Guild Wars 2

Jski.6180:

@ Jornophelanthas.1475
Have you even tried them? Because there are a lot of guilds who are small that are running these. There are answer to your problems and i posted them if your unwilling to try them out then there is no point in talking with you because its like talking into a wall.
Tell me what is your guild that your in? Size activeness etc..

No, I have not tried guild missions yet. However, my guild is saving up influence to unlock the Art of War tree, and we intend to at least try them when we can. The training bounties are likely to help with the influence threshold.

My guild is located on Gandara (EU). We all share the Dutch language, and I am an officer in the guild. The core of the members is made up of our group of friends, with some further non-shared acquaintances added in for good measure. Currently, we have about 10 members, 3 of which are actually active these days (including the guild leader). Some of the others will intermittently log in, are are only active while I am not looking.

As mentioned before, I am quite willing to try out the new guild content, and so are my fellow (active) guildmates. By the time we are able to actually try a training bounty or two, we will likely recruit for temporary (duration of the mission only) additional members in open chat. By the time we are able to start a “real” guild mission, we will likely do the same, and perhaps even ask participants for tips on a successful run. It remains to be seen how many players will be needed for a tier 1 bounty.

Hopefully, there will be players around who like access to this guild content, but do not want to become a permanent member of a guild of strangers.

As you can see, we are trying to make the most out of the current situation. I fully acknowledge that ArenaNet should not throw all rewards for free into the lap of a 3-person guild. However, if a guild is able to do dungeons or fractals together (i.e. if a guild can field 5-player parties to play together), why would guild missions be out of their reach?

Actually i believe it is doable doing t3 without pre-scouting with 30 people(5 person per map gives them 15 minutes to search and kill and if someone kills before one person can find/kill theirs then they can help that team if they have a tougher bounty). Our guild does pre-scout but a lot of times we will find about half of the bounties within 5 min of searching. It is not hard(well sotzz is an issue but meh) when we have everyone searching at once we can usually find all of them within 10min unless a guild ends up killing the bounty thats when it will take longer.. this is not including sotzz. Like some people I tend to look an hr before bounty starts for sotzz since he is stationary. Also tier 3 is even possible with 13-18 people. Our guild have done tier 3 with 18 people the other day 13 with coordination it is possible.

I would like to suggest to add ability to track these NPC that are active similarly to achievement tracking (IE you activate guild bounty tier 2 and u will see list with 3 NPCs on the right side of the screen with timer).
Guild menu is little rusty for this since it has to load your members and then u have to move throu few clicks (nothing to say about its size that is huge just for listing active NPCs)

That would be nice but for the mean time(if they do decide to implement that) you could also end up having one person typing out in guild chat(unless your a guild chat type of guild) or having guild menu down way far in the corner of your screen. That way you can just move it to see the names and put it back down to where it wont block your mini map(<- thats what i tend to do).

My concern with Guild Missions are the fact it is time-gated content. I do not like having to wait for specific times and specific days to work towards my Ascended Jewelry and (as per’ the new Guild Missions page) new weapons bought with commendations.

Please let us simply work towards our goals at our own pace. Some like to do a bit each day, some like to grind it in one day. But please stop time-gated content in a game which already has every other piece of content being time-gated (Dungeon tokens, FoTM Dailies, DR, Laurels, etc…)

Areyia Rose.7046:

That would be nice but for the mean time(if they do decide to implement that) you could also end up having one person typing out in guild chat(unless your a guild chat type of guild) or having guild menu down way far in the corner of your screen. That way you can just move it to see the names and put it back down to where it wont block your mini map(<- thats what i tend to do).

yeah I know that, thats what I’m doing, but I’m having trouble when accidently pressing ESC that it closes my carefully placed guild menu with missions. Its just a suggestion to make bounty hunt little clearer and easier to track progress

Yeah, it does get somewhat frustrating having to open up the guild panel to look which bounties are still left and where I need to send people to.

I think the most important thing that needs to be implemented is an on-screen timer of the time remaining, that gives time down to the sec. The timer is probably the most important thing to view after you activate a bounty, and I find myself opening up the guild panel to check this quite often during a bounty (time management is the most important aspect of bounties IMO). As of now, the guild panel timer only gives minutes with no seconds displayed until the very last minute. Often times Im left wondering, for example, if I have 4min 59 seconds left or 4 min 1 second left. That almost minute difference that is essentially hidden from players can make all the difference in an activity that only lasts for 15min.

At the very least, I would love to see this before anything else.

I agree the non existent user interface for all representing guild members to see whats happening when a bounty mission starts is not helpful.

Would be good to have time left, what bounty we are after and what map they are on and if the npc is being attacked or not.

That way we can be more efficient in our time use and everyone knows who to kill and what map they are on. And if a guildie just logs in they can see a mission is on. 1 st npc is dead, have 5 minutes left and the second npc is in harathi, obviously everyone is there, with out having to ask whats happening, where are you, who you attacking, how much time left. Its there on there screen the instant they have logged in with there character and no one needs to have to reply to the question and continue killing or searching for npc.

Maybe simply a timer that could appear atop the mini map.mouse over and a tooltip could show off the targets.

Would be nice at least until a more robust and less cluttered solution could be built

what about the ability to resize the various windows?

Easiest way to do it is to break into groups of 5, number the groups, each group takes the nth target on the list that pops up when the bounty launches.

5 people with a loosely coordinated search pattern can find a target in < minutes, drop it in another 5.

Top down command of 50 people is going to be a miserable experience and a huge time sink, sure, especially when you’re trying to juggle 15 pre-scouts and the like. So stop doing that. Atomize the problem, 6 targets, 6 commanders, 6 different voice channels. You can coordinate between groups in guild chat.

