Guild Wars 2

bluewanders.5297:

Nobody is arguing that large guilds should not be given content for large guilds. I fully endorse that.

I also fully endorse large guilds having cool things they can guy.

What I do oppose is not being on equal footing on launch day…

Also… I oppose the idea that some rewards might ONLY be available when content made for 500 people is completed. Rewards should be based on expenditure, not the exact content completed. Meaning that a small guild could save up for that big reward if it wanted to. And I do realize we don’t even know much about what forms the rewards are going to take, this is purely in response to your previous question asking if larger guilds complete content for larger guilds they should earn rewards of better quality than a small guild can in no way complete on it’s own. Cost isn’t the issue… people are willing to save up… equality is the issue.

My 20 man guild should be on equal footing with EVERY guild in the game when the new content is released. If we don’t have enough influence to research that upgrade, so be it… but gating it in a tree we have no use for is kitten poor treatment. Making the upgrade cost tens of thousands of influence to research isn’t the issue either… if you want it to cost the same as getting all 5 tiers of AoW… I’m fine with that… as long as on patch day I have the same opportunity as every other guild in the game to research that upgrade.

We don’t appreciate being told we aren’t equal… that our only choice is to pay the tax, wait a few weeks, and bleed players….. or dissolve a guild we have pride in to join the collective and tattoo a number on our neck.

Correct me if I’m wrong. I do want to understand the problem.

One issue is NOT that it requires tier 5…it’s that it requires tier 5 Art of War, a tier you have not invested in.

You would be OK if it required tier 5 in the other trees because you already have invested influence in those.

I’m assuming you would also be ok if they made it require a completely separate and new tree, since everyone would start at the exact same point.

What you are NOT ok with is the fact that other guilds will be able to experience the content at a maximum of 16 days before you, assuming that you are starting at 0 AoW. This is because you would not be on equal footing on day 1 of the patch.

http://thepaletree.net/2013/02/22/guilds-and-the-demerit-system/

A good blog that speaks to the problem better than I can communicate it. I am in the same boat. I lead a guild of 110 people and we are all on the same server. I am not communicating my problems with the system for my guild. I am communicating it for the people that have small guilds for which the Influence needed just to get to the proper tiers to do this stuff will take a while.

I am not saying this is some huge deal and it’s ruining the game. It isn’t. Guild Wars 2 is amazing. Some of the design choices are odd though. Putting PvE Guild Missions in “Art of War” which is the de facto WvW guild tab for rep rewards is akin to a restaurant putting hamburgers in the dessert section on their menu. It makes ZERO sense.

I’m starting to wonder why Anthony hasn’t stepped in yet to explain why it requires the WvW research, at the very least. It would go a long way into easing the virtual tension in this thread.

Vorch.2985:

Correct me if I’m wrong. I do want to understand the problem.

One issue is NOT that it requires tier 5…it’s that it requires tier 5 Art of War, a tier you have not invested in.

You would be OK if it required tier 5 in the other trees because you already have invested influence in those.

I’m assuming you would also be ok if they made it require a completely separate and new tree, since everyone would start at the exact same point.

What you are NOT ok with is the fact that other guilds will be able to experience the content at a maximum of 16 days before you, assuming that you are starting at 0 AoW. This is because you would not be on equal footing on day 1 of the patch.

I think it’s a combination of two separate issues.

One, tier 5 for any aspect is a lot of influence. The guild I’m in has a number of casual players — six people in the roster total, two or three active at once. We’re nowhere near tier 5 in any tree.

Two, Art of War is not a particularly attractive tree for guilds that are not into WvW. So far, my guild has spent a bit of influence for Architecture, because it’s something we wanted (i.e., guild bank). We had zero plans to invest into Art of War simply because it gave us no benefits to how we play.

Dear ANet,

Thank you for opening this thread — its great to see that the designers are engaged with the community, only a few days out from the release.

For what its worth, I run a small but reasonably close-knit Australian-based guild on the Fissure of Woe server (a server with, arguably, a relatively low population compared to others). Since my guild is online at peak (evening) hours in Australia, this doesn’t overlap with many of the larger guilds around. We worry that we’ll effectively be locked out of many of the guild events due to the convergence of timing (i.e. even if we swapped guilds to a large guild, there’s a concern that events wouldn’t be triggered when we’re playing) and being a small guild. (aside: we really don’t want to lose the members we’ve played with for a while to a larger guild).

For the guild events, I would really like to run some for the guild at Australian peak times. But being a small guild means that it will take time to build to level 5 in the tree/s mentioned. As a solution, I’d like to see at least one guild event that can be run with a minimum of expenditure on release, perhaps through a new unlockable tech tree.

Most of the rest of the concerns expressed in this thread I share. I hope that the feedback helps shape a great experience for the future of guilds in GW2.

Best regards,
jabberjabber

Sereloth.4378:

Drew.1865:

I just spent 40 bucks on gems this month and the best way for my opinion to be felt is not to buy anymore gems. I mean I can always run dungeons for easy gold right? ;-)

I can guarantee you not one more penny of my money will be spent on this game if it continues down the path it’s been on since Nov 15 when all this began.

There are way to many good games out there to be loyal to one that doesn’t appreciate ALL of it’s players.

