Guild Wars 2

Hi there, I am a guild leader in GW2 and our guild has been around during the beta and got started properly on day 1 of the early game launch.
Our guild is still going but I wanted to talk about some of the problems with the guild feature in the game.

1) No last logged on time
Why has this actually not been added yet? I thought it was a blip when the game was released, but over a year later it’s still not here. This is a really simple tool for checking how active players are. Unless I read and memorise the list of player names every day I have little idea who to keep and who to kick. It’s also helpful because it gives me an indication of when regular members are logging on, and if I notice a particular memeber is rarely on at the same time as everyone else I can have a chat with them and ask if they want to stay, given that their usual play time is different from other guild members.

2) Players can Multi guild or guild hop
First of all, I have no issues with people being in 2 different guilds for different reasons (i.e. PvP and a casual guild or Roleplaying guild and WvW) I think that in itself is totally fine. However there is no penalty for being in multiple guilds and no bonus for being loyal to one guild. As well as this, there is no player cap for guild commendations while there is a guild cap for merits. This means it’s actually beneficial to be in mutliple guilds and just turn up for events.

3) No guild home page for basic guild rules and information
The message of the day is such a useful feature, but it would be really helpful to have a page where I could explain some of the guild rules and ranks.

4) No guild halls, GvG, or in guild dueling
I wont rant about this, but these are needed things to make a guild feel more like it has a centre and a home.

5) Would be cool if guilds had birthdays
Like characters do, with a guild birthday bonus that is active for all members of the guild that are representing.

I know that it’s the people that make a guild, and I have met a lot of wonderful people through guild wars (as well as some not so wonderful ones)
But the guild mechanic is built in such a way that it is impossible to hold onto people/players. Keeping a guild together feels like constantly trying to catch grains of sand, eventually all of them fall through your fingers. I believe that being in multiple guilds is at the centre of this problem, sometimes we have good weeks where everyone in the guild is online, representing and we all do some guild events and a dungeon and everything is good. But it only takes one tiny thing, like me not logging onto guild wars for 2 days, or the other higher up people in the guild all needing simultanious time off for school/family and then everyone else seems to jump ship. After a few days no one is representing, and all that hard work of recruiting, helping players out, being active is just undone and I feel like the guild has to start over.

Back when the guild missions were released I decided that we’d have to guild events a week, so that people would have a ‘loot’ reason to come back if nothing else. I also thought that in the process of people coming back to do this there would be more bonding between guild memebers via defeating bounties, or doing rushes.
However holding events like this has caused members to now take them for granted, forgetting that myself and the higher ups of the guild take time out of their lives to plan and organize them. Because of the assumption that they will always be happening and that there’ll always be another one, there is no reason for members to come back. This leads to the reast of the guild feeling disheartened, and often another wave of players stop representing.

I don’t think you could possibley remove the mutli guild feature, but a rewrad/penalty system might definately help keep guilds together.

I don’t know how other guild leaders/members feel about this. I just wanted to voice this to Arenanet.

Half Tooth.1867:

2) Players can Multi guild or guild hop
First of all, I have no issues with people being in 2 different guilds for different reasons (i.e. PvP and a casual guild or Roleplaying guild and WvW) I think that in itself is totally fine. However there is no penalty for being in multiple guilds and no bonus for being loyal to one guild. As well as this, there is no player cap for guild commendations while there is a guild cap for merits. This means it’s actually beneficial to be in mutliple guilds and just turn up for events.

Afaik, there is limited number of commendation you can get weekly, which is 8 if i remember right. That means you only get commendations once per mission per week.

I agree with everything you posted. I’d like to see most, if not all, of these features implemented. Players have been asking for this since the beginning of GUILD Wars 2, but I have never seen Anet say a single thing about adding the features. There is a lack of polish to the guild UI that makes me sad to call this game “Guild Wars”, because guilds are simply left on the side burner.

U have very good suggestions… I wonder often why many of these things are still not there.

There’s actually quite a few of these threads spread about the suggestions board – I’ve heard tales that anet has been “working on it” but I am not sure because I haven’t been able to personally find a developer response. Either way I do very much agree with these suggestions – I posted on a thread earlier saying that adding a simple “last logged in” function would at the very very least help a ton with guild management. I’m not going to call any of the developers out for being “lazy” or any some such because they have to deal with enough baby tears about a lot less reasonable things, but it’s still rather bothersome that this function doesn’t exist yet.

Thanks for the replies and the info about the commendation cap kRiza krimos.

Having a guild, group or clan in any game not just guild wars should rally you in the same way that being at a gig to see your favourite band makes you feel. You look around and know that everyone is hear for the same reason. There is a kind of unity that holds you all together. Wearing your build banner should be like “Yeah I’m in this guild >:) And our guild is way more awesome than yours.” Rather than….. “well, I’m with these guys because this is where I get the most loot….. meh”

I would really love to hear some kind of developer response in regards to this because it doesn’t matter about th lore reasons of why the game is called guild wars, if you can have guilds in a game where ‘guild’ is in the title, they ought to be good. Also good guilds will give players another reason to keep returning. Having a guild in guild wars has the potential to be truly spectacular but as it stands at present, it’s half done, and hard work.