Non-Members trolling guild missions
It’s a real shame this thread has been dumped in this forum. Yes I know it’s about Guild Missions but nobody uses it to discuss them, just to spam for public missions.
I entirely agree that at least guild Puzzles should be instanced. As it is having them open world just leads to conflict between guilds trying to run the same puzzle or rampant trolling by random subhumans.
An instanced version of all the missions would be absolutely ideal. No competing to activate a mission if you need the merits, no trolling by randoms, no larger guilds storming through your puzzle leaving you trailing after them bored. The only missions that wouldn’t benefit from instancing are Trek and Bounty.
I’d never done a guild mission before because my guild fell apart after their introduction and their practically exclusive access to accessories which we were too small to compete with (what’s left of my guild is a handful of remaining people on my friends list). I was exploring Snowden Drifts today and I noticed the mission was open. I was curious to see content I’d never seen before so I jumped in. I had seen the beginning of Anthony’s Angmar’s Trove video one the GW2 live stream so I knew about the icicles and bows part so I helped out with that. I didn’t watch any further so I was puzzle solving or following what they others were doing for the rest of it.
I noticed no-one was saying anything and everyone was in the same guild so I assumed they were all on TS (there was at least 40-50 people in there). It was a lot like a WvW zerg where lots of people are stacked together and a few stragglers are off fighting things or pushing forward. Finally in the Ice Drake room I had no idea what was going on, everyone was just standing around waiting. I knew whatever was next probably involved the drake to produce fire so I picked up an egg. Things seemed to go smoothly from here to a certain extent, people began to light torches etc but I guess it has to be synchronised or something? I ended up kitten ing off some people because I lit a torch and then I started getting abuse from the guild. It was a pretty awful experience and I completely lost interest in playing the game.
I was kind of having fun poking around and exploring things and trying out parts of the puzzle, but in hindsight I suspect this guild has done the puzzle multiple times now and have it down to a science. They just wanted their commendation and I was in their way so they were abusing me for my attempts to help them (which apparently hindered them). It was easily my worst GW2 community experience this year. To be singled out by a group of 40-50 people and become the focus of their scorn for what was an honest mistake in my attempt to participate, it made me feel awful. I was actually humiliated as a result.
I hate guild missions. I hate what they do to small guilds, I hate that they are forced on you to obtain ascended accessories (yeah, 40 laurels and 50 ecto is a totally reasonable amount of resources compared to 12 Guild Commendations) and now I hate that in an attempt to help, you can hinder people. They are clearly designed for guilds who are communicating with each other and accountable to each other and the reward as a pug for the puzzle is a freaking blue from the chest.
I think they allowed pugs to join guild missions so they can tell themselves that they aren’t excluding people from fun content. You might miss out on rewards (which is the driving incentive in Guild Mission design) but at least every player can participate at some point in time. That’s what the devs told themselves. But they designed missions so that pugs get nothing out of them aside from an experience and they can hinder (even with good intentions) guilds doing them, resulting in a bad experience for everyone.