This is such a horrible attitude to have. Specially towards an MMO. First of all, “appreciation” is an internal state. Therefore, a person can appreciate someone else without acting on it. What I can assume you are referring to by “appreciate” is “cater”. You want Anet to cater to ALL of it’s players’ wishes. Can you imagine what a mess of a game that would be? There are so many complains and suggestions about how each and every person would like GW2 to be, that there’s absolutely no way to satisfy every single player.

If I wanted to play an MMO that released content for a large group of players and then exclusive content that required a much higher gear or requirements I would have kept playing World of Restarts or Tortanic.

I want to play a game where all the players can enjoy the content and not a select few. if that means I want to be catered to then sure I expect to be catered too. If I don’t like something why would I continue to support it?

Vorch.2985:

Correct me if I’m wrong. I do want to understand the problem.

One issue is NOT that it requires tier 5…it’s that it requires tier 5 Art of War, a tier you have not invested in.

You would be OK if it required tier 5 in the other trees because you already have invested influence in those.

I’m assuming you would also be ok if they made it require a completely separate and new tree, since everyone would start at the exact same point.

What you are NOT ok with is the fact that other guilds will be able to experience the content at a maximum of 16 days before you, assuming that you are starting at 0 AoW. This is because you would not be on equal footing on day 1 of the patch.

We can make the assumption that most guilds will have built economy and architecture for the storage and most desireable upgrades. So the suggestion that the very first batch of guild missions appear there is a compomise solution I presented earlier. It isn’t ideal though.

Ideal would be a new tech tree altogether… where every guild, including the one started on patch day… resides on equal footing with every other guild in regards to what they can choose to research.

This isn’t really an issue of WHAT is in the tech trees… it is in ADDING new content to preexisting trees without warning when many guilds may have not invested into it.

Prohibitive cost is not much of an issue… granted it is insulting to be told to pay 80 gold when others don’t have to… equal footing would dictate that all guilds have the opportunity to research the new content on drop day should they have the influence needed.

Not JUST experience the new content… as you said… anyone can come along for the ride with the lucky few and watch them get cool kitten we can’t. It’s the fact that we have to not only pay a tax for being a guild that was recently forced to start over after 5 months of dedication… but also must wait weeks to take part in the new content with access to the new rewards.

Along those same lines… any time you gate groups of people out of content based on time you are going to damage their population by providing incentive for players to change which population they belong to. A person who is already level 80 and has experienced everything they wanted to already but has been looking forward to new content may feel pressure to leave their small guild to join a larger one and keep up with whatever rewards they perceive are there… weeks before they otherwise would.

In this case… not only are you incentivizing the population to collect in large groups… you are also disincentivizing the population to remain in small groups. By suggesting they must pay a new content tax to buy enormous amounts of influence in a short period of time (to remain competitive with larger guilds who earn influence as a collateral and nearly unintended side effect of simply having a large player base and already have a large pool of previously useless currency) while also being forced to wait for weeks beyond when others will have immediate access. And leveling a gun at their head by bleeding their population further and increasing the amount of time/resources they must devote to the same task. Each member they lose moves them further away from the presented goal… and less able to complete the content once there.

How kitten would you have been if when they added laurels to the game you were told you had to wait after everyone else to earn any of the new currency because you didn’t level an engineer instead of a warrior… but you could fix that by paying 80 gold while you waited for 2 weeks (to level your engineer of course), or leaving your current batch of game partners and all the progress you had made to join a heavy spvp guild. The current situation is just as absurd.

I have two large guilds I belong to and I’m sure they can do the guild missions, but I have a small guild of my own for the purpose of playing with real life friends. We have no area of research above level 3 and zero influence spent in Art of War as WvWvW is not of importance to small guilds.

The rest of my small guild hasn’t been playing the past two months and the guild missions were something I was hoping to use to get some of us playing together again. If the first mission type is restricted behind a level 5 Art of War research wall then it’s unlikely that my friends and I will ever do them.

I fully support this system in fact the lack of larger group content, namely guild content, is something I’ve found very frustrating about Guild Wars 2. The fact we’re getting this finally makes me extremely happy and thrilled to keep playing. We are by no means a large, or even medium sized guild yet we’ve been sitting on having everything unlocked for a few months now. Actually being able to use those unlocks for something outside of boosts is a great idea.

For small guilds, this game is chock full of content you can do, you’re not even excluded from these guild missions either, just from starting them if you don’t have the technology researched. This game lets you join other guilds too, so you are able to keep your “friends and family” casual guilds and join larger guilds for more serious content.

Larger group content that isn’t typical world event grinding or WvW was an addition this game has been sorely needing, thank you ArenaNet.

Thanks, btw for answering, bluewanders.

I may still not agree, but at least I understand where you’re coming from.

Drew.1865:

Sereloth.4378:

Drew.1865:

I just spent 40 bucks on gems this month and the best way for my opinion to be felt is not to buy anymore gems. I mean I can always run dungeons for easy gold right? ;-)

I can guarantee you not one more penny of my money will be spent on this game if it continues down the path it’s been on since Nov 15 when all this began.

There are way to many good games out there to be loyal to one that doesn’t appreciate ALL of it’s players.

This is such a horrible attitude to have. Specially towards an MMO. First of all, “appreciation” is an internal state. Therefore, a person can appreciate someone else without acting on it. What I can assume you are referring to by “appreciate” is “cater”. You want Anet to cater to ALL of it’s players’ wishes. Can you imagine what a mess of a game that would be? There are so many complains and suggestions about how each and every person would like GW2 to be, that there’s absolutely no way to satisfy every single player.

