Guild Wars 2

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

I’m pretty sure if we had ascended weapons, there would be a ton of ways to get them.

Just as there is a “ton” of ways to get all other ascended pieces? Somehow that doesn’t sound very optimistic.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

You don’t need merits to access Guild Bounty Hunts, which is the first level of guild missions. You need influence, and that’s how the training missions help you get there.

dude really…. your talking to a bunch of kid’s who wont be happy unless they can have everything with out putting out any work.

there so worried about there small guilds falling apart because they cant unlock this stuff quickly, I say if that’s what there worried about than there not much of a guild in the first place.

I myself am not in a big guild it will take us much longer to unlock everything But I have NO fear that my guild will split up over this, If any thing pulling together to get to our gole has only made my guild stronger.

we make it a point to run content together in order to max out our influance gain much more than we ever did befour and we crush content ((harder pleas :P ))

Greibach, very good post, and I suspect you’ll be told it’s “off topic,” but it’s really not. The whole ascended fiasco is beginning to pervade every aspect of the game, and the reliance on guild missions for the most efficient (although still entirely unreasonable) method of obtaining the new pieces is a major aspect of people’s discontent.

That being said…

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Every guild can—so long as they research the appropriate upgrades, recruit enough members or outside assistance, and work together to finish the content. This is quite similar to saying every character can kill Zhaitan—as long as they’ve leveled to 80, purchased gear, found a group, etc. Keep in mind that content is often in itself something to be achieved. In this case we’ve taken that concept from character progression and applied it to guilds, and now we have guild progression (which should read as something new for guilds to do). That’s on top of all the other things guilds are already for.

But it’s not similar at all. What sense of achievement is there joining a large guild for the sole purpose of using them for rewards? Or grinding out influence as a small guild to be able to access this content, only to find it impossible to complete without outside help (and who would help? No one outside the guild gets rewards for it, so why bother?). With your Zhaitan example, it’s something that someone can achieve at their own pace (leveling and obtaining gear is not time-gated. Aside from ascended gear, as we’re coming to find out). Finding a group can be done on-the-fly, doesn’t require any kind of extended association, and anyone who participates gets the reward.

The reward structure for Guild Missions (and laurels, and all ascended gear) is insulting enough. Inaccessibility of content for, I suspect, the majority of the player base, is just ridiculous.

Cliff.8679:

Greibach, very good post, and I suspect you’ll be told it’s “off topic,” but it’s really not. The whole ascended fiasco is beginning to pervade every aspect of the game, and the reliance on guild missions for the most efficient (although still entirely unreasonable) method of obtaining the new pieces is a major aspect of people’s discontent.

That being said…

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Every guild can—so long as they research the appropriate upgrades, recruit enough members or outside assistance, and work together to finish the content. This is quite similar to saying every character can kill Zhaitan—as long as they’ve leveled to 80, purchased gear, found a group, etc. Keep in mind that content is often in itself something to be achieved. In this case we’ve taken that concept from character progression and applied it to guilds, and now we have guild progression (which should read as something new for guilds to do). That’s on top of all the other things guilds are already for.

But it’s not similar at all. What sense of achievement is there joining a large guild for the sole purpose of using them for rewards? Or grinding out influence as a small guild to be able to access this content, only to find it impossible to complete without outside help (and who would help? No one outside the guild gets rewards for it, so why bother?). With your Zhaitan example, it’s something that someone can achieve at their own pace (leveling and obtaining gear is not time-gated. Aside from ascended gear, as we’re coming to find out). Finding a grou kitten omething that can be done on-the-fly, doesn’t require any kind of extended association, and anyone who participates gets the reward.

The reward structure for Guild Missions (and laurels, and all ascended gear) is insulting enough. Inaccessibility of content for, I suspect, the majority of the player base, is just ridiculous.

I think most of the player’s actually like having things to work for >_> it keeps them in the world and logging on. or that seems to be the case if you look around in game…..

UnderdogSMO.9428:

I think most of the player’s actually like having things to work for >_> it keeps them in the world and logging on. or that seems to be the case if you look around in game…..

Can you honestly tell me that you look forward to the time investment it will take to get multiple sets of ascended gear for one character/gear out multiple characters in ascended? So far, there’s only 5 slots that have ascended gear in them, with many more to come. At this rate, imagine how much time it will take when we have full sets of armor, weapons, accessories, even rebreathers.

It’s ludicrous.

And I reiterate, a small guild “working” towards Guild Missions is ultimately pointless the way they’re currently implemented.

And just to add, having something to “work” for shouldn’t be what keeps people logging in. Having fun should be.

Ok… since my ussual concerns are about the binary nature of content gating I’ll just throw out there what I really want…

I would like to recieve 1 guild commendation for every 1,000 influence I earn for a guild, no matter how large or small.

My rate of acqusition can be appaling compared to the members of bigger guilds, but I’d like to be in the running, that’s all.

Cliff.8679:

UnderdogSMO.9428:

I think most of the player’s actually like having things to work for >_> it keeps them in the world and logging on. or that seems to be the case if you look around in game…..

Can you honestly tell me that you look forward to the time investment it will take to get multiple sets of ascended gear for one character/gear out multiple characters in ascended? So far, there’s only 5 slots that have ascended gear in them, with many more to come. At this rate, imagine how much time it will take when we have full sets of armor, weapons, accessories, even rebreathers.

It’s ludicrous.

And I reiterate, a small guild “working” towards Guild Missions is ultimately pointless the way they’re currently implemented.

