Old Guild System
I’ve been playing Guild Wars 2 pretty much since launch and after the launch of the “recent” updates I have to say that I really miss the old guild systems. I find it a lot harder to build up your guild and that sucks since they made guilds so much cooler.
Anyway, I just wanted to know if anyone else feels the same way.
Yeah, our guild is small, and no one has large sums of cash or mats to spend a lot on upgrades. Besides, I would think most people are working towards their own personal interests and goals, i.e. making legendary or ascended armour/weapons.
Ummmm actually no I find this new system better. I am in a 2 person guild with a friend from another game (I don’t care if people want to debate if that is a guild or not either lol). In the old system we could not do the guild missions so our influence income was on the low side and we never got to see the guild mission currency. With this system the guild missions are a little bit more forgiving and influence is a thing of the past. We have a fair bit unlocked with guild upgrades, well considering there is only 2 of us anyway.
Edit: Maybe myself and my friend have not found this an issue as we are hoarders and have been hoarding our extra mats for a long time. It seems that the required items for upgrades that Anet targeted were things that were of low value and in surplus or hoarded away so they have a use now. So since my friend and I had a lot hoarded away already we had headstart sort of. Of course people who never hoarded or saved may have had to work for those same things. Maybe that’s the issue?
Since when did this business of being a hero become being a business?
(edited by Paulytnz.7619)
Ummmm actually no I find this new system better. I am in a 2 person guild with a friend from another game (I don’t care if people want to debate if that is a guild or not either lol). In the old system we could not do the guild missions so our influence income was on the low side and we never got to see the guild mission currency. With this system the guild missions are a little bit more forgiving and influence is a thing of the past. We have a fair bit unlocked with guild upgrades, well considering there is only 2 of us anyway.
Edit: Maybe myself and my friend have not found this an issue as we are hoarders and have been hoarding our extra mats for a long time. It seems that the required items for upgrades that Anet targeted were things that were of low value and in surplus or hoarded away so they have a use now. So since my friend and I had a lot hoarded away already we had headstart sort of. Of course people who never hoarded or saved may have had to work for those same things. Maybe that’s the issue?
Yes, it is still pretty easy for small guilds built up of friends, but for someone trying to build a big guild or play with random users it’s become much harder to get started.
Still, you have a good point.
What exactly is different than “the old system” that makes it hard to build up a guild?
What exactly is different than “the old system” that makes it hard to build up a guild?
The fact that the only way to gain favour/experience now is by doing guild missions when you used to be able to gain “influence” by questing alone/purchasing influence. For guild missions you need an organized group which is rather hard for a new guild with people you don’t know.
Since it’s so hard to recruit people with a lvl 0 guild it makes it much harder for new guilds to grow.
Ah, gotcha. I used to purchase favor with my alt accounts’ laurels to do upgrades to my personal guild. And of course you got points just for repping. Miss that.
But the main guild really hasn’t changed, but that’s due to a good core.
What exactly is different than “the old system” that makes it hard to build up a guild?
The fact that the only way to gain favour/experience now is by doing guild missions when you used to be able to gain “influence” by questing alone/purchasing influence.
The old system allowed folks to build up the guild infrastructure without, you know, having a guild.
- You could earn up to 50 influence/day with just a single guild member.
- You could buy all the influence you wanted for gold.
Neither of those mechanisms requires anyone in the guild to participate in ‘guild’ activities.
For guild missions you need an organized group which is rather hard for a new guild with people you don’t know.
You can do every mission with 5 people, except perhaps some of the challenges. They don’t have to be meta or particular super organized, although obviously, at least one person needs to be experienced with the missions and the others have to be willing to follow that person’s lead. (Most missions are also doable with fewer, but I admit it’s a lot more tedious and less fun.)
Since it’s so hard to recruit people with a lvl 0 guild it makes it much harder for new guilds to grow.
While it’s possible to discuss whether “4 people” constitutes a guild or just a circle of friends, I don’t see that it matters much — there are always guild starting from scratch that find ways to accumulate folks.
Or one can do what a lot of small groups do: join a large® guild for the benefits (buffs, scribe station, vendors, nodes, commendations) and use the small-guild for chat (creating a chat channel that turns off the other guilds, as needed).
tl;dr the new guild mechanics are designed to require active participation of a core group, which seems what ANet intended at launch (but just didn’t implement until HoT).
