Guild Wars 2

Kuzzi.2198:

william dj.6953:

so if 5 ppl each spent one dollar and 50 ppl each spent one dollar, which single person spent the most amount of money?
I agree with you on some of your points, but this one no. If you decide to respond please answer the question first.

Answer: Each person spent the same amount of money.
Relevance to guild missions: None.

The correct question would be if a group of 5 people each spent 1 dollar and a group of 50 people each spent 1 dollar, which group would be able to afford a $50 item first.

Same exact thing here, small guilds will get guild missions, just not as fast as large guilds. (And they can get it just as fast if they just put in the effort to farm influence/gold)

Are you sane?

How does an 8 person Guild possibly farm 50,000 influence in the same amount of time as a 500 person Guild?

I honestly wouldn’t give a kitten, one way or another, about this ENTIRE update if it did not give larger Guilds an obvious gear & loot advantage (stat advantage). kitten that, I paid for this game fair and square & I expect the same access as every other single last person that ever logs in to the same paid game. If they want to create a new game called ZergFarm Wars and introduce gated content there they can go ahead, but it has no business in a game that promised to deliver ZERO waiting to have fun and ZERO grind, a game that promised what it’s predecessor delivered in only making SKINS and not STATS something that was ever hard to come by.

Remove the extra chance for precursors, remove the cheaper & faster means of purchasing Ascended items, and I will happily NEVER access a Guild mission ever (because honestly, at the rate of gain of influence for my small Guild this game will be dust before that content, and therefor that ADVANTAGE, is even available to us).

So, guild missions turned out exactly as I suspected they would: casual content with no meaningful reward or character progression for the effort put in.

What’s more the missions seem to be the same pattern of repetitive DEs of no real strategic thought or effort. “Defend this”, “Escort that” and “Kill this by auto attacking it to death for 10 mins while strafing.”

It also seems guilds have to research the PVP branch of guild upgrades to access the guild challenges in the PVE world? Are you kidding me? -_-

The game is so sloppily made that any good ideas in GW2 are almost always dashed. Perhaps the most frustrating MMO I have ever played.

ExaDal.2017:

@Tobias Trueflight: if you read all the post you can found a lot of great ideas, solutions and constructive comments. This is a discussion forum, is normal that not all the comments are constuctive.

I’ve read all the posts, though I haven’t kept every single one in mind all the time. I’ve responded to some of the constructive posts. But things keep getting into things which aren’t as constructive and it doesn’t encourage the devs to read everything.

And I know this is normal for a forum online, but right now this is the second-best alternative for actually getting people’s feedback and ideas. The best one (a live forum) has so many logistical problems and limitations it just wouldn’t work realistically.

obastable.5231:

Kuzzi.2198:

Same exact thing here, small guilds will get guild missions, just not as fast as large guilds. (And they can get it just as fast if they just put in the effort to farm influence/gold)

Are you sane?

How does an 8 person Guild possibly farm 50,000 influence in the same amount of time as a 500 person Guild?

First of all, I didn’t say small guilds can get the same amount of influence as large guilds. I said they can get enough influence to buy guild missions.

An 8 person guild could farm 50k influence by farming gold or buying gems and turning gold into influence. If your members are not willing to contribute gold for influence then maybe they don’t care enough about guild missions.

Ok, after watching this thread for several days now and still seeing no (appropriate) official response, I want to chime in and say my opinion, too.

Personally I’m in a small guild who usually has not enough members online to fill a whole dungeon group. I’d still consider us rather active (have been since release), and I don’t feel left out by the new content because it seems reasonably achieveable for us.
Not by earning all that influence through activities, but because you can buy all the influence you need with gold, too. We’re all casual players, but earning gold isn’t really a big problem.

But I can totally understand all the people who are disappointed now because of the way this content was advertised beforehand. Or rather, the lack of proper information before the patch and the lack of dialogue now.
I really don’t get why the unlocks are structured that way either, why the Art of war tree, why we have to unlock them one after the other without having choices. It doesn’t make sense to me and I don’t like this linear path at all. That’s one thing. The issue that I find really disturbing in all this is the lack of communication and dialogue with the playerbase though, because even if I am not too concerned personally this time, this feel so much like the awful silence that followed the November patch, where so many people were concerned about something and nobody bothered to explain the dev team’s motivations in a comprehensible way.

This patch or its content isn’t a big deal to me personally, but the way reasonable and very understandable player concerns get treated makes me feel uneasy.

Maybe a good solution (one of them) is remove (or drastically reduce) the time to research AoW and bounty hunt. This reduce at least one of the gaps between small and larger guilds and all ppl can start to enjoy the content this week.

I understand them wanting some content to take awhile. I understand that they’d probably like it to take a year or two to get all the puzzles (or maybe a year or two to get two puzzles). But I don’t understand it taking 2.5 years to get the first puzzle and 18 years to get all of them for a guild even of my size. I expect a longer wait time. I just don’t expect that long of a wait time.

There are two suggestions:
1. Please don’t have us get them in order and separate them out entirely.
2. Please scale the influence necessary differently. I’m not terribly fond of the influence tiers in the first place, but I can be okay with them. Just please, why in the world was tier 6 added?! Scaling the influence necessary can be done in a few different ways:
a) Tier guilds by size and influence necessary accordingly. For example, if a guild has 20 members, make it such that the 20 member guild can access the content in the same amount of time as the 100 member guild by making the influence requirement lower for the smaller guild. Though large guilds have to pay more, they do not have to spend more time than smaller guilds.
b) Have a tier with not as good rewards that can be purchased earlier for small guilds, such that they can access the content. However, this still punishes small guilds for being small. But if they want to punish small guilds this way, at least they’ll get access to the content. The only way this can be rectified is if the influence required is still lowered (as it will still take ages to get all the “elite” puzzles) and the pre-cursor and ascended gear rewards are taken out.
c) Other suggestions?

