Guild Wars 2

Ohoni.6057:

The only events people “flock” to are those that are worth the effort, namely those that offer full chests, and usually are part of a chain, meaning multiple doses of event rewards. Try picking a random “vanilla” event and drum up a party over map-chat, like trying to take out the Champ Troll in Sparkfly. Good luck.

If guild missions gave full rewards to all participants, people would flock to help. So long as they only give vanilla event credit, you’d have to personally bribe each of them.

People flock to events specifically for “vanilla” credit as well. The problem is what would you rather do: A group event of killing a boss where you could die horribly over and over and over again because you don’t understand the mechanic OR a nice healthy ‘gather worms for me please’ event where you can just about AFK for credit? Both give you nearly the same rewards. Now choose.

/sigh

Should have just started with Guild Trek, Guild Rush or Guild Puzzle at a lower fee.
I’m sure that would be content that pretty much all players would be able to do.

morrolan.9608:

Vayne.8563:

This stuff was created to fill a void. Small guilds have tons of stuff to do. Big guilds, not so much. Particularly if you’re not a PvP guild.

Yes but then they gated unique rewards behind it and made the other method of getting those rewards unreasonably hard.

Rewards that you need to do WHAT, exactly. You can get earrings and amulets from dailies. You can get rings from running fractals.

Have you ever heard the term storm in a teacup? The only people who care, are people who have convinced themselves they need this stuff to play the game. 100% untrue. You don’t even need this stuff to do fractals until you get to a ridiculously high level. Because if you’re that into fractals, you’ll end up with ascended rings an ascended back piece.

A difference that makes no difference, is no difference. These rewards that you’re so gaga about don’t change the game significantly enough for people to make such a big deal about them.

Vayne.8563:

morrolan.9608:

Vayne.8563:

This stuff was created to fill a void. Small guilds have tons of stuff to do. Big guilds, not so much. Particularly if you’re not a PvP guild.

Yes but then they gated unique rewards behind it and made the other method of getting those rewards unreasonably hard.

Rewards that you need to do WHAT, exactly. You can get earrings and amulets from dailies. You can get rings from running fractals.

Have you ever heard the term storm in a teacup? The only people who care, are people who have convinced themselves they need this stuff to play the game. 100% untrue. You don’t even need this stuff to do fractals until you get to a ridiculously high level. Because if you’re that into fractals, you’ll end up with ascended rings an ascended back piece.

A difference that makes no difference, is no difference. These rewards that you’re so gaga about don’t change the game significantly enough for people to make such a big deal about them.

Aren’t they adding brand new skins that you can’t get anywhere else? Those kinda do change the game a lot for the RP community, who tend to have smaller guilds as huge guilds aren’t the best for organized RP.

People flock to events specifically for “vanilla” credit as well.

Well, I think you’re confusing “flocking” for “doing.” Harathi Highlands is a good example that most people should be familiar with. If you shout “Modnir is up!” over the map, meaning that the quest chain is starting up, you can suddenly go from having just you in the northern camps, to within a couple minutes having at least 4-5, and several more will flock in as it goes, a couple dozen by the end of it even during low-load times. Most players that are in the zone will be there, because you get access to a chest, lots of kill XP and loot, and several distinct events, meaning 2-3 dollops of XP/cash/Influence/karma in a row. Now, there are plenty of other events in that zone, and if you start one then maybe by the time you finish another few people will wander by and decide to participate, but nobody’s going to WP across the map, or run across the map for that matter just to get there.

If someone today said “we’re doing a Guild Mission that’s [halfway across the zone]!” I wouldn’t even consider the trip and just keep doing stuff in my own area. If, on the other hand, they were able to say “we’re doing a Guild Mission that’s [halfway across the zone], and you’ll get 50s, two rares, and commendations for completing it with us!” then not only would I be willing to WP over and join in immediately, but I’d also be willing to help scout out where the bounty target is, making them much easier to track down.

Rewards that you need to do WHAT, exactly. You can get earrings and amulets from dailies. You can get rings from running fractals.

Have you ever heard the term storm in a teacup? The only people who care, are people who have convinced themselves they need this stuff to play the game. 100% untrue. You don’t even need this stuff to do fractals until you get to a ridiculously high level. Because if you’re that into fractals, you’ll end up with ascended rings an ascended back piece.

A difference that makes no difference, is no difference. These rewards that you’re so gaga about don’t change the game significantly enough for people to make such a big deal about them.

So that’s another vote for “shut down the commendation store entire?” I mean, if the loot it contains is not important enough that people should care about not having access to it, then it shouldn’t be important enough to care if mega-guilds don’t have access to it either, right?

You can’t even apologise correctly, can you ArenaNet?

Firstly, you announce this as though it’s not an attempt to address the concerns of the community and smaller guilds. Like there was never a problem in the first place.
This makes you look like the kid claiming credit for someone else’s idea.
And gods-forbid you actually acknowledge your weaknesses!

And then you screw up the rewards.
Small or “Casual” guilds need the merits and commendations too. They’re never looking to expand into 30+ members. They’re never going to be able to do the missions that give these rewards.