I only just got my ascended Ring and an ascended trinket the other day. the next trinket i get will probably be from guild tokens.

and not one’s has not having ascended kept me from content ((or point of fact, Playing that content better than most)) on top of that with each new ascended (pack?) thay add more way’s to get the gear, making it easier and faster to get so by the time the full set dose come out its vary likely going to be much easyer for new players to get and I myself will already have most of it.

considering its only March and ascended has been confermed to be the only tear for this year I think i have plenty of time.

((and no i dont have alot of time to play, speeking of which time for me to go to work))

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Brook.5263:

Very simply, shouldn’t all Guilds be able to participate in Guild Missions?

Every guild can—so long as they research the appropriate upgrades, recruit enough members or outside assistance, and work together to finish the content. This is quite similar to saying every character can kill Zhaitan—as long as they’ve leveled to 80, purchased gear, found a group, etc. Keep in mind that content is often in itself something to be achieved. In this case we’ve taken that concept from character progression and applied it to guilds, and now we have guild progression (which should read as something new for guilds to do). That’s on top of all the other things guilds are already for.

This is a fair point, but I’d like to draw a contrast: EVERYBODY must level to 80, gear up, and find a party to kill Zhaitan. Every. Single. Player. And there’s a system like this:

1) Work hard and play a lot
2) Achieve a certain level of competence
3) You get to fight Zhaitan!

Now pretend you’re an individual who is not in a guild. Two guilds are recruiting you, one big, one small…

The Big One Says: We have guild missions now! They run all the time! We have 24/7 buffs and you’ll have 5 opportunities every week to run a mission and we never fail because we have 100 people online!!!

The Small One Says: We’re working on guild missions! We should have them in a few weeks! We’ll probably try once or twice a week when we get the 10 or so actives we need to try them! Hopefully you’ll be on then!

That makes it harder to recruit.

Furthermore, leveling to kill Zhaitan is both a competency-gate and an equal amount of work for all players. It takes everybody (roughly) the same amount of time to get there. With the structure of these missions, you can have it easy (join a big guild and you don’t have to do a thing) or very hard (join a smaller guild and have to influence farm or donate your gold.)

That’s the difference that I see.

Thank you devs for coming up with this solution. The problem is that smaller guilds are by their very existence, self entitled, against working together, and extremely self centered. They want to achieve everything a large cohesive group can in less time and get the same rewards. You will never appease them because to do so you would have to destroy the game.

For the guilds that were only limited only by influence gain and are willing to work for their reward then this will solve the problem. If you were looking to be instantly handed all the perks of a large guild on the same time scale then you will hopefully continue to be dissapointed.

My guild has been able to complete T1 bounties, All tiers of Trek and T2 Rush with a 5 man group. This means any guild with 5 people can eventually all 5 guild mission types. I don’t know how many will be required for Challenge and Puzzle missions but I think being able to do even the first 3 mission types with only 5 people is quite accessible to everyone.

For T1 bounties you only need to kill 2 targets. There is no pre-scouting required, and since the bosses scale they can easily be killed within their time limits. There are a few bounties that are too hard to find in the time limit with only 5 players, but the missions are cheap to research and run.

timmyf.1490:

That makes it harder to recruit.

This assumes that what a player is looking for in a guild is solely the guild missions itself. That is far from the case.

Why players join guilds is up to them entirely. But some players actually enjoy the intimate setting of a smaller guild much more than the anonymity of a huge, faceless guild. I know I do.

Ursan.7846:

timmyf.1490:

That makes it harder to recruit.

This assumes that what a player is looking for in a guild is solely the guild missions itself. That is far from the case.

Why players join guilds is up to them entirely. But some players actually enjoy the intimate setting of a smaller guild much more than the anonymity of a huge, faceless guild. I know I do.

Didn’t say “impossible,” just “harder.” And I agree on smaller guilds. That’s why I run one. ;-)

UnderdogSMO.9428:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

You don’t need merits to access Guild Bounty Hunts, which is the first level of guild missions. You need influence, and that’s how the training missions help you get there.

dude really…. your talking to a bunch of kid’s who wont be happy unless they can have everything with out putting out any work.

there so worried about there small guilds falling apart because they cant unlock this stuff quickly, I say if that’s what there worried about than there not much of a guild in the first place.

I myself am not in a big guild it will take us much longer to unlock everything But I have NO fear that my guild will split up over this, If any thing pulling together to get to our gole has only made my guild stronger.

we make it a point to run content together in order to max out our influance gain much more than we ever did befour and we crush content ((harder pleas :P ))

Hey hey, I’m 16, am the leader of a 15 person guild and I made this thread to thank them

Most of my guild is made up of people who I have met in Guild Wars, and I am pretty sure that none of them are going to leave for a bigger guild – we have finally unlocked bounties, but have not had a successful hunt yet. We have had a lot of laughs though, and are looking forward to these training missions so we can get used to the bounties.

Thank you ArenaNet.

Thank you very much from the bottom of my whiney and jaded little heart.

Truly.

As a fan and member of a couple of smaller guilds, I’m very thankful for this update. It’s great to know I can introduce friends to this kind of content.

Well, I have to disagree there Zudet. Small guilds HAVE to focus a lot more on working together just to exist. That statement just doesn’t make sense.

ALso, if you do the missions with 5 – that’s great – but how did you unlock the later mission types so quickly with 5 people? Or is your guild much larger than you suggest? Two targets in 15mins, incl trying to locate the mobs has so far proved unsuccessful for us. One yes, but the time limit expires before we get to the 2nd.