My final issue: This is supposed to be a group activity. Why is getting legendaries on an individual so much easier? I’m quite positive I could get my legendary by the end of the year if I wanted to. But this? No way.

They said small guilds could do this. That was a flat-out lie. Either rectify it and say this is elite content for large guilds or change the system. It certainly didn’t sound like this was supposed to be elite content for massive guilds.

These new guild missions are beyond most smaller guilds. My guild is not small, but daily activity is down to a handful of people, and I know mine is not the only one suffering this attrition. I have reached out to our old GW1 Alliance guilds to see if there is a way we can help each other unlock these new missions. In the course of doing this a couple of thoughts came to mind
- we need an Alliance chat like we had in GW1
Small guilds are small for a reason. They don’t want to join large ones, but most do not have a problem teaming together for content. An Alliance chat facilitates this kind of team coordination and participation during times of player attrition
- an Alliance feature should be added to Guild creation
I created my own Alliance rank to add participants in guild missions (when we finally earn enough to unlock the first tier) This works to distinguish my members from other guild guests but it does not afford guests the proper mission rewards if they do not rep my guild. Nor does it assist their own guild in building influence toward their own unlocks. My plan is to guest with my old Alliance buddies when their guild earns enough to unlock, so that they can then start building influence for the next unlock. But my good lord what a convoluted and time consuming work around this is.
- Alliance members should be able to rep their own guild in missions, earn the full rewards and also the influence for their respective guilds, not just the hosting guild
Ya, now this gets tricky doesn’t it. Which is why the Alliance feature in the Guild panel would be a requirement. The Alliance feature, ideally, would also work for teaming up in other content like dungeons as guilds work toward their influence requirement.
That’s all I got so far, folks. My thoughts only, bound to be shot down with cries of ‘join a large guild or merge together’, but it’s worth putting out there as a possible solution for the numerous small guilds. I had this in a separate thread, but it has been buried several pages down. I still think this might be a good solution for small guilds.

My question: You all said that you can get up to 5 consumables per guild mission. Do we get guild merits everytime we complete one of them? Like for example, if we did guild bounties tier 1 twice in a day, will we get a total of 30 guild merits?

This update sort of reminds me of Rift Update 4, which introduced a new raid along with some fluff open world content (more rifts — surprise!). The small group/solo/not-interested-in-raids players got up in arms. 1 or 2 updates later, TW implemented harder content for smaller groups. I don’t remember the details, but the reaction to Update 4 is similar to what I am seeing here.

In an effort to actually get the thread back to productive discussion:

What would satisfy me at this point is:

• The player base accepts that this set of guild missions is designed to fill the void for those who wanted large group content in GW2. I know a lot of people don’t like it, but it’s time to ride the horse in the direction it’s going.
• ANet promises to expand the system in a future patch to provide guild missions that are feasible for smaller guilds. this may not please all small guild players, but it’s likely to please more of them than the current patch did.
• Remove the 50 glob cost from the Ascended Accessories. Replace it with a Karma requirement. I suspect the accessories were put on the laurel merchant because they anticipated that some people would want them but not want to do the guild missions to get them, so they presented an alternative. Why remove globs? They are already required for too many things. Also, 50 is enough for a jeweler to make exotic amulet, rings and accessories for two characters. That being the case, 50 globs on top of 40 laurels is exorbitant.

In this thread we have a lot of complaints and suggestions. I think we need to gather those together.

-I think most in this thread agree that the influence cost is way too high.
-I think most in this thread also agree that the missions should not have to be unlocked in a particular order.

Another idea is that guild missions require a different currency other than influence that alliances can share and unlock (in all guilds) the missions.
Tiers of rewards/missions have been suggested.
Noting the size of the guild with regard to influence requirement has also been suggested.
Also, publicly state that this patch was not intended for small guilds at all – that they’ll just have to wait IF they have an idea for them in the future, if not, they should say “tough luck, sorry we false advertised”.

A member of a very small guild here.
We don’t even stand a chance of unlocking those missions. Even if we would somehow unlock, I doubt we would pass 8/15 people online at the same time. With earrings costing 40 laurels each, it would take me about 2 years to gear up all of my 8 alts in amulets and earrings, so I don’t stand a chance there either.
So I suppose we’re a guild that just said screw you all and started doing all of the other content together. Like running fractals for the backpiece. Going to hard dungeons for the challenge.
Still, this update is definitely upsetting.

First, +1 to Matipzieu KyA’s thoughtful and carefully worded posts on pg. 14.

I think guild missions are a great idea, and I am glad there is interesting new content for large groups of players to work on together. I am also glad that many of them take place in the open world, so that others can join in experiencing some of it, even if the rewards are not the same.

However, I am saddened by the divide this had created in the community. The structuring of this content has created two groups that didn’t exist before (large vs. small guilds). This can breed feelings of bitterness and resentment unfairly directed at large guilds, and feelings of contempt for small guilds. I have seen this before in other games, so it is not a new thing.

Though there have been a number of suggestions (such as scaling or having smaller/cheaper events), my preference is for reinstating the guild alliance system that has already been mentioned a number of times, including by Yohimbe above me here and in other threads.

It is a system already familiar to GW1 players. It could provide a way not only to communicate on a common chat channel for planning events, but also a way to pool our resources. It would be good if we could donate influence or (better yet) upgrades to the alliance. This way small guilds could divide the cost and (more importantly) the time it takes to upgrade while still representing their own guild.

If the upgrades donated to the alliance ONLY counted for the missions, and not the perks, then every guild would still have a reason to eventually upgrade all build lines, and large guilds would still have a significant advantage, just not the overwhelming one they have as it is now.

