days.

By the way, I'm in a Japanese guild and have been for about 8 years. Everyone in guild has withdraw access from the bank, even gold. Nobody has ever robbed the guild bank. I'm thinking it's a cultural difference. Not saying this to rub it in, just saying there are cultural differences and it's appropriate to take precautions when it's warranted.

valenwood_vegan · March 24

As a couple people tried to explain, zos has talked about planning to do a QoL update for guilds this year. It's not like anything is going to change before then. Posting the same rant over and over isn't going to speed that up - their patches are released on a schedule. Hopefully they will provide more details soon and take some player feedback about what features are desired (though they already did this to some extent with the guild survey and the guild "summit" last year).

In the meantime, one has to make due with the current guild system - stating this fact and trying to offer advice is not "blaming the victim." I think there's widespread agreement that guilds and guild management tools need improvement and I hope we hear more on this from the devs soon.

It sucks that people steal and do bad or unethical things. I wish they didn't I'm sorry it happened. Zos should have improved guild tools years ago, but many parts of the game were neglected under the old model of pumping out new content and never looking back. But none of this changes the current reality that one has to try and protect themselves using the current guild system, as all of the guilds I've been a member of have done.