Guild Wars 2

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/guild-wars-2/1226812p1.html

I found this article yesterday and it makes some valid points.

I myself have jumped around to several guilds and have had a very similar experience as the author of the Gamespy article.

I think getting rid of guild hopping would go a long long ways to helping the overall health of Gw2.

Please read the article.

He does make some good points.

One of the first things I noticed was that unlike GW1, when you open the guild screen, it doesn’t open to the roster. I like to quickly check if anyone’s online and have max info on them. The roster is the best one for that. So I didn’t even check anymore.

Also for some reason the chat function seemed more active in GW1. Not sure why that is. But this whole representing thing without limit seems a bit counterproductive to me as well.

I understand why they implemented guild hopping and the sentiment behind it.

Now though after experiencing it I also see the repercussions of guild hopping and I really do think removing it would be what’s best for the long term life of the game.

If nothing else it removing it should be something Anet seriously considers.

Dungeon Finder is never a solution to create a social game. If you want a social game, get rid of the instances altogether. Instances do nothing but isolate people from the game world.

Also, if you want a social game, you want an ecology within the classes/professions. Things a class can do, that others cannot. Everquest had this in spades, which made it a very social game. A Druid and Wizard could teleport, an Enchanter could give you mana regeneration, a Necromancer could summon your corpse, a Cleric could rez you, etc. I am not sure why MMOs try to get further and further away from this.

The social aspect of your game is based around the granularity of your game design, not surface level stuff like whether it has guild options or not. If you present your world as a world that people can get lost in, instead of an amusement park with every little thing pointed out on your map, you will have a more social game. If you have a reason to interact with others because other individuals offer things you want that you can’t get yourself, you will have a more social game.

To be honest, I think this is more of a player issue than a game one.

Yes, the guild design is what enables players to guild hop, but it’s the players themselves causing guilds to “fail.”

For instance: no one uses /g chat anymore, instead using Vent, TS or in my guilds case, Skype. Why chat if you have your main members in a 25 slot vent? This creates an atmosphere of no one talking. After a while, someone sees an ad for HUGE GUILD
and reps them instead, because having that amount of players, people are bound to be G-chatting

The fact the the article concludes with “they need a dungeon finder” which would basically solidify guilds as throw-away if implemented, kind of makes the whole of the article’s complaints moot.

I have been in several guilds, never heard one word out of any of them, nothing.

Makes some good points. I wonder if they can change the guild system to it has things that are required for progression, like mats for legendaries or mats for the ascended gear that will be available outside of the RNG in the single or any dungeon.

I think that would help tremendously. Unlocking these and making it so that the gear requires you be in a guild to wear it would certainly help keep people in a single guild and help people be more motivated to help one another.

Also, the whole dungeon finder thing. If they made it like WoW’s minus the problematic cross server thing or the instaport to the dungeon thing then I’d say go for it but until we can have some guarantee from them that they won’t be making their game dungeon focused in the future I see this as a problem that will further harm the community by making it even less social.

Mackdose.6504:

To be honest, I think this is more of a player issue than a game one.

Yes, the guild design is what enables players to guild hop, but it’s the players themselves causing guilds to “fail.”

For instance: no one uses /g chat anymore, instead using Vent, TS or in my guilds case, Skype. Why chat if you have your main members in a 25 slot vent? This creates an atmosphere of no one talking. After a while, someone sees an ad for HUGE GUILD
and reps them instead, because having that amount of players, people are bound to be G-chatting

The fact the the article concludes with “they need a dungeon finder” which would basically solidify guilds as throw-away if implemented, kind of makes the whole of the article’s complaints moot.

Human beings use systems that are available to them.

Blaming players is not the answer. Blaming the systems is the answer. Players are not going to ignore an available system.

Changing the system is the answer.

Your post is the same as saying that banks should regulate themselves. How about we change the system so bankers have to act responsible instead of leaving it up to them. It’s tantamount to asking a 2 year old to regulate themselves from the cookie jar with a open lid on the floor next to them.

How about we just give people a system that encourages guilds rather than kills them.

one thing they need to change is account wide guild membership.

Godmoney.2048:

Mackdose.6504:

To be honest, I think this is more of a player issue than a game one.