Obviously this cannot help people deal with what is now in place, but since it appears we will continue to get more of this kind of content to work for, this would be a useful thing to have in the future. Particularly for anyone with the hope of starting up a new guild. This structure puts anyone in that position woefully behind in access to content, and actually discourages guild creation.

Thank you for your time.

Honestly, I would probably be satisfied if one of the developers could sit and explain the reasoning which went into the pricing, the target invested time/Influence, and why “Art of War”, and addressed the larger pieces of the concerns.

. . . I mean, satisfied that there was a very clear answer. I am not 100% satisfied with the content, but then I can get over that.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Honestly, I would probably be satisfied if one of the developers could sit and explain the reasoning which went into the pricing, the target invested time/Influence, and why “Art of War”, and addressed the larger pieces of the concerns.

Yes please. Pro transparency!

Velkyn.5168:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Honestly, I would probably be satisfied if one of the developers could sit and explain the reasoning which went into the pricing, the target invested time/Influence, and why “Art of War”, and addressed the larger pieces of the concerns.

Yes please. Pro transparency!

It’s not even about transparency for everyone else, this is a selfish desire to know “just why you put the cost and methods in just that way”. For when I win the lottery and have money to apply to building my own RPG :P

Maybe they could enlighten us why more currencies?

Normal fractal tokens are becoming pretty useless

I would like it very much if ANet would respond to some of the well written and patient posts here such as this one(https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/New-guild-missions-opinions-concerns/page/14#post1522077). I understand that some people are angry (like myself) and may be saying things that are not constructive, but there are people trying to explain and solve what is a very serious problem here. Please developers, take some time to come here and respond to those posts. Explain the reasoning behind the choices you’ve made and lets work together to find solutions that are reasonable and helpful for all.

DylanLucas.6058:

Maybe they could enlighten us why more currencies?

Normal fractal tokens are becoming pretty useless

Oh, that is simple, it keeps you busy.

It does them no good if you can buy the new stuff right away with rewards you’ve already stockpiled. Better to make them useless and make sure you slave away at the new content instead.

Jski.6180:

@ IndigoSundown.5419
Small guilds:
The thing is its not just small guilds its inactive guilds too. If you think you should be able to do every thing day one after not playing the game for 1+ month your taking a lot of liberty with the rights of thoughts who have been playing for the month that you missed. The major thing is Guild events is not the entirety of GW2 its just the “FOTM” if all your coming back for is just one set of events to only leave once your done what the point of getting the new items? We need active ppl for guilds and WvW because we have server that become low pop that they fall behind the other WvW. This is an instinctive to keep playing longer then just the content of this month is done something to work on as a long turn goal.
Look at it this way take a person who just started the game. Now what can this person work for. At level 1 (well level 2) they can build up points to use on a level 80 gear. Now we have a person who can level them self up playing content as if its end game level events all at the same time. Now this person find them self needing ppl to talk with beyond the random encounters so you join up with a guild. Now this guild may or may not have been there for a time to upgrades but over all the guild that they join is a long turn investment to there rewards and over all enjoyment of the game. Now at 80 this person can work on getting the bits that they want with there saved up they cant get every thing but they can some a few things and start to work on the other gear both ascended and exotic. This is where the investment kicks in where you can get ppl from your guild to help you when you cant find random ppl to do things and in being in the guild you grown relationships with ppl making your team work all the better. AND that what its all about mmorpg at its best making long turn relationships with other humans. Yes you can do this in real life and you should but the ideal of these game IS to be with other humans over the long run.

I am active, my Guild is just small. The above doesn’t apply to me one bit. I talk with my guildies and non-guildies friends. I interact with people, regardless my Guild’s size. In short, I do not understand how is a small Guild “inactive” just because it’s small, and why should everyone prefer to be in a larger Guild if people are individuals with freedom of choice. Do you really believe that the 500 member Giulds have 480 members active throughout the week? It usually is a smaller percentage of the whole population, so no, not all members of a large Guild are “active.” I have made valuable long term relationships with humans in a smaller Guild, and I have friends outside the Guild. I actually haven’t missed many days of playing since release-my “wrong-doing” is not wanting to be part of a Guild I feel no attachment to, and where I would feel totally out of place, EVEN if I got rewarded in-game for it.

See how what you say is irrelevant as to why I should join a large Guild? (No offense, BTW.) Further, joining a large Guild makes some personality types feel more isolated rather than in good company. People are not geared the same way as you and many others are, and that’s OK.

The problem is that a certain type of people, those who enjoy the large Guild environment, get rewarded not because they are “more active”, but just because of their sheer numbers. I am active too, but am not the type to join a Legion.

In the end, there just shouldnt’ be any discrimination between smaller and larger Guilds, because both have their place, and none is better than the other-that’s why I can’t agree with the current implementation of Guild missions.

Now with guild missions on track, when will guild halls be coming our way?

Will Anet open the doors for guild to have more than 5 man parties for big events in dungeons/wvw instances?

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?

That’s funny. You do realize that like every large guild is nothing more than a zerg guild that mass invites anyone without a tag to get influence for them, right? There is no coordination involved, I’ve seen it a ton on my server alone. I run a medium sized guild and we only have enough influence to get 1 set of missions going at the moment, but guilds with 500 people (some cases on my server, the guild is broken up in to 2-3 guilds at max capacity (zerg recruiting at its finest) ) are able to queue missions right away.

I see a lot of smaller guilds breaking up over this or flat out quitting. I know that a ton of players in every guild (and even solo players) are really looking hard for a reason to continue to play this game, but alienating the guilds with less than max members is going to cause a lot of people to either leave their guilds (or join multiples just for guild missions) or flat out quit the game altogether.

Bloodstealer.5978:

Martin Kerstein.3071:

As this has probably been buried deep by know, I would like to quote Izzy again. I put aspects of his post that touch on the actual discussion in bold:

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 @-’—-

All I can say is… WOW… how to totally miss the point by a country mile.. or perhaps a Global mile may be more apt.

