Guild Wars 2

I’m a guild leader and I’m new to this role. I’ve been learning how to do things as I go and struggling to adapt to the way guilds are set up in this game. I’ve sought advice from experienced guild leaders and attempted several methods of promoting guild growth and activity. Allowing players to freely join multiple guilds is a great concept, but in practice it only serves to harm guilds by compounding the flaky, whimsical nature of human beings. I’ve heard all the arguments of the idealist individual players, but as a leader trying to build a community, I have to be a pragmatist. I don’t want to remove freedoms from the game, I’d just like to quickly(ish) outline my concerns before giving suggestions.

PvE focused guilds are practically pointless. Dynamic events are easy to pug because its so easy to cooperate with ad-hock groups in the field. Dungeons are easily pugged all the time. If I wanted to do nothing but PvE with people all I would need is my friends list.

SPvP focused guilds don’t seem necessary for the same reason dungeon guilds don’t. The teams are limited to 5 players and the system is designed for easy pug access. You can have a small guild focused on it, but there’s no point in building a guild larger than 10-15 people for it.

WvW focused guilds are the only true type of large guild that can be sustained in this game. WvW is a massive scale type of gameplay that guilds ranging for 5 players to 100 players can all join in and play together at the same time. This is great, but technically this is a PvP guild; leaving many players somewhat homeless as they may only enjoy PvE content.

Here’s what I have been having a huge issue with in my guild. We recruit our butts off just to keep our activity level acceptable. Every day we have to deal with more and more members not representing. Our roster got clogged up to the point where we could have 30 people online but only 3 or 4 representing. We’ve tried whispering and talking to members to simply understand why they don’t represent us. 50% of the time it’s because they didn’t even know about the representing feature. So my first suggestion to Anet is to put some kind of pop-up notification on the player’s screen that guides them to the represent button and explains what it’s for. I’ve tried providing that explanation myself, but I really shouldn’t have to. Sometimes I am met with hostility at the assumption that I am treating them like a noob and/or trying to impose representation rules they don’t like when in fact I am simply trying to make sure they are aware of the feature.

Going back to the issue of having 30+ members online but only 3-4 representing, what am I supposed to do about this? I thought maybe if I get the right bonuses with influence, I can give my members a reason to represent. We unlocked all of the banners and started planting them at the portal hub in Lions Arch, and we activated and maintained the 10% magic find and 5% experience passives. We whispered everyone and sent mail to make people aware that we had all of these perks to take advantage of if they come back and represent us. None of it worked. It seems no one cares about these advantages, probably because of how easy they are to acquire. Any guild can easily get them so they all have them which means there’s no reason for someone to represent a particular guild for a particular buff. Indeed the only thing this does is harm smaller guilds which may be too small to earn the influence necessary to maintain the buffs. All of the larger guilds will be practically identical. cont…

This leads me to propose my second suggestion. Anet should create some new tiers of guild upgrades which give permanent and very significant bonuses to certain areas of gameplay. In Economy, for example, there should be a new tier which adds specialization in dungeon tokens OR magic find. The bonus should be big enough to make the difference for individual players decision on which guild to represent. It should also be a choice that the leader must make. The guild cannot have all of the bonuses, only 1. This would allow guilds to physically be different from each other. Economy could have a specialization tier for extra karma OR experience. In addition Anet could add tiers to Art of War for improved siege OR defensive upgrades OR maybe even a flat movement speed buff. Architecture could have something all on its own for RP guilds; a guild hall. Everyone knows Anet has the best kitten artists in the industry, so why not let them go bananas and make an amazing guild hall for roleplayers to meet and do things. After researching any one of these specialization upgrades, all others would become locked and inaccessible. The guild could have EITHER extra exp, OR the guild hall, OR extra dungeon tokens for example. Again the purpose of this would be to allow guilds to truly distinguish themselves from each other and give their members unique benefits and incentives to represent. If a guild is going to have a focus, give it a physical thing to focus on.

In an attempt to wrap this wall of text up, I’d just like to say that the way guilds are right now, they aren’t families anymore like they are in other games. Guilds in GW2 are less like friendly communities of players, and more like department stores. The GM and officers are like salesmen and the members are the customers. We salesmen have to work our butts off to sell our product to these customers and if we can’t satisfy every whim (pve, wvw, spvp, dungeons, etc) of every customer, they go to a different store (guild). If we don’t get enough customers, we don’t make enough money (influence) to maintain our store. If we can’t maintain our store, we go out of business (less and less players representing over time). It looks really really bad for a guild when a significant portion of its members don’t represent. There’s less activity in guild chat and less upgrades rolling in to benefit members which discourages more people from representing and thus a multiplicative effect consumes the guild until the non-representation is a giant cancerous tumor that I have to deal with.

