Guild Wars 2

Guilds:
Rosters
I’ll start with guild rosters. When scrolling through your guild roster you can see a fellow guildie’s character name and account name. The problem occurs when that player is offline and you can only see their account name. For a small guild this may not seem like an immediate issue, but it quickly escalates as you gain more members and your trying to figure out who should still be an initiate or a full time member.
Gmotd
A problem with the guild message of the day is that if it’s changed, no one knows unless they are told, or just so happen to pull up the roster to look it up. If you could implement a way for the guild leader and officers to broadcast gmotd updates, it would help to keep information flowing. A simple chat command of /gmotd to display the message would be helpful as well.
Guild Vaults and Treasure Troves
I like having two separate storage units for my guild. It makes it easy to divide items into categories. My qualm is that you can’t set withdraw limits for guild members. Nothing is stopping that Theif who just got promoted to member from emptying your entire vault. A withdraw limit would help create a safety net for guild leaders to protect their valuables.
Online notification
It’s as simple as that. The ability to turn on the option to see other guild members log on. It doesn’t just benefit guild leaders, but the guild as a whole. You can see as other people log on to help you with dungeons, events, PvP, etc. You shouldn’t have to friend every guild member to see when they are logging on.
Chat
Another idea that would be nice is to have an officer chat. This makes it easier for guild leaders to talk privately with their officers about official guild matters.

P.S this was someone else’s words but i was going to say all of the exact same things.
Link: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/What-Guild-Wars-2-is-missing-It-s-the-little-things-that-count/first#post125646

Also it should show the time joined and who invited them to your guild.

I would also like guild upgrades to be cross server, as it is I am playing crystal desert but all the upgrades and most of my guild mates are on jade quarry. Despite guild joining being cross server, the upgrades are not. I can’t help but feel this is a fairly massive oversight.

Hmm, for whatever reason the ability for me to quote a user isn’t showing up in this thread.

@NsKush: That ability that you mention about showing who invited a member and the time is in game. If you look at the guild log, click on “roster” you will see who invited someone into the guild. You will also see the time. Not the actual time like 12:00 pm for example, but you will see that a member was invited say 30 minutes ago, 6 hours ago, 1 week ago, etc. So that ability is there.

You bring up some really good points and the biggest one for me is the first one you brought up. I am the officer of a medium sized guild that is growing at a pretty fast rate. Not having the ability to see the last time someone is online is making it next to impossible to keep track of our inactive members. Our guild has a rule that after someone hasn’t been online in a set amount of time, they will be removed. We personally don’t want a guild full of inactive members.

We have come up with other methods to try to help us keep track of our members and it has been a bit of a challenge at times. I keep track of our guild log and keep a close eye on recruits. I am pretty much keeping my own log of recruits and when they should be promoted. So there is the ability to see who invited who and when so this helps me a lot in this aspect.

As far as inactives, until ArenaNet adds the ability to see the last time someone is online, there is nothing we can do except wait for this feature to be added unfortunately.

I am personally loving this game so far and have basically no complaints other than the guild interface needing some much needed improvements and features added to help GM’s and officers properly run a guild. This is something I am guessing unless you are a GM or officer, you may not even notice initially. But as it is at this point, keeping track of our members is a bit of a challenge.

For a game called GUILD Wars…it lacks much on the GUILDS themselves. Sure, the upgrades have been done nicely, but that is about it.

When it comes to members, I like to know when they log in. Placing a check box in the guild interface that says: Notify me when members log in" would be HUGE!! I like to greet people when they log in, it makes them feel welcome.

ALso, I like to know when the last time they played was. A guild’s health depends largely on the amount of people online. If you have 300 members, but only 20 of them log in regularly, you know its time to trim some fat.

Officers chat. There needs to be a seperate channel for guild officers to converse with one another when it comes to guild matters.

Guild MotD

Like others are saying, there needs to be a CLEAR indication once the motd changes. If that comes up as a wall of text in your chat screen (accompanied by some sort of sound) or a pop up box in the middle of your screen with a check box that says: Only display if the gmotd changes" so it doesn’t pop up on every login, could help the guild spread vital messages, even if the GLs/officers arent’ around.

Need more space to put in more characters in the motd as well.

Guild Banks.

You have some untrustworthy people out there A.Net. You can’t just rely upon the honor system, unless you plan to back it yourself. You can’t just say: Well, its your fault you elevated him to XX status. Your screwed, we won’t refund the items you lost"; if you can’t give us the controls to reign in unscrupulous individuals.

Guild Representation.

This needs to be removed. If you don’t want to limit what characters are in what guilds, then make joining a guild individual based, not account. As a guild leader myself, if they are not representing my guild, I am now in the process of removing them.

If a person does not represent, they a) cannot see guild chat or b) give my guild influence. They take up a member slot that serves my guild no purpose. If they can’t see chat, they can’t see what things are going on. If they are not representing, they cannot particpate in the guild chatter that is integral to helping to bind a guild as a unit. If they don’t represent a guild, then they don’t earn that guild any influence, and that just means they are a worthless bump on a log.

Get rid of it

I think all of the suggestions in this thread are great, but the one I miss most is the officer chat. Being able to easily communicate with the other officers is invaluable for managing a guild smoothly, and is pretty much necessary for running events.

