Guild Wars 2

BrunoBRS.5178:

influence, quite honestly, is a non-currency for most guilds (it’s like guild karma, everyone has tons of it but very little to spend on after a while), so i don’t see how multi-repping would damage the system right now.

Influence is quite valuable if you know how to use it properly.

If multi-repping were a thing, myself and a friend could build 5 guilds and do events together. We’d be earning 100 influence per event across our 5 guilds.

Oh, the glorious guild catapults we could build.

Nike.2631:

•stacking in the guild bank should be possible without first moving it to your own inventory.

Not possible for technical reasons – multiple people may be manipulating the guildbank contents at the same time. The current system prevents that from going horribly awry or being purposefully manipulated.

Workaround, though may come across a bit vague in the ui.

when an item is dropped onto a stack, it will be added into the next empty slot, but flagged for compacting, when all instances of the guild bank are closed it will be moved stacked in the slot on which it was dropped OR stacked on the first available stack of that item if the slot on which it was dropped is now either empty or contains a different item

Frankly, and without meaning to sound controversial, it sounds like there is a difference of opinion here from people who use guilds in a utilitarian fashion and people who use them to try and build a community within the game. If anything, it demonstrates the importance of only giving rewards to a main guild, because anything else will just be used to game the system.

If we are going to get into things like guild halls, I can’t see how you can possibly have that conversation if you aren’t dedicated to the idea of a primary guild as a community.

BrunoBRS.5178:

do away with the exclusionary repping system, allow people to actively take part in all of their guilds.

just theorycrafting here: wouldn’t this completely destroy the concept of guild itself? if you are part of all guilds, may as well remove guilds at all and simply have merits/influence/whatever rain upon all players as they login…

JonPeters.5630:

I see a lot of talk about alliances. Two questions on that front:

1) What functionality would you like to get out of an alliance?
2) What makes you want alliances?

1) Functionality:
The ability to interact with other guilds of my choosing (not my guild leader, or any other persons choosing).

My influence generated for each of my guilds.

Able to see guild chat for each of my guilds. Possibly guilds I am not currently representing being in an alliance chat type of channel (with guild tags displayed).
Ability to type in each guild using a separate /chat option would be nice too.

To not get hassled by my guild leader about repping (or have to be the hassle giver).

Alliance to be a polish on the multi-guild concept.

Removal of the non-representing icon. (only necessary if other functionality is in place).

2) The ability to be in a PvX guild that is cross server AND be in a server dedicated WvW guild. This is pretty necessary with megaserver.
Also the removal of hassles caused by non-representation (root cause being influence, and chat).

I will jump in on this because I am a HUGE fan of alliances. Alliances can/will solve nearly all existing problems with small and specialized guilds.

Goal: Guild Alliances

Purpose: To create guild alliances between multiple guilds, while at the same time, individual players create loyalty to a single guild (rather than rep one guild for one activity, and another for another activity).

Functionality: Guilds will be able to ally/join an alliance (with limited number of guilds) both in and out of different servers. Guilds will be able to scout out other guilds that they may have interest in and agree together to join one another. Different RP guilds for example can ally themselves as well as having other types of guilds join them. Another example would be PvE/PvX/WvW/PvP allying themselves together to gain access to specialties that their one guild does not have by themselves. Leaders of guilds in an alliance can implement a voting system for letting new guilds join the alliance, OR have an alliance leader who has the final ‘word’. An alliance chat feature would also be needed in order to not have to rep individual guilds to see what is being discussed

With this implemented, guild loyalty will stabilize and become more constant. By not having to worry that your guild does not do a certain aspect of the game, you can rely on your entire Alliance to achieve ones personal goals, as well as goals for individual guilds. The alliance chat will further help players rep one guild which will help increase loyalty.
Those that have personal guild banks and do not wish to lose them, can include their ‘guild bank’ in the alliance if need be as well. One can also keep their guild bank outside the alliance and will then only have to rep it when they have to interact with it (which should only be for a short period of time) and go back to repping their main guild

I just want to say that after this last update with all the tidal-wave of bugs and complaints on the forums, having a serious discussion about guild Alliances is making me very happy, and as the forums are showing, MANY people are interested in this. Please Chris (and other devs), do your best to make this a coming priority for the game, you will see happy campers here if you do.

After Leading a guild more or less succesfully for 1.5 years I can just say that Anet we need better ingame Guild Roster functionality. in essence we need better guild functionality.

Proposal Overview
Some kind of progression inside the guild without needing to set up forums and outside source help to get people interested in the guild.
The Guild needs something to do together Guild missions were a good start but we need something new and something that we can progress for a long period of time and that it feels rewarding and challenging to do as a guild as a set group and gain something that you couldn’t just pick a lfg group and corner your way the stuff in 30mins.

Goal of Proposal
To get people interested to do stuff together that is guild related. Dungeons meta events etc most of the people don’t do that as guild cause it is not needed expect for wurm but even on that you can join the map without having nothing to do with the guild.

Associated risks
Gating content out of everyones reach. Big guilds would still be the big guilds and the most wanted guilds. probably many more problems.
In simple words I want my guild to be relevant to the members outside our sunday guild missions which it has degraded mostly cause the guild ins’t relevant.

wwwes.1398:

Frankly, and without meaning to sound controversial, it sounds like there is a difference of opinion here from people who use guilds in a utilitarian fashion and people who use them to try and build a community within the game. If anything, it demonstrates the importance of only giving rewards to a main guild, because anything else will just be used to game the system.

If we are going to get into things like guild halls, I can’t see how you can possibly have that conversation if you aren’t dedicated to the idea of a primary guild as a community.

I don’t consider me having a larger guild that I join only to do guild missions gaming the system. My smaller primary guild can not do a lot of the guild missions so I joined one that can. The guild I joined is ok with that so why let it stop them. Perhaps giving rewards for guild missions should be a rank feature. That way you can demote people who are not helping build the community while still not kicking them from the guild.

JonPeters.5630:

This is precisely why I asked the question, “what would you want to gain from your primary guild?” It is an exercise in collaborative creativity to see if someone can come up with something that is actually compelling but at the same time doesn’t make you feel like you made the wrong choice. If the answer was easy, everyone would be doing it already, but most things worth doing are hard.

