Guild Wars 2

Our guild has 495 active members, no unknowns, and a waiting list of 50 people. There are three teams of volunteers with a total of 22. We also have a board of eight and two guild leaders. We do all the guild missions every week and organize six events ourselves every week. To manage this is a lot of work and the guild interface is almost useless. Here are some things that are really frustrating:

Mailing system: If I want to send an email to the whole board, I have to do it one by one with a limitation of two per minute. When they reply, the original message is gone. So sometimes when they haven’t been online for a couple of days, it’s confusing to witch mail they are replying. Today I sent all of the volunteers a thank you present by mail and at the end I was furious with the mailing system (witch lead to this post).

Chat: If I want to talk to more then five people at the same time, party chat is not an option. Teamspeak server isn’t always possible and what do you do then? At one point I just gathered all the people I wanted to chat in to Divinity’s Reach and just used /say.

Guild Roster: It doesn’t show the account + character names so sometimes it’s confusing to know who is who. It also doesn’t show the last time somebody was online or how much of their play time people represent our guild. It also doesn’t show when somebody joined the guild.

Guild bank: You can’t see per user how much they deposited and how much they withdraw. We are contemplating if we have to start keeping an external logbook for the guild bank.

Guild calender: it’s not even there so when and where we do our events always has to be spammed through the guild chat. After the twentieth person that asks ’where’s the event today’ it really gets annoying.

Influence: Where does it come from? We are a PvX guild and want to distribute the output of the influence usage according to the origin of the influence. So how much do we use to keep up WvW buffs? Al we now is we get an average of 150k per week. And off course, those two build slots are ridiculous. We have to up speed six times more then what we can actually build. Also we still don’t know how we are going to use all the merits that we gain. We will probably just put up a hero’s banner once a day, the other stuff is just silly.

Message of the day: It’s almost useless. Couldn’t we have something similar to a daily achievement chest when members first log in for the day. That way they at least see the message. It’s also very limited in characters. We can’t even put our whole week schedule in it.

Out of game communication: not possible, where’s that extended experience app?

Currently we have to use a lot of out game systems to keep the engines running:

Member list and influence calculation tool in Excell, shared trough dropbox
Planning of meetings through Doodle
Getting feedback with Google Forms
Calendar, forum and mailing system on our Enjin site
What’s App groups on our mobile phones

We even have a board member who’s busy programming an overlay for the game so we can use it to communicate. We are also still looking to find an easy way for a to do system.

I don’t expect to be able to do all of the above trough the game itself, but a lot of it could easily be implemented. Currently, my husband and I spend more than 20 hours a week to manage everything. It’s a lot when you also work full time.

PS: English is my third language and I’m dyslectic. So hold your spelling and grammer crap, I did my best.

A thousand times this. There are so many awesome guild features in other games, it blows me away that with everything Anet has done they haven’t capitalized on that innovation. EVE’s in game calendar comes to mind.

This affects even smaller guilds. I run a guild of 50 or so and I have all the same issues.

By the way, a temporary solution to your large group chat problem: Squads have a dedicated chat channel, so you can squad up with one of your guild commanders to get that done. It’s still open, but not as open.

Yeah squad chat maybe. I would prefer commander tag with an option to only be visible for the guild members

Please everything on this list! Still waiting for my last logged on bit but nope, nothing. Also the message of the day is appalling! I can’t even edit sections of it I have to type the WHOLE thing again. Another nice thing would be to have seperate permissions for gold withdrawal/deposit, we keep getting money stolen and then the offending person leaves so I’ve had to block off member access to the stash and give members the trove instead! Why, why, why? I hate having to do that but now members can only use trove and deposit into stash but only higher ranks can withdraw from stash, I just want to let my members use all the features, is it so hard?

agreed 1000%

Also

PS: English is my third language and I’m dyslectic. So hold your spelling and grammer crap, I did my best.

Your english and spelling is still better than most people on this forum.

Totally agree. Your English is fine though. Also squad chat can help if you have a commander handy.

I have found that using an external website for our guild has helped us communicate and organize much better. It’s not the best way since people have to check the site each day for new content but it’s better then waiting on the in game email supression to go away.

+1 for OP
Even if half the suggestions where implemented it would make guild management far easier.
Hopefully this becomes a priority in the near future.

This post <3

For a game with the word “Guild” in it, it lacks some serious guild features.

Good grief, Areann, if this is how you communicate in your third language then you must be a force to be reckoned with in your native tongue.

All very well said, and mygods let’s hope the next patch sees some of this implemented for it is looooong past due.