After that it’s just a matter of success rate and juggling players between targets efficiently.

I do like the new guild-missions and I love that ArenaNet has put them in but I also do think they underestimated the effect it would have on smaller (or new) guilds.

In the first post it is being said that he has a small guild and is loosing people. Looking at how things are going on our server I think thats thats very well possible. We are one of the guilds that are able to keep on going and are even doing much better with the new guild-missions (we love them, finally content to do together) but I did notice a big change for guilds.

If you go to this topic: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Guild-Missions-merged/page/45#post1687764 I also looked to what AreanNet had in mind. Every guild who would get 1000 influence a day should have no problem unlocking the missions, but for those with less then 1000 influence they introduce a special bounty that ears you 3000 (every guild can do it, I think it’s also on a weekly base). In my post there I calculated how long it would take to unlock everything if you had already everything unlocked when they introduced the patch and there would be no influence at that point but the guild would get 1000 influence a day. Well then it does take you about a year to unlock everything. For new guilds who have to start from 0 it is extremely hard.

Also in this thread it is being said (by ArenaNet) that you can do a tier 3 with 30 people after a lot of tries. And I belief that (with 15 bounty’s). It’s about 1 person per bounty if you do tier 2 and if you do tier 3 you indeed need like 30 persons. I however see that about 50% of the representing members wants to do guild-missions, not all want to use TeamSpeak, not all are level 80 (most are) and not all have world-completion. So 30 people, on TS (not even talking about World completion) is a lot, no small guild but a medium-big guild . I can see how adding 3 more bounty’s drive smaller guilds crazy.

Something else they also seem to forget. The guild-missions give merits you need to unlock new missions and guilds like to unlock new missions. So they do not just want to do hard missions 10 times and then succeed. They want to succeed to get the mertis. To organize a guild-mission, get the people online at the same time and so on takes time so guilds can not do it on a daily basis so it’s also not like if they fail they just try it again. Guild-missions are maybe created with the idea of ‘fun’ but they are now also a ‘must farm’ because the merits are require to unlock new missions. Once a guild has everything unlock I can image that guilds just try them with less organizing or a higher tier then they did before just for the fun, but for now most guild want to succeed in doing them to be able to unlock new missions.

What I would suggest is to make tier 3, tier 4 and add a new tier 3 where you get 4 bounty’s and one of the 4 is one of the 3 new ones. You can then also add a tier 5 where all bounty’s count (all 18) and you have to kill 6 or 7 of them. In that way the new bounty’s can give a lot of new fun without harming the smaller guilds.

Thats just my 5 cents. We manage also with 18 bounty’s (but I must confess I am happy that we hopefully have have the merits needed for the next unlock before they 3 new bounty’s are introduced) but I do understand how this can be a problem for smaller guild, just like the required amount of influence. Future additions to the guild should also not all require new influence to unlock because in that way you make it impossible for new guilds.

If any change is needed to make smaller guilds more accessible to missions is by extending the time needed to kill them.

I have a hard time understanding why anyone would think that running around in an open world map looking for an NPC is fun in anyway. I use to do that when I was a kid during Easter. I was running around looking for chocolate eggs.

Seriously, who is this game targeting anyway?

Rakuren Kenshou.7689:

No Walking.6349:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The pre-scouting methods were never used by the testers. Most found it far more efficient to start the mission and the search the map by dividing up our efforts.

Wait… Did you just say that scouting is far less efficient? Lol, um, well… no.

Time = Money.

He didn’t say “effective”. He said “efficient”.

If you spend an hour and 15 minutes doing a Guild Bounty that means that you wasted an hour of your ENTIRE guild’s time. Time they could have spent doing dungeon runs to make money for the guild. Or time they could have spent doing 4 other guild missions.

If your guild is skillful like Anthony’s, then by launching the bounty and finding/killing them in 15 minutes, you are being more efficient.

This is very interesting comment to me.

I don’t think most people in my guild think an hour and a half event is significantly worse than a 15 minute event. It’s part of our play. We’re enjoying the working together aspect. It’s not a waste of time if you have fun doing it.

And I believe we’re having fun prescouting. It gives everyone a chance to participate. We pair off into zones and 1 or 2 people search, other’s coordinate, different people find the bosses each time and lock them down. Everyone feels a part of everything. Not a waste of time in my book.

Everyone running around a zone like chickens hoping to spot the guy and then fifteen minutes later it’s over might be very efficient (if you succeed), and yeah, it’s more of a rush, but then after that, it’s done and the guild goes their separate ways.

I think we’ve bonded more as a guild due to spending time doing the pre-scouting.

Jski.6180:

Just think about how bad it would be if every guild or group of 5 ppl wanted to do these guild events you would have to spawn camp the bounties. Is it realty that hard to work with other guilds or maybe add a few more ppl into your guild and stop being so inclusive?

That would be a failure in design. If there is content design for a MMO which doesn’t scale up to a MMO size population then I don’t know what else to call it.

Just finished a tier 1 bounty with 6 people, only prescouting the Karka, Keg, and prisoner, none of which actually showed up as a bounty lol…

And we didn’t get the super easy to find ones like the quaggan. It was Tarban (Brisban) and Teesa (Frostgorge). We had 3 people on each map and found Teesa within the first 5 minutes, and Tarban around the 7 minute mark. After the other team finished off Teesa they came to Brisban to help take down Tarban faster. Ended up having over 3 minutes to spare.

