GW2’s multi guild system is a great innovation and I would never want to go back.
However, it is in dire need of additional tools to support this new model.
- In game guild finder: I should be able to click on a person, or type in a guild tag in an ingame browser (that’s also accessible via the web), and it will show me a guild’s info page, their description of themselves and any rules they have, and some indication of their roster size / activity times. I should be able to sort the guild list via various statistics like number of members, how active the guild is, what region of the world (if any) they mostly come from, what they key activities are, etc.
- In-game guild application system: Once I find a guild by the above feature, I should be able to apply to it on the same page, and my message will be sent to a guild mailbox that designated officers can access. They can read my message and decide to invite me if they want.
- Guild chat should not require representation: Rather than only my represented guild being on guild chat, instead I should have tickboxes next to each guild. If I choose to tick all of them, then all guild chat messages from all guilds will appear in my chat box. If I do /g I will type to my currently represented guild. But I can also type /g [guild tag] and type to a specific guild.
I should also be able to set up multiple tabs in my chat box, one for each guild, and typing /g in the tab will message that particular guild.
- Some indicator of member activity: We already have influence gain as a way to measure when guildmates play together. Guild officers and leaders should be able to see statistics on how often members represent, and how much influence they generate.
Don’t like how it forces you to generate influence all the time? Then don’t join a guild that says they have a requirement on how much you participate.
- Some indicator of guild activity: Player’s should be able to see a graph of the guild’s activity over time. Members representing / influence gain rate, etc. This way players can see what time zone a guild is active in, whether the members only play on weekends, etc, and can decide if the guild fits into their own play patterns.
- You should be able to select text and cut and paste from the Message of the Day – often VOIP server info and other stuff is in there, and it’s inconvenient when you can’t cutpaste it into your browser or VOIP software.
I forsee, with the above tools available, then Guilds can more easily communicate what they’re about to prospective members, members can more easily find and apply to active guilds that fit their play style, and guild leaders can more easily weed out inactive members if they choose to do so.
The overall effect of this, is that active, participating players will start to congregate into a fewer number of larger, active guilds. Because there’s no cost to running a guild, there will be a lot of pointless dead guilds that really should be disbanded anyways.
The key to having good guilds in this game is to consolidate the active players into fewer numbers of healthy guilds. Currently everyone is too spread out over a bunch of half-dead guilds and don’t have the tools to find each other.