Yes, the guild design is what enables players to guild hop, but it’s the players themselves causing guilds to “fail.”

For instance: no one uses /g chat anymore, instead using Vent, TS or in my guilds case, Skype. Why chat if you have your main members in a 25 slot vent? This creates an atmosphere of no one talking. After a while, someone sees an ad for HUGE GUILD
and reps them instead, because having that amount of players, people are bound to be G-chatting

The fact the the article concludes with “they need a dungeon finder” which would basically solidify guilds as throw-away if implemented, kind of makes the whole of the article’s complaints moot.

Human beings use systems that are available to them.

Blaming players is not the answer. Blaming the systems is the answer. Players are not going to ignore an available system.

Changing the system is the answer.

Your post is the same as saying that banks should regulate themselves. How about we change the system so bankers have to act responsible instead of leaving it up to them. It’s tantamount to asking a 2 year old to regulate themselves from the cookie jar with a open lid on the floor next to them.

How about we just give people a system that encourages guilds rather than kills them.

So basically you’re saying players are stupid/irresponsible and expecting them to act reasonably and responsibly is bad design and asking too much?

All the game has is a means for players to represent whatever guild they want, changing that won’t change the revolving door approach to player expectations for guilds. The fact that most players in guilds have probably known each other for years, and are in a 3rd party communication solution is a huge problem for new players looking for guilds.

Mackdose.6504:

Godmoney.2048:

Mackdose.6504:

To be honest, I think this is more of a player issue than a game one.

Yes, the guild design is what enables players to guild hop, but it’s the players themselves causing guilds to “fail.”

For instance: no one uses /g chat anymore, instead using Vent, TS or in my guilds case, Skype. Why chat if you have your main members in a 25 slot vent? This creates an atmosphere of no one talking. After a while, someone sees an ad for HUGE GUILD
and reps them instead, because having that amount of players, people are bound to be G-chatting

The fact the the article concludes with “they need a dungeon finder” which would basically solidify guilds as throw-away if implemented, kind of makes the whole of the article’s complaints moot.

Human beings use systems that are available to them.

Blaming players is not the answer. Blaming the systems is the answer. Players are not going to ignore an available system.

Changing the system is the answer.

Your post is the same as saying that banks should regulate themselves. How about we change the system so bankers have to act responsible instead of leaving it up to them. It’s tantamount to asking a 2 year old to regulate themselves from the cookie jar with a open lid on the floor next to them.

How about we just give people a system that encourages guilds rather than kills them.

So basically you’re saying players are stupid/irresponsible and expecting them to act reasonably and responsibly is bad design and asking too much?

All the game has is a means for players to represent whatever guild they want, changing that won’t change the revolving door approach to player expectations for guilds. The fact that most players in guilds have probably known each other for years, and are in a 3rd party communication solution is a huge problem for new players looking for guilds.

Players being to stupid to regulate themselves? UM, hello banking industry. Um, hello humans with power.

Yeah, people regulating themselves works out real good am I right? Maybe we should just get rid of checks and balances in government and we’ll just trust them to regulate themselves.

You know like how Walmart pays their employees better and better every year, oh wait.

You know like how children with a bag of halloween candy will regulate themselves.

You know like how the Dodo bird is still around because people regulated themselves.

You know like how Rhino’s and Elephants are doing well because of self regulation.

You know how the rich don’e abuse their money and power in politics to get lower tax rates.

People are great at regulating themselves. >.> 10,000 years of human nature, numerous animals being hunted to extinction would disagree with you.

Four words: No Guild vs. Guild.

I think part of the problem is the active nature of combat and the fast respawn rates. In GW1 I could chat while in combat without too much difficulty, and once an engagement was over, I could chat for as long as I wanted without another battle taking place. In GW2, it’s kitten near impossible to chat while fighting, and if you chat when the mobs are dead, they’ve likely respawned before you can get three sentences out.

That’s cause you’re all doing it wrong.
1. Get friends. RL friends or Gamelife friends. People you know and enjoy playing with.
2. Make a guild with them.
3. Keep it SMALL (15 people MAX preferably less).