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
Ummmm actually no I find this new system better. I am in a 2 person guild with a friend from another game (I don’t care if people want to debate if that is a guild or not either lol). In the old system we could not do the guild missions so our influence income was on the low side and we never got to see the guild mission currency. With this system the guild missions are a little bit more forgiving and influence is a thing of the past. We have a fair bit unlocked with guild upgrades, well considering there is only 2 of us anyway.
Edit: Maybe myself and my friend have not found this an issue as we are hoarders and have been hoarding our extra mats for a long time. It seems that the required items for upgrades that Anet targeted were things that were of low value and in surplus or hoarded away so they have a use now. So since my friend and I had a lot hoarded away already we had headstart sort of. Of course people who never hoarded or saved may have had to work for those same things. Maybe that’s the issue?
Yes, it is still pretty easy for small guilds built up of friends, but for someone trying to build a big guild or play with random users it’s become much harder to get started.
Still, you have a good point.
I have a guild of well over 200 people. We’re at guild level 59 now and have all the upgrades we really care about except the new buff for WvW reward tracks, which we’re working on.
It depends on the type of guild and how much the players like a respect it. Guilds, I find, are a two way street. If the guild gives, then a percentage of people will want to give back. That’s how it’s worked for me anyway.
Ummmm actually no I find this new system better. I am in a 2 person guild with a friend from another game (I don’t care if people want to debate if that is a guild or not either lol). In the old system we could not do the guild missions so our influence income was on the low side and we never got to see the guild mission currency. With this system the guild missions are a little bit more forgiving and influence is a thing of the past. We have a fair bit unlocked with guild upgrades, well considering there is only 2 of us anyway.
Edit: Maybe myself and my friend have not found this an issue as we are hoarders and have been hoarding our extra mats for a long time. It seems that the required items for upgrades that Anet targeted were things that were of low value and in surplus or hoarded away so they have a use now. So since my friend and I had a lot hoarded away already we had headstart sort of. Of course people who never hoarded or saved may have had to work for those same things. Maybe that’s the issue?
Yes, it is still pretty easy for small guilds built up of friends, but for someone trying to build a big guild or play with random users it’s become much harder to get started.
Still, you have a good point.I have a guild of well over 200 people. We’re at guild level 59 now and have all the upgrades we really care about except the new buff for WvW reward tracks, which we’re working on.
It depends on the type of guild and how much the players like a respect it. Guilds, I find, are a two way street. If the guild gives, then a percentage of people will want to give back. That’s how it’s worked for me anyway.
Yeah, once you have a big guild it’s no problem getting people together, but in the beginning it can be really tough. I used to have a guild of about 100 ppl but it eventually died out once the old members stopped playing. Me and a few others tried to keep it alive, but eventually we gave up. Me and another guy moved over to a new guild and since then we’ve been struggling to get it together.
I guess you could say that it’s my fault but if we had the old system in place I could easily grow it.
What exactly is different than “the old system” that makes it hard to build up a guild?
The fact that the only way to gain favour/experience now is by doing guild missions when you used to be able to gain “influence” by questing alone/purchasing influence.
The old system allowed folks to build up the guild infrastructure without, you know, having a guild.
- You could earn up to 50 influence/day with just a single guild member.
- You could buy all the influence you wanted for gold.
Neither of those mechanisms requires anyone in the guild to participate in ‘guild’ activities.
For guild missions you need an organized group which is rather hard for a new guild with people you don’t know.
You can do every mission with 5 people, except perhaps some of the challenges. They don’t have to be meta or particular super organized, although obviously, at least one person needs to be experienced with the missions and the others have to be willing to follow that person’s lead. (Most missions are also doable with fewer, but I admit it’s a lot more tedious and less fun.)
Since it’s so hard to recruit people with a lvl 0 guild it makes it much harder for new guilds to grow.
While it’s possible to discuss whether “4 people” constitutes a guild or just a circle of friends, I don’t see that it matters much — there are always guild starting from scratch that find ways to accumulate folks.
Or one can do what a lot of small groups do: join a large® guild for the benefits (buffs, scribe station, vendors, nodes, commendations) and use the small-guild for chat (creating a chat channel that turns off the other guilds, as needed).
tl;dr the new guild mechanics are designed to require active participation of a core group, which seems what ANet intended at launch (but just didn’t implement until HoT).