I think a progressive visual reward can help. For example:

Level 1< 5 days representing the guild < Free Aura personalized with the emblem of the guild, in the boots of your armour.

Level 2< 10 days representing the guild < Free Aura personalized with the emblem and colors of the guild, in the boots and Helm.

Level 3< 15 days < Access to the Guild Merchant (a special merchant in the Guild Hall, with discounted prices for items. This merchant can get items for other members of the guild (donations or sells). This merchant can deposit a little of the earnings in the Guild Bank

Level 4< 20 days < Access to the Guild Hall of Winners. (special place in the guild hall, with the trophyes of the guild and a visual list of their members.)

Level 5< 25 days < Access to the Guild Battle room. (Special place in the guild hall. The people of the guild, fight and train in this place.)

Level 6< 30 days < New Title: Honored member of the Guild. Discount in purchases in the Guild Merchant.

Level 7< 35 days < Guild chat representation. A mini icon in the (guild) chat with the emblem of the guild.

Level 8< 40 days < Minipet of the Guild < A minipet dressed with the colors and emblem of the guild.

Level 9< 45 days < Legendary minipet of the Guild < Same minipet, but with special auras or functionalities. Get drops from enemies for example.

Level 10< 50 days < New Title: Hero of the Guild. Bonus to rewards in Guild Bounty and Guild Rush in this Guild.

Representing can be intermitent, but if the time no representing extend too much time (for example 30 days) the visual reward go back to level 1, and lose the visual rewards.

I have many more ideas ;D

JonPeters.5630:

This is precisely why I asked the question, “what would you want to gain from your primary guild?” It is an exercise in collaborative creativity to see if someone can come up with something that is actually compelling but at the same time doesn’t make you feel like you made the wrong choice. If the answer was easy, everyone would be doing it already, but most things worth doing are hard.

For me, the entire concept of having a ‘primary guild’ in a multi-guild system is the root of the problem, closely followed by the concept of ‘influence’.

Every part of the game has been designed in order to avoid the negative sides of general MMO’s; you don’t steal kills, you don’t steal harvesting nodes etc. But the influence system is the opposite and promotes the idea of “100% rep or boot”.

Any player that’s a member of a guild, but not representing it is ‘stealing’ influence from the guild and taking up a limited space that could be given to a member that is representing the guild. At all times, a player is wasting a spot in up to 4 other guilds, because they are representing the 5th.

I tend to represent a smaller guild that is mostly filled with members that don’t ever represent the guild and tend to play at different times. I can see that they are usually a few ‘members’ online, but I can’t communicate with them, and because all the interesting guild activities are gated behind representational influence. We can’t draw them back because we can’t unlock the interesting content that would draw them back because we need them to be representing in order to generate influence to unlock the content.

It’s not as simple as saying, "if they wanted to be in your guild they’d represent’, because they clearly ‘do’ want to be in the guild because they’ve used up one of thier limited spots to be there. They don’t represent because their influence pays them back better by being given to a larger guild that can do more.

It’s also not as simple as just making more content that smaller guilds can do, because that content is still going to be locked behind influence, and larger guilds will still be able to do more of the smaller guild content than smaller guilds could.

Essentially we’d have a very similar system by removing the ability to join multiple guilds, and instead letting players create groups in the friends list.

anzenketh.3759:

wwwes.1398:

Frankly, and without meaning to sound controversial, it sounds like there is a difference of opinion here from people who use guilds in a utilitarian fashion and people who use them to try and build a community within the game. If anything, it demonstrates the importance of only giving rewards to a main guild, because anything else will just be used to game the system.

If we are going to get into things like guild halls, I can’t see how you can possibly have that conversation if you aren’t dedicated to the idea of a primary guild as a community.

I don’t consider me having a larger guild that I join only to do guild missions gaming the system. My smaller primary guild can not do a lot of the guild missions so I joined one that can. The guild I joined is ok with that so why let it stop them. Perhaps giving rewards for guild missions should be a rank feature. That way you can demote people who are not helping build the community while still not kicking them from the guild.

I think the best option here is to implement alliances and allow allies to get credit for another guild’s missions.

My guild allies with another guild and we do missions together, but it’s a pain in the butt. My guild is constantly having to invite their members for missions and vice-versa. If we had alliances with shared missions, we’d just set up the alliance and be done with it.

Just as a side note: if you implement both alliances and guild calendars, be sure to have a system where a guild can make events visible to alliance members. That’s an important design consideration you shouldn’t leave out.

titanlectro.5029:

Proposal Overview:
Simply the guild upgrade system by removing the build queue.

Goal of Proposal:
The goal of this proposal is to remove all the frustrating micromanagement that goes into managing upgrades, by simplifying the system. I’m recommending that the build queue be removed entirely, and in its place all upgrades will fall into two modes: Instant Buy, and Cost Per Day.

This improves upon the current system, which requires constant babysitting and fidgeting. If you want to keep a buff up 24/7 it requires a coordinated group effort. There is no reason why it should need to take this much effort.

Proposal Functionality:

• Remove the build queue.
• All “one time use” upgrades will become instant buy, with a fixed price and no build time.
• All “buff for x hours” upgrades will become toggles. You can turn the buff “on” for a constant influence drain that keeps running until you turn if “off” again. You could also add a “use for 1 day” button.

Associated Risks

• Perhaps some people find the build queue system to be fun.
• This will probably make guild upgrades more powerful.
• People could leave too many buffs on, and burn through all their influence.

Im commenting as I browse over the last pages, so I hope I dont reiterate something that has been said too many times.

in this particular comment, I like the constant influence drain buff idea. To extend the concept (and tweak for a secondary option), in some RTS games, you have income and things that can be alotted as a percentage to go toward various things. A given research or building will proceed as long as there is enough of the given resource to go around. When resources dwindle, progression slows, but a set percent of all incoming funds still go to that project.