You will have camaraderie with your guildies rather then just being a random collection of people. Skype and Teamspeak are your friends as well.

arcaneclarity.5283:

Dungeon Finder is never a solution to create a social game. If you want a social game, get rid of the instances altogether. Instances do nothing but isolate people from the game world.

The days of wonderfully designed open world dungeons are over. Sad, I miss Crushbone….

Godmoney.2048:

Mackdose.6504:

Godmoney.2048:

Mackdose.6504:

To be honest, I think this is more of a player issue than a game one.

Yes, the guild design is what enables players to guild hop, but it’s the players themselves causing guilds to “fail.”

For instance: no one uses /g chat anymore, instead using Vent, TS or in my guilds case, Skype. Why chat if you have your main members in a 25 slot vent? This creates an atmosphere of no one talking. After a while, someone sees an ad for HUGE GUILD
and reps them instead, because having that amount of players, people are bound to be G-chatting

The fact the the article concludes with “they need a dungeon finder” which would basically solidify guilds as throw-away if implemented, kind of makes the whole of the article’s complaints moot.

Human beings use systems that are available to them.

Blaming players is not the answer. Blaming the systems is the answer. Players are not going to ignore an available system.

Changing the system is the answer.

Your post is the same as saying that banks should regulate themselves. How about we change the system so bankers have to act responsible instead of leaving it up to them. It’s tantamount to asking a 2 year old to regulate themselves from the cookie jar with a open lid on the floor next to them.

How about we just give people a system that encourages guilds rather than kills them.

So basically you’re saying players are stupid/irresponsible and expecting them to act reasonably and responsibly is bad design and asking too much?

All the game has is a means for players to represent whatever guild they want, changing that won’t change the revolving door approach to player expectations for guilds. The fact that most players in guilds have probably known each other for years, and are in a 3rd party communication solution is a huge problem for new players looking for guilds.

Players being to stupid to regulate themselves? UM, hello banking industry. Um, hello humans with power.

Yeah, people regulating themselves works out real good am I right? Maybe we should just get rid of checks and balances in government and we’ll just trust them to regulate themselves.

You know like how Walmart pays their employees better and better every year, oh wait.

You know like how children with a bag of halloween candy will regulate themselves.

You know like how the Dodo bird is still around because people regulated themselves.

You know like how Rhino’s and Elephants are doing well because of self regulation.

You know how the rich don’e abuse their money and power in politics to get lower tax rates.

People are great at regulating themselves. >.> 10,000 years of human nature, numerous animals being hunted to extinction would disagree with you.

Thanks for not addressing any points in my posts, choosing instead to draw poor analogies as straw-man arguments.

The issues are, and I’ll spell it out for you, that players:

1. Do not have consequences for leaving or not repping any guild.
2. Do not have any attachment to the guild they join.
3. Join either huge family-type guilds that serve no purpose but to be a chat room, or are small, insular groups of friends.
4. Are turned off by the fact that /g chat is empty, so the guild feels empty.

arcaneclarity.5283:

Dungeon Finder is never a solution to create a social game. If you want a social game, get rid of the instances altogether. Instances do nothing but isolate people from the game world.

The way fractals are designed hurts the communities alot also. Everyone in guild has no doubt noticed that making groups to them separates the people heavily, the ones on high levels refuse to do low level ones and low level ones can’t join the high ones and everyone end up spamming for groups instead in guild chat and lion’s arch instead of you know , like playing them.
Still can’t believe they came up with such a system.

I think I’ve seen an article or post on from every MMO on why guilds are failing. MMOs are a social game but I feel sometimes the game community depends on them a little too much socially. I love the guild system in GW2. I have a overly active guild I am in but hardly know any one. I have my own guild of three. No one ever votes for my guild name so I get to make it here. I have a 3rd guild that has all my MMO friends I’ve played with over the years. Then I have my GW1 guild. You know what is really crazy though some time I play the game by myself but cause an MMO is a social option not a social rule.

First point is kinda void, he joined guilds randomly.

Second point… he is 1000% right. It’s absolutely unconceivable for a mmo in 2012 to come out without an auto-grouping LFG tool.

arcaneclarity.5283:

Dungeon Finder is never a solution to create a social game. If you want a social game, get rid of the instances altogether. Instances do nothing but isolate people from the game world.

