Guild Wars 2

Making the guild panel a social panel
Great idea!
Communication from officers to members
This has been suggested several times, and I’d really like seeing this in the game.
Guild mission activation control
I don’t mind it the way it is atm, just don’t give the rights to morons :l
WvW and guilds
I don’t do wvw so I won’t comment on this
Events and guilds
Could be interesting, but I’d like to see this suggestion expanded a bit more to post some feedback!
Last logged in
I don’t even know why this isnt in the game yet, this is the most needed tool for guilds, I run a very small guild with hardly 30-40 members and yet it is a pain to remove inactives, I can’t imagine the 400+ ones…
Calendar with alerts
A fun, yet not that much needed feature if the guild social panel would be up.
Guild achievements
I’d say no this. It’s purely another huge disadvantage for small guilds that don’t have all the missions. It’s hard to run small active guild anyway, since everyone wants to do the missions, and with few people it takes a long long time to unlock them. Giving achievements to guild missions would make it even harder, and would definitely kill several small guilds.

To me this is an even greater oversight than how they delivered the game without a decent LFG tool. Guilds are the lifeblood of WvW and overall long term player retention.

These improvements are sorely needed to make running a guild fun and not an overwhelming chore that it is now.

Fixing the guild systems would result in more happy faces and would not take an army of artists, modelers and level designers to do. A few command line tools would be more than welcome and really how much design does it take to rework or add to the current guild options window?

Lonami.2987:

I don’t know if this is a new case of developer blindess, but I do think guilds deserve some dedication, and soon.

This isn’t a new problem, it is pure and simple developer blindness.

We players would like a lot of things. Nerfnet has other priorities.

The "last seen online" and the guild Calendar would help alot the community and should be developed by ArenaNet as fast as possible

Wow, I missed that, assuming what you say is true. To say that improving tools to better help the community communicate and facilitate interaction was not a priority is just pure stupidity. I’m beginning to think that Anet is full of savants. They make a really pretty game but it just seems more and more like they don’t know how to interact with people. It’s as though numbers are absolute and human idiosyncrasy are irrelevant to these guys.

(argh, I’m not sure idiosyncrasy is the best word for it but I can’t currently think of a better one.)

Great post mate! There are waay too many things lacking as of right now.

Ian Smith.8690:

Wow, I missed that, assuming what you say is true. To say that improving tools to better help the community communicate and facilitate interaction was not a priority is just pure stupidity. I’m beginning to think that Anet is full of savants. They make a really pretty game but it just seems more and more like they don’t know how to interact with people. It’s as though numbers are absolute and human idiosyncrasy are irrelevant to these guys.

(argh, I’m not sure idiosyncrasy is the best word for it but I can’t currently think of a better one.)

Wait what? I find ArenaNet on of the companies that actually listens to it’s fanbase. While they still need to follow their own or NCsoft rules and path. They actually listen to what we want and know where we want changes in.

People expect that some things are just easy implented but I think that some of the coding and balancing needed is hard sometimes. I agree that they need to change the Guild User Interface and how it all works. But saying that they don’t know how to interact with people is just nonsense.

Still this post about the guild changes that should come is build up very well. And I can’t agree more with it that something has to change. While they indeed said that this isn’t high priority I agree at some levels. (Class balancing and bug fixing should be higher) I hope they actually will give some small updates on it and make a larger one later.

I hope someone of ArenaNet can put their thoughts on this so the fire get extinguished quickly.

I love every suggestion on the list, and they don’t all have to be implemented in some big “guild improvements patch” 6-12 months from now, just take the simple things first and the rest over time. I would love to see the “last online” in one of the next few patches, even if I have to wait several months for the rest.

Umrae.5124:

Guild mission activation control
I don’t mind it the way it is atm, just don’t give the rights to morons :l

You missed the point and/or are not aware of the following bug: The mission control right only controls the right to activate a guild mission from the guild panel. That’s okay for bounty and treck (they start immediately), but activating puzzle, challenge and rush only unlocks a ~5hour time window where the mission can actually be started. In that window, anyone in the guild can actually start the puzzle/challenge/rush with the ~15min time limit.

I agree with the need for better communication between players, especially in guilds. The entire OP is full of good suggestions that ANet should be seriously considering.

At least get the “last online” stat working as a starting point.

