Guild Wars 2

For those of us that remember the original Guild Wars days, one of the fonder memories was the guild setup. With the advent of alliances, we were able to join up with tons more players that, though attached to their own guilds, were thus able to chat and group with other alliance members easily, and, to an extent, it created another community of its own.

And now, with guild missions having been released, it seems only logical that alliances should be in the next update. In the release notes, the developers mentioned that you might have to find others in the world to group up with in order to complete some of the more difficult guild missions. While that’s fine and dandy, doesn’t being able to simply invite another guild in your alliance to come along make much more sense?

This would provide a platform for many small guilds to earn influence and merit without having to go on massive recruiting drives or being forced to represent in another guild. It would also be in line with the GW2 mission of encouraging group play and group interaction.

If influence and merit could be earned for both the guild and the alliance (in differing amounts, of course), then there would be opportunities for additional, expensive alliance upgrades that would give some alliance wide buffs similar to regular guild rewards, but perhaps slightly larger and more effective. This would encourage more active guild/alliance play in all aspects of the game.

Capes could be introduced to supplement this. An alliance could earn enough points to buy an alliance cape, and then depending on their achievements the cape could have prestigious trims, designs, different rare colors, etc.

Doing so would provide a greater sense of identity and encourage a want to contribute to the alliance in the hopes of earning these rewards.

And, let’s face it, capes were just plain cool in GW1!

ArenaNet, the current system kind of sucks, and there are better ways to go about it. Please consider this thread and other like it, and implement the changes that your customers are craving!!

-Studzmckenzy
Borlis Pass

Ok, so this is not Gw1 thats an established fact, yet Guild Alliances provided a great way for smaller guilds such as ours to find groups amongst Alliance members.

Hi all

it’s exciting to see the upcoming content that will be injected in the game, and while I was thinking at it I noticed that GW2 lacks a thing I’ve seen elsewhere: Alliance System.
Many small guilds want to keep their identity, but as the time passes they build friendship maybe with members of other small guilds that for one reason or another tends to avoid “merges” into bigger guilds, although they would be willing to form a “cluster” of smaller guilds forming a powerful Alliance and being able to stand against larger guilds.

It would be aver useful and welcome system, I encourage both players and developers to at least consider it

Yes, please. Alliance chat is a huge thing to me.

I’ve been told that a very similar system was present in “Factions” (GW1) so, other than wondering why in the world someone would remove such extremely useful feature, I also cross finger to have it back asap

They most likely have it on their list but it is bottom of the list most likely. There are more pressing matters i dare say

Coming from GW1, I really miss the alliance feature. Under GW2 several of the guilds from our old alliance in 1 have done cross members recruiting. so that each guild is aware of when members from the other guilds are on. This provides the ability to form parties faster when your guild does not have many members on. We have used this for forming groups in wvw, for forming parties for dungeons, or just running pve. We have established ranks that specifically say “Guild so and so” in “Our Guild” for example. What we are missing is the ability to chat in the other guilds without having to step down from our guild and represent the guild we want to chat with. I think a nice feature would be to have a check box that allows guild members to chat with multiple guilds represented by the guilds that the guild leader is a member of. As an example, I as guild leader am a member of two other guild, FMI and ROTG, by default my members can chat in our guild, if they had the ability to check a box for these two guilds based on my membership, they would be able to chat with one or both guilds, while also chatting in our guild. AKA recreating the alliance chat everyone loved in GW!.

Alliances are a great way for smaller groups of guilds and friends to stay together but have a larger community and pool of people to group with.

I would like to see this.

I’ve been reading a lot about these Guild Missions and I can say that I’m pretty stoked, much like my small guild. We’ve been waiting for another reason to band together to do stuff that challenges us in ways we cannot imagine and this seems to be the one update to do so.

HOWEVER, we NEED an alliance system guys. How can you not have implemented this already? 30,000 influence?! Seriously? We’re a 25 people guild (growing) and you speak about being able to group with other guilds to accomplish these missions? Why not give us the alliance system?

Please Arenanet, for the sake of all guilds, give us an alliance system with alliance chat. Please!

