Guild Wars 2

As Anet continues to develop and refine larger-scale content, one cannot help but notice that there is still a horrible, festering, stinking hole in the game’s social design…

First, a word on design: It is my experience (and feel free to correct me on this), that UX design is about allowing users to do what the game/application is intended to do, quickly and easily (with as few steps from A to B as possible).

It seems clear that the direction Anet is taking with GW2 is to encourage all members of a server to organize and work as a team to accomplish great things… Yet somehow they’ve left communities to slave away forming alliances via neutral (unrepresented) guilds, forums outside of the game, and long debates about which guild’s voice chat server is better…

The following is a list of features that are essential to closing this gap:

-Search needs to actually work. I should be able to find anyone on my server who is currently listed as ‘logged in’ by using this feature. The feature doesn’t work right now and its sitting there, stinking up the social design.

-Guild-to-Guild communication. I don’t really care what clever alternatives you thought were going to work… a simple, neutral channel of communication which is managed by a group of consenting guilds is needed.

-In-game community bulletins. As a feature of guild-to-guild communication, there should be a method by which players of a certain rank in each guild may broadcast a community bulletin which would show for all consenting guilds. This would be similar to the guild MOTD, and would save a history, allowing multiple announcements in a short period without fear that some people might miss a bulletin.

-working LFG. I don’t even need to explain this… just fix it… no excuses.

That’s it… that’s all that is missing from the social design. Other than that, great work! Unfortunately, the missing areas are just very big, and really do stand out… like a whitehead on the end of your boss’s nose… i mean you have to look at him when he’s talking to you… but you just wish he’d pop it already.

If anything comes of this post, please please please let it be an alliance feature! I miss and want a /alliance chat. This will help your smaller guilds thrive instead of failing. This is a game breaker and should have been there since/before launch. GW1 had it why not GW2? It is time that the players of this game come together and change the way its played. Your players have spoken!

Perhaps there is going to be a release similar to GW1 Factions, where guilds can earn faction for whoever they support! (Kurzick/Luxon) (Order Of Wispers/Vigil/Priory)…(Skritt/Quaggan)

Or something along the lines that required a split in the player base making competing parties bigger, so that guilds can form alliances.

I agree. I think a lot of these features that are brought up daily in the forums (not just social UI discussion) are features that ANet knows needs adjustment. I’m hoping it’s just an issue of content priority and these popular topics are noted, but lagging behind more pressing matters. I guess we’ll see.

In regards to alliances and Guilds in general, I think there is a lot to see in the future as soon as playable content is brought up to standards. GW1 offered some of the best social interaction between gaming groups and guilds I’ve seen.

I find it odd that they didn’t add in the /alliance chat feature that was available in the original Guild Wars. It really needs to be looked into and fixed if possible so that we can communicate MUCH easier. There really was no reason NOT to include it.

The one I’d most like to see implemented from the above list is an alliance chat. Much has already been made of the detrimental effect of allowing players to be in multiple guilds, if they’re just going to be pulled in several directions at once by requirements to represent one guild x amount of the time, or contribute a certain amount of influence or resources to one over the other.

A working alliance chat then, won’t remove that difficult choice, but at least will allow players to cast a wider net when trying to find a group, instead of forcing them to resort to PUGs, which are notorious for their impatience and kicks when doing speedruns or completing any kind of content.

Coco.3021:

The one I’d most like to see implemented from the above list is an alliance chat. Much has already been made of the detrimental effect of allowing players to be in multiple guilds, if they’re just going to be pulled in several directions at once by requirements to represent one guild x amount of the time, or contribute a certain amount of influence or resources to one over the other.

A working alliance chat then, won’t remove that difficult choice, but at least will allow players to cast a wider net when trying to find a group, instead of forcing them to resort to PUGs, which are notorious for their impatience and kicks when doing speedruns or completing any kind of content.

I agree 100%. Even if we do not have alliances like we had back in GW1 right away, an alliance chat function would go a long way for the social game and would make being in several guilds that work together a much happier place.

One guild I am in has sister guilds and we work together on things. It would be nice not to have to switch representation all the time just in order to communicate.

Thanks for the replies all. I’d love to see more people agreeing with this so that Anet can get the message… this is a much needed feature.