Also, it’d be great for you to be able to have multiple tabs of guild chat open at once (one for each of your guilds)

Inactivity detection and some in-game organizational tools, such as a calendar, are sorely needed to support guilds in this game. I realize improvements like these aren’t the kind of feature that sell more copies of the game, but they are a quality of life issue and I don’t understand why they’ve been ignored while things like AoE looting were fast-tracked. Guild management tools are a must in a modern MMO and the lack of them in this game contributes heavily to the weak state of guilds in GW2. I agree with the OP and implore ANet to reconsider allocating some resources to improving this area of the game.

Falanin.4102:

Also, it’d be great for you to be able to have multiple tabs of guild chat open at once (one for each of your guilds)

This, to me, is the most important thing. I started playing GW2 with a bunch of my RL friends, but we never had enough people on line to do big activities like WvW or dungeons. So some of us joined a bigger guild to get a chance to get in on those things. But then we couldn’t chat in our friends-only guild, and eventually it withered and died and most of my friends stopped playing the game.

Only being able to chat with one guild at a time is a death sentence for small guilds.

This needs to be done. Guild Management is really weak.

If I could, I would click the +1 button a million times.

I’m not sure why Anet just can’t quite get their priorities straight. Guild feature request posts have been flooding the Suggestions forums since August 2012, but they still don’t find this a priority. Please Anet, be the gaming company that we think you are and listen to the community.

As an aside (since Anet is stuck in a box and can’t find a perspective from which guild features are a priority), all of my rl friends and many in-game friends have quit the game as a direct result of the guild features being lacking and Anet neglecting to address them over the last 11 months.

Next month the game will have been out a year now and we still don’t have a “last logged in", and no simple way of knowing of knowing who has been active. Our guild was reaching the 500 mark and it was a miserable, miserable experience to try and figure out who was inactive by use of the leaderboards. Why do I have to spend hours on this? I’m sure guild leaders and officers in large guilds everywhere are experiencing the same thing. We want active players. We want to give members a timeline of how long they can be inactive so if they are gone for months they know they will be kicked. But there is no reasonable way to monitor this.

Anet does respond to their player base. The problem is that the miserable functioning guild panel is only noticed by officers and guild leaders and therefore Anet is not really getting the grief they should be getting. If the average player experienced something this bad in their game-play in another area these boards and every other GW 2 forum would be lighting up and something would be done about it.

pmnt.4067:

Umrae.5124:

Guild mission activation control
I don’t mind it the way it is atm, just don’t give the rights to morons :l

You missed the point and/or are not aware of the following bug: The mission control right only controls the right to activate a guild mission from the guild panel. That’s okay for bounty and treck (they start immediately), but activating puzzle, challenge and rush only unlocks a ~5hour time window where the mission can actually be started. In that window, anyone in the guild can actually start the puzzle/challenge/rush with the ~15min time limit.

Never done those, so wasnt aware of that

Let’s keep this post on the first page until we get a response.

I’ve never understood why they haven’t put in the last time logged in into the guild system. Are they afraid that people will remove people their guilds and “leave them on the streets?”

After reading that the “guild management isn’t a priority right now,” why not!? Ugh that really grinds my gears. I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels this way.

This is one, albeit lengthy, among many posts with regard to the, shall we say rudimentary, guild management system. Guilds, wether you consider them a lore based idea or not, are, for a large majority of players, an integral everday part of GuildWars2. There are many many guilds out there, large or small, PvP, PvE etc., whose leaders, officers and members are crying out for improvements to the guild management system.
Now, ArenaNet, for whatever reason, this is known only to themselves, consider improving the management system a low priority, excuse me but this simply does not make sense. A key everyday part of their game is considered a low priority?
Whilst ArenaNet does largely listen to it’s customers, yes it does, this ‘low priority’ should be made a high priority as soon as they possibly can, you only have to track down all the posts regarding guild management to see the depth of feeling attached to it.
Please, if you could bring yourselves to, someone at ArenaNet reply to one of these posts to show your customer base that their needs and wants, reasonable ones at that, are not simply being ignored and are at least being considered?
Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Lonami.2987:

• Options to write long and classified pieces of text on your guild panel, for guild news and links. Editing shouldn’t remove the previous text. Message of day displayed in chat when logging in
• Last logged in in guild panel.
• Calendar with optional mail alerts minutes before it begins.
• Guild missions and playing with guildmates should have achievements of their own, with rewards that show guild progress and effort.