Oh, and I can’t believe your marketing team didn’t point this out to you, but you shouldn’t be using “Casual” to describe your userbase. It’s becoming a gaming slur term.
When people hear the term “Casual” they hear Facebook, Zynga, Appstore and all that other crap. Gaming in that sector is due a backlash, with the groundswell of people unhappy with “Casual” gaming becoming louder by the day.
“Casual” means vapid, 5 minute games that thrive on exploiting users with microtranscations.
Do you really want to be associated with such drivel?

Pockets.3201:

Vayne.8563:

morrolan.9608:

Vayne.8563:

This stuff was created to fill a void. Small guilds have tons of stuff to do. Big guilds, not so much. Particularly if you’re not a PvP guild.

Yes but then they gated unique rewards behind it and made the other method of getting those rewards unreasonably hard.

Rewards that you need to do WHAT, exactly. You can get earrings and amulets from dailies. You can get rings from running fractals.

Have you ever heard the term storm in a teacup? The only people who care, are people who have convinced themselves they need this stuff to play the game. 100% untrue. You don’t even need this stuff to do fractals until you get to a ridiculously high level. Because if you’re that into fractals, you’ll end up with ascended rings an ascended back piece.

A difference that makes no difference, is no difference. These rewards that you’re so gaga about don’t change the game significantly enough for people to make such a big deal about them.

Aren’t they adding brand new skins that you can’t get anywhere else? Those kinda do change the game a lot for the RP community, who tend to have smaller guilds as huge guilds aren’t the best for organized RP.

But they have unique dungeon skins already and I know a lot of RPers who don’t do dungeons. Having a unique skin is not game-breaking.

I don’t hear you complaining about the unique weapon skins that come from level 20 and above fractals, and it falls much under the same canopy.

It shouldn’t affect your game at all.

In fact, as an RPer, your character wouldn’t likely even know it exists. But if your character did find out, your character might join a bigger guild to get it, because your character wants it. Guilds exist in game. The clothes exist in game. Your character, in character, and see them and do what it takes to get them.

Public guild missions exist on most servers, and take about an hour a week to get the stuff for them.

Surely you can do that in character.

Even though the dev response in this thread says that everyone has their own opinion for what guilds are, they have chosen a pretty strange way for their view. For ANet, a guild is co-operating with other people randomly – i.e. they expect you to guild-hop just to reap rewards. That’s not what it’s about in my opinion at all! I feel like you should be able to do the GUILD content with YOUR GUILD, no matter how small or big it is! My guild is a small one with good friends and I want to do the content with them.

Maybe you could add some kind of Alliance feature that would rack up the influence for the whole alliance, this wouldn’t be such an issue. But right now it’s way easier to get rewards just by being in a big guild, and since those rewards are the best gear in the game, it’s not working out evenly.

(also, your example about dungeon gear etc. is kind of moot here. Everyone can go in the dungeon and try to do it. It’s simply not possible for a 5-man guild to do these missions as of now.)

I think this is an helpful first step toward a good direction for very close knitted Guilds. Now the only thing I can wish for in the near future, is to see Guild Alliance System implemented…

Anthony: you’re sounding a little exasperated here, and I’m sure there’s alot on your plate — but hopefully you can understand the exasperation leaders of small guilds feel right now.

So I’d like to take an opportunity to provide you some background —

Guilds in GW1 — had alot of options when it came to accessing content. Alliances (which is apparently outside of your department.. but since alliances pertain to guilds shouldn’t it be?) was one of those options. It provided better co-ordination, and it did not matter how small each guild in that alliance was — we kept our own rules individually and were allowed to keep our individuality. There were strong bonds of trust, loyality, and friendships. Guild pride was an important thing. It boosted morale for one, and at times kept people playing content, even when that content slowed down. When some guilds from GW1 made the switchover to GW2 we had members at first. But there were a plethora of mechanics already put into place that slowly and surely hampered and ate away at those smaller guilds. The lack of alliances, the ability to represent multiple guilds, a lack of guild features, smaller restricted content access/party size, seperated servers, a lack of a working guesting feature — all were obstacles in many a guild’s way. Surely, I hope you can understand and empathize that this provided considerable challenges. Eventually many individuals became frustrated and moved on. Guild size, of what was once a delightful place, sadly grew dark. People ran off to large guilds, and stayed there, and the rest stopped playing. For lack of a better term — guilds seem to be in a reccessionary phase, just as bad as our real life economy.

Now correct me if I’m wrong, but if i’m understanding you: your position is that small guilds can now have access to some features, but that large guilds should have better access to features, even extra features/rewards — and small guilds cannot. That is certainly not a balanced approach. Your player base is simply not used to that concept. A guild, no matter how small, could accomplish anything they wanted to in GW1 — even if they did not have an alliance to assist them. After a great deal of time you gave us heroes so that 99.9% of content could almost be done solo (not saying it wasn’t quite a challenge but it was doable). Everything became free and fair access.