I would like some of these implimented as well. It is hard to tell who does what in my guild when the history only shows so much.

I would’ve thought that “Guild Wars” would have an advanced Guild Customization system at least. Last night I held a meeting for our personal Guild Emblem. Even though the choices were abundant the level of customization was poor. 1 symbol/1 background made choosing a good Emblem quite difficult.

Thanks for the compliments. Spellingcorection and proofreading helps ;-) It’s also a bit luck, my brain has good and bad days.

Another way around the group chat for more than 5 people is to have a separate guild for those select people, if it is like an officer meeting or something. Then you just need to represent that when you want to chat with them privately.

I also want to add the list of great ideas… An alliance system for guilds!

Yes we need an alliance so we can divide into a pve guild, a pvp guild and a wvw guild. The two build spots are way to restrictive for a PvX guild.

Yes on all of these! I’m the webmaster of our 350+ guild and its very frustrating to be on the admin side.

Our suggestions are:

Make it so that it makes you confirm to kick someone from a guild.
We keep accidentally kicking members from guild when trying to kick from party.

Ditto on message on of the day but making it so that you can edit what you already have.

And for the love of god, make it so that when guildies deposit in the guild bank, they can stack it. Right now it takes someone removing 3 ore, 2 ore into personal bags, stack then putting back in. This creates a mess in the log, pushing down who actually put what in, then erasing all by a days worth of log info. Need over 2 weeks of info.

Need “Date last on” to help purge out inactive people.

Better management of who is Repping and who isn’t.

I have lead a community for nine years now. Guild features are invariably lacking in most games. Last login and guild activity percentages didn’t appear in SWG until a year before closure! So our website has always been an invaluable tool and heavily used.

Somehow, I expected this game to have better admin tools in game. It is disappointing to find that it possibly has worse guild admin tools than The Secret World! At least there the mail limit is larger and there is a cabal mail facility.

I support improvements to in game guild management tools.

Yeah we got an Enjin site to, you can’t organize a big guild otherwise.

Areann.1304:

Our guild has 495 active members, no unknowns, and a waiting list of 50 people.

Guild Roster: It also doesn’t show the last time somebody was online or how much of their play time people represent our guild.

Guild bank: You can’t see per user how much they deposited and how much they withdraw. We are contemplating if we have to start keeping an external logbook for the guild bank.

While other suggestions you made were sound, I dislike how these few sound. To me, it just sounds like you want to kick members based on who isn’t the most efficient member, who isn’t bringing a ton of influence to the guild or who took 3s worth more stuff from the bank than what they gave.
I disagree on that style of guild leadership. And to protect the experience of the average users, I do not think that style of guild leadership should be made available. To be honest, it would be worse than a damage meter for dungeons.

And yeah, that is probably not what you were going for, and I’m not saying you’d be some horrible leader, I’m not trying to insult you in any way. I can see you’re somewhat dedicated, spending a lot of time with your guild… but sadly, there are just a ton of people who would abuse the suggested (quoted) features in a way that would have a huge negative impact on the experience of other players around them. That is wrong and should not be allowed, endorsed nor made available.

Fred Fargone.3127:

Areann.1304:

Our guild has 495 active members, no unknowns, and a waiting list of 50 people.

Guild Roster: It also doesn’t show the last time somebody was online or how much of their play time people represent our guild.

Guild bank: You can’t see per user how much they deposited and how much they withdraw. We are contemplating if we have to start keeping an external logbook for the guild bank.

While other suggestions you made were sound, I dislike how these few sound. To me, it just sounds like you want to kick members based on who isn’t the most efficient member, who isn’t bringing a ton of influence to the guild or who took 3s worth more stuff from the bank than what they gave.
I disagree on that style of guild leadership. And to protect the experience of the average users, I do not think that style of guild leadership should be made available. To be honest, it would be worse than a damage meter for dungeons.

And yeah, that is probably not what you were going for, and I’m not saying you’d be some horrible leader, I’m not trying to insult you in any way. I can see you’re somewhat dedicated, spending a lot of time with your guild… but sadly, there are just a ton of people who would abuse the suggested (quoted) features in a way that would have a huge negative impact on the experience of other players around them. That is wrong and should not be allowed, endorsed nor made available.

Ow off course not, once you get in the guild you stay in the guild until you haven’t played for over a month (wich is hard to tell since Arenanet put people on Unkown status very infrequently). Yes we are big, and a bit ambitious. But we are still a social guild, not a hardcore guild. And should somebody get kicked because they didn’t come online for a large time, they jump ahead of the waiting list as soon as they annouce they are back playing.