Also, we don’t want the same identical rewards – that has been put to rest a long time ago. We just want to enjoy the content or a lower scaled reward at worst.

Greibach.5341:

Here’s my problem with the bolded statement. Before ascended items became part of this game, all of those things that you mentioned were cosmetic and/or on the same scale of power. All the different ways of getting gear all gave you the same quality of gear (exotic). The skin was different, yes. Walking around in full Arah dungeon armor was earned, and was respected. Having that little star next to your name for world completion was neat, and respected. If you didn’t want to do those things, you could still be on the same level as them when it came to statistics.

When ascended gear entered the game, we saw a shift in methods of gear attainment. Ascended gear is flat out statistically superior to exotic gear. When fractals came out, it was no longer a question of being able to play the game the way you wanted to play and still be on a level playing field, it was “Play fractals, or be worse statistically”. This was a massive departure from the pre-ascended tone, message, and motto. Before, you could earn something cool by doing something hard. It was cool, but it wasn’t better. You could earn other cool things by doing other tasks. Again, they did not improve you, they merely let you show off the work you had done.

When laurels came out, there was finally a new way to get ascended items. Except that it didn’t cover back slots. So really, you still have to do fractals to get an ascended back slot. When guild missions came, so too did yet another set of ascended items that were unique from there (and laurels). For those of us in small guilds, the message was basically “Nope! Better join a big guild and leech off them to earn these.”

Laurels are an inadequate solution to providing alternative methods of gear. They are heavily gated on IRL time. In order to get one character geared using Laurels you have to spend ~5 months of getting every single daily and monthly achievement. By the time you’ve done that, I’d wager that ascended armor and/or weapons will start entering the game. For someone that has played over a thousand hours, if you don’t like Fractals or are in a small guild, you will never be able to gear multiple characters in ascended gear unless other methods of attaining them are introduced. Again, pre-ascended there were a multitude of ways that you could invest time to make your character unique, cool, and maximally geared. It’s not a matter of not wanting to put in the time, it’s a matter of not wanting or being able to do one specific kind of content and not having any realistic alternatives.

So to wrap it up, my problem is largely with ascended items. There need to be more ways of acquiring them than whatever specific new content you come out with any given month + laurels. There has been a paradigm shift with regard to how players are awarded for their time, and in my opinion, it is for the worse. I don’t care if I can’t turn into a guild banner because I am not in a large guild, I care that I am gated from getting earrings for two months per character.

Maybe there is something in the works. Maybe there is some grand plan that I don’t know about or is taking longer than expected. All I know is that as it stands, I’m giving up on gearing my characters despite playing them for hundreds of hours because I don’t want to be funneled into one specific kind of content in order to earn the most powerful rewards. I respect that you’re coming on here to talk to us about this, and I respect that you are trying to find a solution that benefits everyone. I think this goes a long way towards helping, but I feel that this entire Guild Mission drama has really highlighted how problematic many players feel Ascended items are and where they might be going. I hope I haven’t been overly aggressive or offensive here, I’m just trying to express my frustrations in a clear and cogent fashion.

As always, I completely agree with you.

This post, like countless others, won’t be addressed. Because it actually touches on real issues. Items that the players actually care about by the majority. Things that we were led to believe pre-launch and have slowly had to learn to let die because that’s not the GW2 we knew and loved.

It’s sad really. Each month that goes by it seems to get worse instead of better. I honestly feel like just grabbing the developers by the shoulders and shaking them. “What are you doing to your game, man!?”

Brook.5263:

Very simply, shouldn’t all Guilds be able to participate in Guild Missions?

Yes. In my opinion it should have been done so that all guilds, large and small, could have begun enjoying the new guild content immediately. No requirements other than having an active game account and being in a guild. I believe each guild, large or small, should have started with the same starting missions, and then worked their way up at their own pace from there, unlocking more content as they went, content that scaled to the size of the guilds playing it. That’s how I would have done it, if I’d been the person in charge.

Randulf.7614:

Well, I have to disagree there Zudet. Small guilds HAVE to focus a lot more on working together just to exist. That statement just doesn’t make sense.

ALso, if you do the missions with 5 – that’s great – but how did you unlock the later mission types so quickly with 5 people? Or is your guild much larger than you suggest? Two targets in 15mins, incl trying to locate the mobs has so far proved unsuccessful for us. One yes, but the time limit expires before we get to the 2nd.

Also, we don’t want the same identical rewards – that has been put to rest a long time ago. We just want to enjoy the content or a lower scaled reward at worst.

You’re right I phrased that poorly. Small guilds don’t work together in large groups mostly because they don’t like large groups and want to be exclusive to people they already know. Nothing wrong with that in and of itself but it tends to lead to the problem I mentioned.

My guild is very large but we run our large organized on the weekends and small group who need the reward during the week. If I can’t join on the weekend we do 5-10 person runs. 5 is pretty difficult. When we have completed it we get 2 easier bounties and usually send 1 person to get a jump start on searching while the other 4 go to the other site. If you can get 10 people it becomes almost trivial.

And you ARE getting the content with a lower reward now. You get guild bounties and an influence reward instead of the full reward. But people aren’t happy with that. they want the full rewards and say the content it “useless” without it.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Randulf.7614:

Well, I have to disagree there Zudet. Small guilds HAVE to focus a lot more on working together just to exist. That statement just doesn’t make sense.