Granted, with smaller teams it definitely requires that you know their mechanics and can play your class well, as some of these guys can be extremely tough and punishing for groups smaller than a full party. But hey, Tarban is supposed to be one of the most difficult to fight and we were holding our own with a group of 3 at the beginning. =P

TL;DR it’s completely doable with smaller groups (with very limited prescouting for the most difficult to find ones, if you want to increase your chances for success). Just queue up more than 1 mission in case something goes wrong.

Khisanth.2948:

Jski.6180:

Just think about how bad it would be if every guild or group of 5 ppl wanted to do these guild events you would have to spawn camp the bounties. Is it realty that hard to work with other guilds or maybe add a few more ppl into your guild and stop being so inclusive?

That would be a failure in design. If there is content design for a MMO which doesn’t scale up to a MMO size population then I don’t know what else to call it.

I am using it to point out that its designed for larger numbers of ppl. Party size is purely for non open world events but in the open world every player is in your pt in that zone your in at any given time.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

All of the missions are designed to be completed in the fifteen minute window. The pre-scouting methods were never used by the testers. Most found it far more efficient to start the mission and the search the map by dividing up our efforts.

Some of the new bounties are designed to actively encourage this approach instead.

Kilrain Daggerspine.6843:

You telling me your testers tracked down and killed 6 diffrent targets within 15 mins? that sounds completly unrealistic unless you have upward of a hundred people searching at the same time.

Try 30.

My question is were they doing this cooperatively or competitively? Both tracks would have needed to be tested as both are what is in-game now.

Yes I would like to know the answer to the post above as well. I am wondering did the test team endure what we have to endure. for example, one npc was being camped by a player considerably larger and they were actually able to stand on it in such a way as to conceal it. Did they have to deal with others holding an npc in a very obscure place? did they have to deal with other guilds killing the target causing it to respawn? They say, you can get the map to help. Did they put up with so many other guilds camping an npc only to scale it and do nothing when a group of 5 ppl are trying to kill it. Please don’t get me wrong, I love the content , when it is being done the want anet intended. But for them to compare what we have to deal with and their own experience in doing the content is like comparing apples to oranges.

Hi Anthony, I read your comments yesterday and thought about them quite a bit. I’ve been organising our bounty runs for about 15 people (all 5 successfully) and while we’ve been pre-scouting about half the targets I think we’ve been getting more organised. and might be ready to try it blind.

I wanted to believe and do it your way but the problem is Sotzz and Wildman, even with pre-scouting the areas with 5-7 people we’ve still spent half an hour looking for Wildman and not found him. So yesterday I had some time so I found him and parked one character there while I switched to look for Sotzz.

For 45-50 minutes I ran over as much of the map as I could think of. There were no barrels so I presume Sotzz was out and would be easy to see but no luck. At our meeting time I got the others organised to do some pre-scouting and got a couple of people to look for Sotzz. As we found other bounties we sent more people to Gendaren and they couldn’t find him. After an hour we started and of course, we drew Sotzz. We didn’t have our 2nd target so I sent everyone except myself to search for Michelle so they would at least get their personal reward while I looked for Sotzz again.

Once done there (with 8 minutes left) I got everyone to jump to the waypoints along the South of the map and to spread across and run North (plus one to check the swamp)…. still nothing and time runs out… our first fail, so we keep searching….

Was he bugged? Was he there? No idea because after another 15 or 20 minutes we decided to take everyone to do some mini-dungeons to put some fun back. I personally spent an hour and half looking. We had 15 on the map for half an hour and still nothing, that’s more than enough time spent and way more than the team have allowed for.

So what’s my point here? If you have some control and can learn then yes we can organise. 5 people can find the targets that loop in 15 minutes without pre-scouting (discounting competing guilds), but with Sotzz? Even if everyone in the game spends their time wandering Gendaren memorising barrel locations (when they are there) then that one is just going to be about luck and frustration, or massive guild numbers.

You’ve indicated that you want more of them to be like Sotzz, well I’m saying that if you do go down that road I feel you will be hampering the small guilds even more and encouraging even more pre-scouting. I don’t feel like I have a choice now, my guild is desperate to get the jumping puzzles unlocked so we have to earn marks each week (even if just Tier 1). Unfortunately because we were missing a bunch of the level 5’s we are playing catch-up and didn’t have space to queue spare bounties.

We can fix that and the next time Sotzz comes up, if we don’t have him pre-scouted then we’ll probably not bother and start another. If you add more like him, then we might end up skipping those as well because I’m sorry but last night just wasn’t fun.

Sotzz is currently bugged on some servers where he does not spawn again after being reset.

Are you on Sanctum of Rail by chance? I believe he is bugged there…

No we are on the EU – Aurora Glade Diviner, but thanks for the info.

Can’t say I’m happy to hear that but it kind of makes my point though. If you have a bounty on a track or known spawn points you can check them all and get to a point where you are certain it’s bugged and move on, but with 300 random spawns unless you check everyone yourself then how do you know that someone didn’t miss something and you keep looking and wasting your friends time… The barrels were missing for 2 hours at least, does he re-hide after a time I wonder?

That’s probably going to annoy me more now but I appeciate you letting me know.

No, Sotzz only resets if he is activated and fought by a guild during a bounty (whether he is killed or not).

If he is never fought, then he will literally never move from the location he spawns in.

Vayne.8563:

Rakuren Kenshou.7689:

No Walking.6349:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

The pre-scouting methods were never used by the testers. Most found it far more efficient to start the mission and the search the map by dividing up our efforts.

Wait… Did you just say that scouting is far less efficient? Lol, um, well… no.

Time = Money.

He didn’t say “effective”. He said “efficient”.