Currently though, we got a big problem with the guild bank. An unknown user took hundreds of items out of the guild bank. Nobody left the guild in the time frame of the action. So who the hell was it? See attachement

Areann.1304:

PS: English is my third language and I’m dyslectic. So hold your spelling and grammer crap, I did my best.

Respect for the honest and awesome disclaimer.

Also +1 to all your suggestions.

Fred Fargone.3127:

While other suggestions you made were sound, I dislike how these few sound. To me, it just sounds like you want to kick members based on who isn’t the most efficient member, who isn’t bringing a ton of influence to the guild or who took 3s worth more stuff from the bank than what they gave.
I disagree on that style of guild leadership. And to protect the experience of the average users, I do not think that style of guild leadership should be made available. To be honest, it would be worse than a damage meter for dungeons.

And yeah, that is probably not what you were going for, and I’m not saying you’d be some horrible leader, I’m not trying to insult you in any way. I can see you’re somewhat dedicated, spending a lot of time with your guild… but sadly, there are just a ton of people who would abuse the suggested (quoted) features in a way that would have a huge negative impact on the experience of other players around them. That is wrong and should not be allowed, endorsed nor made available.

fargone, my guild does not have requirements; therefore, it is unimportant to us who last logged in when, or how often they represent our guild over their other guilds. this is our preferred method of managing our guild. however, you need to hear this, please, and think about this:

this is not my way of managing things — that does not invalidate it as a way of managing things. you’re not in that guild, and you wouldn’t join that guild, based on their requirements. but the truth of the matter is, they have the right to manage their guild as they see fit. they have the right to structure their guild as they see fit. they’re right up on the edge of the member cap with a waiting list … that means that knowing who’s not been on in over six weeks may be vital, to them. if this is communicated as a requirement to their members upon recruitment, then absolutely no harm, no foul.

i agree with your view of how your guild should be managed; i wholly applaud OP for her incisive and very well-thought out list of requests. i wholly back her right to manager her guild as required, and to have the game support at least some of what she needs.

truth? i need a lotta that stuff too! ;-)

Isende.2607:

this is not my way of managing things — that does not invalidate it as a way of managing things. you’re not in that guild, and you wouldn’t join that guild, based on their requirements. but the truth of the matter is, they have the right to manage their guild as they see fit. they have the right to structure their guild as they see fit. they’re right up on the edge of the member cap with a waiting list … that means that knowing who’s not been on in over six weeks may be vital, to them. if this is communicated as a requirement to their members upon recruitment, then absolutely no harm, no foul.

Yes, I know that there are a whole lot of people who do things the right way. Unfortunately, there are also guilds that just see members as tools that they can throw away when they’ve outlived their purpose. Guilds that just try to recruit everyone with no requirements stated, and then just kick the least efficient members out to make room for new people.
And while it is the right of the guild leaders to manage their guilds as they see fit, I think it is the right of every player to enjoy the game as they see fit. If they join a guild to hang out with their friends or make new ones, and the guild accepts them as who they are, they should not be kicked out half a year later just because they were the least efficient member at the time. It’s an unfortunate fact, but there can only be one most efficient player, and there will always be one least efficient one.

Areann.1304:

Ow off course not, once you get in the guild you stay in the guild until you haven’t played for over a month (wich is hard to tell since Arenanet put people on Unkown status very infrequently). Yes we are big, and a bit ambitious. But we are still a social guild, not a hardcore guild. And should somebody get kicked because they didn’t come online for a large time, they jump ahead of the waiting list as soon as they annouce they are back playing.

Yeah, I know there are a lot of guilds with honorable methods of management. But there are also a bunch that would use any means they can to just maximize the profit for the guild with no regard of individuals. And it’s usually pretty hard to tell which guilds would do that if given the chance, especially when you are just looking a guild to join. A guild where you would do your best to help, make friends ect.

Areann.1304:

Currently though, we got a big problem with the guild bank. An unknown user took hundreds of items out of the guild bank. Nobody left the guild in the time frame of the action. So who the hell was it? See attachement

Ahhh…. I must apologize, I seem to have gravely misunderstood what you meant. I thought you wanted something like a simple figure next to each guildmembers name saying how much they’ve given/taken from the guild bank (converted to silver or something).
I guess what you really wanted was just to use account names (Fred Fargone.3127) on the guild bank history rather than character names. Yes, that indeed is a sound suggestion with valid reasoning behind it.