Yes, I know full well that you can do all activities with only 5 people, but the hard part is getting those 5 people together at the right time in the right place without having any outside contact with any of them. Sure I can set the “message of the day” to “Guild mission at 5pm” or whatever, but most people will ignore it and I can’t make promise that I’ll be online then either.
In short: “Active participation” seems pretty good, but it’s not always easy. I much preferred the old system as it allowed a more casual way of building guilds.
Yes, I know full well that you can do all activities with only 5 people, but the hard part is getting those 5 people together at the right time in the right place without having any outside contact with any of them. Sure I can set the “message of the day” to “Guild mission at 5pm” or whatever, but most people will ignore it and I can’t make promise that I’ll be online then either.
In short: “Active participation” seems pretty good, but it’s not always easy. I much preferred the old system as it allowed a more casual way of building guilds.
If you can’t get 5 people together, then you have a smaller guild than you think (I don’t mean this as a criticism — organizing guilds is harder than herding cats, which is why I’m retired from leadership).
The point I was making is that the old system didn’t require participation — you could fully upgrade a guild without any participation at all. That’s bad for a ‘guild’ (although perfectly fine for a social club).
I can see why lots of people liked that. At the same time, I hope you can see why “more casual” isn’t something that our New Gaming Overlords would be interested in supporting. ANet wants guilds to be active associations of players. It’s better for an MMO if groups band together, because nearly all of the content is more fun with more people.
Again, my recommendation is that instead of banging your head against the GH wall trying to worry about upgrading, join a big guild and do g-mish with them and do treks and bounties as you can (solo, in pairs, whatever) until you feel like you have something more substantive.
Either that, or get more creative about building your guild from scratch — lots of people manage to do it.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
Op, I agree with you. I much prefer the influence system to the cynical gold/mats sink system they instituted with HoT. Denying guild boons to anyone who didn’t buy HoT was low.
Yes, I know full well that you can do all activities with only 5 people, but the hard part is getting those 5 people together at the right time in the right place without having any outside contact with any of them. Sure I can set the “message of the day” to “Guild mission at 5pm” or whatever, but most people will ignore it and I can’t make promise that I’ll be online then either.
In short: “Active participation” seems pretty good, but it’s not always easy. I much preferred the old system as it allowed a more casual way of building guilds.
If you can’t get 5 people together, then you have a smaller guild than you think (I don’t mean this as a criticism — organizing guilds is harder than herding cats, which is why I’m retired from leadership).
The point I was making is that the old system didn’t require participation — you could fully upgrade a guild without any participation at all. That’s bad for a ‘guild’ (although perfectly fine for a social club).
I can see why lots of people liked that. At the same time, I hope you can see why “more casual” isn’t something that our New Gaming Overlords would be interested in supporting. ANet wants guilds to be active associations of players. It’s better for an MMO if groups band together, because nearly all of the content is more fun with more people.
Again, my recommendation is that instead of banging your head against the GH wall trying to worry about upgrading, join a big guild and do g-mish with them and do treks and bounties as you can (solo, in pairs, whatever) until you feel like you have something more substantive.
Either that, or get more creative about building your guild from scratch — lots of people manage to do it.
Aye, in the end it comes down to preference. Depending on weather you take guilds seriously or just want to mess about with the idea. My point is, the old system allowed for both.
With the old system,small and even personal guilds could contribute,now that part of the game is totally lost for me.
I’m not into big guilds,and I liked that even with my limited resources I could offer a banner,or a siege engine,or a +5,here and there.
-Win a pip,lose a pip,win a pip,lose a pip,lose a pip,
lose a pip,win 2 pips,lose a pip,lose a pip…………..-
-Go go Espartz.-
lose a pip,win 2 pips,lose a pip,lose a pip…………..-
-Go go Espartz.-
Yes, I know full well that you can do all activities with only 5 people, but the hard part is getting those 5 people together at the right time in the right place without having any outside contact with any of them. Sure I can set the “message of the day” to “Guild mission at 5pm” or whatever, but most people will ignore it and I can’t make promise that I’ll be online then either.
In short: “Active participation” seems pretty good, but it’s not always easy. I much preferred the old system as it allowed a more casual way of building guilds.