If you spend an hour and 15 minutes doing a Guild Bounty that means that you wasted an hour of your ENTIRE guild’s time. Time they could have spent doing dungeon runs to make money for the guild. Or time they could have spent doing 4 other guild missions.

If your guild is skillful like Anthony’s, then by launching the bounty and finding/killing them in 15 minutes, you are being more efficient.

This is very interesting comment to me.

I don’t think most people in my guild think an hour and a half event is significantly worse than a 15 minute event. It’s part of our play. We’re enjoying the working together aspect. It’s not a waste of time if you have fun doing it.

And I believe we’re having fun prescouting. It gives everyone a chance to participate. We pair off into zones and 1 or 2 people search, other’s coordinate, different people find the bosses each time and lock them down. Everyone feels a part of everything. Not a waste of time in my book.

Everyone running around a zone like chickens hoping to spot the guy and then fifteen minutes later it’s over might be very efficient (if you succeed), and yeah, it’s more of a rush, but then after that, it’s done and the guild goes their separate ways.

I think we’ve bonded more as a guild due to spending time doing the pre-scouting.

Oh, I agree.

It is fun.

But it’s still not efficient. I was mostly just defending the company, as get pretty tired of listening to all of the “we never get dev responses” complaints. And then when a dev responds, he has to listen to “blah blah blah, you’re wrong because you obviously didn’t test exactly the way I would have tested”.

We did a guild bounty last night and when it came to the last target, he hadn’t been scouted like the others, so we had like 5 minutes to do a mad dash to find him and take him down. And we did. And that was fun too. I like the idea that some can be scouted and some can’t after the update, because that will allow for both kinds of fun. The fun of working together and tracking some down, and running around frantically trying to find the other ones.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

wizzy.6871:

I would like to suggest to add ability to track these NPC that are active similarly to achievement tracking (IE you activate guild bounty tier 2 and u will see list with 3 NPCs on the right side of the screen with timer).
Guild menu is little rusty for this since it has to load your members and then u have to move throu few clicks (nothing to say about its size that is huge just for listing active NPCs)

I’d like to get this added but that portion of the screen is getting a bit crowded. We’re looking into other options as well, such as moving the missions panel to the top level list of tabs or somehow displaying it on the main page.

Top Center when guild mission is active would be my vote. Second spot perhaps right above your skill bar. Right now with the guild mission interface it is behind 3 layers.

But back to the topic at hand i find it hard that 30 people with a tier 3 will find all their targets within the 15 min time window without a stroke a luck.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Kilrain Daggerspine.6843:

You telling me your testers tracked down and killed 6 diffrent targets within 15 mins? that sounds completly unrealistic unless you have upward of a hundred people searching at the same time.

Try 30.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

As far as 30 vs a T3, yes they were coordinating over voice and guild chat. They absolutely failed plenty of times and they tried lots of different tactics before they found what worked for them. But they were mighty pleased with themselves once they got it done, and that’s exactly the kind of group content that we’re aiming for.

This is where i feel the truth lies in this conversation. It took multiple tier 3 attempts with the 15 mins timers to get it to work, which at least in my mind means there is some luck involved in the process. Some are simply easier to find then others then there is also the time of day factor, where a guild having the same one can be a good or a bad thing depending on your situation. I would argue more of a bad thing when it comes to such a short timer as its more likely they killed it during your hunt.

But what i really think is that this system is going the wrong way. You are adding more bounties to the list which is a good thing but the problem is guild bounty difficulty is increased by amount of bounties which is a #’s game. Rather then the same amount of bounties with harder bosses. Most will see the addition with new bounties to track making it more difficult, i have the feeling people arnt is because of the addition of the training bounties. The method is going to always be find, then wait……………….. keep waiting………… start bounty, kill or move to one you have because its the safest way and has the highest chance of success.

The thing i read from the official reactions is getting me worried. The new bounties for example are going to require more strategy yet again. This might be fun for a very well coordinated group who are all very skilled, geared and on some kind of voice chat, but try it with a larger not coordinated guild. The numbers can actually work against you during the killing of a boss as they scale up related to the number of players around. Yes it well probably be more easy to only take the top players of the guild and do the bounty but hey are we to exclude part of our members because they are not ‘elitist’ players (yet) just in order to complete a guild mission?. it is not called guild mission for nothing so everyone should be able to join. Ok this will probably mean we will not get a 6 target one done in 15 min but thats fine. However with the current system even with 15 min of pre-scouting it is hard enough to coordinate everything and get the bounty done. Specially when using only the chat to communicate, since not everyone likes to use a form of voice chat. By adding more and harder targets this is not going to improve.

I know some other groups are looking for an harder challenge and it should be provided, but not by upgrading the current ones, but by adding an extra rank for example, or by creating a hard variant of a current rank which is sure to include one of the harder bosses to kill, in return providing an extra reward (more merits likely). Also an improvement would be to get rid of the hard 15 min cut off, but instead make it so that after 15 min you can still complete the mission but you get rewarded with less merits for it (like drop 1 reward merit / min or so). In this way it feels at least a bit more rewarding for players as you can still make it even though its not the full reward. Of course you should be able to replay it and get a change to do it better in the next round. scores of different attempts should not be added up or something, but like now the highest score stays. (like if you do a rank 1 first an later complete a rank 2 you only get 5 more merits reward as you already had a rank 1). In this way more players can enjoy the missions. The ones up for the challenge have their goal of getting the maximum amount of merits while the less organized also have their reward be it a bit less.

