Guild Wars 2

Mackdose.6504:

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

- It’s never the player issue. Players are static. Game is what molds the behavior of players. What is easy to do, what is hard to do? What sort of visibility and access constraints there are? What kind of playing is encouraged and what is punished? These are questions of design.

Zenith.6403:

Mackdose.6504:

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

- It’s never the player issue. Players are static. Game is what molds the behavior of players. What is easy to do, what is hard to do? What sort of visibility and access constraints there are? What kind of playing is encouraged and what is punished? These are questions of design.

This is completely inaccurate to this discussion, players aren’t static, their lives and needs change. This game allows more choice with less punishment. If someone that leads a guild demands people to rep 24/7 with few exceptions that’s their choice. I have a pretty tight nit group and i don’t demand repping, they do it because we enjoy playing together, period.

I run a guild and am a member of another and rep the guild that i run with. It’s more at the hands of players than ever in GW2.

Our guild has taken the problem by the horns.

Before members join we make sure they are cool with our rules, one of them being “You cannot multi-guild”

This has created a HUGE bond for our guild. We all run groups constantly and we are all in WvW together.

We also have 40+ active “representing” members on prime time having a good time and a great community within guild

People don’t care about guilds because they don’t want to. Not because of multi-guild system.

Stop blaming the game for player desires.

If there is a lot of non-sociable people in GW2, then guild system won’t change them.

90 members – only 6 on last night. Do the math.

Josher.9612:

90 members – only 6 on last night. Do the math.

exactly… every time i get into game i check all 4 of my PVE guilds and out of 4 guilds there might be 10 total online – primetime EST US.

and not only that.. but my contact list is huge, as i have a habit of adding cool players that i’ve done random dungeons and events with. i think i have around 35-40 players listed and i check it regularly because i like to group with fun people and personalities. but its just GRAY… none of them are getting online.

GW2 has very very weak social stickiness.

My guild is doing fine! Lack of guesting and not being able to do cross-server dungeons with our EU members definitely hurts, but we get by.

Multi-guilding can work, if the person in question is both honest and dedicated enough (and has enough time for at least semi-regular participation in both guilds). Be upfront that you’re in another guild already, what you expect from and can give to both, and if that is in line with what both guilds expect from you. Most of all, don’t spend 90% of your time in your big glorious main guild and then expect the alt guild to instantly be there for you when you deign to give them some time now and then. People who do that are supremely irritating and deserving of some firm words and a swift kick if they keep it up.

My guild is failing (on GW2, at least) because they all got to 80 and got bored. I’m pretty much the only active player of my group that still chills on GW2 (and I play everyday!)

I still play with them all on other games, but I think they’ll probably eventually come back after a considerable amount of perma new content is released, and maybe a few extra that didn’t want to fork over the 60 clams.

I think they really missed out on not coming back for the Halloween event, myself (and I told them). Best Holiday event I’ve seen in an MMO to date.

This is the problem I’ve had with all three of the guilds I’ve been in. They all had voice comms too but no one ever uses them.

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.

The article is about members hopping guilds. You’re talking about banks. Now unless you’re suggesting banks would be regulated better if members didn’t have the ability to switch banks and/or use more than one bank, I’m having a hard time following your analogy. Guild members aren’t on par with bankers using real life as an example. Guild leaders are. Members are equivalent to bank customers.

Also, systems are human created so if your argument is that humans are inherently flawed then inevitably so are the systems we create to regulate ourselves.

Any system has its pluses and minuses. Games with more restrictive guild systems already exist. This game offers a less restrictive system for which there was a demand. Personally, I’d be happy to see when the last time members were online so I could trim the fat and have a better idea of who is active or not. We have active members who also periodically represent family guilds instead, and guilds that a parent enjoys may not necessarily be appropriate for their child. To suggest removal of this feature is antisocial and against the spirit of the game’s philosophy.

Aly Cat.9415:

The article is about members hopping guilds.

The article is silly; bad guilds exist in every game. If anything, guild hopping allows for players to more readily find the guild that suits them best. At worst, it’s no more an indictment of this game than any other MMO out there, in that bad guilds are bad guilds are bad guilds….

In essence, a good guild maintains membership regardless of how easy it is to join/leave guilds. Ironically, its no more easy to join/leave here, so I really have to wonder just what someone is smoking when they claim that guild hopping is an issue.

lothefallen.7081:

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.

I think this hits a big nail on the head. While the guild issue is a secondary problem to the way the classes are set up. Builds, specs, roles, inter-class reliance is all really homogenized. Mix that with the fact that everyone runs basically the same thing due to lack of skill…it’s a very anti-social system.

Nonsense; the truth is, social in MMO was related to downtime. Starting with WoW’s push to minimize downtime, you’ve seen less and less socialization in MMOs as subsequent developers copied the WoW model (as best they could interpret it).

Builds, instancing, etc.; it’s all meaningless. The most socialization I’ve experienced in GW2, or any recent MMO I’ve played, has been associated with downtime (excepting socialization via voice chat software).

Sorrow’s Embrace path 1 was a great spot to socialize for a few minutes while waiting for the patrols to pass. Now, it’s content I don’t even bother entering without some sort of heavily premade group, ie people I’m on voice chat with, ie no new people, and the content doesn’t even support the same level of socialization because there’s no longer the same downtime.

WoW focused on eliminating personal downtime. I feel that too many developers misinterpreted this to mean any downtime. Even Blizzard made that mistake in Burning Crusade, when they started streamlining dungeons, removing extra trash, extra packs, extra patrols, etc. Half the nuance or more of clearing a dungeon was, for me, in getting to a given boss, but all that has largely been removed from modern MMOs.

Without rambling further, I guess I should just conclude by saying that socialization isn’t a function of the holy trinity or class builds or instancing or dungeon finder. It’s most directly a function of the content. If the content allows for constant action, then there’s no time to socialize.

I think we should learn to use the multi-guild idea to our benefits. Not every guild is going to do everything in the game, why should someone be limited from one aspect of the game with a consistent group because the guild he’s in now doesn’t do that? That’s what I think this whole idea was designed to fix.

If people are only logging on for your magic find buff, and then you don’t see them anymore once it’s gone, then maybe you should be looking into your guild and what the point of it is. What are you doing besides having a random perk to make people want to represent your guild all week long?

Games like this have a lot of different types of content. This system lets you have a guild for PvP, a guild to run dungeons, a guild to level alts, a guild for farming mats and crafters… You can do every piece of content in the game as a guild. But if your guild doesn’t offer any of that, and you’re just a social guild, then it’s really not fair to punish someone because they have another guild during the week for PvP.

Everyone wants to lead a guild, but not everyone wants to lead a guild through the game. Again, if your people aren’t consistently representing your guild, maybe you should look into wanting to do some of the stuff that their other guilds are doing. You’re a guild, not a cult.