I know that removing the multi-guild feature would result in the most deafening community outcry since the ending of Mass Effect 3, and I have no wish to remove player freedoms from the game. I also don’t want to feel like Hitler demanding loyalty and respect from my subjects, so I hope that Anet reads this and seriously considers improving the family and community aspect of guilds in this game somehow, even if it’s not something I suggested. Hire some sociologists and behavioral psychologists if you need to. Your guild leaders will love you for it; hell I would be willing to pay for my suggested upgrades in gems if I had to!

I haven’t had this issue. I join a guild because of an atmosphere that guild gives. If that guild has chat, discussion and the occasional group being formed for what ever the guild focus is then that is a guild I am going to represent because it adds something noticeable to my experience. A silent guild with no community even if you have all the bonuses in the world I am not going to want to represent you.

I do not think it is that different to previous games just more obvious. I have always been a member of several guilds just now I do have to log to another character just because nothing is going on it a guild.

You just have to focus on providing that community and not just bonuses.

Erin.7521:

I haven’t had this issue. I join a guild because of an atmosphere that guild gives. If that guild has chat, discussion and the occasional group being formed for what ever the guild focus is then that is a guild I am going to represent because it adds something noticeable to my experience. A silent guild with no community even if you have all the bonuses in the world I am not going to want to represent you.

I do not think it is that different to previous games just more obvious. I have always been a member of several guilds just now I do have to log to another character just because nothing is going on it a guild.

You just have to focus on providing that community and not just bonuses.

Maybe I failed to mention it clearly, but since the OP is so incredibly long I wanted to wrap it up. I do want to have the community part of the guild strong. I want active guild chat and grouping and activities. I can’t do that when no one represents. As I said, sometimes we would have 30+ people online and only 4 representing. If you can’t see chat when not representing and all you can see when viewing our roster is that 90% of my guild is not representing, it’s sadly safe to assume there’s no community activity going on and thus no reason to represent, thus the multiplicative issue where the less representing compounds upon itself until no one is representing.

There might be a threshold of members it takes to represent in order to turn this multiplicative effect in the other direction, but I haven’t reached it yet. Currently I am having all of my officers and myself sit down and talk to everyone to make sure they know how to represent, why it helps, and if they intend to do so at all. If we don’t get a response or they say no, we kick them and continue recruiting. Someone who only represents us 10% of the time is only harming our guild by clogging up our roster with non-representation.

It really is much like a cancer that must be healed or removed. If I let it sit, the guild pretty much dies. Honestly I sympathize with the GMs who impose representation rules because I can clearly see why they find it necessary. I would like to find a better solution though, and it requires Anet to take some action.

Erin.7521:

You just have to focus on providing that community and not just bonuses.

Easier to say it than do it.
If you don’t come in the guild with a few people who you already know and who you chat with via “chat window” and not an external VoIP, than creating a community with new players added through the in-game invites isn’t a success at all.

Oh I never said it would be easy but their our a lot of guilds out there that are succeeding. I think one thing to do is focus on chatting with those that are representing rather than chasing those who aren’t. To give a view from the traditional guild perspective it is like chasing the members who have left rather than those who are still there.

I just do not think there is a change that GW2 can make that will increase the community as that is something you as a guild have to create for yourselves. Making sure the representing feature is clear is one step they can make, I do agree. But extra bonuses erc. while a good thing to add in the future are not going to solve the issue you have.

It might not completely fix the issue, but it would probably help, and at the very least it would just be a cool new guild thing. It’s the only thing I can currently think of that would please both sides of the argument.

If Anet would overhaul the system, they could set it up so that your guild chat is window-based such that you can put guild 1 in one window next to your map chat, and guild 2 in another window, etc. Then they could remove representation all together and allow a single player to contribute influence to all current guilds they are in. Since there’s a 4 guild limit it wouldn’t be too hard to change all of the upgrade prices and the rate of influence gains to re-balance everything. In fact I make this suggestion number 3 for Anet’s consideration. It’s a lot more work, but it could potentially work better unless I’m missing something.

I wholeheartedly agree with the OP.

Having a multi guild system makes absolutely no sense when you don’t allow synergy between guilds. The only thing the current system is creating is jealousy and conflict between friends.

I love the all the ideas suggested in the OP, but at the very least anet should allow us to see more than 1 guild chat. I think that would be a great start, and maybe ease a little bit of the pressure that us guild leaders are feeling.