Indeed come with a hard variant of some of them in which you are guaranteed to get the bosses that need more strategy that just hitting them down in a large group, but give us a choice, since for example it is almost impossible to control 60+ players who don’t know the strategy for Half Baked Komali to get him down if you only have chat to communicate. yes you can learn, but it only takes a few to ‘forget it’ and it gets a awful lot harder again (and we are not even talking about random players walking past who like to help out)

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

(EDIT: and neither does the feedback or the metrics that help us make these determinations)

I quite often see developer quotes like this.
Can we see this information ourselves?
I find that sort of stuff fascinating and wide open to interpretation.

laures and guild missions = cancer of guild wars 2

BadHabitZz.1856:

laures and guild missions = cancer of guild wars 2

Hyperbole much? lmao

I like dailies and laurels and so far like Guild Missions. There are things about guild missions that could be improved and perhaps they will be, but they’re not bad now.

Seems like another potshot from the I must have everything today crowd, particularly BIS gear.

BadHabitZz.1856:

laures and guild missions = cancer of guild wars 2

Nah, more like a bad cold. As soon as the worst of it is over you never think of it again. Once you have the ascended items you want Laurels rewards become fun extras. Once you have the guild mission types unlocked the missions themselves are good fun. It’s just putting in the time to get there that’s miserable.

But, if you’re calling Guild Mission content deadly to GW2 then you’re just plain wrong. This is great content. If you’re in a small guild team up with other small guilds. It’ll kittenay, and it just might make you realize how fabulous multi-guilding really is, both for guilds and for players.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

I’ve read every post in that thread, yes. Please stop trying to fling it towards my face. I share some of the concerns, but I don’t agree with everything every player says (EDIT: and neither does the feedback or the metrics that help us make these determinations).

I would like you how important it is to me to see that you are actively interacting with the player base. Knowing that someone is in there representing guilds is everything.

Robert Hrouda, says that he plays PUG dungeons anonymously for the sake of learning what the players go through while pugging dungeons. Do you run a guild anonymously? Do you have the insights that come from recruiting, creating events, stomping drama, dealing with people who love the game but are frustrated by some of the updates? If you don’t do this already please do consider it.

I would love to believe that there is a guild leader in the Wintersday content meetings next time around arguing for group play instead of random arenas. Tixx could have been a real boon for guilds and instead it was the opposite.

Thank you for your time and efforts on behalf of our guilds. I for one very much appreciate them and appreciate you for talking to us.

One of the more frustrating aspects of the bounty hunt is when world events kick off in the middle of the bounty hunt and half of your teams end up in overflow.

If this is not fixed by the upcoming change in event looting, please consider giving priority to the locals, or removing those targets from the list near event times or giving three potential targets, two of which have to be killed in the prescribed time period.

Thanks

All of this still doesn’t address the fact that all other guild activities are locked behind guild bounties.
I have no interest in bounties, but guild puzzle and rush sound a hoot. Unfortunately, I have no option to unlock these before bounties.

I still contend it’s this way because ArenaNet haven’t actually finished the puzzle content.

Wow. This thread is still alive? I’ll help solve this problem so everyone can be happy. The way to get around the Guild size problem is as follows:

1) Make more friends
2) Invite more people to your guild
3) Join a bigger guild
4) Create an alliance with other guilds

As you can see, it’s really simple. By following one of the above options, you’ll have more people in which to do Guild Bounties. But if you can’t get others to join in on the bounty hunt, then these missions aren’t for you. Asking Anet to make an “easy mode” button is like asking them to water down the Claw of Jormag so you can solo him.

Hello everyone,

SOS from anvil rock server is proud to say that we finally completed Guild Bounty Mission 3. When the first time we did it after the update, we almost beat the mission on our first attempt, but that Komali guy just wouldn’t die. lol. afterwards we made multiple attempts and failed, it was either a case of we couldn’t find the target or we fought a boss that just wouldn’t go down within the time frame of escaping or mission ending.

It was rather discouraging, as I would consider our guild to be highly organized, voice chat etc.., we have the numbers, and so I assigned everyone to be deligent about opening waypoints in those maps of the different bosses. As the guild leader i did more research, and found out the following:

1. Guilds that activate their guild missions can get the same target. I thought that when guilds activated the mission, each guild would get their own different set of 6 targets. I was wrong.

2. It takes a team to get credit. Again I was wrong. It actually only takes one person in your guild to help kill the boss, in order for the guild to get the kill and taken the boss off your list.

So SOS after multiple failed attempts did the following:

1. We flooded each map with all of our members till we found the boss. Afterwards we left two bodies to stand watch. I would be notified if other guilds were there as well. We would then get everyone there, so they know exactly where the boss was. We did this till we found all the mobs, and those we didn’t find we just took our chances.

2. We broke down into an original team of 10, that would go to each boss as the roaming kill group, those that were guarding bosses that wasn’t our target would gather towards a target and become the 2nd killing team.

3. We had some luck into play, because once i activated the mission, skallywag was one of our target, which I already had with my 10 man group, so we dispatched him easily, another target was started by another guild, so the two guarding it, helped kill it and we got the credit for it. By this time, we had 4 targets, which 2 was already being brought down by my team and my 2nd roaming group. Once my team finished with our mob, we went to iron marshes to look for 1411, the one mob we couldn’t find and rolled the dice on. The 2nd group killed the 3rd boss, and now we had about 5 mins left to find and kill 1411. I ran towards the area I know he runs through, and sure enough 1411 was there. I called it in vent, and linked the nearest waypoint. We killed 1411 in less than 3 mins completing tier 3.

I will say that the mission is difficult, but it’s worth it. My guild felt a sense of accomplishment completing this mission that has had us pulling our hair out, and causing our aging process to multiply by 10.