I quite agree with some of these improvements (some with slide changes ) the rest also sounds interesting but I really don’t care about them as much as the ones above

Bumping and +1’d. Really, this is mostly all stuff that should have been in game Day 1. ESPECIALLY with Guild Wars as a predecessor, what we have is pure retrogression, and not in a good way.

I second this, you got my +1. Very good suggestions. Lets hope they do an overhaul of the guild panel like they did with the achivement panel.

Malmis.4568:

I second this, you got my +1. Very good suggestions. Lets hope they do an overhaul of the guild panel like they did with the achivement panel.

Yes! I’d be very impressed if the guild panel was as nice as the achievements panel.

My main concern is that I want these features sooner rather than later, and Anet did not include them in their 2013 plan.

I would be happy with having guild quests, like a board were the Guild master can put up quests for members to take and do in groups. I like the whole guild mission thing, but i hate time limits. I want something hard and long for the whole guild to do together. Id love guild achievements too btw.

Another perfectly legitimate set of ideas for improving a lacklustre system, consigned to the forum scrapheap due to lack of interest, lack of will, or just plain good old fashioned intransigence.
When will we see an improvement that actually does something? Not just a new set of cosmetic fluff that keeps the masses following the carrot.
When will we see an improvement to a core part of the game?
Do ArenaNet actually care? I think they do but there silence on this matter is beginning to test ones opinion somewhat, prove me wrong ArenaNet?
The current guild management system is dull, lacklustre, largely pointless in some areas and encourages, maybe even forces, guild leaders to use third party applications to make their guild management more functional. Is this what ArenaNet want, players using third party applications because the management system is less than useful?
Come on ArenaNet, a considered reply would be nice, can you do that for us?

I also read that interview and was quite crestfallen when I read not a priority and not currently being worked on.
I stopped reading right there. Did I read that right? So I read it again and then one more time for good measure. Yep I read that right, quiet sobbing begins.

As a somewhat frequent visitor to the Forums; I know that ANet listens to the community and acts accordingly, usually with positive results. So I sit here wondering, how could ANet possibly be so utterly missing the boat on this one?

• Keeping a guild active in the game is quite difficult as it is a laborious chore to manage them.
• It it tough to meet, congregate interact and plan, without a physical place to do so i.e. Guild Hall
• Guild security lacks form and function, as in permissions for the Guild Bank

1. Guild Management has been addressed quite nicely by the OP and I agree wholeheartedly
2. Guild Halls have been begged for in so many topic posts too numerous to count, no sense in retreading that road
3. Guild Security is a topic that I don’t see much banter on, so I will detail that a bit

Guild Security by Guild Rank

There are 10 ranks available (a few more would be nice). For our guild that is 4 officer ranks (one leader and 3 officers) and 6 member/non-officer ranks (one new member default and 5 standard member ranks). Moving up thru the Guild Ranks is done by being promoted for your dedication to the guild and receives more security/responsibility as they do so.
The problem is there is barely any security to differentiate the middle 8 ranks excluding New Member (no access) and Leader (All Access).

Guild Bank as an example
One of the few things you can use to change access to is the Guild Bank.

• The Guild Bank is broken into 2 separate pieces, the Stash and the Trove/Cave.
• There are only 3 security options that you can grant for the bank: No access, Deposit access or Deposit/Withdraw access. I group the last 2 together as there is no sense having withdraw access without deposit access.

Since the 3 security options (None, Deposit, Withdraw) is about all you can do with the access, maybe some sub-access would be the way to go. Like…
Only allowed to deposit T6 materials
Only allowed to deposit cash
Only allowed to withdraw upgrade components
Only allowed to withdraw from Bank Tab(not implemented) A & B but not C or D

The Bank would need to be broken up into a minimum of 3 separate distinct areas(though 4 or more would be much better)…
Stash – for use by all members – for generic stuff
Bank – for use by all members – for higher end stuff
Trove – for use by officers – for the for storing valuable stuff to be rationed
Cave – for use by Leader – for the most valuable stuff only one person to blame if it is gone from here

Which brings us to Leadership
Only ONE Leader. With the possible exception of Ettins there is a reason why things only have one head.
Who ever made the guild is the leader. She can have one or many ranking officers but only one President/King/CEO/Guild Leader.

Now what about if it not ‘Great to be the King’ and the Leader wants to step down?