Releasing content that all but excludes small guilds is just dumb.

So, when you make bold statements like “PLAY YOUR WAY”, what you really mean is play your way but you cant play this or that cos you dont fit the mandate we have designed our incredible GATED guild system around…

So if small guilds prefer only to dabble in WvW or PvP, we now have to play your way in order to even attempt to be included – ooh that’s right in a month, 3 months, 6 months, a year you might of thought up some other idea to maybe reintrouce some of the small guilds into the guild system…
Now your telling us small guilds (you know, ones that might be a closed guild of say 2-6 friends & family members or are a hardened bunch of MMO gamers who have been round the block, know each others game and like to keep it close nit with a view to only recruiting quality players that we get to know over time ingame), now have to become one of the desperado guilds who constantly have to spam Map chat repetitively to pick up the “anybodies” from their /whisper me for immediate invite dribble …. NO THANKS!

I prefer my small guild of trusted players with no drama, all play regular and have voice chat for some social interaction…. I will leave the “we take any player.com” guilds to flush this content away.

I have been pretty forgiving and supportive of ANET since before launch but if I am honest this “exclusive” content update and continual poor patching quality has started to take it toll on me to the point I can hear the death knolls – I’ve tried to fall in love with GW2 like I did with GW1 but excluding guilds of any size from guild content / guild rewards is just plain dumb.
All you had to do was create a new Guild Line to measure progress/unlocks etc which had no bearing on whether the guild played WvW or PvP or PvE so that it could pcil and choose its guild goals and then utilise difficulty scaling based on the number of players in a group who are guilded or who are in the relevant istance/event zone etc and if necessary scale the reward back with some form influence / loot penalty…. course that would be too sensible an approach I guess.

You have gated the guild system and the game content and I hope it leaves much egg on face.
Sadly for me its time to head back to my MMO of choice (No I dont mean WoW Panda either) where guilds get to enjoy all content, no matter what their size, skill level and commitment to certain game functionalities.

Very good post, I feel your pain. I do wish this works itself out, because when guild missions were originally introduced, they were advertised as “Things to do for all guilds of all sizes!” And seeing the influence cost for some of these things is just laughable to think that a smaller guild will ever even see this content.

Heijincks.9267:

Joseph Skyrim.2470:

My friends vs new content. Sorry, but friends win out each time. That’s just me. Maybe I’m wierd.

I have a question regarding this. What if your friends came with you to a bigger guild?

Hi Heijincks! Sorry it took me awhile to reply but here I am, replying (more than I can say for Anet :P). Seems you have caught me out here. I suppose if all of us move to a bigger guild that would be ok – but very hard for me.

If we abandoned the guild that means I would have to shut down our website, and end our 13 years of recorded history because in effect we would be no more. It’s a very sad thought, especially since ANet seems to be pushing us this way. Don’t think it will come to that though because as long as there are as still steadfast members (and there are) we’ll just forge on by ourselves.

Can’t speak for the others but personally I’d prefer all my influence to help my own guild instead of aiding another or worse, just leeching from them. I will assist the big guys in hunting down their bounties if I come across them though regardless of reward or lack thereof, simply because I hope that when it’s our turn people will help us too.

Joseph Skyrim.2470:

And here I thought the guild missions would rope me back into GW2, instead I basically find just another reason to grind (influence dump). May not have been so bad if people were only allowed to join one guild per account but with people scattered all over with fragmented loyalties I think your system is just a failure waiting to happen.

Putting pve content down the pvp research tree doesn’t really make sense. Hey if you had guild missions that pitted guild against guild then this is probably a good line to put it on but I’m gonna go out on a limb and predict you’ll put that on the diplomacy line because you obviously like making players play the game in ways they dislike to reach the content they are after.

Yikes, man – I’m getting so negative in my old age. Sorry! Ok ok devil’s advocate with some less aggressive questions then:

If a guild starts a quest – other random people can join. I think I remember reading that somewhere which means the quests are in the open world. My question is, if the other random people complete the objective because the guild were not as skilled or not as many as the “guests” (say a small guild mission is invaded by large guild), does the initiating guild get anything for the gazillion influence points it lost to host the thing in the first place?

Similar to the question above – do the “guest” players get rewards for helping out in another guild mission (they aren’t part of),

If the quest is started concurrently by 20 guilds does it cope by randomizing the areas or will there be overlap where the guilds may actually have to fight for objectives/prizes?

How long does a mission remain active once started? Indefinitely? I ask because it would be cool if the mission can’t be finished by team 1 but team 2 who live in the next time zone can wrap it up.

What parameters are there for turning off a quest without finishing it after it has started? Team wipe? Leaving the area? Logging off? How many quests can a guild run simultaneously?

Are there any planned guild quests in dungeons?

Are there any planned guild quests in WvW?

What exactly -are- the rewards for guild quests anyway? Just a rough idea – you don’t need to put specific %. Does each guild member get the reward based on participation or just by simply being in the guild (logged off) is enough?

Guild jumping puzzle mission sounds instanced. Hopefully not? You have lots of good jumping puzzles around already.

I’m sure people are going to enjoy your guild mission content regardless – doubt that list will include myself or my guild any time soon though.

Very well put, Joseph. You’re not alone in that mindset and I do agree with you completely.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Chuo.4238:

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

You know, now this thread is winding down and away from actually offering any kind of suggestions or study of the Guild Missions and breaking down into yet more complaints about how people conduct themselves. I don’t think this will last much longer.

Once again, I feel less like trying to chime in because what I have to say doesn’t matter or won’t be actually heard over the rest of it. Even trying to just keep conversation on topic is too much, because by the time I finished sleeping I see this thread has picked up more destructive sentiments than constructive ones.