Even though i have been defending arenanet on this topic, i would actually have to agree.

All these issues would have very little merit if an alliance system was introduced.

I’ll start by saying I support this, but seriously, “Why have you not implimented this yet?” Like it’s a very common thing in MMOs? Really?

We don’t need an alliance system.
Alliances are restricted to the discretions of the guild leaders with minimum benefits.

What we need is cross-guild chat.

Let our chat channels display chat channels from any given guild we belong to, irrelevant of whether or not we are representing that that.
Then you could set up your own “Guild Alliance Channel” for those guilds allied together.

And while you’re doing that, your members can have other channels dedicated to other guilds they are a part of for reasons like family, friends, RP, etc..

Kal Spiro.9745:

I’ll start by saying I support this, but seriously, “Why have you not implimented this yet?” Like it’s a very common thing in MMOs? Really?

I hear you man, but it makes you wonder because it was one of the great things in Guild Wars 2. I know it’s not the same game, but GW2 could have used more polish when it comes to Guild systems, you know? It almost feels like Guilds, alliances and such were an after thought for Arenanet during the development process.

DreamOfACure.4382:

We don’t need an alliance system.
Alliances are restricted to the discretions of the guild leaders with minimum benefits.

What we need is cross-guild chat.

Let our chat channels display chat channels from any given guild we belong to, irrelevant of whether or not we are representing that that.
Then you could set up your own “Guild Alliance Channel” for those guilds allied together.

And while you’re doing that, your members can have other channels dedicated to other guilds they are a part of for reasons like family, friends, RP, etc..

This would be a great idea as well. Still, we do agree that some sort of communication or system is necessary between guilds, right?

why do you need the devs to make a function and not just talk with other guilds about having an alliance.

redhare.9210:

why do you need the devs to make a function and not just talk with other guilds about having an alliance.

You make alliances with guilds, but we need an ingame channel to communicate with them. I see too many that are redundant in my opinion. No one uses /squad that I’ve seen for example. If there’s so many channels, why not just make one for alliances? If it bothers you so much, you could turn it on and off, also customizing which guilds channels you want to be in.

why dont you just invest in a mumble channel. Yet again why state the devs have to put it in and just find your own way around it.

Idea to solve the problem: Let us create chat channels out side map, party, guild etc. This would then allow several guilds to communicate, allow people to get advise from a large base of people and allow people in WvW to request help out side of there WvW map. This would solve alot of problems.

keln.6051:

Idea to solve the problem: Let us create chat channels out side map, party, guild etc. This would then allow several guilds to communicate, allow people to get advise from a large base of people and allow people in WvW to request help out side of there WvW map. This would solve alot of problems.

+1

keln.6051:

Idea to solve the problem: Let us create chat channels out side map, party, guild etc. This would then allow several guilds to communicate, allow people to get advise from a large base of people and allow people in WvW to request help out side of there WvW map. This would solve alot of problems.

Sounds like in-game IRC integration would be the biggest bang for buck here.

redhare.9210:

why dont you just invest in a mumble channel. Yet again why state the devs have to put it in and just find your own way around it.

Because it’s not integrated and it isn’t efficient to do so. By your logic, why don’t we create a forum, a website or a social network ourselves? I’m asking for a specific feature that should’ve been delivered seeing that it was already in the first game to begin with.

So Guild Mission content has been added, and it’s become clear how unfair this type of content is to smaller guilds that cannot afford to reasonably participate in them at the same level as larger guilds, but that don’t want to be absorbed into those larger guilds. There are plenty of threads making that point in more detail. A good solution, I believe, would be a “Guild Alliance,” which would function a bit like a small business union.

The way it would work is that any number of guilds could form together into a “Guild Alliance,” basically a guild of guilds. Only Guild leaders could participate in the alliance interface (which would function for them similarly to the standard guild interface), and only the Alliance leader and chosen officers would be able to exercise that level of authority within the Alliance.