Voluntary replacement: A 3 step process. The Leader would request to step down, it would have to be accepted by the potential new Leader and finely confirmed by the old leader… done.

Involuntary replacement: If the Leader does not log in for some predetermined period of time then the leader would then swap places with the next highest ranking member who becomes Pro Tempore Leader until such time as the old leader returns. This swap would become permanent after an extended period of time.

There are certainly many other things to add on this subject but my Lunch break has run out…sorry

I saw this reddit post about taking a drastic measure to get our voices heard. Even though this is a large sacrifice for me personally, I will commit to this protest and also encourage my guildies to do the same.

It pains me to support such a violent approach to make Anet see what the community wants, but I believe this is for the best.

Support, hopefully this gets some attention.

im completely agree with you with all you said!!

Also, the message of the day shouldn’t go empty each time you try to edit it. I can’t believe I need to copy+paste the message in a .txt to avoid losing it. My calendar says it’s 2013, please.

hell YEA! … c’mon areanet.. at least the ‘’message of the day’’ that no1 check. Give us more space for write something.

Anet releasing the Wallet gives me hope that someone on their team does care for working on content that is important to the players and will make our lives easier. I just hope that person will come across all the guild feature suggestions.

Kuzzi.2198:

Anet releasing the Wallet gives me hope that someone on their team does care for working on content that is important to the players and will make our lives easier. I just hope that person will come across all the guild feature suggestions.

Well, maybe they’re working on it but don’t want to say something until it’s ready to go. I don’t think wallets were ever mentioned and the wallet was a great addition.

bump for great justice.

forgive me for the necro, but the thread deserves more attention and really hits the nail on the head.

managing a large and active guild is quite troublesome with the current and limited features.

it’d also be nice to see additions to guild missions. i would love to see them tied in with new/old living story or just new missions to do stuff with the guild.

+1
But ANET never reads suggestions; and they’re so slow if they did, it would take years to implement.

one can hope.

they haven’t changed the guild functions since launch. it’s about time.

Lonami.2987:

Last logged in

I won’t ask for a “how much influence every member produces” option. I don’t think that could be positive in any way. However, inactivity detection is a must.

We should have two types: Last represented, and last connected. Last represented could require a minimum of time, like 30min, to make sure it wasn’t a flash represent that doesn’t show any kind of activity.

It’s a pain to clean inactives to make space. This is probably the most important point of the list.

This should be higher priority than it is. While there is a way to figure out when guild members have last gotten an achievement, I’d like a much easier method than that which currently exists.

In addition, I mentioned this in a post before but we need more things to spend guild merits on! (for those who don’t realize, merits are not commendations)

I mainly just want Guild Allegiances (or Alliances).

Umrae.5124:

Guild achievements
I’d say no this. It’s purely another huge disadvantage for small guilds that don’t have all the missions. It’s hard to run small active guild anyway, since everyone wants to do the missions, and with few people it takes a long long time to unlock them. Giving achievements to guild missions would make it even harder, and would definitely kill several small guilds.

I like the idea of guild achievements as for small guilds it’s true that missions and this might be lot tougher for small guilds to get into but that doesn’t really mean it shouldn’t be put in.

As for the problems small guilds have to face would be nice if they also put in a guild alliance system and if they put in achievements specific to missions it would provide more motivation for cooperation or if you could just do alliance events that uses up an event on both guilds but they each get full rewareds both guild and personal for completion. This way you can keep the community and closeness of your small guild while being able to actually do guild missions.

I’d have to agree with anyone who thinks arena net is making a bad choice in not making community and connectivity a priority.

Run Away PLZ.7639:

I’d have to agree with anyone who thinks arena net is making a bad choice in not making community and connectivity a priority.

Yep. It makes no sense.

Bump.

Taken from OP’s link in the first post;

“There are limited resources for improving guild management at this moment, and it’s not a priority…”

This was posted about 4 months ago. Since then has anything changed that might have freed up some resources to start working on this? Also, why is this not a priority?

Would really like some answers on this. Maybe even start one of those collaborative discussions just for improving guild management?

I know that those who run the large guild I am in would love to see more guild management tools. This would make a great collaborative discussion topic.

Bump, as this is an important topic.

Coehati.1096:

I know that those who run the large guild I am in would love to see more guild management tools. This would make a great collaborative discussion topic.

it would be nice to see more stuff that guilds can actually do together.

bump.

the guild system is still terrible and it’s been over a year now.

bump.