ALso, if you do the missions with 5 – that’s great – but how did you unlock the later mission types so quickly with 5 people? Or is your guild much larger than you suggest? Two targets in 15mins, incl trying to locate the mobs has so far proved unsuccessful for us. One yes, but the time limit expires before we get to the 2nd.

Also, we don’t want the same identical rewards – that has been put to rest a long time ago. We just want to enjoy the content or a lower scaled reward at worst.

You’re right I phrased that poorly. Small guilds don’t work together in large groups mostly because they don’t like large groups and want to be exclusive to people they already know. Nothing wrong with that in and of itself but it tends to lead to the problem I mentioned.

My guild is very large but we run our large organized on the weekends and small group who need the reward during the week. If I can’t join on the weekend we do 5-10 person runs. 5 is pretty difficult. When we have completed it we get 2 easier bounties and usually send 1 person to get a jump start on searching while the other 4 go to the other site. If you can get 10 people it becomes almost trivial.

And you ARE getting the content with a lower reward now. You get guild bounties and an influence reward instead of the full reward. But people aren’t happy with that. they want the full rewards and say the content it “useless” without it.

it is literally useless because it can’t be used to unlock any of the other guild mission content

Not exactly, what they want is a way to earn merits and at a semi-reasonable rate. We’re certainly not expecting to match larger guilds – they work as a big team and deserve to earn bigger and better rewards. I wont dispute that. What I’m saying is that merits are by and large not something that small guilds of under 10 can obtain under the current system. We’d like the opportunity to work towards the higher tiers, even if slowly, but the opportunity nonetheless. Currently, I don’t agree that system is in place, although I respect that some disagree.
Our small guild tries very hard to get everyone together, split up, use our voice chat to communicate and yet still find the time barrier beyond reasonable means. A change to that, a reduction to targets, scaling of rewards – all have been cited as quick and easy solutions to this problem. Then we could all move on from this topic

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Thank you devs for coming up with this solution. The problem is that smaller guilds are by their very existence, self entitled, against working together, and extremely self centered. They want to achieve everything a large cohesive group can in less time and get the same rewards. You will never appease them because to do so you would have to destroy the game.

For the guilds that were only limited only by influence gain and are willing to work for their reward then this will solve the problem. If you were looking to be instantly handed all the perks of a large guild on the same time scale then you will hopefully continue to be dissapointed.

My guild has been able to complete T1 bounties, All tiers of Trek and T2 Rush with a 5 man group. This means any guild with 5 people can eventually all 5 guild mission types. I don’t know how many will be required for Challenge and Puzzle missions but I think being able to do even the first 3 mission types with only 5 people is quite accessible to everyone.

For T1 bounties you only need to kill 2 targets. There is no pre-scouting required, and since the bosses scale they can easily be killed within their time limits. There are a few bounties that are too hard to find in the time limit with only 5 players, but the missions are cheap to research and run.

Yes because the large “cohesive” groups worked far harder for their content roll eyes.

The small guilds have to work FAR harder for everything. They don’t just get 1k influence because 200 people they don’t know logged in. The small guilds don’t want a free ride, but we want some content we can actually do and rewards for that effort. The effort a small 5 man guild has to put into finding 1 target is exponentially more than a 100 person guild trying to find 2 targets. Big guilds having more people makes everything easier, each person needs to put in less effort because there are more people doing it. If there is anyone that thinks they are entitled here it is the big guilds who want to restrict small from gaining the same rewards even though the small guilds are putting in more effort.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

I have some clarifications for you guys. The intent of the training mission is to make it easier for your small or less active guild to access other guild missions (or acquire anything else you need influence for). It’s not meant to replace standard bounty hunts or augment influence gain for guilds that can already earn a ton of it. To that end:

• The commendations, rares, and silver are not awarded. That reward is specific to actual bounty missions.
• The training mission can be researched and activated as many times as you like. You can stockpile up to 10. Keep in mind that researching a training mission will tie up one of your research slots and that boosting that research with extra influence will ultimately cancel out a portion or all of your gains from the training mission.

I’m happy to answer further questions, but please remain civil in this thread. Thanks!

So, instead of simply making Guild Bounties accessible, you just added a time sink that has a penalty if you speed it up. Brilliant.

Oxe.6142:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

I have some clarifications for you guys. The intent of the training mission is to make it easier for your small or less active guild to access other guild missions (or acquire anything else you need influence for). It’s not meant to replace standard bounty hunts or augment influence gain for guilds that can already earn a ton of it. To that end:

• The commendations, rares, and silver are not awarded. That reward is specific to actual bounty missions.
• The training mission can be researched and activated as many times as you like. You can stockpile up to 10. Keep in mind that researching a training mission will tie up one of your research slots and that boosting that research with extra influence will ultimately cancel out a portion or all of your gains from the training mission.

I’m happy to answer further questions, but please remain civil in this thread. Thanks!

So, instead of simply making Guild Bounties accessible, you just added a time sink that has a penalty if you speed it up. Brilliant.

I think that’s the best way to put it. But hey…they could’ve found a GOOD solution by reading the kittening thread with the good suggestions. That again proves that ArenaNet isn’t about the community anymore…

Hmm…I’m ok with this.

2,700 influence (when you deduct the 300 build cost) is way, way more than we make in a fortnight, let alone 3 days. Double that since we can queue two at the same time. Stick some more on to queue while we do them ones, and it does help us* quite a bit.

*By us, I mean our guild. Not speaking for everyone here.