I suggest to keep trying, don’t let the mission deter you from doing it, you’ll feel great when you accomplish the mission. Work with other guilds, infact I’m trying to organize this with the smaller guilds, because again, right now, only one member of your guild is needed to get credit for the boss, so working with other guilds may just allow you to complete mission 3.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Wow. This thread is still alive? I’ll help solve this problem so everyone can be happy. The way to get around the Guild size problem is as follows:
(snip)

So, your solution to the “small guild problem” is to become a big guild.
Way to miss the core of the problem.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

wizzy.6871:

I would like to suggest to add ability to track these NPC that are active similarly to achievement tracking (IE you activate guild bounty tier 2 and u will see list with 3 NPCs on the right side of the screen with timer).
Guild menu is little rusty for this since it has to load your members and then u have to move throu few clicks (nothing to say about its size that is huge just for listing active NPCs)

I’d like to get this added but that portion of the screen is getting a bit crowded. We’re looking into other options as well, such as moving the missions panel to the top level list of tabs or somehow displaying it on the main page.

Well, if we could turn off some of the stuff there that would be a start.

Astralporing.1957:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Wow. This thread is still alive? I’ll help solve this problem so everyone can be happy. The way to get around the Guild size problem is as follows:
(snip)

So, your solution to the “small guild problem” is to become a big guild.
Way to miss the core of the problem.

So your solution is to make everything “easy mode”? If your guild doesn’t have the people and/or skill to complete harder missions, team up with other people who have more members and/or skill than what you have. There is a social aspect to this game, and the Guild Bounties are a good example of why you need friends.

note – Friends are not required to have fun in this game. There’s a lot to do in this game by yourself. But if you’re a solo player who wants to do group events/missions, time to change your play style.

My issue with the bounties isn’t their difficulty; it’s that they are – in my opinion – counter-productive to team play. Regardless of a guild’s approach to finding the bounties (one or a few large groups at mission activation or multiple small groups pre-scouting the maps), the end result is the guild’s members aren’t really playing together.

Sure, they may use chat or even a 3rd party VOIP program to coordinate efforts. From what I’m seeing in practice, though, in my guild, guilds in which I’ve been a guest to participate in their bounty, and other guilds I’ve seen searching the maps, the procedure is largely the same. Everyone splits up to find the bounties.

If a “zerg” on a single map, the group splits up to cover the map/path North, South, East, and West. If using the pre-scouting method, the players split up into small parties (2 to 5 players depending on how many bounties and how many members are participating), with each covering a separate map.

Now this may require teamwork and coordination. Unfortunately, it discourages team play. At the end of the day, you aren’t actually playing with/alongside your guild mates. They’re on another side of the map or even a different map altogether. There’s very little sense of everyone working towards a common goal. Of course, that’s the idea behind it; but it’s vague with very little feedback or sense of participation in a larger group goal. Instead, it’s small parties running around the map acting independently of one another. Functionally it’s not much different than if the guild members split up onto different maps and assigned themselves a goal of completing a dynamic event or defeating a non-bounty champion within a self-imposed time limit. At the end of the day, you aren’t really playing together.

Before anyone counters that “You’re doing it wrong” or “L2P”, my guild and the guilds I’ve guested to have successfully completed all the T1 and T2 bounties we’ve done to date. We’ve used both the pre-scouting method and the “zerg the map” method. The general consensus at the end of each bounty is it’s largely boring and not much fun splitting up (whether that be splitting up across multiple maps or splitting up on a single map). We do it because it’s a necessary evil for earning the guild merits to unlock the other types of guild missions; we’re really looking forward to the Guild Rush, a mission that does appear (from the description, anyway) to include all of the members participating in the same activity as a group in close proximity to one another.

It amounts to this:

Guild leader: “Hey, everyone! Let’s do a group activity together.”

Guild members: “Cool! Great! Yeah! Woot! That sounds fun! What do we have to do?”

Guild leader: “Well, I need everyone to split up into parties and teleport away from each other to separate maps or to different waypoints on the same map so as to cover as much territory as quickly as possible to find some NPCs. Furthermore, we only have 15 minutes to do this, so there’s no time for idle chit-chat and socializing. Get in, get it done, and get out as quickly as we can so we can go find the next NPC in the list.”

Guild members: “That sucks!”

But, hey, it got a lot of players to unlock waypoints on maps they probably wouldn’t have visited for any other reason, right?

/fail

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

snip

You’re not doing it wrong. You just misunderstand the “team play” aspect. You need to work as a team to find the bounties, then work as team to capture them. I don’t know how you come to the conclusion that splitting up does not equal team work. My guild WäR on the Maguuma server is one of the top guilds in game, and when we WvW, we may break into small 3 to 5 man teams, and also split into separate voice channels. It doesn’t mean we’re out of touch with each other. Should our Commander need us, we all form our super zerg ball.

Ursan.7846:

Gasoline.2570:

Ursan.7846:

I’m just gonna apologize, because I can’t understand where the frustration stems from.

Well those could be many. Might wanna do some self-research next time if above words dont grasp you.

You described why it’s so hard to do t3 Bounty Hunts and why it’s unfair. And that it should scale down for small guilds.

I ask you, why do you want to do t3 Bounty Hunts? For Guild Commendations? For Guild Merits? Why can’t you just do t1 Bounty? It gives you the same amount of Guild Commendations and a little bit less Merits (15 vs 25). I mean, we already have scaling difficulty with t1/t2/t3. You’ll just be earning merits a bit slower than a large guild, and I think that’s fair especially when the individualistic rewards (which you don’t even need to complete the bounty itself to get, just kill one target.) are the exact same.