I’m going back to building sandcastles in Minecraft, someone wake me when it’s over.

I find it interesting that this thread wound down after a bit over 1000 posts, and never even got close to the 11000 mark. Did we lose so many after November 15th? How many will be left to protest the next update?

It’s “wound down” as I put it because we’re no longer making any new points or suggestions. We’re just shouting at each other.

Korrigan.4837:

Mungrul raised a good point.

As a leader, if someone joins my guild just to get to participate in the guild events but doesn’t represent the guild to earn the influence required to start those events, he will get in trouble and will most likely get the boot if he doesn’t change is behavior.

I have a word for that kind of behavior – it’s called a “leech”. And I don’t like leeches. Want to benefit from the size of my guild? You better also participate in building it.

Like the stuff which followed from this.

Like the continuous “ArenaNet owes us answers, aren’t they even reading this?” even as four pages go up in eight hours.

That’s why it’s “winding down”. Not because people have stopped input but because the input isn’t being helpful to the discussion.

So we’ve said our piece, and ArenaNet can take or leave it? Sounds about right.

Chuo.4238:

So we’ve said our piece, and ArenaNet can take or leave it? Sounds about right.

That’s where I am right now, I’ve said just about everything I think about this without further input, and really I just am kind of repeating myself so . . . yeah. I’m waiting to see what comes out of this.

Joseph Skyrim.2470:

Heijincks.9267:

Joseph Skyrim.2470:

My friends vs new content. Sorry, but friends win out each time. That’s just me. Maybe I’m wierd.

I have a question regarding this. What if your friends came with you to a bigger guild?

Hi Heijincks! Sorry it took me awhile to reply but here I am, replying (more than I can say for Anet :P). Seems you have caught me out here. I suppose if all of us move to a bigger guild that would be ok – but very hard for me.

If we abandoned the guild that means I would have to shut down our website, and end our 13 years of recorded history because in effect we would be no more. It’s a very sad thought, especially since ANet seems to be pushing us this way. Don’t think it will come to that though because as long as there are as still steadfast members (and there are) we’ll just forge on by ourselves.

Can’t speak for the others but personally I’d prefer all my influence to help my own guild instead of aiding another or worse, just leeching from them. I will assist the big guys in hunting down their bounties if I come across them though regardless of reward or lack thereof, simply because I hope that when it’s our turn people will help us too.

People shouldn’t be forced to abandon their guilds to join larger ones. The big zergy guilds already have enough people as it is, why would you seriously suggest that a group of players with a common goal who want to do things their own way needs to disband and join a Walmart guild to enjoy the game?

That’s just flawed.

rainbeetle.4579:

First, +1 to Matipzieu KyA’s thoughtful and carefully worded posts on pg. 14.

I think guild missions are a great idea, and I am glad there is interesting new content for large groups of players to work on together. I am also glad that many of them take place in the open world, so that others can join in experiencing some of it, even if the rewards are not the same.

However, I am saddened by the divide this had created in the community. The structuring of this content has created two groups that didn’t exist before (large vs. small guilds). This can breed feelings of bitterness and resentment unfairly directed at large guilds, and feelings of contempt for small guilds. I have seen this before in other games, so it is not a new thing.

Though there have been a number of suggestions (such as scaling or having smaller/cheaper events), my preference is for reinstating the guild alliance system that has already been mentioned a number of times, including by Yohimbe above me here and in other threads.

It is a system already familiar to GW1 players. It could provide a way not only to communicate on a common chat channel for planning events, but also a way to pool our resources. It would be good if we could donate influence or (better yet) upgrades to the alliance. This way small guilds could divide the cost and (more importantly) the time it takes to upgrade while still representing their own guild.

If the upgrades donated to the alliance ONLY counted for the missions, and not the perks, then every guild would still have a reason to eventually upgrade all build lines, and large guilds would still have a significant advantage, just not the overwhelming one they have as it is now.

Obviously this cannot help people deal with what is now in place, but since it appears we will continue to get more of this kind of content to work for, this would be a useful thing to have in the future. Particularly for anyone with the hope of starting up a new guild. This structure puts anyone in that position woefully behind in access to content, and actually discourages guild creation.

Thank you for your time.

Rainbeetle, another well thought out post explaining the real problems behind this. I completely agree with your post and couldn’t have said it better myself.

Still no communication. Interesting.

vince.5937:

Still no communication. Interesting.

Go ahead, tell you are surprised.
I can’t tell you how disappointed I am in ArenaNet. This is not a simple mistake, this is incompetence. I would love to ask Mike what he was thinking when he approved this, but it is quite apparent that he wasn’t thinking.

Mkalafut.1273:

Bloodstealer.5978:

Martin Kerstein.3071:

As this has probably been buried deep by know, I would like to quote Izzy again. I put aspects of his post that touch on the actual discussion in bold:

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 @-’—-

All I can say is… WOW… how to totally miss the point by a country mile.. or perhaps a Global mile may be more apt.

Releasing content that all but excludes small guilds is just dumb.

So, when you make bold statements like “PLAY YOUR WAY”, what you really mean is play your way but you cant play this or that cos you dont fit the mandate we have designed our incredible GATED guild system around…

So if small guilds prefer only to dabble in WvW or PvP, we now have to play your way in order to even attempt to be included – ooh that’s right in a month, 3 months, 6 months, a year you might of thought up some other idea to maybe reintrouce some of the small guilds into the guild system…
Now your telling us small guilds (you know, ones that might be a closed guild of say 2-6 friends & family members or are a hardened bunch of MMO gamers who have been round the block, know each others game and like to keep it close nit with a view to only recruiting quality players that we get to know over time ingame), now have to become one of the desperado guilds who constantly have to spam Map chat repetitively to pick up the “anybodies” from their /whisper me for immediate invite dribble …. NO THANKS!