I don’t understand how people aren’t understanding the reasoning for this. Large guilds have recieved access to guild missions when they were released. This is for SMALL guilds, who don’t even have the influence coming in to even get the Art of War level 5, and such. By doing these new missions, it will help us build up the influence to acquire AoW level 4> then 5. THEN we can partake in the guild missions the larger guilds are able to partake in. Not everyone is in a guild with your hundred random people herpaderping/piggybacking off other members progress. And to people questioning the ability of small guilds to complete the missions: Does it matter? Should we be excluded from content because you assume we cannot complete these? If anything, it poses a challenge…and I’d even go as far to say smaller guilds will get more bang for their buck(members), as we’re able to communicate a strategy that’s not so hard for people to follow, as we’re usually the same members who’ve done many other activities together. We do it all the time running dungeons/fractals(albeit, totally different content and strategy.) Whereas big guilds it seems more like pugging, due to the large number of unfamiliar members.

Harajuku.3412:

I don’t understand how people aren’t understanding the reasoning for this. Large guilds have recieved access to guild missions when they were released. This is for SMALL guilds, who don’t even have the influence coming in to even get the Art of War level 5, and such. By doing these new missions, it will help us build up the influence to acquire AoW level 4> then 5. THEN we can partake in the guild missions the larger guilds are able to partake in. Not everyone is in a guild with your hundred random people herpaderping/piggybacking off other members progress.

I can only speak for myself, but I’d say this: the change is a good one, but it’s not enough. We were hoping for more, but it seems like this is all we’ll get.

I’ll take it! Gladly! But it’s underwhelming.

Harajuku.3412:

I don’t understand how people aren’t understanding the reasoning for this. Large guilds have recieved access to guild missions when they were released. This is for SMALL guilds, who don’t even have the influence coming in to even get the Art of War level 5, and such. By doing these new missions, it will help us build up the influence to acquire AoW level 4> then 5. THEN we can partake in the guild missions the larger guilds are able to partake in. Not everyone is in a guild with your hundred random people herpaderping/piggybacking off other members progress.

Well if you read the forums ppl are looking for any angle to make it out that what they are doing is bad. Its some of the most flawed logic i have every seen. It like they are working to make them self believe what they are saying.

Any way i think this is great its a good way to make small mostly active guilds viable for these new events but inactive guilds are still going to have problems but that is the nature of inactive guilds (if your only logging in say 4 times a month your not being active for your guild and if your guild only has one person on a day on any given days that a very inactive guild that you may want to think about leaving and or get a new guild on the side.) I would still like to see more things for guilds but this is still a great step!

I appreciate the new goal and the influence it will generate.

Levistis.8356:

UnderdogSMO.9428:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

You don’t need merits to access Guild Bounty Hunts, which is the first level of guild missions. You need influence, and that’s how the training missions help you get there.

dude really…. your talking to a bunch of kid’s who wont be happy unless they can have everything with out putting out any work.

there so worried about there small guilds falling apart because they cant unlock this stuff quickly, I say if that’s what there worried about than there not much of a guild in the first place.

I myself am not in a big guild it will take us much longer to unlock everything But I have NO fear that my guild will split up over this, If any thing pulling together to get to our gole has only made my guild stronger.

we make it a point to run content together in order to max out our influance gain much more than we ever did befour and we crush content ((harder pleas :P ))

Hey hey, I’m 16, am the leader of a 15 person guild and I made this thread to thank them

Most of my guild is made up of people who I have met in Guild Wars, and I am pretty sure that none of them are going to leave for a bigger guild – we have finally unlocked bounties, but have not had a successful hunt yet. We have had a lot of laughs though, and are looking forward to these training missions so we can get used to the bounties.

Thank you ArenaNet.

Immature would have probably been a better word.

Assuming everything is as it seems and there aren’t any hoops to jump through or anything like that you’re not telling us about, this sounds like a really great addition. I am wondering if it’s possible we could see these training level missions for all missions so that we have a variety of ways to earn influence. I suppose you could lock them into the same system for guild missions by requiring the previous mission to be unlocked if you really feel it needs to be gated. I just think it’d be neat to choose different training missions to gain influence instead of grinding out the bounty training missions—especially as we attain our current goal of guild bounties and start trying for other missions. Right now, it’s going to be fun and exciting to go out and do these—they’re brand new but I’m thinking a few months down the road it’ll feel a lot like grinding because we’ll have found them all and learned them all and there’s no true reward other than influence for them.

Also you said we can do these as many times as we want without punishment. Does this mean that if we stockpile all 10 training missions, can we activate them back to back and get 3000 influence from each (assuming we complete them of course)? Or are they affected by DR or the like?

Haven’t missed it. I’m fully aware of this perspective, however, we have always said that these guilds who are extremely limited in number will have to work together to attain these goals. That’s what this content is about. That’s WHAT these rewards are about.

There’s a huge variety of content and rewards available in the game. And while some rewards can be attained several ways, others are reserved as merit for specific tasks. This is no different from dungeon armor, achievement titles, or the map-completion badge. Certainly we would never give you those things for completing guild content.

Except that world completion can be soloed, and dungeons require no more than a few minutes pick-up group of five people. A Guild mission requires a GUILD, a long term collection of people, and furthermore it requires one consisting of dozens of members, minimum.

I was hugely disappointed when Guild Missions were fully detailed. The initial pitch was “it takes a Guild to start it, but then anyone can join in and have fun.” That turned out to be a lie. Yes, players can “join in” but they’ll only get a scrub reward for their efforts, while the active guild members get a chest full of treasure, a ton of silver, and credits towards a bunch of unique rewards. Yay if you’re in a mega-guild, or have any interest in being in a megaguild, but a total bummer if you do not.