Moving to GW2, first, again, I like the idea of a buff being a drain rather than a build. When turned on, it consumes a set amount of influence at the beginning of every hour and then remains on for that hour, rinse, repeat. Along with this, it would be really nice if you could set timers to turn them on or off like an oven. If influence is exhausted, th2 buff turns off.

second, say we allow 5 build slots for upgrades (if the insta-buy proposal is not implemented as per the quoted suggestion). When an officer chooses to build an upgrade, it begins building at its set rate (less time to completion than now) but consumes influence over time rather than in one lump. Along with each slot is a slider/spinner/whatever that allows the officer to select an amount (%) of incoming influence (after buff influence is take out) that is designated toward each build slot. Sometimes people just like to visualize progress. smaller guilds will see that progress bar go up as they earn influence and wont have to gather all the needed influence and then wait while its being built. Can general members view the build queue right now while just not being able to interact with it? if not, it would be nice for officers to have the option to display these progress bars so that members can see right where thier influence is going because both of those things are now happening at the same time. Larger guilds will see much faster progress.

Risk: members might not like what the officers have queued

JonPeters.5630:

I see a lot of talk about alliances. Two questions on that front:

1) What functionality would you like to get out of an alliance?
2) What makes you want alliances?

I’ll try to answer them myself.
1) Ability to play content that is made for larger guilds. Ability to connect some of my guilds and have them be able to chat together without the commitment of being in the same guild.
2) My guild is small and there is not enough content for small guilds. I think we could make more small guild content too which would help alleviate the need for alliances.

To answer to 1 & 2 at the same time, I would ultimately see alliances as something that can balance WvW using a headcount maximum in an alliance (something somewhat more complexe). Though this would, for me would be one of the possible solutions for solving population disparities.

Even though those disparities might still exist, it would then be the alliance’s fault for not being able to bring their own players into WvW versus the current issue of stacked servers and others. For instance, T1 has way less queues than it used to, yet every single one of those servers is almost constantly considered “full” due to the amount of PvE players online.

Being full limits the recruitment pool of the WvW guilds, or even getting their players on the same server. But if only the server cap gets changed, it will continue to encourage server stacking.

Edit: What I think GW1 did best was totally abstracting any concept of server/shard from the players. All it does is split the community.

I know I’ve gone a bit off topic, but this is the reason why I would want to see an alliance type thing, I dont see another use to them with the current state of the game.

Proposal Overview
I see a lot of discussion about primary and secondary guilds. Here is what I think the multi-guild system should be. Right now there is no point in being in multiple guilds whatsoever when practically every piece of functionality in a guild is locked behind the represent status. This might be a logistical nightmare systems wise, but for me the represent button should be no more than an indicator to which guild the influence or merits should go to or whether I am eligible for rewards on completing, say a guild mission (ie. I should only get full rewards or even be able to only participate while representing).

Goal of Proposal
Reduce the necessity to jump between guilds to access certain elements of the Guild UI there is no reason why the full roster, chat, bank or (read only?) queue access f.ex. should be restricted to the represented guild only (some of these may need additional options for added security or finer control on the guild leaders part). I am a leader in one small guild, and a member in another bigger guild, as a leader I would appreciate the possibility to be more present in the guild I am a leader of without necessarily representing it 100% of a time, because as things now it does take unnecessary steps of hopping between guilds to potentially do a single task in one guild and be right back with the other. I imagine this would be even more hectic if one was say a leader of guild A and an officer of guild B and tried to balance activity in both.

Proposal Functionality
Add UI functionality to access wider array of information and services for all guilds equally versus the current design of only being able to access any and all functionality of a singular guild (which makes the concept of multiple guilds less relevant in my opinion).

Associated Risks
None, apart from the implied risk of loosing some exclusivity from the represented Guild.

Alternative Proposal (the bandaid solution)
Allow easy and fast “one action” access to choosing a represented guild from eg. a regular dropdown list outside of the main Guilds UI (for example the party UI) and from any Guild tab inside the main Guild UI without resetting the selected tab.

anzenketh.3759:

wwwes.1398:

Frankly, and without meaning to sound controversial, it sounds like there is a difference of opinion here from people who use guilds in a utilitarian fashion and people who use them to try and build a community within the game. If anything, it demonstrates the importance of only giving rewards to a main guild, because anything else will just be used to game the system.

If we are going to get into things like guild halls, I can’t see how you can possibly have that conversation if you aren’t dedicated to the idea of a primary guild as a community.

I don’t consider me having a larger guild that I join only to do guild missions gaming the system. My smaller primary guild can not do a lot of the guild missions so I joined one that can. The guild I joined is ok with that so why let it stop them. Perhaps giving rewards for guild missions should be a rank feature. That way you can demote people who are not helping build the community while still not kicking them from the guild.

Well, the way I put it sounds like it has a worse connotation than it does. It implies some sort of deception or misconduct where none exists or is even intended. I don’t mean that the person should be punished who keeps the guild he has been in from start even though he doesn’t promote it or try to keep it active. I don’t mean that you should be punished for not doing guild activities in your social guild. I don’t mean that the dude who wants to rep all his guilds at once should be punished.

But I think that the future design of guilds should be built in the direction of providing the most rewards to people that have a primary guild that they stay in 90% of the time and chat/do activities with. Not everybody will benefit from this system, but it is the system that will most benefit the game as a whole.

The system that has people do things like represent TTS for big events or for runs on Teq is totally valid, but the goal of the game should be that you shouldn’t HAVE to do that to find a group to beat Tequatl or form a band for WvW.

Guilds are a place to organize players, something you say you belong to. Everything else is a workaround for having a better system for group chats or for shared banks. These are valid uses for guilds, but let’s not build the future of the game around them.

At this point, I think we really really would benefit from somebody that can sort of compile and consolidate the points being made. I am currently on lunch break from work or else I’d do this myself.

wwwes.1398:

anzenketh.3759:

wwwes.1398:

Frankly, and without meaning to sound controversial, it sounds like there is a difference of opinion here from people who use guilds in a utilitarian fashion and people who use them to try and build a community within the game. If anything, it demonstrates the importance of only giving rewards to a main guild, because anything else will just be used to game the system.

If we are going to get into things like guild halls, I can’t see how you can possibly have that conversation if you aren’t dedicated to the idea of a primary guild as a community.

I don’t consider me having a larger guild that I join only to do guild missions gaming the system. My smaller primary guild can not do a lot of the guild missions so I joined one that can. The guild I joined is ok with that so why let it stop them. Perhaps giving rewards for guild missions should be a rank feature. That way you can demote people who are not helping build the community while still not kicking them from the guild.