Like I said, I just don’t understand the frustration. What you ask for (scaling for smaller guilds) already exists.

I’m coming to this conversation a bit late, but why would you ever do a T1 or T2? T3 is the only way to get full merits. If you want commendations, T3 is the easiest way to get them.

If we’ve already got our merits and just need commendations for some members who missed it, we’ll run a tier 3, go to the easiest of the 6 and kill it and then just abandon the rest.

If you run a 1 or 2 you have less options in the ones you can kill. As they all cost the same to build I see absolutely no reason to ever build a tier 1 or tier 2 bounty.

Nabrok.9023:

Ursan.7846:

Gasoline.2570:

Ursan.7846:

I’m just gonna apologize, because I can’t understand where the frustration stems from.

Well those could be many. Might wanna do some self-research next time if above words dont grasp you.

You described why it’s so hard to do t3 Bounty Hunts and why it’s unfair. And that it should scale down for small guilds.

I ask you, why do you want to do t3 Bounty Hunts? For Guild Commendations? For Guild Merits? Why can’t you just do t1 Bounty? It gives you the same amount of Guild Commendations and a little bit less Merits (15 vs 25). I mean, we already have scaling difficulty with t1/t2/t3. You’ll just be earning merits a bit slower than a large guild, and I think that’s fair especially when the individualistic rewards (which you don’t even need to complete the bounty itself to get, just kill one target.) are the exact same.

Like I said, I just don’t understand the frustration. What you ask for (scaling for smaller guilds) already exists.

I’m coming to this conversation a bit late, but why would you ever do a T1 or T2? T3 is the only way to get full merits. If you want commendations, T3 is the easiest way to get them.

If we’ve already got our merits and just need commendations for some members who missed it, we’ll run a tier 3, go to the easiest of the 6 and kill it and then just abandon the rest.

If you run a 1 or 2 you have less options in the ones you can kill. As they all cost the same to build I see absolutely no reason to ever build a tier 1 or tier 2 bounty.

I agree that doing T3 does give more options if you’re only in it for the Commendations. But some guilds actually need the Merits to unlock other Guild Missions.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Nabrok.9023:

Ursan.7846:

Gasoline.2570:

Ursan.7846:

I’m just gonna apologize, because I can’t understand where the frustration stems from.

Well those could be many. Might wanna do some self-research next time if above words dont grasp you.

You described why it’s so hard to do t3 Bounty Hunts and why it’s unfair. And that it should scale down for small guilds.

I ask you, why do you want to do t3 Bounty Hunts? For Guild Commendations? For Guild Merits? Why can’t you just do t1 Bounty? It gives you the same amount of Guild Commendations and a little bit less Merits (15 vs 25). I mean, we already have scaling difficulty with t1/t2/t3. You’ll just be earning merits a bit slower than a large guild, and I think that’s fair especially when the individualistic rewards (which you don’t even need to complete the bounty itself to get, just kill one target.) are the exact same.

Like I said, I just don’t understand the frustration. What you ask for (scaling for smaller guilds) already exists.

I’m coming to this conversation a bit late, but why would you ever do a T1 or T2? T3 is the only way to get full merits. If you want commendations, T3 is the easiest way to get them.

If we’ve already got our merits and just need commendations for some members who missed it, we’ll run a tier 3, go to the easiest of the 6 and kill it and then just abandon the rest.

If you run a 1 or 2 you have less options in the ones you can kill. As they all cost the same to build I see absolutely no reason to ever build a tier 1 or tier 2 bounty.

I agree that doing T3 does give more options if you’re only in it for the Commendations. But some guilds actually need the Merits to unlock other Guild Missions.

Yeah, my guild being among them. Still the tier 3 is the only one way to get max merits. It’s not like you can do a tier 1 and tier 2 and add them together.

I guess we might do a tier 1 or 2 if it’s getting close to reset time and we haven’t managed to complete a tier 3.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

I’d like to get this added but that portion of the screen is getting a bit crowded. We’re looking into other options as well, such as moving the missions panel to the top level list of tabs or somehow displaying it on the main page.

Have you guys looked at an option of making an alliance system similar to GW1 guild- alliances? Then you could make a pop up on an alliance notice board that x guild is doing guild bounty, then they could post information from there into alliance chat. This also helps smaller guilds who don’t fully have the numbers to the higher tiers.

@ Nabrok.9023,

Why do players do tier 1 or 2, well thats pretty easy, NOT every guild is super organized and willing to go on team speak and everything to do a bounty hunting mission. For them it is as good as impossible to complete a tier 3 for merits, so they have to settle for a completer tier 1 or 2 so you at least get some merits in instead of attempting trier 3 over and over again and failing over and over again getting no merits in. NOT everyone finds these bounties super easy. Some guilds are to small to get a tier 3 done, others have lots of members who are not that hard core players that they will go to all extremes to get it done (yes for a lot of players it is not common to use voicechat to play a game and for then that is surely considered to be extreme) As i stated before their should be something for everyone, if you look for a challenge it should be provided by ADDING one, and not by scaling every else thing up. ( I fully agree that if you complete a bigger challenge you should also get a bigger reward, and i actually like the reward scaling between the current tiers, you get more for a tier 3 but this is not an extreme amount more although still enough to get some missions a bit faster) Yes we don’t make so many merits as you would with a tier 3 so yes we have to wait longer to get new missions open but we can actually complete the lower ones so you at least get some in.

I Agree with you that when you already have your merits for the week, a trier 3 is the best way to go for everyone who missed his/her personal reward for that week, as you have 6 changes to get an easy boss that everyone can help to kill.