The solution to this problem should be entirely obvious, fix the rewards. Make it so that anyone who helps with the bounty event gets FULL credit, whether in the guild or not. That means full chest, silver, commendations, etc., and giving them full access to all the guild mission rewards. That way, players who are not part of mega-guilds can at least jump in on the guild missions around them, and while it would take someone longer to earn those unique weapons and other items, they would at least be on a path towards them. Guild Missions should become as they were originally advertised, a Dynamic Event that a guild can “drop” on the field, just like a karma banner or a keep claim, but that once dropped, EVERY player can benefit from.

You’re looking at this entirely from the perspective of someone who’s already in a megaguild. Look at it from the perspective of someone who isn’t in a guild (or is in a very small one), doesn’t want to be, and yet wants to have just as much reward from the game. You’ve added a system that gives you all these bonus perks for being in a megaguild, but where are the balancing perks for NOT being in such a guild?

Most other elements of the game are about not being evil or exclusionary. Guilds drop banners which benefit everyone. Guild Claim keeps which benefit everyone. Now guilds drop missions which only benefit themselves, making those guilds well off enough already to start them even MORE well off, while leaving everyone else in the dust. This is a step towards the dark side guys.

Randulf.7614:

OK, but what about the rest of the missions? They need merits and are incredibly difficult to earn the way the time limit is set up on the bounties. To be honest the rewards are second. You clearly have decent content and we want to play it, but after the bounties, we have and probably will never access to those. 250 merits for the puzzles is simply unattainable for small guilds like us, yet we really, really want to see them, play them and enjoy them – they after all sound like great fun.

Here’s one suggestion – take the tier 1 of bounties down to 1 target not 2. That’s challenging, but doable for a small guild on a weekly basis. It’ll take a while to get the merits, but the possibilty exists.

It is perfectly possible to run tier 1 guild bounties with a dedicated group of 5 people. I tried it and we were successful. Granted, you can be unlucky with some bounties, but our rate so far is like two thirds success, one third failure. Now, with the training mission, influence for crafting the bounties is no problem any more. So you may need longer than big guilds but you will get there eventually.

For guilds with less than 5 members: Yes, you are screwed. Guild Wars 2 is not the game for you anymore. The world is about to end. No content left. You should quit. But no! There is hope: may be your social abilities empower you to get a fifth member. You should be trained enough to do so by your experience with looking for a fifth member for a dungeon group…

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Brook.5263:

Very simply, shouldn’t all Guilds be able to participate in Guild Missions?

Every guild can—so long as they research the appropriate upgrades, recruit enough members or outside assistance, and work together to finish the content. This is quite similar to saying every character can kill Zhaitan—as long as they’ve leveled to 80, purchased gear, found a group, etc. Keep in mind that content is often in itself something to be achieved. In this case we’ve taken that concept from character progression and applied it to guilds, and now we have guild progression (which should read as something new for guilds to do). That’s on top of all the other things guilds are already for.

So your idea of guild progression is to recruit members? Every guild should aspire to be bigger?
You designed guilds to be small or large, why didn’t you design guild missions for them.
Many of us are very happy in our small guilds and would love to do missions.
As for your Zhaitan example, he is in a dungeon which is understood to be 5 man content.
If Guild Missions are designed for 15+ people then why allow guilds to have less?

The most important thing in this, as far as I’m concerned, is that ArenaNet DID listen to the player’s concerns and has made some effort to improve things.

Thank you for that. This one mission will make a big difference for my guild. The fact that you’ve so openly adressed players’ concerns makes a big difference to me personally.

As long as you still get 2 recommendation tokens for the kill there will be no problems.

If your guild has only 1 person, you should be able to do it too?

Sure, why not? I’m not saying I should be able to solo the entire thing, but I should have a reasonable capability to start it, and if I can convince dozens of people to jump in for just a few minutes to help out, then we should be able to complete it together. And people should want to jump in, because they’d get the FULL rewards for doing so. It’s like if you’re on Wayfarers, and the Maw starts up and you’re the only one in eyeshot, do you have to solo that? No, you shout “Maw!” and people flock to your position and help out, and then you get to complete it, and they do too, and everyone gets a chest. Win win win.

Now, I’d be fine if a small guild or “guild of one” could never reasonably start any guild missions, like they can be crazy expensive for such a small number of players to afford, but they should be able to fully participate and be fully rewarded. If I’m just doing whatever in some zone, I should hear something like “Bounty at Eukaryan Caves!” over map chat, and suddenly everybody comes WPing in, has a fun little event, courtesy of the Knights of Good or whomever, the Knights all get their rewards, and everyone else who showed up and participated also gets the full rewards, not just the same pittance they would get for doing the bridge event for the umpteenth time.

It would be a gift to the community, from the guild in question, and they would of course also benefit equally so it’s not like it’s costing them anything that they weren’t paying anyways. It’s basically like if you could go to a restaurant, order your fancy meal, and then, without paying anything extra, the whole place gets free meals too. Why should you find that upsetting? Your food is just as good as it would be if you were only getting your own, and you aren’t out a penny more for it.

We could fix the rewards so they reward everyone equally proportionally to the amount of effort poured in. But let’s put this in the perspective of the big guilds. There should be an incentive for guild building, that is, bigger rewards as your guild grows bigger, or else everyone would be in small guilds as there will be no obvious advantage to being in a big one.

No.