If I wanted to play an MMO that released content for a large group of players and then exclusive content that required a much higher gear or requirements I would have kept playing World of Restarts or Tortanic.

I want to play a game where all the players can enjoy the content and not a select few. if that means I want to be catered to then sure I expect to be catered too. If I don’t like something why would I continue to support it?

Your view is distorted. The guild missions are available to every player. Some will have to work/wait longer than others (e.g., smaller guilds, and even players not in a guild). Without Anet’s reasoning behind this, all we can do is speculate. There are already some good points on this board. For example, it is possible that they have designed this content to be gated to smaller guilds because of the required world/server space of running too many guild missions at once. I think that’s a good possible explanation. It would be nice if Anet would tell us specifically their reasoning, but I do not believe they owe us any reasoning at all.

Further, given the parameters put forth by Anet, and assuming they are unwilling to change them, you then have to make the decision whether or not the content is worth it for you to continue playing. I would absolutely back you in quitting the game if this game no longer provides you with satisfaction. However, expecting that all content put forth by Anet from now should be specifically available to you is idealistic, unrealistic, and, frankly, quite sophomoric.

Regardless of what I just said, though, I think we should wait a bit more to get more information before making rash decisions.

etiolate.9185:

I have two large guilds I belong to and I’m sure they can do the guild missions, but I have a small guild of my own for the purpose of playing with real life friends. We have no area of research above level 3 and zero influence spent in Art of War as WvWvW is not of importance to small guilds.

The rest of my small guild hasn’t been playing the past two months and the guild missions were something I was hoping to use to get some of us playing together again. If the first mission type is restricted behind a level 5 Art of War research wall then it’s unlikely that my friends and I will ever do them.

This is the position I’m in. We were looking forward to this as a way of connecting again ingame (several guildies are studying so holidays will still probably be the best playing times, but oh well). We recently switched servers, as well, to avoid having to pay for transfers in light of the fact that guesting is not cross region. All of our upgrades and Influence stayed behind on our old server, so we had to start from scratch. Which was clearly just perfect timing. (Can’t blame anyone for that, but it’s a bit galling all the same seeing as we had a lot of Influence on our old server.)

Now, well. We’re mostly inactive or repping other (bigger) guilds, and seeing as our other commitments mean we don’t get so much time to play simultaneously any more, we’re facing either grinding out influence solo over a period of weeks or months just to get the first Guild mission, and forego all other upgrades in that time, or to not bother and just merge with a bigger guild, or at least rep a bigger guild to join in with stuff.

All in all it’s a bit of a blow really. The thing that could have been a reason to log in and play together is actually looking more like a hurdle to put us off.

Could a developer pop in and give us some more details? A bit more light on this topic is looking rather needed. We’ve got a little information and a lot of speculation to go on at the moment, and that’s really not helping the matter.

It sounds ridiculously cruel to impose something that keeps smaller guilds away from the content, and to make an announcement which guarantees my guild won’t be able to play on the day it is released no matter what I spend or do (there is a one week wait for AoW5.) Even if they said each guild had to pay $20 US to enjoy the new content, that would be better than this because there is currently NO way I can play upon release.

Maybe if we understood their reasoning? Has Anet explained WHY they are imposing this restriction?

In a way, this feels like a possible repeat of the FotM and Ascended gear mistake. The level resitrctions separated players who wanted to rise in level from playing with others at low levels, and the reward increase at higher levels increased this behavior. The fact that FotM was also the only way to access Ascended gear also pulled people out of the world.

The restricting of access to the first mission behind AoW 5 will keep many small guilds out of starting their own mission. Of course, they can join in another guild’s mission, but guild specific parts of that mission and more importantly guild-tied rewards will not come to them. This will draw people out of small guilds.

Maybe the intention is to cull the number of small guilds. Not out right eliminating small guilds but put in HUGE incentives for player to join an additional, larger guild.

This is in a way giving large guilds a bone, a very big bone. Many large guilds are formed by players who have been playing together forever. Not only playing GW1 and 2, but other games as well. It is important from a business point of view to keep these maga guilds happy by giving them a head start of a sort. For the members of a large guild, this must feels like the prestige of belonging to a large guild have paid off.

Somewhere in this thread there a poster suggested that instead of looking at it in a negative way, this could be seen as a way of luring large WvW only guilds back into the Open World, and make the open world busy again.

It would be nice for Anet to comment on some of these, kind of pointless to create a thread for questions and just leave it like this…

I was wondering this as well. They did state that one of the goals of these updates was to get people out into the open world and seldom visited areas. So it would make sense to give large guilds goodies to get out of instanced areas and into the open world. Of course the downside is that when ever you exclude a part of your player base it will create ill will.

Mag Li.2581:

Maybe the intention is to cull the number of small guilds. Not out right eliminating small guilds but put in HUGE incentives for player to join an additional, larger guild.