Well, the way I put it sounds like it has a worse connotation than it does. It implies some sort of deception or misconduct where none exists or is even intended. I don’t mean that the person should be punished who keeps the guild he has been in from start even though he doesn’t promote it or try to keep it active. I don’t mean that you should be punished for not doing guild activities in your social guild. I don’t mean that the dude who wants to rep all his guilds at once should be punished.

But I think that the future design of guilds should be built in the direction of providing the most rewards to people that have a primary guild that they stay in 90% of the time and chat/do activities with. Not everybody will benefit from this system, but it is the system that will most benefit the game as a whole.

The system that has people do things like represent TTS for big events or for runs on Teq is totally valid, but the goal of the game should be that you shouldn’t HAVE to do that to find a group to beat Tequatl or form a band for WvW.

Guilds are a place to organize players, something you say you belong to. Everything else is a workaround for having a better system for group chats or for shared banks. These are valid uses for guilds, but let’s not build the future of the game around them.

I dont agree with the concept of “primary” guilds for a very fundamental reason. If I’m in a guild for WvW and they fit my WvW needs, it by no means implies that those players enjoy PvE and if they do, that they are looking for the same experience as me in the other aspects of the game such as WvW.

Having complementary guilds should not be something punishing the players because they dont have a “primary” guild.

Edit: as a metaphore that we can see in real life, people go to specialty shops to find what they want when they are looking for something in specific that you will not be able to find in a “jack of all trades” shop like target.

JonPeters.5630:

I see a variety of comments on feeling more attachment to a specific guild and a lot of talk of the # of guilds people are a part of and the fear that is causing a lack of attachment. This lack of attachment keeps players players from being compelled to belong to any of their guilds instead of being compelled to belong to all of them (which was the original intention of this design of guilds as more social groups rather than as exclusive cliques).

I’d love to see some discussion on how we could create greater attachment to a single guild without taking away the current value of membership in multiple guilds.

I think that involves some discussion of the following.

1) What is currently a part of being in a guild that can’t be taken away, and why would it be bad to take it away?
2) Is there anything that is currently part of being in a guild that could be taken away and given to a more focused guild association? What could we do to mitigate some of the negativity of taking away current functionality? For example replace it on all guilds or enhance it for the one guild that it is tied to?
3) What kind of features are there that don’t even exist yet that would really only make sense with a more fixed association with a single guild?

A lot of good design discussions come from answering these questions anyway which I would summarize as what can/can’t we take away? What can/can’t we change? What can/can’t we add? I ask them in that order because it’s generally the order that they are easiest to implement in.

Jon

The reason that I think many people have difficulty belonging to multiple guilds is that there is great pressure to always be representing a guild at all times. Guilds want to be able to provide guild buffs for all their members all the time which requires influence which is only being generated as long as people are representing that guild. As a result, many guilds have instituted 100% rep time policies where if you stop representing them for even a few hours and an officer notices, you will be kicked from the guild.
I do not fault any guilds for these policies as it is the in game mechanics which have necessitated these sorts of practices.

It’s hard to become attached to guild other than the one you’re having to represent because for all intents and purposes you aren’t really ever in it.

It’s tempting to consider this a problem that should just be solved by the players themselves. Perhaps more guilds should just stop requiring 100% representation. However, I would like to see some statistics of guild buff uptime vs whether or not a guild has a 100% rep policy. I don’t claim to have such data, but I would surmise that of the top 10% of guilds as scored by guild buff up time, I bet something like 95% of them have 100% representation policies.

I think in order to feel more apart of multiple guilds, the notion of guild representation needs to be done away with or restructured:

• You should generate influence for all guilds you are a member of at all times.
• You should have chat options to be able to see the guild chat for any or all of your guilds at once. Perhaps being able type in those guilds via “/g1”, “/g2”,.. depending on what order your guilds are in in the guild panel.
• Perhaps the one aspect of representation that should be kept is in selecting what guild tag is displayed.
• You should be able to tell if some one else is in any one of your guilds via the color of their name tag in the world. Perhaps the for people in the guild for whom you are currently displaying a guild tag will be in the standard gold, and players in guild you are not currently displaying a tag for would have their names appear in another color (perhaps a darker gold).

Shufflepants.9785:

JonPeters.5630:

I see a variety of comments on feeling more attachment to a specific guild and a lot of talk of the # of guilds people are a part of and the fear that is causing a lack of attachment. This lack of attachment keeps players players from being compelled to belong to any of their guilds instead of being compelled to belong to all of them (which was the original intention of this design of guilds as more social groups rather than as exclusive cliques).

I’d love to see some discussion on how we could create greater attachment to a single guild without taking away the current value of membership in multiple guilds.

I think that involves some discussion of the following.

1) What is currently a part of being in a guild that can’t be taken away, and why would it be bad to take it away?
2) Is there anything that is currently part of being in a guild that could be taken away and given to a more focused guild association? What could we do to mitigate some of the negativity of taking away current functionality? For example replace it on all guilds or enhance it for the one guild that it is tied to?
3) What kind of features are there that don’t even exist yet that would really only make sense with a more fixed association with a single guild?

A lot of good design discussions come from answering these questions anyway which I would summarize as what can/can’t we take away? What can/can’t we change? What can/can’t we add? I ask them in that order because it’s generally the order that they are easiest to implement in.

Jon

The reason that I think many people have difficulty belonging to multiple guilds is that there is great pressure to always be representing a guild at all times. Guilds want to be able to provide guild buffs for all their members all the time which requires influence which is only being generated as long as people are representing that guild. As a result, many guilds have instituted 100% rep time policies where if you stop representing them for even a few hours and an officer notices, you will be kicked from the guild.
I do not fault any guilds for these policies as it is the in game mechanics which have necessitated these sorts of practices.

It’s hard to become attached to guild other than the one you’re having to represent because for all intents and purposes you aren’t really ever in it.

It’s tempting to consider this a problem that should just be solved by the players themselves. Perhaps more guilds should just stop requiring 100% representation. However, I would like to see some statistics of guild buff uptime vs whether or not a guild has a 100% rep policy. I don’t claim to have such data, but I would surmise that of the top 10% of guilds as scored by guild buff up time, I bet something like 95% of them have 100% representation policies.