Everyone should be in the guild size they like. There should be no incentive to join bigger guilds than you prefer. The advantage to large guilds is having a larger roster to pull from when needed, and being more active in keep claiming, and the sense of community and that sort of thing, but the individual level perks, the things that each member of the guild gets should not be based on the scale of the guild. Small guild players should have equal access to fancy gear, equal access to rare drops, equal access to bonus gold and currency with which you can buy fancy new individual rewards.

If they want to have systems that reward large guilds for being large, those rewards need to be entirely community-based, things that the whole guild shares as a guild, like a hall or something, they should not be a whole tier of personal rewards that each individual member gets for being a part of that guild. Individual rewards should be awarded on an individual level (or at most a small pick-up group).

That also includes rewarding people who aren’t in the guild. If you get the same rewards not being in a guild, what’s the point in being in one then?

If people outside the guild can use a karma banner, what’s the point of spawning one? If people outside the guild can get claiming buffs from a keep then what’s the point of having them? It’s a public service, it’s something the guild does to show how awesome they are to everyone. And of course everyone in the guild has a leg-up on acquiring them, since they would have advanced warning as to when the event is going down, so certainly more members of the guild would be participating than any bystanders.

And of course other people getting rewarded doesn’t mean that the guild is rewarded any less.

More so, I don’t know why people are seeing this as bad news. It’s an obvious step BACK into the right direction.

It is a step in the right direction, but it’s a smaller step than was necessary and the impression is that they think they’ve got this solved now, small guilds are no problem with this “fix.” All we’re doing is making it clear that this change alone is not nearly enough to set things right and more work will be needed to make the system fair to all.

I do not understand this at all.

The only part of this I care about is the individual reward, in particular the power creep that you’ve gated behind guild content.

The most expedient way to get the weekly individual reward for a small guild, for now, is to research tier 3 bounties, fire one off, pick the easiest boss off the list, kill it, get the commendations, and be on our way for the week.

If I could do that with a training bounty, I could talk people into that. We’d have less choice over which boss to kill, but there’d actually be a guild reward for it, making it the bounty on exactly the right scale for 5-10 people.

With no personal reward? I’m not going to get anyone to show up for that. I’m asking people to go through the exact same amount of work as they’d go through for a full bounty (more, in fact), except for zero reward.

What is the design reason for not giving out the weekly commendation reward for assisting with a single-target bounty? I’d really like to know because I’m not seeing it at all.

Heijincks.9267:

Ohoni.6057:

-snip-

If your guild has only 1 person, you should be able to do it too? No, it shouldn’t work that way the same way dungeons shouldn’t be soloable.

Also, there are many guilds out there who work altruistically with smaller guilds by giving them temporary membership to do guild missions. Yes, they exist. With that said, is it really such a big sacrifice to go out of your way just slightly to circumvent the “gating”?

We could fix the rewards so they reward everyone equally proportionally to the amount of effort poured in. But let’s put this in the perspective of the big guilds. There should be an incentive for guild building, that is, bigger rewards as your guild grows bigger, or else everyone would be in small guilds as there will be no obvious advantage to being in a big one.

That also includes rewarding people who aren’t in the guild. If you get the same rewards not being in a guild, what’s the point in being in one then?

More so, I don’t know why people are seeing this as bad news. It’s an obvious step BACK into the right direction. If this was any other game, the community will be completely indifferent. Out of every MMORPG I’ve played, GW2 has the most complaints with the most relatively minor issues. Could be a good thing though.

If ArenaNet allows a guild with 1 person in it then they need to also design some guild content with those 1 man guilds in mind. Otherwise you are forcing players to make up for shoddy game design. It’s as easy as allowing the 1 man guild to “sponsor” an event, just like banners. It allows them to feel like they are earning something while at the same time providing content to everyone around. Make the rewards for that event a world reward chest(1 guild event reward per day) so others have an incentive to do it. Let them pop the event while waiting on a dragon or something. Of course the guild that sponsors the event get their merits and all guild members, even if just 1, in attendance get their commendations. Problem solved, that took a whole lot of design work!

Why does everyone need to be in big guilds? There is zero reason for big builds except for WvW. Why are we now pushing to reward the big guilds and thus force people into them? The people in small guilds are there for a reason and do not want to mass recruit or join a big guild.

The big issue here is that ArenaNet is further backing away from what this game was supposed to be designed around. Remember when they said they don’t want seeing other players to be a bad thing? Well cut to people killing guild mission mobs ahead of you or standing around making a target harder. Remember when they wanted all players who participated to be equally rewarded with XP, loot, and event rewards? Where did that go in this system? The guild missions wouldn’t be so bad if you got the same rewards for helping another guild finish their mission, but you don’t. Now we are taking that a step further and not allowing smaller guilds doing a smaller mission to even get equal rewards.

ArenaNet consistently takes 1 step forward and 2-3 steps backwards. They need to go back to their philosophy of including EVERYONE and rewarding EVERYONE equally. Instead they are going to continue to segregate and gate rewards so that some people play just a bit longer, while others just flat out quit playing.

IF they want to salvage this small guild mission fiasco, all they need to do is reward 2 commendations and maybe 10s. I’d even go as far as saying the exact same rewards that the other missions reward with a few less merits. All the players doing guild missions be them big or small are putting in the same effort so they should be rewarded the same. Now some person in a bigger guild is going to say that’s just small guilds being entitled, yet most of their guild members “effort” is showing up where their leader tells them and killing a mob. Oh your mobs harder? You have more people. Oh you have to kill more? YOU HAVE MORE PEOPLE. What do the big guilds care if the small guilds are getting rewards too? It’s not taking anything away from you.