It would be nice for Anet to comment on some of these, kind of pointless to create a thread for questions and just leave it like this…

The only problem with this is the 5 guild join cap. My alliance came over from GW1 and we have a 10 guild Alliance there that formed in 2007. As leader it makes it tough because i can only be a member of 5 guilds total. I can’t even rep all the guilds that are members of our previous alliance. You factor in sPvP only guilds and WvW guilds and that makes it impossible to stay in all the ones you want to be a part of. We were told as this game was in development that we could be in as many guilds as we wanted to be in. That is a moot point now. IDK if this stuff was being designed with that in mind, but it can’t be denied that larger guilds are being catered to, while at the same time, not being catered to, because you can not do large guild map clears without a certain degree of tedium involved. Sans having a few commanders, there is no option to see guild members on the map or mini map outside of a 5 person group. Anything over that requires a commander and if you don’t have multiple commanders costing hundreds of gold, it makes it difficult to keep track of it all. ArenaNet should give us at the very least, a toggle just to see guild members as dots on the mini map. I don’t believe that is too much to ask for.

Vorch.2985:

However, I also think that the vast majority of the game can be tackled by a group of 5 or less. Giving open-world content to larger guilds should not be frowned upon, imo. Especially when ANYONE can join in and help with the experience.

And small guilds must realize that some content will take more than 5 people to finish.

• The name…Guild Missions. Because they have the word guild in their name, SOME people have assumed, rightly or wrongly, that any guild, from the 2 person husband and wife, to the 400+ person guild, would be able to partake in them.

And it will most likely start guild wars… Maybe thats what the name of the game mean all this time!
It sure sounds like a lot want war to break out. Guess it’s dog eat dog again, and the little one’s will get eaten as always!
As someone said before, they so easily could have made some instanced way of doing things. Another straw for the Camel’s back please, Sir!

Sereloth.4378:

Drew.1865:

Sereloth.4378:

Drew.1865:

I just spent 40 bucks on gems this month and the best way for my opinion to be felt is not to buy anymore gems. I mean I can always run dungeons for easy gold right? ;-)

I can guarantee you not one more penny of my money will be spent on this game if it continues down the path it’s been on since Nov 15 when all this began.

There are way to many good games out there to be loyal to one that doesn’t appreciate ALL of it’s players.

This is such a horrible attitude to have. Specially towards an MMO. First of all, “appreciation” is an internal state. Therefore, a person can appreciate someone else without acting on it. What I can assume you are referring to by “appreciate” is “cater”. You want Anet to cater to ALL of it’s players’ wishes. Can you imagine what a mess of a game that would be? There are so many complains and suggestions about how each and every person would like GW2 to be, that there’s absolutely no way to satisfy every single player.

If I wanted to play an MMO that released content for a large group of players and then exclusive content that required a much higher gear or requirements I would have kept playing World of Restarts or Tortanic.

I want to play a game where all the players can enjoy the content and not a select few. if that means I want to be catered to then sure I expect to be catered too. If I don’t like something why would I continue to support it?

Your view is distorted. The guild missions are available to every player. Some will have to work/wait longer than others (e.g., smaller guilds, and even players not in a guild). Without Anet’s reasoning behind this, all we can do is speculate. There are already some good points on this board. For example, it is possible that they have designed this content to be gated to smaller guilds because of the required world/server space of running too many guild missions at once. I think that’s a good possible explanation. It would be nice if Anet would tell us specifically their reasoning, but I do not believe they owe us any reasoning at all.

Further, given the parameters put forth by Anet, and assuming they are unwilling to change them, you then have to make the decision whether or not the content is worth it for you to continue playing. I would absolutely back you in quitting the game if this game no longer provides you with satisfaction. However, expecting that all content put forth by Anet from now should be specifically available to you is idealistic, unrealistic, and, frankly, quite sophomoric.

Regardless of what I just said, though, I think we should wait a bit more to get more information before making rash decisions.

This might sound sophomoric but I disagree with you and frankly that might seem unrealistic to you but it’s just the way it is ;-)

White Wolf.3291:

Fallon.2347:

Question: Guilds with cross server members; Will a guild with members on multiple servers be able to join in the same events? Also, will a guild need these upgrades on multiple servers in order to participate?

Thanks for your reply.

Your members of different server can join through your guild missions through guest. Guild upgrades and influence are saved on the server you are. Example: If you maxed everything on jade sea server, and then transfer to piken square server, your guild in piken square server you will not have the same upgrades and influence than your guild in jade sea server.

I understand we can guest to other servers. We do it often. However, this speculation for Guild Bounties to be a part of WvW or not based on pre-requisite being Art of War V gives me concern. As well as does our current guild need to have all upgrades done on the two main servers we are on in order for everyone to access these guild missions?

Now, to my understanding thus far there is several guild missions available that will require different upgrades for each guild event to be ‘unlocked’. With that in mind, we are a newly formed guild and will not have everything done to V when this is released. However, I feel like I don’t want to waste time. So, I’m queing what I think is useful either way. I believe more notice could have been given about this. A lot of guilds have died out over the past month and/or reformed. Not everyone wants to be in a 400+ guild, nor do they want to transfer servers to be in a true ‘smaller guild’.
For us, we pve because there is really no point to WvW. (I’ll just hold that speech for another thread) We have found players that like to run dungeons, that like to teach eachother or help people get their dungeon master done. We do not run AC and CoF for gold..

At this point, it feels like more and more the game is being pushed for zerg guilds for WvW and HUGE guilds for PvE. What happened to 10-20 people playing together? Everyone knows each other and has a good time. From the forum post I have read, it does feel like the actual smaller guilds (20-50 members / 5-20 people online) will be bleed out and forced to join massive guilds to participate. Honestly, if that is the case I’m done. Hope this all turns out for the best and there is more than just Art of War V.. or all upgrades to V in order for people to participate.