Please keep in mind that not every group / guild is the same, what is easy for one group can be a real challenge for an other.

It was my true intention to not post a wall-of-text but my feelings towards Guild Bounty are very strong and my expectations for them very high.

There are 2 key-phrases that keep popping up throughout this thread, both in the words of the developers as well as the fans’:

“Coordination” & “a sense of accomplishment completing (the) mission”

I’m all for “coordination” and I don’t mind successful completion being difficult to accomplish. But there are many ways to make something ‘difficult’: there are fun ways and then there are annoying ways.

AnthonyOrdon said their testers did it with 30 people.
I was going to say “impossible” but I choose “improbable” instead, to reflect the luck factor included in the equation. An equation which, at this point, is severely malfunctional due to two parameters mainly:

Sotzz the Scallywag & Ander “Wildman” Westward

I’ll start by saying that we, the members of DragonSeason [DS] over at Aurora Glade pretty much operate in the way Diviner described , when executing our own Guild Bounties:

Us, the leaders, gather (at least) half an hour in advance of the pre-determined event start time and begin scouting with whom ever wants to join us at that point. Typically, when we’re going for a T3 event we have at least one more guild (allies) representing us, yielding a total of about 40 people give or take. When the launch time approaches we start splitting people up in groups. We use RaidCall and have multiple channels set up so each team leader can talk to his/her members without interference. In addition, group leaders are on Skype talking to each other. Finally we use the /map chat to ask for help from other players (“have you seen X today?”) and the /guild chat to link waypoints in the case a team needs assistance. Typically we will launch the bounty when we find at least 5-6 targets, one of which will be Sotzz for certain (to eliminate one of the RNG factors from the equation).

Now, while all these sound very coordinated and orderly, what actually happens during the event is the following:

- the event starts and we begin clicking wildly to get to the insanely deeply-hidden Missions panel to see what our targets are
- the leaders quickly decide on Skype which party goes where, so that at least two groups engage each target
- each group leader orders his/her party members to the appropriate waypoint, over RaidCall and also linking it on party chat
- after a target is down, the leaders of the parties who downed him receive further instructions (through Skype and sometimes through guild chat) as to where to go next, typically to reinforce another group or to look for a target not tracked down during the pre-bounty phase
- this latter case is wildly frantic as it involves the leader looking at a second monitor where dulfy’s map is displayed (Alt+Tab-ing is so inefficient…), informing the other leaders where s/he’ll be searching (Skype) and ordering his/her members which waypoints to get to (Raidcall and /party chat)
etc.

[continued]

Highlights:
a) Coordination, both horizontally (among leaders) and top-down (leader to groupies)…
b) …(via) many means of communication, used simultaneously (at least 2 VOIP applications, in addition to the in-game chat)
c) Extensive use of dulfy’s indispensable guide/maps
d) A lot of pre-event preparation

I believe most guilds who have successfully completed one or more T3 will agree that this is a solid and relatively fail-proof strategy.

But is it fun to play? Or have our members already begun to think “omg, there’s another T3 coming tomorrow…”?

Unfortunately, it’s the latter. Anyone who has played a couple of T3’s, successful or not, can read behind the lines above and see their true meaning:

a) YES, it takes a lot of coordination so ArenaNet got this one right – they aimed to bring lots of people to work together towards a common goal
b) It is a VERY confusing and tiresome and stressful process, for leaders in particular, and totally not-fun, unless hardcore
c) Requires the use of an out-of-game ‘utility’, which completely ruins the ‘living’ experience
d) This is an extremely critical phase for the success of the entire operation – and it runs OUTSIDE the event’s time frame!

Did anyone complain about Half-Baked Komali and her fight mechanic? No. Why? Because she requires a certain approach or even certain professions to down her – we have failed an entire T3 once just because of her and our lack of giving our members in due time instructions about the correct way to deal with her. We did not complain; a few heads fell of course (on their owner’s keyboards mainly) but a valuable lesson was learned, and we tried again.

…Only to find Sotzz the Scallywag in our path (list, actually) and fail again. This time around though, the Mighty Axe of Flaming Blame fell heavy on the developers’ heads.

@AnthonyOrdon
“This is unlikely to change. In fact, the new content is only going to take us further down this road.”

I am terribly sad to hear this Anthony. It only spells grief and more frustration to all of us.

p.s. I aimed to submit some ideas proposed by our members during the long talks we have each time we fail a Bounty, but I am going to refrain from doing so until I see what fate awaits this post. If it does not get wiped from the e-face of the internet, I will return with some honestly constructive ideas.

We are currently finishing a tier 1 guild bounty weekly with 10 to 15 players and everyone in our guild is very happy with this. I think in the future we will most often have 10 players attending. We do this without pre-scouting and finding and killing the mobs serial, not parallel. We found pre-scouting to be counter-productive and frustrating. When you find a mob and are waiting for the rest of the guild to find theirs, your mob will be killed and you can start looking again.

Also, as a smaller guild we don’t need the max merits because we do not gain the influence fast enough. When we will unlock the next thing, we will most likely have a surplus of merits as we keep doing the guild missions weekly while saving up influence.

I am happy the guild bounty trainings will be added for the small guilds and it will also help us a great deal with the extra influence we can get that way. But in my opinion, a guild with 5 members should be aware that they can possibly not obtain everything and unlock everything available for guilds.

Just wanted to add a shade of grey to this discussion, as it pretty much seems to be about big guilds and max gains vs small guilds that in my opinion are so small they should be aware that there are consequences for that. We as a medium sized pretty casual but organised guild are just happy with what the guild bounties currently are.