Fred Fargone.3127:

Yes, I know that there are a whole lot of people who do things the right way. Unfortunately, there are also guilds …

that, right there, is where i think the problem exists. you state “the right way” as though your way is the right way, the only way, the correct way.

that typically falls under the category “elitist thinking,” now doesn’t it? “the most dangerous person you’ll ever meet is the one who knows they know everything about everything.”

you need to give room for guilds to manage themselves, regardless of any judgement calls you think should/could/may be made. if the members join, wishing to play in a guild that manages itself thusly, then they have as much right to find a guild like this as my guild’s members have to find a guild run the way we run it.

having tools to best manage both ways of being is providing more tools, not enforcing a judgement call either way.

Areann.1304:

Yeah squad chat maybe. I would prefer commander tag with an option to only be visible for the guild members

We’ve been asking for this since BW1…. a private grouping system for more than 5 people. The easiest thing would be to allow commanders to hide the pin AND still retain all the functions of a squad. It can now be used for private guild events and specialty forces in WvW.

If we actually had an option in game to create medium size forces with some control over the size and makeup… perhaps we wouldn’t have so many people flocking to a commander pin in WvW and deal with the zergs. This seems like a no brainer to me and I can’t understand why it’s not be added.

Fred Fargone.3127:

i wholly applaud OP for her incisive and very well-thought out list of requests. i wholly back her right to manager her guild as required, and to have the game support at least some of what she needs.

truth? i need a lotta that stuff too! ;-)

On second thought maybe I shouldn’t have talked about my husband, since now people see me as a woman. I’m a man, same sex marriage is possible where I live …

heya areann, i will just post my opinions here instead from my other topic

I’m managing a guild of 500 members. And it is difficult for me to check who is still playing and who have quit GW2 because there is not “Last Login” info.
And with only 10 ranks available, it is difficult to separate the responsibilities of my officers. No hierarchy is available too.
I would like to have the guild system to have divisions so my officers and I can manage the guild well and properly.
For example, WvW Division officer, Dungeon Division officer.

Also, Anet make more guild challenge with multiple coordination strategy but the guild system is not good enough currently…. my members dont know who they wan to follow or who is taking which responsibility for the missions …

Areann.1304:

Fred Fargone.3127:

i wholly applaud OP for her incisive and very well-thought out list of requests. i wholly back her right to manager her guild as required, and to have the game support at least some of what she needs.

truth? i need a lotta that stuff too! ;-)

On second thought maybe I shouldn’t have talked about my husband, since now people see me as a woman. I’m a man, same sex marriage is possible where I live …

hugs he, then. either way? great post, great thoughts, great idea. and please forgive my OTHER post where i referred to you as “gurl,” i think!

Xephens.3217:

For a game with the word “Guild” in it, it lacks some serious guild features.

Like being able to group more than 5 people privately for a guild event. Did it not ever cross the dev’s minds that guilds might like to coordinate events for just guild members? With the commander and squad system you end up having everyone in the zone join you.

Ahmrill.7512:

Xephens.3217:

For a game with the word “Guild” in it, it lacks some serious guild features.

Like being able to group more than 5 people privately for a guild event. Did it not ever cross the dev’s minds that guilds might like to coordinate events for just guild members? With the commander and squad system you end up having everyone in the zone join you.

Carefull, it almost sounds like you want guild raids. Ssssst, don’t step on the hornet nest ;-)

Areann.1304:

Ahmrill.7512:

Xephens.3217:

For a game with the word “Guild” in it, it lacks some serious guild features.

Like being able to group more than 5 people privately for a guild event. Did it not ever cross the dev’s minds that guilds might like to coordinate events for just guild members? With the commander and squad system you end up having everyone in the zone join you.

Carefull, it almost sounds like you want guild raids. Ssssst, don’t step on the hornet nest ;-)

Nahh just want a way to coordinate multiple groups without having to have everyone in separate groups. Using the commander system is more effective for coordinating than simply running 2-3 seperate multiple groups using ventrilo and “driver” marking. But using the commander system for “stealth” or"havoc" forces is useless. Hard to make a stealth force when everyone in the zone is flocking to the pin.

Just frustrating not being able to use the only grouping system for more than 5 people due to the negative aspects if you are not actually trying to command the zone.

I had replied to another thread with this idea and since it falls neatly into Guild Management decided to add it here as a possible consideration. The Guild Vault should be built around a merit system. A person can only take out of the guild vault up to the value of the items he placed into the guild vault. In that way no one person could empty a Guild vault and run off with the loot. The only ones that would be exempt from this would be the Guild Officers so they could assist new members with items from the vault.