I think in order to feel more apart of multiple guilds, the notion of guild representation needs to be done away with or restructured:

• You should generate influence for all guilds you are a member of at all times.
• You should have chat options to be able to see the guild chat for any or all of your guilds at once. Perhaps being able type in those guilds via “/g1”, “/g2”,.. depending on what order your guilds are in in the guild panel.
• Perhaps the one aspect of representation that should be kept is in selecting what guild tag is displayed.
• You should be able to tell if some one else is in any one of your guilds via the color of their name tag in the world. Perhaps the for people in the guild for whom you are currently displaying a guild tag will be in the standard gold, and players in guild you are not currently displaying a tag for would have their names appear in another color (perhaps a darker gold).

I really agree with the stuff being said here.

Navi.7142:

Proposal Overview

More guild and group content, especially guild/ group vs environment (in instanced areas)

For smaller groups (~ 5 minimum) to medium-sized guilds (no idea.. maybe 50 maximum??).

how is this idea different then the already in game meta event system?

Blaeys.3102:

On the topic of guild alliances – I have a different idea for potential discussion that could help get around some the logistics and confusion. Most of what Ive seen proposed amounts to alliances being little more than shared chat channels. I think they could be alot more.

Instead of having alliances be permanent connections between guilds, I would like to see an alliance system that is based around events.

The idea, which is just that (an idea that could be good or complete trash), would work like this:

1. Create an option in the guild permissions tab (ranks) called “propose/accept alliances.” This option would allow guild officers to propose temporary alliances with other guilds for particular events (wvw sessions, guild missions, etc) – as well as accept invites from other guilds offering alliances. The ability to invite other guilds to a temporary alliance would have to first be built – for a minimal guild influence cost – and activated (like any guild booster); and would last a set amount of time (six hours sounds about right to me).

2. While the event is active, the alliance would mean all guild perks and triggers are shared between the two guilds. Most importantly, these perks could include WvW boosters (+5 to supply, etc) and guild mission activations. Additionally, all members would be able to participate in an “alliance chat” channel.

3. The primary advantages of a system like this would be to encourage guilds to work together (rather than simply serving as a shared chat channel) – and it would give large PVE guilds a way to, if they were feeling benevolent, help smaller guilds or WvW focused guilds participate in guild missions without having to ask members of either guild to un rep for the duration (likewise, it would allow large WvW to do the same and share WvW perks with PVE focused or small guilds).

Again, it’s just a thought to throw into the pile. Feel free to shovel and discard if it has no merit (late night musings and all that).

1) is a bad idea. I can already see the “WTF ArenaNet? It is hard enough for our small guild to gain influence now we have to keep building these alliance upgrades to join an alliance. …” posts.

2) I see balance issues with the buff sharing for WvW. Right now each guild can claim one thing and apply their buff there. With the buff sharing you could have a bunch of one person guilds and basically have one 1 buff upgrade apply to everything owned by your server. I guess 1) was supposed to prevent that but it would be better to make the buff sharing a separate upgrade rather than requiring a consumable upgrade to join an alliance.

pdavis.8031:

Proposal Overview
Changing the guild roster UI to better reflect guild leaders/officers.

Goal of Proposal
Currently, when viewing the guild roster, members/representers/officers/leaders are all scattered across the roster. Having a “call out” section that displays the guilds officers/leaders to be able to quickly identify those people allowing for quicker and easier means of communication for inter-guild issues/questions.

Proposal functionality
The top portion of the guild roster player slots being reserved for leaders and officers, in a seperate and distinct area. For example: When viewing the guild roster, instead of showing the players name first, and the other guild members (presumably according to their log in times), a dedicated section displaying the guild leaders and officers is displayed first on that list.

Associated risks
None.

It might be nice to always have leaders and officers at the top as part of a revamped guild UI. But the function is there now at your discretion, just click the little arrow under Rank and it sorts by Rank instead of Name or Online, with top ranks at the top or bottom as you prefer by continued clicks. It’s like sorting the tables in any online chart.

just hopping in as someone who isn’t member of a guild >2 players: I wasn’t too happy when I saw all that guild missions which have no value for players like me. I enjoy playing with people I meet by accident since I have no time for schedules for a game.

When creating large content for guilds, would it be possible to make this content accessible for non-guild players as well? An example would be content like the Marionette. I really enjoyed this battle and I would hate if Anet would implement encounters like these for guilds only.

Kaz.5430:

JonPeters.5630:

This is precisely why I asked the question, “what would you want to gain from your primary guild?” It is an exercise in collaborative creativity to see if someone can come up with something that is actually compelling but at the same time doesn’t make you feel like you made the wrong choice. If the answer was easy, everyone would be doing it already, but most things worth doing are hard.

For me, the entire concept of having a ‘primary guild’ in a multi-guild system is the root of the problem, closely followed by the concept of ‘influence’.

Every part of the game has been designed in order to avoid the negative sides of general MMO’s; you don’t steal kills, you don’t steal harvesting nodes etc. But the influence system is the opposite and promotes the idea of “100% rep or boot”.

Any player that’s a member of a guild, but not representing it is ‘stealing’ influence from the guild and taking up a limited space that could be given to a member that is representing the guild. At all times, a player is wasting a spot in up to 4 other guilds, because they are representing the 5th.

I tend to represent a smaller guild that is mostly filled with members that don’t ever represent the guild and tend to play at different times. I can see that they are usually a few ‘members’ online, but I can’t communicate with them, and because all the interesting guild activities are gated behind representational influence. We can’t draw them back because we can’t unlock the interesting content that would draw them back because we need them to be representing in order to generate influence to unlock the content.

It’s not as simple as saying, "if they wanted to be in your guild they’d represent’, because they clearly ‘do’ want to be in the guild because they’ve used up one of thier limited spots to be there. They don’t represent because their influence pays them back better by being given to a larger guild that can do more.

It’s also not as simple as just making more content that smaller guilds can do, because that content is still going to be locked behind influence, and larger guilds will still be able to do more of the smaller guild content than smaller guilds could.

Essentially we’d have a very similar system by removing the ability to join multiple guilds, and instead letting players create groups in the friends list.