Thundolfe.9302:

Wouldn’t it just be easier to give us real, accurate information? It would clear up a lot of confusion about this. Certainly an ANet employee could shed some light here.

I agree why all the secrets, they are far from fun especially if they don’t live up to expectations, players are a lot more helpful with all the facts..

Mireles Lore.5942:

Sorry but if your guild is 5 man, thats a group not a guild, there does have to be some restriction. we cant have every small guild dropping events endlessly.

Destinies edge is a 5 person Guild…

I don’t see why a 5 person guild should be excluded and 500 people guilds get everything, that is favoritism at best and the 5 person guild will either evaporate to larger guilds or drop Guildwars 2 entirely, this is a bad decision..again..

Is all of the guild content going to require at least 5 in some line? Do we know?

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

I know there have been some concerns about Guild Bounties being in the Art of War line. Our goal with this system is to give guilds activities and long-term progression that they can accomplish by working together as a guild. These missions are meant to be difficult and challenging to not only unlock, but to accomplish.

We would also like to make every guild upgrade line valuable to every guild. Currently, Art of War is very focused on PvP and WvW, but our plan is to continue to add more guild upgrades in the Art of War line to accomplish this. These Guild Missions are the first step. Along with this system, we also added a number of new guild upgrades that guilds can earn.

In the end, our goal for all of this content is to give guilds new goals and challenges to accomplished once they have researched deeply into each line, as well as require guilds to have researched multiple lines to unlock some upgrades. We expect guild members to have to work together as a guild to earn the influence needed to unlock these new missions, as well as overcome the challenge of the missions themselves.

In the future, we plan to continue to add more guild upgrades, as well as continue to add challenging guild missions, as we don’t want guilds to run out of goals and accomplishments they can achieve.

~Izzy @-’—-

Appreciate the post but this still leaves out critical information. I guess we will know in like 4 days :P

Why are so many people moaning at having to work towards something? Its just another case of ‘want it now’. Sure the larger guilds can undertake the missions at a faster rate than the smaller ones but what do you get for completion? All thats been confirmed is added WvW buffs for the guild.

To me its like moaning at the fact that a friend is helping another friend to get their legendary. “Oh dear, its not fair that this person has a friend in GW2 and I dont”. (1) whats the rush? (2) whats stopping smaller guilds from participating? (3) Larger guilds are harder to run so they deserve a ‘headstart’ in the guild missions. I dont hear anyone moaning about the fact larger guilds get more influence for magic find banners and WvW buffs so whats changed?

I don’t get why this thread was posted only a week away from the release after you’ve already built the content and have made public announcements about it. Why not present an idea to the community before you build it? This way the community will play a larger role in the creative process and thus it will be generally more satisfied with the content. You can make it clear that all ideas are theory only until decided on by development teams so expectations and demands don’t get overwhelming. As it is now, it feels like anything I could suggest to change or add would be in vain.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

I know there have been some concerns about Guild Bounties being in the Art of War line. Our goal with this system is to give guilds activities and long-term progression that they can accomplish by working together as a guild. These missions are meant to be difficult and challenging to not only unlock, but to accomplish.

We would also like to make every guild upgrade line valuable to every guild. Currently, Art of War is very focused on PvP and WvW, but our plan is to continue to add more guild upgrades in the Art of War line to accomplish this. These Guild Missions are the first step. Along with this system, we also added a number of new guild upgrades that guilds can earn.

In the end, our goal for all of this content is to give guilds new goals and challenges to accomplished once they have researched deeply into each line, as well as require guilds to have researched multiple lines to unlock some upgrades. We expect guild members to have to work together as a guild to earn the influence needed to unlock these new missions, as well as overcome the challenge of the missions themselves.

In the future, we plan to continue to add more guild upgrades, as well as continue to add challenging guild missions, as we don’t want guilds to run out of goals and accomplishments they can achieve.

~Izzy @-’—-

Thanks for hurting the small guilds consisting of friends again! Of course we all should be in those 500 person “close knit” guilds right!!!

Thereon.3495:

Why are so many people moaning at having to work towards something? Its just another case of ‘want it now’. Sure the larger guilds can undertake the missions at a faster rate than the smaller ones but what do you get for completion? All thats been confirmed is added WvW buffs for the guild.

To me its like moaning at the fact that a friend is helping another friend to get their legendary. “Oh dear, its not fair that this person has a friend in GW2 and I dont”. (1) whats the rush? (2) whats stopping smaller guilds from participating? (3) Larger guilds are harder to run so they deserve a ‘headstart’ in the guild missions. I dont hear anyone moaning about the fact larger guilds get more influence for magic find banners and WvW buffs so whats changed?

I think the main complaint is that it appears all the other missions are gated behind the AoW/Bounty line, and smaller guilds probably don’t have that line researched.

Based on the response here, it’s obviously is what it is at this point – servers will have to band together to help each other. We’re working on this on SoR right now.

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

I know there have been some concerns about Guild Bounties being in the Art of War line. Our goal with this system is to give guilds activities and long-term progression that they can accomplish by working together as a guild. These missions are meant to be difficult and challenging to not only unlock, but to accomplish.