Also, if you want a social game, you want an ecology within the classes/professions. Things a class can do, that others cannot. Everquest had this in spades, which made it a very social game. A Druid and Wizard could teleport, an Enchanter could give you mana regeneration, a Necromancer could summon your corpse, a Cleric could rez you, etc. I am not sure why MMOs try to get further and further away from this.

The social aspect of your game is based around the granularity of your game design, not surface level stuff like whether it has guild options or not. If you present your world as a world that people can get lost in, instead of an amusement park with every little thing pointed out on your map, you will have a more social game. If you have a reason to interact with others because other individuals offer things you want that you can’t get yourself, you will have a more social game.

Well said arcaneclarity

What would go a long ways towards helping guilds is a built in voice chat. At this point, there is very little excuse to not have one.

its true evrything in that article is true and the dungeon finder can help but they are not puting that thing whic is SIMPEL thing to do

I’ve been in 3 total since launch. I pre-screened 2 of the 3 extensively before joining.

First 1 – very restrictive guild rules, always required to be on vent when online, very sensitive to anything said in guild chat. It did not come across this way during my review of the guild which says it is “family” oriented, but it got pretty absurd. People stopped using guild chat for fear of getting PM’d with a nasty message from an officer. The final shoe dropped when some of those on the “inside track” within the guild were allowed to get away with “drama” in vent and in guild chat while those who were not “insiders” would get a guild kick for any similar offense. Eventually I stopped caring about the guild, lashed out at them for their nepotism, and got kicked. Who cared at that point.

Second 1 – OK guild but on a server that was in the midst of dying (Henge). Severed ties when I leapt off that fail server.

Third guild – open, friendly, over 400 members, always doing groups – good guild, no BS.

So – the article is partly right but some of this comes back to the player – do your homework on a guild before you join. And if you learn they are full of it – move on. There are some really good guilds out there but you need to research them.

Like any other “social activity”, you need to find a guild that you like. It will take time for some people to find a guild that is the best “fit” for them and what they want to get out of the game.

Jinn Kazuma.2163:

What would go a long ways towards helping guilds is a built in voice chat. At this point, there is very little excuse to not have one.

Yes there is.

The bandwidth for the graphics and sound and all the other data you’re already getting is huge from them. You want to throw in a voice chat client and almost effective double that? Also meaning they have to divert resources that should be supporting other aspects of the game (all those bugs everyone keeps complaining about) to developing, implementing and then supporting it. Also meaning they add further hardware demands for use of the product and that limits their audience and customer pool.

Why would they do that when there are a plethora of free and easy options out there for players to use such as Skype and Teamspeak? They do this FAR better than ANet is ever going to do it. Use them.

We’re probably better off with the Guild Wars 1 version of guilds. I’d much rather have alliances (and the ability to represent other guilds within my alliance) as well as an alliance chat than the current system. Both are fine systems that are lacking in certain areas (such as GW1 not allowing you to see online alliance members and GW2 not fostering loyal members), but if we take the best from both we could come up with something stronger and better.

And I am flatly against a dungeon finder. Automatically throwing me into a room with 5 strangers is cold and mechanical. It’s like sorting objects on a factory line. No thanks. I’d rather have a party-find system that’s some sort of mashup between GW1 and Star Trek Online. I want a bulletin board style interface in-game where I can browse guilds and their recruitment ads, where I can browse active parties seeking more, where I can find dungeon groups seeking more, etc. A random dungeon finder is pretty god awful, keep it away.

You should be able to chose whatever guild you want BUT staying in a guild for a long time should reward you for your contribution. There’s no real contribution system in guilds at the moment, the influence and upgrades are so small it doesn’t really make a difference and any guild can get them.

Once ArenaNet add guild halls, GvG and better upgrades and rewards people will feel more connection to their guild. Guild rewards is really important for guild members, it encourages them to keep playing in the same guild.

WoW has a great guild rewardsystem, the longer you play in a guild the more reputation you will earn and you can unlock and buy new rewards like mounts, guild armour and other stuff like banners.