The benefit to doing it this way is that the previous guilds remain intact and largely autonomous. You never have to “rep” the Alliance. You can only be part of one Alliance at a time, and if you’re repping your own guild, you’re also repping the alliance automatically. The Alliance would not take Influence away from your guild, it would get bonus influence that you acquire in parallel to your own guild’s, but the things available to spend it on are more limited (no banks, no WvW upgrades, no stat boosts, just access to Guild Mission content, mostly).

So the way this would work, say you have ten Guilds of five people each. They could form an Alliance. The Alliance would then have ten active members, the leaders of those guilds. The one who set it up would serve as the Alliance Leader, but could pass that role on as normal. Then as the players play, they each acquire 100 influence for their own guilds, which they can spend as they see fit, meaning each guilds’ coffers contains 500 influence at this point. They also acquire bonus influence that passes up to the Alliance, so the Alliance would now have 5000 influence to spend. This would allow an Alliance to catch up to the power guilds at a much faster rate.

Now, to prevent massive guilds from just forming Alliances of one and doubling their capabilities, there shoud be measures to limit the maximum size of guilds participating in an alliance (maybe 10-20 members tops?), and limit a minimum size of an alliance before the bonus influence is sent to them (like maybe you need 3-5 guilds in an alliance before they really do anything). If the absolute size limit is too harsh, it could be a relative reward limit, in which the smaller the guild, the more bonus XP gets sent up, so that guilds of 1-5 people would send up a bonus 100% of the influence they receive, guilds of 5-15 would send up 75%, 15-25 would send up 50%, etc. until very large guilds would barely send up any, meaning that an alliance made up of guilds of hundreds would only be able to get a “bonus” event every few weeks at most.

Would that work?

Guild missions work easily, and you don’t even have to be in a guild to do ’em…

I don’t see the problem. Instead of banding bunches of guilds together, you just grab random people.

Guild missions work easily, and you don’t even have to be in a guild to do ’em…

I don’t see the problem. Instead of banding bunches of guilds together, you just grab random people.

As I understand, this is not true. In order to receive the rewards for participating in a Guild Mission, you need to be a part of that guild at the time. Here is a link to the Wiki: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_mission

Now, for certain events non-Guild members can sort of “hang out” and participate in some of the content for kicks, but they will not receive the rewards of a participating guild member.

The random people don’t need to get rewards and many five player guilds can currently group up on the same guild missions as it stands now.

Nels the Cornwhisperer.8025:

The random people don’t need to get rewards and many five player guilds can currently group up on the same guild missions as it stands now.

Most 5 players guild don’t have the inf to even unlock the freaking guild missions, and if you not part of a guild that can do the missions you have to pay obsurd prices for ascended assecories, no i do not expect a small guild to be able to get that stuff as fast, but i DO expect to be able to get it in a reasonable timeframe, as we where promised at release, that BiS items was relatively easy to acquire, 40 laurel+50 ecto is NOT relatively easy however.

So yeah i can support the OP’s idea, beside guild alliance existed in gw1 as well as many other MMO’s before and it always worked wonders

Cash => Gems => Gold => Ascended gear. Best in slot in under 45 seconds.

Cash => Gems => Gold => Influence. Homeless people can afford the influence required to unlock guild missions after buying some beer for some minors. You should be able to do anything a homeless person can.

And last, but certainly not least… Why not just join a bigger guild?

You have all the tools you need to do everything you want right now.

first things first… your first line is blatantly false, you cant get any piece of ascended gear in 45 seconds, since you can buy your way to laurels, but i don’t mind that part of it that much, it is the 100 ecto for getting both accessories that is stupid

… as i said we were promised at release (and before that even in fact) that BiS was relatively easy to get, nowhere was there a caveat to that that you need to BUY gold for real cash, or have to be in a big guild.

As many have pointed out some of us simply do not like being one of the mass in a big guild where you likely don’t really know anyone most of the times, we prefer the small guilds. (If im spending money on gems (and I have done a couple times already in past), it is to buy stuff i want in the gemstore to get gold.

Seriously there is 3 tiers of most of the guild missions why not put tier 1 in lvl 2 or 3 and then tier 2 in lvl 3 or 4 and you can have your tier 3 in lvl 5. That way yes you oh so big guilds can get it a little faster, but it would still be within reach, for the smaller guilds, if you are so much against guild alliances

See, making them easier for small guilds is a great idea. Making a whole new system to help guilds band together into even bigger masses of people while still feeling special is the problem.