I agree somewhat. My guild has the same problem but if the “rep” feature is removed and all influence is split evenly between guilds then the problem would be resolved. Each person should have full access to all guilds they are in and the “rep” option could be kept as a title. That way a person could advertise any guild they are in while contributing and interacting with them all. Of course a guild chat would need to be available for each guild they were in too

Grevender.9235:

BrunoBRS.5178:

do away with the exclusionary repping system, allow people to actively take part in all of their guilds.

just theorycrafting here: wouldn’t this completely destroy the concept of guild itself? if you are part of all guilds, may as well remove guilds at all and simply have merits/influence/whatever rain upon all players as they login…

Thats a little over stating it. Being part of 5 groups isn’t going to destroy the system. How many groups do you belong to in real life? Church, work, friends…. The list could go on. Don’t say its not the same thing either bc yes it is. A guild is a group of like minded people with a purpose.

wwwes.1398:

anzenketh.3759:

wwwes.1398:

Frankly, and without meaning to sound controversial, it sounds like there is a difference of opinion here from people who use guilds in a utilitarian fashion and people who use them to try and build a community within the game. If anything, it demonstrates the importance of only giving rewards to a main guild, because anything else will just be used to game the system.

If we are going to get into things like guild halls, I can’t see how you can possibly have that conversation if you aren’t dedicated to the idea of a primary guild as a community.

I don’t consider me having a larger guild that I join only to do guild missions gaming the system. My smaller primary guild can not do a lot of the guild missions so I joined one that can. The guild I joined is ok with that so why let it stop them. Perhaps giving rewards for guild missions should be a rank feature. That way you can demote people who are not helping build the community while still not kicking them from the guild.

Well, the way I put it sounds like it has a worse connotation than it does. It implies some sort of deception or misconduct where none exists or is even intended. I don’t mean that the person should be punished who keeps the guild he has been in from start even though he doesn’t promote it or try to keep it active. I don’t mean that you should be punished for not doing guild activities in your social guild. I don’t mean that the dude who wants to rep all his guilds at once should be punished.

But I think that the future design of guilds should be built in the direction of providing the most rewards to people that have a primary guild that they stay in 90% of the time and chat/do activities with. Not everybody will benefit from this system, but it is the system that will most benefit the game as a whole.

The system that has people do things like represent TTS for big events or for runs on Teq is totally valid, but the goal of the game should be that you shouldn’t HAVE to do that to find a group to beat Tequatl or form a band for WvW.

Guilds are a place to organize players, something you say you belong to. Everything else is a workaround for having a better system for group chats or for shared banks. These are valid uses for guilds, but let’s not build the future of the game around them.

I think it completely depends on the reward. A lot of the rewards (minus the banners) in the economy and politics track I would agree. They are not that big to begin with in the first place. Guild Missions however I would disagree. An alliance to where allied members get rewards for guild missions however would negate this problem.

I love the idea of guild taxes, last represented fields, amounts of influence donated etc simply because it gives me a list of guilds not to recommended to people

Eight Samurai.6840:

allying themselves together to gain access to specialties that their one guild does not have by themselves.

I like this idea.

Proposal Overview
Change guild mission control to include starting guild mission in map instance. Example: someone in the guild that does not have permission cannot interact with the puzzle start location and cause the puzzle to start.

Goal of Proposal
Encourage guilds to invite people to join them for guild missions and not have to worry about anyone accidently start guild missions. In my guild we run public missions every week and have had troubles where people will start the missions early before everyone is present.

Associated risks
Could make bounties difficult if you are trying to kill multiple targets, but you should have enough people you trust with that and just spread them out.

Proposal Overview

Total Removal of ‘Influence’ as a currency.

Goal of Proposal

The whole ‘100% rep or boot’ concept is built around building up influence in order to purchase guild boosts and upgrades. In a multi-guild system this creates two tiers of guilds, the haves and the have nots.

If the concept of sharing the influence you earn between all your guilds is so hard for a lot of players to deal with, then let’s just remove influence all together.

Proposal Functionality

Guilds would receive a set amount of credits per day based on the number of members in the guild. I’m going to call them credits simply to differentiate between this system and influence as it exists now. The credits could still be ‘called’ influence in game though.

These daily credits could be used in exactly the same way as influence, to purchase upgrades and boosts, perhaps along with a slightly extended build time. Guilds could also purchase credits using gold if they so wished.

Associated Risks

1. The fact that the current large “100% rep only” guilds might feel thaty they are getting a nerf, although this system could be balanced based on preventing that.

2. Guilds could hang on to members who have stopped playing in order to gain credits from them. This could be resolved by adding an activity element .e.g. credits are awarded when a member logs on each day.

try saying that to your wife “ok dear, in the future I may or may not be loyal to you, but you have to earn it first! meanwhile – if you excuse me – I have to date Nancy, Stacy, Jilly and Mary. That’s today. KTX bye”.

If you’re married, then your wife should have earned that loyalty before you said “I do.” Before you started dating seriously though, you were perfectly free to do out with those other girls until you found one that you wanted to be exclusive with.

Nah, loyalty is something you are born with. It’s ok to carefully choose where to invest that characteristic, but if all places are alike it has completely no sense.
Just think about why you tend to choose a particular restaurant or hotel over others: it’s because they have something that make them unique in your eyes.
Currently, GW2 offers no tools for any kind of specialization so it is not even possible to try.

Again, it has to come down to whether you like the people in that guild enough. It should not come down to the guilds bribing you with exclusive features, you should stick with the guild that is just too much fun not to stick with them, not the one with the best toys. Guild loyalty should be based on people not based on perks.

It requires for me a lot of efforts to see what is positive in getting the same result whatever choice you make, examples that come to my mind are in no particular order: you can’t be Paragon AND Renegade, you can’t be Templar AND Assassin, you can’t be Alliance AND Horde, you can’t be Empire AND Rebels, you can’t be Mickey Mouse AND Donald Duck ecc.

It’s getting a bit off topic, but one of the things that I loved about this game is how there are no factions to it, and everyone is on the same team. That really annoyed me in the Wildstar Beta, how there was no server were Dominion and Exile could hang out and share content. Same with ESO.

The Multi-Guild Dilemma

If I did not need the inventory space for storage via my Personal Guild, my number of Guilds would drop from 3 to 1. Now that is fine for me, I come from the GW1 Guild mentality and in all honesty, one guild was plenty. But I know that is just me and this is not, GW1.

Now in the GW2 world, I can see a potential need for more than one guild for different purposes. PvE, WvW, Tequatl, Dungeons… Where we come to a conundrum is multi-guild representation.