It’s really important to show what guild you are in and how much you have contributed.

It’s also up to the guild and the people in there to encourage new members to stay and play with them. Some are not the most social players and tend to leave as fast as they don’t get attention.

Kerithlan.1659:

We’re probably better off with the Guild Wars 1 version of guilds. I’d much rather have alliances (and the ability to represent other guilds within my alliance) as well as an alliance chat than the current system. Both are fine systems that are lacking in certain areas (such as GW1 not allowing you to see online alliance members and GW2 not fostering loyal members), but if we take the best from both we could come up with something stronger and better.

And I am flatly against a dungeon finder. Automatically throwing me into a room with 5 strangers is cold and mechanical. It’s like sorting objects on a factory line. No thanks. I’d rather have a party-find system that’s some sort of mashup between GW1 and Star Trek Online. I want a bulletin board style interface in-game where I can browse guilds and their recruitment ads, where I can browse active parties seeking more, where I can find dungeon groups seeking more, etc. A random dungeon finder is pretty god awful, keep it away.

Everything about this post should be taken as gospel.

A LFG/Guild browser UI is an exceptionally wonderful idea.

I think the writer got his analysis pretty dead on.

I run a guild on Tarnished Coast and we’ve been seeing a lot of what was described (and more). My stance during recruitment (before the game launched) was that I would not allow multi-guilding as a general rule. Exceptions could be made on an individual level if it was felt the reason made sense.

This was an extremely unpopular stance prior to launch and I know a lot of people with a similar position saw themselves getting eaten alive in forum rages from players who felt that it was their absolute right to guild surf every night, and that it was up to the guild to earn their participation at every moment.

I can understand, from a players perspective, how intoxicating this new freedom might be considering how many guilds in other games largely held the exact opposite position and really took advantage of (or neglected) players.

But I also knew perfectly well that the opposite extreme was going to be equally as dysfunctional. And as predicted it is. When players can channel surf guilds, they have no reason to invest into a specific one. They literally become consumers of what the guild is offering, like showing up to eat dinner, with zero motivation to help set up before-hand or stick around afterward.

Event planning and implementation is not easy, and the above mentality does little to help that. You need as many (or more) planners and facilitators than consumers of that content.

The “represent” drift has already started to occur in my guild, although it remains minor right now. Interestingly enough the people doing it are the same ones that have stayed un-engaged with the guild, but will show up to consume events we are able to put together. They do not respond to offers of assistance, don’t often engage in /guild, and are generally very distant. They are also clearly dissatisfied with their experiences with the guild.

Oddly enough, the folks that have integrated extremely well with everyone (the guild moved over from WoW, so there is a solid foundation of pre-existing members) are the ones that have gotten into Mumble with us and socialized.

It is an unexpected turn of events, since in WoW our voice chat was used almost exclusively for raiding and was otherwise totally neglected. In GW2 we have people in Mumble interacting whether we are in-game or not (I’ll sit in Mumble while I do dishes and just listen). Keeping out in-game /guild channel active is actually something we put a lot of intention behind since it is otherwise not something that is happening naturally like it has in other games.

I do believe that the action oriented nature of GW2 has made it substantially easier to use voice instead of type.

Anyhow, rather than re-state what the GameSpy article already stated, I do want to offer that I am steadily realizing that guilds need a lot more in the way of administrative tools to help address what the game already offers. I need to know how often someone does not represent the guild, I need to know when they last logged in. Things like that. I am a tolerant person, but I’d still like to be able to make informed decisions in cutting people loose if they clearly have no interest in the guild.

It would also be nice to have an in-game association between accounts and characters if that character has represented the guild. Having a roster of account names forces you to manually compile character lists which is mildly annoying.

I also think, despite the prolific use of Mumble, that we need the ability to create custom channels. I know that being able to form guild alliances, or just have a channel for OOC banter, would help a ton. The game lacks certain social tools that I think people expected to have.

I can’t comment on the Dungeon Finder tool simply because the guild will generally never need to use something like that. We are very good about supporting each other in that way and keeping runs going on a nightly basis. I can see the merits of the system, I suppose I can see the down-side too. Ultimately I am just fortunate enough to not need to pursue that either way.