It would be way easier to simply make every Guild Mission completable with a party of five guildies. Or three guildies even. Makes a lot more sense than trying to organize a mob of mobs…

And just for reference, I’m a casual with about 12 real world friends I play with, though never at the same time. We don’t even have a guild, because there’s no point.

And last, but certainly not least… Why not just join a bigger guild?

You have all the tools you need to do everything you want right now.

Look, there are already plenty of threads about why “joining a bigger guild” is not a desirable option, about why the status quo of Guild Missions does not work for a lot of players, there’s no reason to re-litigate that argument in this thread.

If you don’t agree that there is a need for something similar to this idea, something that allows small guilds to reasonably participate in Guild Missions, then just bow out of this discussion, there are other threads for that. If, on the other hand, you do see the need, and just believe that the solution I proposed is not the best way of solving it, then that’s fine, provide alternatives, but “no solution needed” is a fight to be having in a different thread.

See, making them easier for small guilds is a great idea. Making a whole new system to help guilds band together into even bigger masses of people while still feeling special is the problem.

Why is that a problem? What harm does it cause? The idea would be to allow each guild to retain it’s own autonomy, retaining their own chat channel, bank, influence pool, banner, etc., while also allowing them the opportunity to participate evenly in this new Guild Missions system. I do understand that a system like this would take time and resources to implement, and maybe it wouldn’t be worth it, I leave that up to ANet to decide.

And yes, I know there are other ways to allow smaller guilds to participate, and if they felt like making the Guild Missions vastly less expensive to get to (like not requiring you to complete the WvW tree first at least), or if they gave full participation rewards to anyone involved in the event, whether they’re in the initiating guild or not, then fine, this proposal wouldn’t be needed. I just assumed that with the time they spent putting the Guild Missions system together, the costs involved were where they wanted them to be, at least for high tier guilds.

I’m in favor of it. Also perhaps a way to share influence throughout guilds?

Problem: There are two problems with guilds as implemented right now:

1) Small guilds are unable to compete with large guilds in influence gain, and are unlikely to be able to run the new Guild Missions.
2) Large guilds tend to require 100% Representation, which makes it difficult to have a small/social guild and a large/serious guild.

Solution: Implement a Guild Alliance system that allows small guilds to align with one larger guild, with the purpose of splitting influence gain and having separate simultaneously active chat channels.

Major/Minor Guilds
- Each guild is able to set itself as either a Major Guild or a Minor Guild.
- A Major Guild can create alliances with multiple Minor Guilds.
- A Minor Guild can join an alliance with one and only one Major Guild.
- A guild can switch its Major/Minor designation at-will, but all existing alliances must be dissolved first.

Influence Gain
- Members representing a Minor Guild allied with a Major Guild split all influence gain in half with both guilds.
- Possibly allow Major guild leaders to set an Influence tax rate anywhere from 0% to 100%.
- Events/Dungeons completed by Minor Guild members with Major Guild members grant bonus influence to both guilds.

Chat Channels
- Members representing a Minor Guild allied with a Major Guild have two chat channels, one for each guild.
- Members representing a Major Guild see only their own chat channel, and not the channels of any of the Minor Guilds.

Upgrades
- New Major Guild upgrades in Politics can increase the maximum # of Minor Guilds that can be allied with
- New Minor Guild upgrades in Politics can grant small bonus Influence for completing events to the Major Guild when allied

Comments
Please share your comments/thoughts!

Your ideas have some nice pros.

But there are few points i don’t like.
1) "- Members representing a Minor Guild allied with a Major Guild split all influence gain in half with both guilds. "
It will just boost Major guilds, and cripple minor guilds.
Lets say GuildA(100members) take GuildB (20members) as an ally. After a month GuildA finds another guild – GuildC (30 members). GuildA doesn’t have Influ to boost “politics”, so it kicks GuildB and invites GuildC. As a result GuildB Looses half of a monthly Influence.