I prefer my small guild of trusted players with no drama, all play regular and have voice chat for some social interaction…. I will leave the “we take any player.com” guilds to flush this content away.

I have been pretty forgiving and supportive of ANET since before launch but if I am honest this “exclusive” content update and continual poor patching quality has started to take it toll on me to the point I can hear the death knolls – I’ve tried to fall in love with GW2 like I did with GW1 but excluding guilds of any size from guild content / guild rewards is just plain dumb.
All you had to do was create a new Guild Line to measure progress/unlocks etc which had no bearing on whether the guild played WvW or PvP or PvE so that it could pcil and choose its guild goals and then utilise difficulty scaling based on the number of players in a group who are guilded or who are in the relevant istance/event zone etc and if necessary scale the reward back with some form influence / loot penalty…. course that would be too sensible an approach I guess.

You have gated the guild system and the game content and I hope it leaves much egg on face.
Sadly for me its time to head back to my MMO of choice (No I dont mean WoW Panda either) where guilds get to enjoy all content, no matter what their size, skill level and commitment to certain game functionalities.

Very good post, I feel your pain. I do wish this works itself out, because when guild missions were originally introduced, they were advertised as “Things to do for all guilds of all sizes!” And seeing the influence cost for some of these things is just laughable to think that a smaller guild will ever even see this content.

Would’ve loved to have my small guild be able to do some coordinated jumping puzzles or something. Could have been a lower tier unlock, less rewarding etc. Just something that makes small guilds feel like they can advance the guild beyond treasure trove.

Kendra Nightwind.8734:

vince.5937:

Still no communication. Interesting.

Go ahead, tell you are surprised.
I can’t tell you how disappointed I am in ArenaNet. This is not a simple mistake, this is incompetence. I would love to ask Mike what he was thinking when he approved this, but it is quite apparent that he wasn’t thinking.

You know it’s probably close to: “Ah, you do know I don’t actually approve everything that comes from the development team, coders, artists . . . I delegate that to other people and they just report to me if they have an issue they can’t solve on their own?”

You don’t want to ask Mr O’Brian. You want to ask whomever worked on it. And my guess is if (if) we actually get a directed answer it’ll be a blog post or similar. Unless someone gets pulled off whatever they’re doing to continuously answer questions/comments for a time.

Just to reiterate: It would take my guild 18 years to unlock all of them (the puzzle! Which is the only one we want!). If we doubled our rate of influence gain, it would take us 9 years to unlock the puzzle (the only one we want!) Where is “play the way you want?” This is complete madness. We should be able to get the one we want, with long-term progression in mind, within 2 years (as we are a very small guild). That is not the case. Destiny’s Edge has only 5 members. Small guilds shouldn’t be discriminated against. I am quite positive I have said my piece, but I just want to make sure ArenaNet realizes how insane the requirement is. ArenaNet has finally truly disappointed me with this.

Note: My guild runs at about 3-5 active people at a time, we have now 8 people as of today (prior to this week we only had 6, with two not representing and on another server). We’re not very active, but we certainly aren’t inactive. Adjust calculations as you see fit. I’d suggest other people note the length of time it would take to get the guild mission they’d want to on here.

stobie.2134:

I doubt I’m the only one going back & forth here. I’ve already seen horrific behavior in game, & heard from others, with big guilds behaving – well, just the way you’d expect, charging to join, insulting those who don’t wish to expand, & generally & absolutely ruining an atmosphere that has been, until now, very positive.

Do those at ArenaNet truly not understand why so many of us left mmos like Warcraft? I used to love the play there, but the people, the players, were awful. Terrible. People will grow into the atmosphere you provide. If you set up Lord of the Flies, that’s what you’re going to get.

If this happens, I’m out. Done. Adios.
The main reason I was sucked in to GW2 was the thought that maybe this game wouldn’t contain that attitude, because it would not be set up to give them the advantage.

I am one of those you mention, who left warcraft for this (actually, left swtor too, but that was a very short transition period). As much as I enjoyed WoW’s wide selection of venues and atmospheres, the attitude of the community cut the game in half for me. I worked on builds to solo older raids, took part in fishing competitions, tried some RP, that kind of stuff. But eventually that other half was not worth the sub fee.

GW2 doesn’t have a sub fee, but I also feel it lacking in that “other half”. If the community goes WoW, i’m out.

Totally agree, Lorelei! (and I am loving the thought of all of us, 18 yrs from now, still plugging away, only to find that we can’t do the bounty missions, anyway. Then a bunch of aged people, crumped from too much play, start a vast protest)

The largest group size we need in this game is 5. Therefore, I’m pretty content with a guild of 5. I hear a few snarky types saying 5 is not a guild. Well, no – in Warcraft, it wasn’t. In other mmos, it isn’t. But Guild Wars isn’t Warcraft – and if it was, I wouldn’t be here. That system encouraged AWFUL behavior. Awful. They didn’t care about community or a positive environment. (their cross server looking for group feature proved that conclusively, & perhaps works for a totally gear-based game) But this is a dramatic shift from the lure of this game.

I’m curious…what exactly did you learn from the fractals debacle again?

Mackanstein.2503:

stobie.2134:

I doubt I’m the only one going back & forth here. I’ve already seen horrific behavior in game, & heard from others, with big guilds behaving – well, just the way you’d expect, charging to join, insulting those who don’t wish to expand, & generally & absolutely ruining an atmosphere that has been, until now, very positive.

Do those at ArenaNet truly not understand why so many of us left mmos like Warcraft? I used to love the play there, but the people, the players, were awful. Terrible. People will grow into the atmosphere you provide. If you set up Lord of the Flies, that’s what you’re going to get.