Guild ::An association of persons of the same trade or pursuits, formed to protect mutual interests and maintain standards. b. A similar association, as of merchants or artisans, in medieval times. 2. Ecology A group of diverse species, especially animal species, that occupy a common niche in a given community, characterized by exploitation of environmental resources in the same way.

One player makes not a guild. Your just a dude with a guild tag. You fild out all the paperwork now time to start recruiting

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Conner.4702:

I don’t think you truly understand what makes a guild a guild.…

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion about what a guild is. Guild content, however, is designed to be about challenges that can only be overcome by working with other people. The new mission type is not intended to change that by circumventing the content that’s already in place. All it does it make it more accessible.

No Offense man, but 99% of the people in this game could pretty much care less about guild content, they want END GAME Content, this game has NONE. Thats why you are losing players!

Rama.6439:

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Conner.4702:

I don’t think you truly understand what makes a guild a guild.…

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion about what a guild is. Guild content, however, is designed to be about challenges that can only be overcome by working with other people. The new mission type is not intended to change that by circumventing the content that’s already in place. All it does it make it more accessible.

No Offense man, but 99% of the people in this game could pretty much care less about guild content, they want END GAME Content, this game has NONE. Thats why you are losing players!

Lol what do you think guild content is? Also fractals?

Just for the sake of comparison, the new training bounty is significantly worse than full-DR runs of Citadel of Flame as far as unlocking guild content is concerned.

One of these new bounties is worth 2700 influence after the initial cost of paying for the thing.

Two guild runs of Citadel of Flame net 200 influence off the bat. 2500 influence would cost 5 gold to purchase.

You will make much, much more than 1 gold per person from 2 CoF runs.

I see a lot of people here whining “there is no personal reward, no one in my guild will join!” Holy hells. Do you really need a shiny trinket dangling every. single. step. of the way to motivate your guildies? No one ever understands long-term planning or working together towards something? You don’t know how to make it fun?

Then why the hell are you a guild leader? It’s not Anets job to bond your guildies together and create some fun. It’s yours. And yes, that job’ll be easier now if guild missions are your goal.

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

I see a lot of people here whining “there is no personal reward, no one in my guild will join!” Holy hells. Do you really need a shiny trinket dangling every. single. step. of the way to motivate your guildies? No one ever understands long-term planning or working together towards something? You don’t know how to make it fun?

Then why the hell are you a guild leader? It’s not Anets job to bond your guildies together and create some fun. It’s yours. And yes, that job’ll be easier now if guild missions are your goal.

This is all true i had a small guild and we have kept together they do rep other guilds just for guild missions then come strait back! My guild is built on respect and when we saw this new update we are all up in arms and see this as are chance to get guild missions unlocked sooner rather then late! This has already brought some none representers to rep!

Just wanted to add that I’m really happy about this, it’s a good solution to help us smaller guilds. Currently my guild gets between 3-10 active players (although 50 on roster) and gaining influence is pretty hard, unlocking the missions feels like quite a mountain to climb but this addition to the game should make guild progression feel more attainable.

Hopefully when we start doing these it will bring back some our less frequent members.

I’m still not happy that there is no last online feature.

I’m still not happy that there will be Ascended crap.

Arcanorum Ignis.9218:

I’m still not happy that there is no last online feature.

I’m still not happy that there will be Ascended crap.

yeah last online would be nice but its not game brakeing.

as for Ascended how much do you want to bet that most people the QQed and left because of ascended would probably already have most of what out by now if they were still playing.

if your not willing to play the game and get gear you probably were not going to stick around that long anyway, nothing lost so much more gained.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

I have some clarifications for you guys. The intent of the training mission is to make it easier for your small or less active guild to access other guild missions (or acquire anything else you need influence for). It’s not meant to replace standard bounty hunts or augment influence gain for guilds that can already earn a ton of it. To that end:

• The commendations, rares, and silver are not awarded. That reward is specific to actual bounty missions.
• The training mission can be researched and activated as many times as you like. You can stockpile up to 10. Keep in mind that researching a training mission will tie up one of your research slots and that boosting that research with extra influence will ultimately cancel out a portion or all of your gains from the training mission.

I’m happy to answer further questions, but please remain civil in this thread. Thanks!

Nothing like finally hearing them speak and remind us to be civil about how they chose to fix their bad design with a way to make small guilds feel like they aren’t worthless. In their eyes we must still be cause nothing like forcing ever tier to be complete before you can do new stuff and nothing like adding new currency to an existing guild currency ladder. Why even set back gigantor guilds why not just let them pay influence to have it be unlocked if they have enough. Small guilds with realistic influence gains my have had a chance then but not this. I actually wonder if when you guys meet to develop anything you even talk about ramifications to community and/or if its just wouldn’t this be great to have but we cant let them get through it to fast, hey I got a great idea lets just add a new currency and have it only be gotten through this method. Please note that what I have said of you is just criticism and you do deserve it. Last I checked civil didn’t mean I had to agree with how you implemented things ( and in my opinion poorly since the end of wintersday).

Without Guild Commendation rewards new guild content still useless for my three-friends-guild… And no top gear (Ascended Accessory), if you not in big guild, for 3 mounths. “Play your way” :-\

dennie.9237:

“Play your way” :-\

And you’re doing. You are playing the way you want. You decided to be in a guild of 3 people :\