We would also like to make every guild upgrade line valuable to every guild. Currently, Art of War is very focused on PvP and WvW, but our plan is to continue to add more guild upgrades in the Art of War line to accomplish this. These Guild Missions are the first step. Along with this system, we also added a number of new guild upgrades that guilds can earn.

In the end, our goal for all of this content is to give guilds new goals and challenges to accomplished once they have researched deeply into each line, as well as require guilds to have researched multiple lines to unlock some upgrades. We expect guild members to have to work together as a guild to earn the influence needed to unlock these new missions, as well as overcome the challenge of the missions themselves.

In the future, we plan to continue to add more guild upgrades, as well as continue to add challenging guild missions, as we don’t want guilds to run out of goals and accomplishments they can achieve.

~Izzy @-’—-

For a lot of us, the problem isn’t the Art of War (though it is also rather disappointing). The problem is the huge advantage you are giving to larger guilds. It is already hard for small guilds to recruit members and compete with the big guys. Now it is becoming nearly impossible. The average player wants to maximize their gains. Large guilds will be able to easily offer the new guild missions (and the bonuses that come with them) to potential recruits. Small guilds of groups of friends simply can not keep up with this. In the end, we are being forced into large guilds for the gain that comes with this new update. Casual guilds get the short end of the stick, despite the promise that we can play the game our way.

• Can’t all the small guilds just band together?

• Or the 5 people in your guild join another guild all together? You’d still be in the same guild…

• Is it the name of the guild or the exclusivity of it that keeps the 5-man-or-less guild together? Does being part of something larger detract from your kinship?

• Can the guild stay together, but simply rep another guild on the side for the guild missions?

These are just things that come to mind, sorry.

Thereon.3495:

Why are so many people moaning at having to work towards something?

I don’t think it is the “having to work” that bothers people. It’s that with more warning, the smaller guilds could have aimed for AoW5 instead of other things. Many guilds (including mine) would have been ready and able to do the content as soon as it is released. Now, even if we do gather up the influence, my guild will be unable to experience the content on launch with everyone else.

No small guilds with have AoW5, and with the current process of gathering influence – most guilds it takes a significant long time to gather a large amount because of the amount of players who have quit.

I’m sorry, but I’m going to be blunt – it is another stupid idea, its going to fail – and your going to suffer a major backlash.

well thx for the reply, as usual it didnt get to any concerns which where discussed here

a goal is fine
a goal which is reachable
a goal only for certain groups is not

so to sum it up big guilds who got influence stuffed like crazy can just upgrade in a few days and zerg every event down
and small guilds have to build like 1-2month to even be capable to get to this goals —--way to go

like 2-3month you could have given a hint so people upgrade but no….

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

No small guilds with have AoW5, and with the current process of gathering influence – most guilds it takes a significant long time to gather a large amount because of the amount of players who have quit.

I’m sorry, but I’m going to be blunt – it is another stupid idea, its going to fail – and your going to suffer a major backlash.

I don’t think so.

There is a difference between this and the release of ascended gear. Ascended gear represented another gear tier. I forgave them, but many people RIGHTFULLY did not. The ONLY reason I’m still here and enjoying the game is because they gave a good line about it being a bridge between exotics and legendaries…but that’s for another day.

This represents a form of guild progression. That was in GW1 in the form of Kurz/Luxon faction farming for the ownership of certain cities. Smaller guilds could not own them and the monetary advantage that they had, especially with lockpicks and salvage kits.

Gear progression was a direct affront. Guild progression doesn’t require or motivate every player to replace their armor. It’s another form of vertical progression, not unlike the guild faction from GW1 or title tiers that offered stat advantages.

It may make people angry because they could not prepare, but it’s no where near the same issue.

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

No small guilds with have AoW5

Our guild is lucky to have 10 people on at once on guild nights. AoW5 was the first level 5 we unlocked….

Durian.5419:

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

No small guilds with have AoW5

Our guild is lucky to have 10 people on at once on guild nights. AoW5 was the first level 5 we unlocked….

Ahem…no small ‘PvE’ guilds will have it.

Vorch.2985:

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

No small guilds with have AoW5, and with the current process of gathering influence – most guilds it takes a significant long time to gather a large amount because of the amount of players who have quit.

I’m sorry, but I’m going to be blunt – it is another stupid idea, its going to fail – and your going to suffer a major backlash.

I don’t think so.

There is a difference between this and the release of ascended gear. Ascended gear represented another gear tier. I forgave them, but many people RIGHTFULLY did not. The ONLY reason I’m still here and enjoying the game is because they gave a good line about it being a bridge between exotics and legendaries…but that’s for another day.

This represents a form of guild progression. That was in GW1 in the form of Kurz/Luxon faction farming for the ownership of certain cities. Smaller guilds could not own them and the monetary advantage that they had, especially with lockpicks and salvage kits.

Gear progression was a direct affront. Guild progression doesn’t require or motivate every player to replace their armor. It’s another form of vertical progression, not unlike the guild faction from GW1 or title tiers that offered stat advantages.

It may make people angry because they could not prepare, but it’s no where near the same issue.