Maybe we are making this harder than it need be.

If you aren’t representing a guild…you don’t get the benefits. Seems way too simple, eh?
If you are a member of 5 guilds and you go with one to WvW and they have guild bonuses, you would receive the bonuses from the WvW guild and they would receive the influence but nothing from or for any of the other guilds. You rep, you get benefits, you don’t rep you get nothing.

Now this is where simple, falls apart. What will start to happen is many people will only rep the most powerful guilds. So the huge 500 soul guilds are going to dominate as their resource pool will be so great that they can have tons of bonuses up all the time, thus the perpetual motion machine. Massive guild provides massive bonuses, attracting massive amounts of people, giving massive Influence, yielding massive bonuses…

Enter the Guild Megacorporation and say good bye to the little guy. Oh sure people like me could care less and will always keep repping my small guild cause hey, I don’t much care about any of the bonuses that might be generated. Sure some extra magic find and the like would be nice but in no way needed. However if ANet decides to implement some kind of bonus which I AM interested in, well then, I will become less happy and we all want Yalora to be her bubbly ray of sunshine now don’t we… I said, DON’T WE?

Now enter Alliances. We little guys bind together and now back off Guild Megacorp, you may have 500 members but there is 10 of us and not such a pushover anymore.
But wait, not to be outdone, 10 Guild Megacorps now form the Northern Tyria Alliance and proceed to succeed from Jenna’s Monarchy and thus the Guild Corporatocracy is formed.

Where does it all end? The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few, or the one. He who has the most toys at the end of the game…Wins? Is this the path we wish to tread?

Unlike my previous posts, I present no solutions here. This is only meant as food for thought. Do with it as you see fit. – Y

steveway.3167:

Don’t say its not the same thing either bc yes it is.

no, they aren’t
discussing this matter is off topic so I will just briefly say that:
- guilds required to sign a formal contract to be joined (bye bye “circle of friends”) and to pay a regular fee
- rules and discipline were extremely strict the more specialized and prestigious they were
- you may want to take a look here for a start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_university

in GW2 there are many critical errors for what concerns depicting middle age systems (most notably heraldry) but this is not a goal of this CDI ^^

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I think small guilds would Ally . WvW guilds would. And potentially for PVE content to with larger guilds. And WvW alliances with pve guilds. I have been adopted by a WvW Zerg Smashing guild called Helioz on TC and they wanted to ally with a PVE guild to do the content.

Depends on how progression is distributed and the communication channels etc.

Chris

Hey, I know Helioz. Back when I was on SOR (and they were, too) my old, now-dormant guild used to team up with them and another guild to take out some of the tougher guild challenges together- each week we’d all help each other with the challenges, puzzles, etc.

On that note, one feature which would really help a guild alliance system would be the ability to share a guild mission- this would be really beneficial for guilds which are smaller or have lower guild mission attendance.

Donari.5237:

pdavis.8031:

Proposal Overview
Changing the guild roster UI to better reflect guild leaders/officers.

Goal of Proposal
Currently, when viewing the guild roster, members/representers/officers/leaders are all scattered across the roster. Having a “call out” section that displays the guilds officers/leaders to be able to quickly identify those people allowing for quicker and easier means of communication for inter-guild issues/questions.

Proposal functionality
The top portion of the guild roster player slots being reserved for leaders and officers, in a seperate and distinct area. For example: When viewing the guild roster, instead of showing the players name first, and the other guild members (presumably according to their log in times), a dedicated section displaying the guild leaders and officers is displayed first on that list.

Associated risks
None.

It might be nice to always have leaders and officers at the top as part of a revamped guild UI. But the function is there now at your discretion, just click the little arrow under Rank and it sorts by Rank instead of Name or Online, with top ranks at the top or bottom as you prefer by continued clicks. It’s like sorting the tables in any online chart.

True, but this is QoL suggestion. While you may be able to do that easily, having it just there, just makes it a bit easier. Just because it’s already there doesn’t mean there is no reason to change it. And seeing as this is a guild QoL and logistics CDI, this type of thing, I believe, fits right into that theme.

JonPeters.5630:

3) What kind of features are there that don’t even exist yet that would really only make sense with a more fixed association with a single guild?

Competition. Allow players to set up global chat channels that are not associated with guilds in any way. That way I don’t have to leave gchat with my favorite guild to talk about my love for jumping puzzles and find other people to run them with me.

Ohoni.6057:

If you’re married, then your wife should have earned that loyalty before you said “I do.” Before you started dating seriously though, you were perfectly free to do out with those other girls until you found one that you wanted to be exclusive with.

well…what to say….good luck to your gf.

Again, it has to come down to whether you like the people in that guild enough. It should not come down to the guilds bribing you with exclusive features, you should stick with the guild that is just too much fun not to stick with them, not the one with the best toys. Guild loyalty should be based on people not based on perks.

no one said that the guild must popup out of nothing already specialized, that’s your’s assumption. What I, and other people, are asking for is a set of tools that allow those who want to do so to specialize. To further clarify: we don’t want any functionality removed, we want new ones to be implemented.

It’s getting a bit off topic, but one of the things that I loved about this game is how there are no factions to it, and everyone is on the same team. That really annoyed me in the Wildstar Beta, how there was no server were Dominion and Exile could hang out and share content. Same with ESO.

how different is the world my best memories in previous mmorpg are huge player killing battles versus enemy guilds (who broke peace treaty, who sold unique items to non Allies, who stole items from the Guild Palace ecc) now THAT was kitten fun and I miss it sooooo much.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Piogre.2164:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I have been adopted by a WvW Zerg Smashing guild called Helioz on TC

Hey, I know Helioz. Back when I was on SOR (and they were, too)

Really looking forward to the reset tonight and playing with them.

Ahh, the Great Migration from Sanctum of Rall. :-/

Devata.6589:

Or we keep the cash-shop completely out of the guild-stuff. Earning those things are goals / content / playtime for guild. Buying any of that removes that and makes just ’ buying it’. If Anet want to earn money on that (what make sense) simply put the guild-halls + everything you can do with it in an expansion.

BTW guild-halls are out of the scope of the CDI (for now).

Did not realize that (just assumed that GH fell under the QOL) thanks for letting me know and giving me some feedback I’ll be sure to tweak it before they introduce a topic for Guild Halls.