None notice the lack of Guild Wars… I mean.. guild vs guild battle?

And let be honest… guild in gw2 is just a glorified chat channel.

TabMorte.5297:

Jinn Kazuma.2163:

What would go a long ways towards helping guilds is a built in voice chat. At this point, there is very little excuse to not have one.

The bandwidth for the graphics and sound and all the other data you’re already getting is huge from them. You want to throw in a voice chat client and almost effective double that? Also meaning they have to divert resources that should be supporting other aspects of the game (all those bugs everyone keeps complaining about) to developing, implementing and then supporting it. Also meaning they add further hardware demands for use of the product and that limits their audience and customer pool.

Graphics and sound don’t affect bandwidth as they are served up client side. Only things like combat data, and actor state are marshaled by the server. Chat is usually handled by a separate server in games like this, and I would assume that voice would either have its own server or be served up by the existing chat server. It could also be managed by the instance server if voice chat were specific to dungeons or whatever.

Probably they would implement it to be peer-to-peer like skype since voice chat wouldn’t need to be regulated by the game’s servers.

Regardless, I personally am pretty intolerant of how strangers sound and act on voice chat and would immediately disable the feature should it exist. I only want to talk to people I’ve known for a while. And there are definitely a lot of people, who aren’t elitist like me, but are insecure or awkward about using voice chat.

The crossover of people who are willing to talk to strangers on voice chat, but aren’t willing to coordinate to talk on skype, ts or vent is very small.

Back on topic: Honestly I think it’d help a lot if one could join multiple guild chat channels at once, instead of only the guild being represented.

Ethawn Fanar.3871:

I run a guild on Tarnished Coast and we’ve been seeing a lot of what was described (and more). My stance during recruitment (before the game launched) was that I would not allow multi-guilding as a general rule. Exceptions could be made on an individual level if it was felt the reason made sense.

This was an extremely unpopular stance prior to launch and I know a lot of people with a similar position saw themselves getting eaten alive in forum rages from players who felt that it was their absolute right to guild surf every night, and that it was up to the guild to earn their participation at every moment.

I can understand, from a players perspective, how intoxicating this new freedom might be considering how many guilds in other games largely held the exact opposite position and really took advantage of (or neglected) players.

But I also knew perfectly well that the opposite extreme was going to be equally as dysfunctional. And as predicted it is. When players can channel surf guilds, they have no reason to invest into a specific one. They literally become consumers of what the guild is offering, like showing up to eat dinner, with zero motivation to help set up before-hand or stick around afterward.

Hi, I’m someone who despises guilds (in any game) that, as a requirement, force me to only be a part of them or to exclusively contribute to them. It’s a problem that I had in Star Trek Online as well as World of Warcraft. My reason isn’t because it’s a breath of fresh air to have a system or whatever else you think. The reason is that it’s an artificial constraint on my account.

In Star Trek Online, most of the fleets use extra chat channels to manage out of character or etc chats. Because of this, one of the prerequisites to joining the majority of the game’s fleets is making an oath that you won’t join any other fleets with any character under any circumstances for as long as you’re with that fleet. In short, they expect you to join with your account rather than with your character.

I find this unacceptable as someone who usually separates my PvP/PvE/RP characters instead of using the same character for everything. If I join a PvP fleet, then I’m unable to have my RP character join a RP fleet. The RP character must remain fleetless or join the PvP guild/alt-guild. I understand why a fleet leader would want to do this (to keep the player-created chat in line, or to prevent spying with enemies), but it still feels unnecessarily restrictive to me.

In World of Warcraft, for a long time I was unable to join any guilds with a strict anti-Horde or anti-Alliance policy. I enjoyed playing both factions and had characters on both sides. Because I played a human alt, for example, I was unable to join a large number of Horde guilds with my Undead main. This prevented me from joining several guilds that I had friends in on both sides of the fence. Eventually changes to the game made this pretty much vanish, but while it lasted it was pretty bad.

In Guild Wars 2 my problem is that I have a small guild filled with my real life friends. There’s about 10 of us (half of which log in once a week), which means that we earn influence slowly. We don’t want to be a competitive or huge guild, but we do need influence to get upgrades like the guild bank or guild armor. I have the same issue as I do in STO where I can’t have my split character archetypes representing proper guilds.