If this happens, I’m out. Done. Adios.
The main reason I was sucked in to GW2 was the thought that maybe this game wouldn’t contain that attitude, because it would not be set up to give them the advantage.

I am one of those you mention, who left warcraft for this (actually, left swtor too, but that was a very short transition period). As much as I enjoyed WoW’s wide selection of venues and atmospheres, the attitude of the community cut the game in half for me. I worked on builds to solo older raids, took part in fishing competitions, tried some RP, that kind of stuff. But eventually that other half was not worth the sub fee.

GW2 doesn’t have a sub fee, but I also feel it lacking in that “other half”. If the community goes WoW, i’m out.

I did that, too! (and we played SWTOR for several months, too – it had its perks. I loved the stories & choices, but by the end, it didn’t offer anything more than WoW, though I can’t complain about the community there, since there were maybe 5 of us on that planet… once they crunched servers together, we left for good.) I had a boy elf paladin in WoW who used to solo all kinds of things – I adored him. It actually hurt to leave that game – I’d played it a long time, & I loved my characters. (my little gnome rogue… sigh… she was my favorite) My boy elf was a Fishing King. (It’s almost scary that I loved fishing so much – but I did.) But the atmosphere was so bad that we couldn’t take it anymore. I’m actually not an anti-social person, but neither do I appreciate mass crowds. We’ve met people in all the mmos we’ve tried – and some have come with us through 4-5 games. (and one joined us on a trip to New Zealand this fall.) But when we get to know someone, it’s over time, and if we join up with them, it’s because we’ve developed a level of comfort in their company. It’s not because we needed someone to complete a mission. That just seems the definition of ‘anti-social,’ like the WoW LFG groups where people don’t even bother to say ‘hi,’ or thank you. That’s… dysfunctional, & that’s why we left WoW.

WoW was the worst, but mmos I also loved (lotro) were so focused on big guilds to do the complete content that eventually (and after maxing every class but 2) we left that, too. (I still belong, being lifetime, but I don’t play – and their perhaps too aggressive store didn’t help) At least, LOTRO had a genuinely positive environment, no doubt because of the story on which its based. (it’s pretty hard to get negative with Tolkien’s work, but geez, sometimes those developers did try! Letting people die for an achievement… ugh! It’s like they’d never read the books!)

Anyway – think twice, Anet. You’re not the first mmo many of us have tried. You had a HUGE promise by saying you’d be different. The line that drew me in was your, “If you’ve hated mmos in the past, you’ll really love us!” I had sworn off ever doing this again, until my rarely-plays-games daughter showed me that. (3 of us play a lot – but that one did not. She has a maxed thief here. That’s the kind of person this situation completely betrays.)

Vlad Morbius.1759:

I’m curious…what exactly did you learn from the fractals debacle again?

Haha, seems I was too slow in quoting your full statement that included the generic response previously used by ANet. If that’s all they say again with no specifics to the points that have been raised here well… I guess it comes down to trust. I mean when have they ever mislead us before right? ;p

Also very good sig you have there.

[Edit: Anyone game to try put up an infraction post just to see if this thread is even being read? Maybe this is just their “complaints bin” to make it easier to hide a single thread later on. Lol] <— Feel free to remove this Mods, if you read this.

Discussion Ending Post:

I created a guild of 5 people for the purpose of trying to understand things from the perspective of people in small guilds. We cleared our bags and began farming CoF path 1 for 2.5 hours. (We can speed clear in about 6-8 minutes, but even for newer players doing it in 15-30 minutes is fairly easy). After completing 20 runs, we exchanged tokens for ectos and sold them to the highest buy orders on the market. We then pooled our gold together and had just over 73g – enough to buy 36500 influence.

I’m not sure where people are coming up with “years”, because that is just not the case if you exchange gold for influence. After this little experiment, my conclusion is that the guilds who are complaining are just not willing to put in the effort.

And with your guild of 5 people, were you able to do the first bounty?

I can buy influence. I’m not sure how that’s work, but I can do it. So then what?

Also, as to your rather arrogant ‘discussion ending post’ claim, it’s quite apparent that you don’t understand the discussion at all.

I’ll just quote Colin here and you can make up your own opinion:

“It helps. There’s still plenty of vicious folks who want us to be infallible and I wish we could be but I think we definitely get the benefit of the doubt more often than other studios do because at least we try to have that level of interaction and honesty with our fans as much as we can.”

Kuzzi.2198:

Discussion Ending Post:

I created a guild of 5 people for the purpose of trying to understand things from the perspective of people in small guilds. We cleared our bags and began farming CoF path 1 for 2.5 hours. (We can speed clear in about 6-8 minutes, but even for newer players doing it in 15-30 minutes is fairly easy). After completing 20 runs, we exchanged tokens for ectos and sold them to the highest buy orders on the market. We then pooled our gold together and had just over 73g – enough to buy 36500 influence.

I’m not sure where people are coming up with “years”, because that is just not the case if you exchange gold for influence. After this little experiment, my conclusion is that the guilds who are complaining are just not willing to put in the effort.

IF you were to read many, many posts from the people in smaller guilds who are concerned over the guild missions, you would be aware that your ‘conclusion’ is false.

Very, very few of them have been complaining about the ‘effort’. It has been about the vast unbalanced nature of these missions and the fact smaller guilds may not even be able to participate in these events. (Btw….saying just ‘buy your way in’ is the OPPOSITE of effort’)

There is no effort in being in a large guild. No skill. No work. It seems to me, that the people whining the most are the ones who are in the big guilds. Whining that little guilds shouldn’t be able to do the same content….because somehow, that takes away from their ‘eliteness’…..(it doesn’t by the way..)

We do not want anything handed to us. We do want to work for what we earn. Heck, I would be happy if there were just certain tiers that large groups could do. As it is, this new update is for “Large Guilds Only.” This is in direct conflict to Anet’s promise of the game.