If you can’t get 5 people together, then you have a smaller guild than you think (I don’t mean this as a criticism — organizing guilds is harder than herding cats, which is why I’m retired from leadership).
The point I was making is that the old system didn’t require participation — you could fully upgrade a guild without any participation at all. That’s bad for a ‘guild’ (although perfectly fine for a social club).
I can see why lots of people liked that. At the same time, I hope you can see why “more casual” isn’t something that our New Gaming Overlords would be interested in supporting. ANet wants guilds to be active associations of players. It’s better for an MMO if groups band together, because nearly all of the content is more fun with more people.
Again, my recommendation is that instead of banging your head against the GH wall trying to worry about upgrading, join a big guild and do g-mish with them and do treks and bounties as you can (solo, in pairs, whatever) until you feel like you have something more substantive.
Either that, or get more creative about building your guild from scratch — lots of people manage to do it.
Aye, in the end it comes down to preference. Depending on weather you take guilds seriously or just want to mess about with the idea. My point is, the old system allowed for both.
Actually from my point of view, the old system was severely flawed. It conflicted against itself.
On one hand, you didn’t need many people, or active people to progress a guild. On the other hand, guild progress meant you had to depend on people repping. And therefore there were a lot of guilds that required 100% rep…but the game allows you to have five. So you either wasted four slots, or you didn’t join many guilds.
The idea of not repping and how much repping become contentious. My guild never had a rep requirement. But if people didn’t rep, it really looked bad. I hated it as a guild leader.
I prefer the new system where people repping is largely irrelevant. They can still chat in our guild chat. They aren’t required to rep the guild. They can still come into voice chat and participate in guild events and missions.
No, this one is much better for my guild. The old one caused a lot more drama.
With the old system you could only do upgrades by purchasing them with influence. For my friend and I it was tough to get the vast amounts needed for some of them. We had no issues unlocking all of the bank access and some small things like banners and such. However we could never earn enough to even unlock guild missions so we never even got to try them.
With this new system you say goodbye to the influence cost as it is replaced with gold/mats. Sure it may seem harder as you need to actually have those mats and gold or go and make it. But to me it’s actually easier. Because you can do many things in the game to earn coin to straight out buy what you need. Again with the old system influence (especially for the very small guilds) was a lot harder to come by and was via a very boring method. You had to pretty much party your guildmates and spam events to get any decent amount of influence. That is very linear and repetitive and obviously worked more in favour of the bigger guilds.
So imo I think this system works better for smaller guilds.
Since when did this business of being a hero become being a business?
For me the old system was horrible, and guilds forced people to 100% rep even if you have a personal or friends only guild. So basically you was a free influence for them. I do understand that the old system supports passive play to gain influence which helped me gain a personal guild bank befor the changes, but it was mostly the 100% rep that all guilds was throwing around that stopped me form joining more guilds.
At the moment am in a small guild just with my friends mostly 3 active most of the time. And claimed a guild Hall with 4 people and now at guild level 25 so it’s possible to have small guilds, and some Gms can be done solo.
The only thing I really miss about the old guild system was being able to have more than one guild boost at a time. Sometimes I want my karma as well as my gathering boost >:
“Even if we find a way to save the world from the
dragons, I sometimes wonder if we’ll ever find a way to save us from ourselves.”
dragons, I sometimes wonder if we’ll ever find a way to save us from ourselves.”
The only thing I really miss about the old guild system was being able to have more than one guild boost at a time. Sometimes I want my karma as well as my gathering boost >:
That’s somthing I forgot about, would love to have back.
(edited by Gilgamesh VII.8690)
I’m sure the new system is here to stay but I would certainly vote for the old system given the chance.
I’d like to see the things unlocked in the old system made available at least. Banners, guild siege and plus five at least. And make those things available quickly in the current system without requiring a guild hall or multiple people to complete. It would let you acquire the things you need to start playing and building a guild. Also make it possible to pick an initial WvW, PvE or PvP XP bonus depending on the focus of the guild so players aren’t penalized for playing in a new guild rather than a large established guild. This would let small guilds have a decent start and also allow people that want to command pugs without the hassle of a guild (which is playing with others and social – being able to pug is good for the game) to do so.
(edited by Thelgar.7214)