@teviko (who posted while I was posting) For the most part, if they removed guild representation and made joining a guild character based, it would still be the same as the situation you’re describing. Then the person not representing would just be on a different character for a different guild, still not participating in gchat or gaining influence. The only difference is that they’d no longer be taking up a slot in your guild.

Looking to get ,
1: guild officer chat
2: a in game guild event calendar
3: officer player notes

As a guild master i really liked these options in the past.. would help with guild controle a lot.

Many great suggestions in this thread and I would say most of them are essential additions/changes to the current, spartan guild interface we currently have.

The first thing I did on 8/25/12 was create my guild..since then I can’t but help notice all of the glaring oversights with this guild system. For a game called ‘Guild’ Wars, ANet put very little thought into the actual functionality of guilds.

First and foremost…PLEASE fix the bugs that prevent or impede the flow of guild growth. Struggling for hours to try to figure out the trick that will allow a single prospective member to be able to accept a guild invite when they click the ‘Accept’ button is counterproductive and, frankly annoying. I don’t want intermittent outtages with guild functionality…it was not my decision to release GW2 several months too early and I want the spartan guild features we do have to work now.

We need more controls and feedback within the roster…I want to be able to track member log-in times as well as the amount of time they’ve Represented my guild. I want to be able to set limits on vault withdrawals (both cash and items) per rank. I want to be able to remove guild chat privileges from cantankerous members without having to boot them. I want to see what other guilds my members are in and how much time they spend representing those other guilds as well.

The Representation system…oi…I’ve disliked this since the moment I understood what it means. It ONLY benefits the the type of members we probably don’t want in our guilds to begin with (guild hoppers and vault scammers). Being able to be in any number of guilds you want to might seem great to a player who plans to put little or no time into actually building their own community but for someone who enjoys community building it’s a nightmare and adds an extra layer of administration that simply should not be there.

There are good reasons, aside from technological limitations, that most MMO’s have single guild systems. Guild loyalty and ensuring that an applicant actually wants to be a part of your guild via having researched it are just a couple. This multi-guild system dilutes the integrity of individual guilds and makes the joining of a guild far too superficial to be of any real benefit to the guilds themselves.

The decision to join a guild should be one of thoughtful consideration, not a matter of window-shopping for shinies.

Either severely limit the number of guilds an account can be a part of or remove the multi-guild system entirely in favor of a single guild system please.

Sincerely,

1: MotD: This definitely needs to be clear when people log in, otherwise, messages are simply being missed.

2a: Representation: I understand the concern people have expressed above, however, I am not opposed to having multiple guilds. My guild is social and we have no major plans for events. In my experience, I have been involved in separate or subguilds that exist for specific events and permit participation from people outside of the main guild. Granted, I have had the good fortune of being involved with people who do respect the concept of guild community and return to their main guilds when the particular event is over. The concern over those who might take advantage with guild vaults etc is already addressed with permissions. Simply ensure they are placed in a rank with limited access. Having them in this rank also identifies them as secondary/probationary members who should not be placed in priority over active and dedicated members until they prove themselves and their loyalty.

Perhaps, some way of tracking participation is in order? Is it possible to identify how much influence a particular member has provided a guild? That would be a helpful way to determine when probationary status ends.

2b: Because the representation does exist, it would be nice if, like the MotD suggestion, it be made clear when logging in what guild you are representing or if you are representing at all. I’ve seen several situations where people make new characters and don’t realize they are not representing.

3: Officer chat: Definitely.

4: Guild calendar: Absolutely.

5. Alerts when guild members (and friends) pop online: yup!

1. MotD pop ups: Need
MotD is completely useless the way it is now.
Members usually don’t look in the roster except when explicitly asked.

2. Officer chat: Need
For obvious reasons.

3. Guild calendar: Greed
My guild uses a forum in order to schedule event, but nevertheless this would be a nice feature.

4. Alert for log on/log off: Need
We are a very social bunch and really rely on this kind of functionality.
New members are very unlikely to jump into chat right off the bat.
So we usually take the first step in approaching them.
If I can’t see them log on, I can’t really greet them now can I?

5. Representing
This is a tough one…
I can see benefits from this feature, but at the moment too much confusion is going on for this to really work. This goes for both veterans as people who are new to the mmo-genre. Personally I would be glad to see this feature removed and all the issues that come with it. Some people just don’t even know what ‘representing’ means.

/rant
I don’t want this too sound too harsh, but it needs to be said.
If users don’t know what their software does, then you’re just too short-sighted and unworthy to be called a developer. If you’re one of those developer-knows-best type of guys, then you’re just supplying nourishment for the support department…
/end rant

Loyalty of members is indeed a big concern. I’m not talking about vault leeches here fyi. Like previous posters have said; Joining a guild should be a well thought through decision. Right now there is no way to see how ‘loyal’ a member actually is. There should be some way of measuring this for this feature to work. For instance:
Last time representing, Relative representation in % (representing vs game time on character), Influence earned, etc.

6. Small guilds…
Being a small guild in GW2 is horrible…
We really take pride in being as small as possible as a guild, while achieving the same as the bigger guilds out there. I just takes us longer, but we’ll get there.
- Influence: PITA, big guilds are being spoiled here.
- Commanders: Just forget it, never going to get the money for it.
- Representing: We really need dedication, not guild hopping.