2) You haven’t talked about any other guild upgrades besides missions. Do minor guild members use major guild upgrades? (exp, gathering, magic find bonuses?)

3) “Members representing a Major Guild see only their own chat channel, and not the channels of any of the Minor Guilds.”
Why shouldn’t there be Ally chat for all, besides minor/major guild chats?

Few flaws i see here…

Small guilds don’t have to compete with large guilds for influence, and they can have access to guild missions it will just take them a bit longer because they choose to be small.

Not all large guilds require 100% reputation, that is a very broad assumption.

Why would a guild that earns influence let other small guild spend it, how does this benefit the large guild in any manner?

Multiple guild parties already earn influence for their respective guild upon completion of a activity.

Don’t understand the point of a tax… to regain influence small guilds spend… why wont they just keep their influence in the first place?

Or they could just give us an Alliance chat channel. That’s really all I’d need to keep my happy. Our guilds/members can work out their own things about who reps where and for what activities. Really, all we need is an alliance chat channel.

Killyox.3950:

They most likely have it on their list but it is bottom of the list most likely. There are more pressing matters i dare say

I think that the latest patch and the introduction of Guild Missions awoke many people from their slumber: Guild Alliance System is now of critical importance to avoid the actually unavoidable neat division between who can enjoy the game to its fullest (huge guilds) and the unlucky souls who are cut out from that same content (medium to small guilds).

Killyox.3950:

They most likely have it on their list but it is bottom of the list most likely. There are more pressing matters i dare say

Not for my game play. There is absolutely nothing that they could add to the game that would give me more enjoyment, increase my longevity in the game, or make me appreciate A-Net more than an alliance chat system — not bug fixes, or guild missions or PvP maps. Nothing.

i agree we really need an alliance chat, actualy we must change the guild we represent to be able to chat with the whole ally guild, but meanwhile we can’t chat with our guild mates… give us a alliance channel that’s a very good idea.

Capes, scarves, half-capes for all!

And alliances are something that… well, they just need to happen.

alliances: yay!
capes: nay!

not sure either concept benefits from being tied to the other.

We should add this to the other post about Last Online Date. That way all the Guild stuff is in one place and we can keep it on the first page instead of trying to keep multiple post on the first page. I will go add this to my post on that page so everything is in one place.

I didn’t realize Alliances needed a case to be made. It seems pretty self explanitory and to be a good idea.

Capes are a problem, unfortunately. Capes were meant to be a thing at launch but were removed due to clipping issues that it seems they have not resolved.

Yes to all and especialy capes, I kittening miss capes.

Gosh dang them charr, stopping us from having capes!

VoIP programs ruined the online games chat channels. Five years ago the chat was full in all games but now they feel empty most of the time. People are not used to type, read and play anymore, the multi tasking is now replaced by the spoken words so maybe that is why no game producers care now about the chat window.
With LFG website, not even the LFG spamming isnt present anymore in the chat.

Guild Alliances should have been here day 1.

I’d love to see an alliance/cross-guild chat very soon. I belong to a guild that a bunch of us from gw1 created and i’m very loyal to but i’d love to join other guilds without having to give up guildchat there. also i’d love to have guild capes too, especially with a length cuztomization feature as the ones in gw1 were a tad short for me

Ohoni.6057:

Would that work?

Your idea is pretty sound. Although id have to disagree on the member limit.

Lets remember that alliances would probarly have to include guilds that are on the same server, due to WvW. This means that even if the whole server forms a mega alliance, theres no real detriment to other guilds on the world… Actually becoming the true representation of co-operation on that server. Now that might happen on a few, rare worlds, i think its much more likely that current mega guilds will not band together, due to trying to upkeep reputation and the fact they gain kitten loads of influence anyways.

A problem I am seeing however with the whole alliance system, is the way influence could be accumulated and then used within the context of a alliance. Would it be an extra unlock and seperate UI/tree?? Wouldnt that make the guild UI redundant?

TheJedi.2481:

Guild Alliances should have been here day 1.

I agree, it’s a feature present in very cheap MMORPG so it kinda surprised me to not find it in GW2…

capes: yes!
the more we can customize, the better…