The only thing I have seen small guilds ask for, is the same thing that was promised from the start by the Devs. That this would be a game that ALL levels of players could enjoy. All play styles. That you do not have to join a “Raid” type group simply to see the content.

We don’t want things easy. We DO want things to rely on skill. We don’t want to be stuck in another WoW clone. This game does have a very unique, positive environment. The more ‘gated’ they make their content, the more that will get destroyed.

Hm – I’m actually surprised at the lack of the usual ‘gaming company failz’ type posts here. That kind of thing is why I generally avoid forums of any kind. Huge generalizations, personal attacks against the developers – that kind of abuse shouldn’t be tolerated at all.

However, this particular issue deserves attention. For me, it’s approaching a ‘leave’ situation, mostly because of the negative impact on community. (this is bad in so many ways. For instance, big guilds no longer have to provide incentive or be welcoming to new members. Instead, they can CHARGE – and apparently, are doing so.)

I suspect the developers wanted to do something for guilds – and that’s great. Guild missions are a great idea. But, clearly, they had no conception of the negative impact on smaller guilds. That’s understandable – a good idea undercut by an oversight, basically. But it comes off as trying to force us into big guilds – entirely. And that is not going to happen. Past experience in mmo environments has taught a lot of people VERY well. No game is worth the abuse I’m seeing just in map chat, & certainly, here on these forums.

stobie.2134:

And with your guild of 5 people, were you able to do the first bounty?

I can buy influence. I’m not sure how that’s work, but I can do it. So then what?

Well, we’d need at least 15 people to guarantee succeeding in a bounty. But, if we take our chances guessing where the targets are we would have about a 1/3 chance of completing the mission with 5.

I’m curious how multiple groups and guilds can coordinate effectively in game without any effective grouping systems? Many of the bounty missions require more than a group (5 people) to complete. There is actually no way for more than 5 people to group except for the commander and squad system, which is ineffective for guild missions and some specific WvW content. Even if you try and use the commander and squad system for guild missions, you still can’t see where the guild members are located in a zone, as only people in your group show a unique color. Using the C&S system also invites every single player in the zone to join your guild event.

Would it be to hard to have a couple of modifications to the C&S system?

1: Unique colored dots for everyone currently in a squad, visible in all zones.
2: Ability to “Hide” the commander pin from allies, but anyone currently in the squad still sees it. Basically it would become a private squad.

The lack of in game grouping systems and customization for guild or private events is really noticable now since guild missions have been implemented. Having to use 3rd party voice programs is not a great option, but the only one we have.

Kuzzi.2198:

Discussion Ending Post:

I created a guild of 5 people for the purpose of trying to understand things from the perspective of people in small guilds. We cleared our bags and began farming CoF path 1 for 2.5 hours. (We can speed clear in about 6-8 minutes, but even for newer players doing it in 15-30 minutes is fairly easy). After completing 20 runs, we exchanged tokens for ectos and sold them to the highest buy orders on the market. We then pooled our gold together and had just over 73g – enough to buy 36500 influence.

I’m not sure where people are coming up with “years”, because that is just not the case if you exchange gold for influence. After this little experiment, my conclusion is that the guilds who are complaining are just not willing to put in the effort.

Nice work Kuzzi, your crew is very effective. Good suggestion about tokens for ectos too. I’ll have to look into that. Thanks for your post.

We could certainly ask if anyone would like to help us out – we could offer to let them join the guild for the mission. That’s the only way to do it, should we go ahead with the unlocks. (and right now, no one in the guild thinks it’s worth doing) Guild Alliances – assuming they were ‘official,’ would be better, if they allowed both guilds to share the rewards. That would be an acceptable solution, actually – let guilds formally ally for the sake of these missions. Not sure why they didn’t do this – I believe they had something similar in GW1.

Ahmrill.7512:

I’m curious how multiple groups and guilds can coordinate effectively in game without any effective grouping systems? Many of the bounty missions require more than a group (5 people) to complete. There is actually no way for more than 5 people to group except for the commander and squad system, which is ineffective for guild missions and some specific WvW content. Even if you try and use the commander and squad system for guild missions, you still can’t see where the guild members are located in a zone, as only people in your group show a unique color. Using the C&S system also invites every single player in the zone to join your guild event.

Would it be to hard to have a couple of modifications to the C&S system?

1: Unique colored dots for everyone currently in a squad, visible in all zones.
2: Ability to “Hide” the commander pin from allies, but anyone currently in the squad still sees it. Basically it would become a private squad.

The lack of in game grouping systems and customization for guild or private events is really noticable now since guild missions have been implemented. Having to use 3rd party voice programs is not a great option, but the only one we have.

Good suggestions but for now I think you’ll have to rely on guild chat. I think shift clicking (haven’t done it for awhile so pls check) on the map also puts one of those red beacon things for a few seconds that anyone can see which may help.

My guild came to GW2 with the promise of a new direction for MMOs. While we loved leveling and PVP in the game, we felt lost after we all reached max level. We did some WvW and started on new toons, but ultimately, without things to do as a guild that challenged us, we eventually started playing other games again (Rift, SWTOR and WoW) to find that guild-based challenge.

We were so excited to hear that GW2 would finally have the guild-based endgame we’re looking for. Only to find out that it’s behind a rather large paywall and required large numbers to complete.

This is fine for large guilds that have been around since launch that can afford that. But what about us looking for a good reason to return to the game? We’d have to either give up our identity and join another guild and do challenges under their tag, defeating the purpose of our guild in the first place or we’d have to recruit like crazy and farm a lot of content that we’re not really interested in farming just to do progression as a guild together.

It’s very, very prohibitive to guilds in our situation. It’s just not worth the time/effort to come back. It caters to the large established guilds not ones that want to return and rebuilt as a result of this launch.