JonPeters.5630:

I see a lot of talk about alliances. Two questions on that front:

1) What functionality would you like to get out of an alliance?
2) What makes you want alliances?

As for these questions,

I would have to say that a lot of it has already been said. I believe that if you limit representation to 1 guild (which I agree with) it would allow guilds to have members that focus solely on their guild (ie gathering influence and taking advantage of their buffs) 24/7 while still having a multitude of guilds to enjoy. So, maybe there is a group of guilds that are focused on WvW so they have a 5,7, nth number guilds that work together (maybe guild 1,2,3 take Red BL, while 4,5,6 focus on Blue BL, etc etc). Or maybe there are guild alliances that focus on farming. Or my personal favorite, an alliance that has 1 wvw guild, 1 farming, and 1 pve guild in it, that way there is always something going on in each sector of game play for the alliance members. I believe it would allow for people to pick and choose what they want to do, while still awarding the guild they’re in with influence.

As for the second question, I have to simply say that I like being in small guilds. I like running small guilds (always have since the early days of GW1) but I also like being able to maybe be in an alliance with guilds that share the same values and enjoyment of the game that I could help or even just hang out with, without unrepresenting the guild that I am the leader of.

Proposal Overview
An option for people to show the server-time and the local time. (Yes this is guild-related)

Goal of Proposal
A more uniform time to plan guild events. Usually people want to see there local time. However for guild-missions (for international guilds) it is more useful to use the server-time to organize guild events. If people can see both it should give people the local time they might prefer personally but also have the option to at the same time see servertime whats helps with guild-events.

Proposal Functionality
Have an option to not also show local time or server-time but also to show both.

Associated Risks
None.

Proposal Overview
In guild-chat also show the account-name. [account-name] | [Character-name]

Goal of Proposal
Learning members better and by account-name. People who switch a lot between characters might be harder to learn and when you know a person by character-name but he comes on an alt you might not know it’s him. When guild-chat also always shows the account-name you learn people that way. That really helps in the communication.

Proposal Functionality
In the guild-chat simply before the character-name also show the account-name. The numbers behind the name are not really needed. [account-name] | [Character-name]

Associated Risks
None.

Proposal Overview
Show all characters (+ info) from guild-members.

Goal of Proposal
Getting a better view of the members what again can help with organizing things.

Proposal Functionality
In the guild-roster or another screen don’t just show the character a member logged in with last but show all his characters.

Associated Risks
Possible privacy risk. Solution would be that you can also see characters that the member was also representing your guild on the last time he was online with that character.

Proposal Overview
Mailing to multiple people (in the guild) at once. Rank based or just multiple names at ones or multiple ranks at once. And not being suppressed.

Goal of Proposal
Being able to better communicate with a guild-members. Sending mails to many members is a problem now because you have to select them all manually and then after a few mails you get suppressed

Proposal Functionality
In the mail simply have the ability to select multiple people to send the same mail to and possible even allow to select people based on some criteria. However an upcoming suggestion might be better for that.

Associated Risks
Spam guild. While I think that risk is low because people will simply leave those guilds.

Kaz.5430:

Proposal Overview

Total Removal of ‘Influence’ as a currency.

Goal of Proposal

The whole ‘100% rep or boot’ concept is built around building up influence in order to purchase guild boosts and upgrades. In a multi-guild system this creates two tiers of guilds, the haves and the have nots.

If the concept of sharing the influence you earn between all your guilds is so hard for a lot of players to deal with, then let’s just remove influence all together.

Proposal Functionality

Guilds would receive a set amount of credits per day based on the number of members in the guild. I’m going to call them credits simply to differentiate between this system and influence as it exists now. The credits could still be ‘called’ influence in game though.

These daily credits could be used in exactly the same way as influence, to purchase upgrades and boosts, perhaps along with a slightly extended build time. Guilds could also purchase credits using gold if they so wished.

Associated Risks

1. The fact that the current large “100% rep only” guilds might feel thaty they are getting a nerf, although this system could be balanced based on preventing that.

2. Guilds could hang on to members who have stopped playing in order to gain credits from them. This could be resolved by adding an activity element .e.g. credits are awarded when a member logs on each day.

what would smaller guilds do?

also I would rather have it so every guild that I am in gets a split of the influence I gain instead, this would make people to join guilds and remove the 100% rep requirement at the same time.

Proposal Overview
Setting notes per member (already suggested) but also having the option for multiple notes with view premission based on ranks.

Goal of Proposal
As well as having a way to make notes about members only for the eyes of some of the ranks (leaders / officers) as well as being able to also show information that the whole guild may see. Like “Won last guild-event”.

Proposal Functionality
Again in the guild-roster or another new roster the ability to go to a member and add a note or multiple notes and linking ranks to the notes that allow those ranks to view that note.

Associated Risks
When to many notes are added stuff might become a mess. This can be solved with a smart UI or by simply limiting the number of notes and the length of them. Usually 3 notes per member would be more then enough.

Linked or required previous suggestions
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Logistics-and-QOL/4399930

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Logistics-and-QOL/4399978

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Logistics-and-QOL/4404697

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Logistics-and-QOL/4404663

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/CDI-Guilds-Logistics-and-QOL/page/10#post4404758

Proposal Overview
In the guild-roster being able to select / filter multiple people, manually or with criteria (like how much influence earned or rank or online-time or last online and so on and so on).

And then being able to do something with that selection. Like mail all of them or change rank or set a note for that member and so on….

Goal of Proposal
More easy way to manage guild and guild-members.

Proposal Functionality
In the roster have a much more detailed way to filter / select members using the addition information added (from the other suggestions) and when having made such a selection also being able to do things with that group all at once.

Associated Risks
Accidentally doing the wrong action on some members. So a confirmation warning should be in place.

Proposal Overview
Seeing (or having the option to) guild-members on the mini-map with orange (or other color) dots.

Goal of Proposal
Easier to join up with other guild-members that might be playing nearby and so helps with better binding.

Proposal Functionality
Simply show all the guild-members on the mini-map with dots just like you see party-members. However it might be useful to allow this to be turned of. I can imagine that when doing a big event with the whole guild this would not be wanted.

Associated Risks
Cluttering the mini-map with dots when the whole guild is together. Solution would be to being simply able to turn the option on and off.