Its going to make alot of people angry, and they cannot afford to do that. It truely does alienate alot of players, and limits alot of guilds. I hate to say it, but if this patch goes live as is ~ I’m going to quit the game, and I’ll make sure the reasons are expressively known. I’ve given anet the benefit of doubt several times, as many others players have – yet they have consistently screwed us over. Look at the reddit panel the reasons for that? In my opinion, the community will suffer another huge blow if this patch goes live as is.

This entire game is for small guilds. Just about everything in this game can be done with a small guild. Even WvW, with five guys you have things you can do. And you can find a zerg if you want to do bigger things. Dungeons, SPvP, running around Orr with a party limit of 5…small guilds have the run of this game.

The problem has always been that big guilds could only do one thing. WvW. The rest of the time we had to ACT like small guilds. This content was obviously designed to give larger groups something to do to work together.

So if you only have five guys in your guild, what makes you think you’ll be able to do the content anyway?

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

These missions are meant to be difficult and challenging to not only unlock, but to accomplish.

How exactly is gaining Influence difficult? It’s tedious and mundane. There’s a severe difference, and this is not the first time that people have felt this way about what you guys have currently listed out as “difficult” for the player base.

We would also like to make every guild upgrade line valuable to every guild. Currently, Art of War is very focused on PvP and WvW, but our plan is to continue to add more guild upgrades in the Art of War line to accomplish this.

Do you realize that the entire point of you guys separating the upgrades into different categories was so that Guilds that wanted to focus on certain aspects of the game wouldn’t have to delve into the categories that were not pertaining to their interests? The idea of making every upgrade category valuable to every Guild is nonsensical. That’s why there are different Guilds devoted to different aspects of the game.

In the end, our goal for all of this content is to give guilds new goals and challenges to accomplished once they have researched deeply into each line, as well as require guilds to have researched multiple lines to unlock some upgrades. We expect guild members to have to work together as a guild to earn the influence needed to unlock these new missions, as well as overcome the challenge of the missions themselves.

This sounds fine. There should be some ultimate goal at the end of the lines that is rewarding to the entire Guild. However, putting a reward into a category that is not even remotely related to that line is beyond ridiculous. It just makes for a clunky and seemingly unorganized set of categories for a Guild to delve into.

On a completely separate note, this thread is kind of pointless. You ask for everybody’s feedback, and then just say “oh well, we’re putting it into the WvW/PvP category anyway. You’ll understand one day.” Why even ask for what we want, then?

I think this is going to be great. The big guilds didn’t have much of a purpose… now they do. The game is so small group friendly, there almost wasn’t a point to being in a big guild. I’m sure that “guild event” guilds will pop up, and with the functionality available to join different guilds, if there’s a difficulty just jump in a bigger group for the events that require it, and mosey on back to your little 3-man guild for socializing.

You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Something in this game HAS to require a strong guild, or at least present something resembling a challenge.

This is going to be great for some people, but really very bad for alot of others. Its almost like a giant slap in the face for many guilds, especially casual PvE guilds. This is very serious error in judgement, you should never release a content update that gives one set of players a huge advantage over others – In GW2 current state, it is practically self-mutilation and is literally inviting another rebellion.

Vorch.2985:

Can’t all the small guilds just band together?

Ah yes, let’s force players to play with strangers, better still let’s MAKE the server work together (lol GL with that, I’ll not be!).
I see more ignorant players than enough, some barely speak, other train mobs into you and your wanting them to help and vice-versa? rofl you guys kill me!

Isaiah Cartwright.8569:

I know there have been some concerns about Guild Bounties being in the Art of War line. Our goal with this system is to give guilds activities and long-term progression that they can accomplish by working together as a guild. These missions are meant to be difficult and challenging to not only unlock, but to accomplish.

We would also like to make every guild upgrade line valuable to every guild. Currently, Art of War is very focused on PvP and WvW, but our plan is to continue to add more guild upgrades in the Art of War line to accomplish this. These Guild Missions are the first step. Along with this system, we also added a number of new guild upgrades that guilds can earn.

In the end, our goal for all of this content is to give guilds new goals and challenges to accomplished once they have researched deeply into each line, as well as require guilds to have researched multiple lines to unlock some upgrades. We expect guild members to have to work together as a guild to earn the influence needed to unlock these new missions, as well as overcome the challenge of the missions themselves.

In the future, we plan to continue to add more guild upgrades, as well as continue to add challenging guild missions, as we don’t want guilds to run out of goals and accomplishments they can achieve.

~Izzy @-’—-

Allow me to be clear….

I have absolutely no problem with guild missions appearing 10 upgrades deep in the WvW line.

I have absolutely no problem with larger guilds being given content that only larger guilds can complete.

I have absolutely no problem with giving guilds goals to work for… I WANT MORE of that…

I have absolutely no problem with guild missions appearing 500 tiers deep in a tech line I don’t care about/have no use for.

What I have repeatedly protested in this thread is that LAUNCH CONTENT be exclusionary.

I would have had absolutely no foul reaction at all if you had announced that a “guild missions lite” or whatever name you would want to give it would be available on launch day for smaller guilds to activate some nominal small content to do together as a guild and participate in the new reward system at a lower tier in a more popular tech line AND that there would be more large guild or hard core content available 25 or 100 tiers deep in the AoW tech tree. This way… we wouldn’t bleed members to the borg while we work toward these new guild goals… to activate missions that our guild now no longer has the numbers to complete.