If I decide to join a guild that grinds dungeons all day or that loves wvw or something, I can do that… but the down-side is that these super-huge guilds that have 60-100 people constantly representing earn influence much faster and still demand constant representation. This means that I’m unable to invest in my small guild (which takes way more time to invest in/is in higher demand of influence) while the bigger guild (which is way lower demand of influence) grows fatter. Two points of influence to my small guild is worth way more than two points of influence to a giant.

I understand that every guild has the same desires and demands that my small guild has, but what the big guilds need to understand is that they’re still going to get influence from me when I run dungeons with them or flip camps in wvw. They don’t need me constantly representing them. They just don’t.

The issue with demanding my representation is that I’m unable to properly manage where my influence resources are going. Joining a guild and not representing often might seem fickle to you, but to me (and I am sure a large number of other players) it’s because we recognize that you’re already well-off on resources. I’m more inclined to do something when I don’t have to do it. If my guild is in good shape and none of my friends are online, then if your guild has been good to me I’ll join with you for a while.

Gehenna.3625:

He does make some good points.

One of the first things I noticed was that unlike GW1, when you open the guild screen, it doesn’t open to the roster. I like to quickly check if anyone’s online and have max info on them. The roster is the best one for that. So I didn’t even check anymore.

Also for some reason the chat function seemed more active in GW1. Not sure why that is. But this whole representing thing without limit seems a bit counterproductive to me as well.

Wait, your guild menu doesn’t open to a roster? Mine does.

Push G, see exactly who is online and who isn’t, every time.

Anet seem to think that to create a MMO game, you need to create a big persistent world. Then you create a neverending dungeon to take people out of those areas.

Of course Guild Wars has guilds. But there are no guild battles and no reasons to stay loyal to any guild. So a lot of people don’t really care. They take guild membership so lightly it became meaningless.

But on the bright side, everybody is together in LA talking to each other now thanks to the new dungeon.

LF1M fractals, must be level10+
etc…
etc

We are just all one big guild looking for each other in the same town.

Cumbaya my lord, cumbaya ^^

Running a guild takes a good deal of effort, it’s also takes the participation of it’s members to have a good social experience. The guild setup in GW2 is fine, it’s always been an issue to start up a guild and have it fail in short order. It takes a certain kind of person to run a successful guild in as much as it takes a bit of luck to find the right people that fit well together. People have always blamed the tools in MMO’s, when it’s really more about the players.

Guild hopping isn’t a good mechanic. Not sure why that was instituted. I don’t hop. But thats my choice. We have several that do and we’re okay with it since its part of this game.

But, would rather see it changed if given the choice.

Raf.1078:

Guild hopping isn’t a good mechanic. Not sure why that was instituted. I don’t hop. But thats my choice. We have several that do and we’re okay with it since its part of this game.

But, would rather see it changed if given the choice.

There’s no raiding, or things requiring large numbers of people at once, so guilds exist only to socialize, and as an easy access LFG.

Lack of basic guild management tools doesn’t help things either. A guild calendar would go MILES to help guilds, IMO.

Kerithlan.1659:

And I am flatly against a dungeon finder. Automatically throwing me into a room with 5 strangers is cold and mechanical. It’s like sorting objects on a factory line. No thanks.

Yes, because spamming “LF2M FotM lvl 10” is meaningful conversation.

Dungeon Finder isn’t the answer to why guilds fail in any case. Its a completely different issue. Guilds fail for a variety of reasons. Bad management, immaturity and egos come to mind right off hand. And if you are just unlucky…all 3 of those will be present in your rapidly imploding guild.

Really…successful guilds just boil down to good people having fun in a game that they enjoy.

Guild hopping is fine. There just needs to be more point to being in a guild.

We need guild log-on/log-off notifications. We need achievement broadcasting to guilds. We need ability to set notes on the guild roster. We need ability to display alts other than the last-used on the guild roster.

These are all really, really easy things to do (or they should be, unless the game’s been coded in some really bizarre way). They’re trivial. They should have been there at launch. They should have been there in the first patch. It’s baffling that a game called Guild Wars doesn’t have basic guild functionality that, for instance, WoW had at launch.