I agree with a lot of players that most things can be completed with a 5 man team. A small guild of 20 players has the same problem as a guild of 500 in this respect… there has been no content aside from wvw and helping to open temples in orr for any group over 5.

I want more stuff for larger groups to do that isn’t WoW raiding… but you have chosen to exclude players from launch content… most particularly a new reward system with confirmed monetary bonuses… and given players the choice between not participating immediately or leaving their guilds to join a larger collective.

Make your new missions 5 million tiers deep in whatever tech line you want…. with as convoluted an unlock system as you want… with as prohibitive a cost to research as you want… I’m fine working toward them as a goal… which you stated is what you want. LAUNCH CONTENT should not be exclusionary… because you bleed population from the excluded percentage while they scramble to catch up.

i got sick of raiding based games cos they were “exclusive” based that is, not just anyone could come along to a raid, instead of being “inclusive” allowing just about anybody to do stuff together, see the content all that. i started playing this because it didn’t feel like those treadmill raid based games with their restrictions and you could see/do most of this game w/o it being gated behind gear or other stuff. this addition tho.. seems to counter that idea.

When content is proposed, I’d suggest it pass through 4 checks before development begins:

1. (red team) what would an exploiter do with this?
2. (red team) what would a griefer do with this?
3. (red team) what are players incented to do? Is anything incented that will negatively impact the play of a class of players, particularly those new to the game?
4. (marketing) based on a thorough segmentation of the player base, which segments will be delighted, which will be so alienated they’ll leave, and how are the segments in the middle affected? This isn’t rocket science but does require someone immersed in all the different subsets of players (this is more the work of a political scientist than a classic marketing person). Unlike politics, which is just about votes, this determines whether all of Arena Net’s people get to continue to eat, so it’s a good idea to do it well.

But like politics, the fate of a candidate (in this case a game) which serially offends all of its players, by making decisions that drive each segment away in series, is of course oblivion. Just look at what happened to RIFT after it started out open world, then nerfed the open world events into irrelevance, then focused on instanced raiding (which drove off a lot of people who’d left WoW to get away from the have / have-not problems and the negative community issues Jeff Kaplan modeled for his raiders), and then alienated the raiders by thrashing on whether raids should be hard or easy. GW2 has alienated a nontrivial bloc of players with each of its recent content releases, in a way that indicates the dev team has no idea the alienation is going to occur. This is a business basic, people.

Sorry to be so blunt.

Of course a small guild wont have to grind for influence, after all they dont make grindy games…

These guild missions are nice, but I personally don’t believe it gives guilds any more of a reason to exist except as a method through which like minded players can group together.

My initial hope was that they would be missions for GUILDS and not something random pugs can join in on once they’re activated. That IMMEDIATELY tells me that these missions aren’t going to be very taxing on the senses and that the only need for voice chat will come out of arbitrarily telling guildees where to go in the world during a bounty or something.

I’m just gonna say it right now.

10 man raids. Imagine if fractals were to be structured as different rooms in a large dungeon rather than the timesplitters portal jumping we have currently. Obviously for the sake of this example we’ll strip away plot and setting but keep the overall mechanics of each room and place them in this fictional raid and then further modify them in both scale and difficulty so as to accommodate a larger group.

Arenanet has obviously shown they have the ability to create interesting and inventive encounters so why not take that and apply it to something worth being called “end game?”

But oh wait……

Your loot distribution consistently leans toward the “holy god this is terrible” spectrum so even a raid won’t be worth doing.

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

I hate to personally say it, but this might be the time to start a petition to attempt to block this patch.

No… you don’t petition to block new content from dropping. I don’t want big guilds to be excluded from the content too just because small guilds have been… the answer is make our position known, and understood, be willing to discuss it at length until it is… and then act like adults once the “final” decision has been made and deal with it’s consequences on an adult level.

We aren’t 5 year olds… we can certainly deal with an unfavorable turn of events without trying to screw over everyone else for whom it is favorable. At the same time… when decisions have been made, the decision makers need to be given feedback and alerted to dissident opinions… that is the very basis and strength of freedom of speech. “Good” decision makers take this feedback into consideration in the future and incorporate it into more accurate decision making models… even if their decisions continue to press disfavor on a portion of the population affected by them… not all decisions can be favorable to everyone… but everyone should be heard and acknowledged… and their feedback should have weight.

bluewanders.5297:

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

I hate to personally say it, but this might be the time to start a petition to attempt to block this patch.

No… you don’t petition to block new content from dropping. I don’t want big guilds to be excluded from the content too just because small guilds have been… the answer is make our position known, and understood, be willing to discuss it at length until it is… and then act like adults once the “final” decision has been made and deal with it’s consequences on an adult level.

We aren’t 5 year olds… we can certainly deal with an unfavorable turn of events without trying to screw over everyone else for whom it is favorable. At the same time… when decisions have been made, the decision makers need to be given feedback and alerted to dissident opinions… that is the very basis and strength of freedom of speech. “Good” decision makers take this feedback into consideration in the future and incorporate it into more accurate decision making models… even if their decisions continue to press disfavor on a portion of the population affected by them… not all decisions can be favorable to everyone… but everyone should be heard and acknowledged… and their feedback should have weight.

I agree with you completely.

And then i remember back when Anet said they didn’t want to make a grindy game.

Truthfully, they haven’t. It’s all optional.

So people quit playing because they don’t want to grind.

Ironic.