I hope more website and more gamers out there write out a detailed article about the perils and problems of GW2.

I want a freaking LFG system. By the way I’m looking for a group right now, whats the website everyone is using I forgot to save it.

I don’t quite agree with the author of that article. Sure, there are plenty of dead-end guilds that become empty after a while. However, there are also plenty of guilds with great leadership that give members a reason to stay. Good leaders will try to be as inclusive as possible with frequent guild events (not just dungeons), and good members will try to answer questions that the newer players have.

The number of guilds emptying out is no fault of the system, but rather the fault of the members. If you like a guild where everyone is friendly, inclusive, and helpful then perhaps you should start with instilling these qualities in yourself. Guilds aren’t exclusive in this game, so you can’t rely on exclusivity for member retention.

Fuz.5621:

Kerithlan.1659:

And I am flatly against a dungeon finder. Automatically throwing me into a room with 5 strangers is cold and mechanical. It’s like sorting objects on a factory line. No thanks.

Yes, because spamming “LF2M FotM lvl 10” is meaningful conversation.

Yes, because that is EXACTLY what I posted as an alternative. Why don’t you quote the rest of that paragraph? Oh that’s right, because then you couldn’t make sarcastic statements on the internet, my bad.

Crappy guilds consisting of 10 random people are failing, sure. That’s to be expected. Now, I am a goon so this problem doesn’t apply to me (we take the initiative and destroy ourselves rather than waiting for the game systems to do it) but there are plenty of active pubby guilds on my server that I see running around all the time. Your expectations can only be so high when joining a guild that recruits from LA map chat though.

Maybe adding a fee on representing a guild could curb the guild hopping. If you stand down from a guild, you won’t get penalized or charged for a fee. But once you represent a specific guild, you get charged a fee, and that fund goes to the guild bank. The Guild Leader and the Officers won’t lose any money since they can withdraw from the bank, but the newbies and the normal members would think twice by standing down from a guild. And the Officers can set the amount of how much they can charge.

I wish they would make guild similar to how they work in most other games, that you have to join with each of your characters.
If someone wanted to make a guildless character, they couldn’t. Characters are tracked by guild even if you aren’t representing. Once you have a friend or guild, you cannot have “anonymity” in game anymore. even the invisible option doesn’t really work. Login in from the launcher show that you’re online ingame, then when you enter the game it tells your friends that you’ve come online, and if you go invisible it still track your location in friend and guild list.

Volomon.9147:

By the way I’m looking for a group right now, whats the website everyone is using I forgot to save it.

http://gw2lfg.com/

Godmoney.2048:

Yeah, people regulating themselves works out real good am I right? Maybe we should just get rid of checks and balances in government and we’ll just trust them to regulate themselves.

You know like how Walmart pays their employees better and better every year, oh wait.

You know like how children with a bag of halloween candy will regulate themselves.

You know like how the Dodo bird is still around because people regulated themselves.

You know like how Rhino’s and Elephants are doing well because of self regulation.

You know how the rich don’e abuse their money and power in politics to get lower tax rates.

People are great at regulating themselves. >.> 10,000 years of human nature, numerous animals being hunted to extinction would disagree with you.

How did you go from talking about a gamespy article to talking about this LOL.

Anyway re: the article, this has already been posted and one of the agreements was that while Gw2 social system does need some improvements, the writer was joining random guilds in LA so really what do you expect.

dungeon finder wont fix anything. the world is DEAD right now. they need to keep the action in Tyria, not dungeons. if anything, rewards need to be better in the open world. id rather have a mindblowing open world and mediocre dungeons than having all focus shifting to crap like FOTM.

nerva.7940:

dungeon finder wont fix anything. the world is DEAD right now. they need to keep the action in Tyria, not dungeons. if anything, rewards need to be better in the open world. id rather have a mindblowing open world and mediocre dungeons than having all focus shifting to crap like FOTM.

Someone explain to me why did they planned a beatiful dynamic world and then introduced a dungeon that requires spamming Lfg in a single city hub leaving the open world empty?