You have made a small step in the right direction with adding this new content for a smaller guild. So there is kudos for that. But this, sir, does not negate the problem. Guilds of our size still face the impossible dilema. To gain access beyond this gated content — we have to guild hop to a size of a guild that would allow us to do it. This means that being part of a guild is not anything to be prideful of or to maintain a strong bond. It has become that guilds are a means to an end. Merely existing for their ability to unlock that content. Members are merely numbers.

If my friends in larger guilds ask me to come along to a guild mission, I’m currently opting to say – no. Because there is nothing that I can contribute to my own personal guild that says — ‘’we did this together!".. ’’we accomplished something for us’’. I have a greater sense of pride and happiness when I walk into WVW (where I don’t have to join some other guild to do content or to help someone out!) In GW1 if you wanted to do something together as a larger unit — say oh.. Urgoz eg, everyone could still be in their own guilds and be rewarded equally. There was no fuss and no mess.. except for coordinating people. That sir, to me, was a spirit of fairness and equality. It didn’t matter if big 100 man guild could gain access to that content faster than a smaller alliance of 50 could — we could still get to that content and be representing our own guilds at the same time.

Guilds now, feel virtually worthless and a chore, and their only use is for wvw at it’s present state. As it stands now, we will not be doing this guild mission content, as it’s still beyond our reach. We will not compromise our stands to invite just any body for the sole sake of gaining numbers to accomplish it, nor will we demand our friends and old alliance members must be forced to represent us in order to achieve it. And our small guild is not ‘casual’. We spent over 7 years contributing to this franchise — and now, it sort of feels like we’re nothing more than a tiny town of Mom & Pop businesses that got obliterated by Wal Mart.

kenshinakh.3672:

Chuo.4238:

I think they wanted multiple ways to get the same piece – not a different way to get each piece.

Adding more ways to get ascended seems to be the trend with the recent patches. There’s now 3 ways to get ascended rings (well, 4 if you want to count FotM daily), and 2 ways to get ascended amulets.

…did i miss something? As far as i know ascended amulets are still laurels only, and rings come from FotM or laurels. Guild rewards provide only earrings.

So, for now we have 2 slot types (earrings and rings) that can be acquired by 2 different ways each (but only one method common for both types), and 2 slots (amulets and backpacks) that do not have any alternate ways to get them.
I certainly would not describe this as “providing more ways to get ascended equipment”.
In fact, doing it this way is a mechanics that is far more restrictive that having them all be acquirable only through FotM (and that was very bad idea already).

^ not to mention 0 ways to get any of these items through a crafting profession (not counting the toilet). Makes me wonder why i spent the time and effort to become a master crafter.

Really happy about this addition, this will help us a lot since our guild is made of people from different servers.

When you say we can stockpile these missions, can we research several at once like guild banners? And is there a cap to how much of these training missions you can run in a week/day?

Pathetic.

Player: “Hey… small guilds got screwed by the way you implemented this content. I’m not happy and this is why. Blah blah blah.”

Devs: (Silence)

Player: “I’m still not happy… and look at what it is doing to the game now that it is released… people are turning into kittens toward each other, charging gold to get the new currency… small guilds are being torn apart…”

Devs: (Silence)

Player: “……”

Devs: “We are excited to announce a way to make more influence, but we want it to be highly time gated, so we are going to penalize you for wanting to make it happen faster. Don’t worry though, big guilds who don’t need any help making influence can still speed things up and see no penalties at all.”

Player: “This doesn’t address the most important failings in the implementation of this content. This is a baind-aid for a mostly non-issue. But thanks for being a jerk… we love time gating irrelevant kitten.”

Devs: (Insert bottom line response here.)

Player: “You said all guilds can participate in this… I belong to a small guild… I don’t want to be a part of a big guild.”

Devs: "All guilds can participate in this content… you just need to “grow” and “progress” your guild till it’s a big guild."

Player: “Did you even read one kittening word I’ve written?”

But they have unique dungeon skins already and I know a lot of RPers who don’t do dungeons. Having a unique skin is not game-breaking.

The distinction is that while you may not choose to go for a dungeon skin, getting enough tokens to earn them is relatively trivial. You can just join up with a few pugs and run some dungeons and you’re fine. You can’t “pug” Guild Missions. They require that you form or hook up with a guild that has a significant investment of resources, and then run weeks of missions with that same group.

Just imagine for a second the complete kittenstorm that would erupt if they changed the way dungeons worked such that A. You could only get full token rewards for a dungeon once per week (meaning 180 tokens per dungeon, per week, tops), and B. You could ONLY run the dungeon with a group of your own Guild members, not PUGs, and only after that guild has reached Politics 5, AND each dungeon run requires buying a “dungeon key” for influence and “crafting” time.

Or imagine the converse, if they decided that dungeon runs should be exclusively the domain of the PUG, and therefore you would NOT be allowed to run any dungeons with anyone in your guild (because that would somehow be unfair to people who like to PUG).

Nobody’s complaining about them giving players something that a guild can do together, the complaints are from how they’ve designed it so that ONLY guild can do them, where no other activity in the game does.

Skim reading this thread it still seems like small guilds are going to have to join forces to complete the Guild missions??

Aranel.2837:

Anthony: you’re sounding a little exasperated here, and I’m sure there’s alot on your plate — but hopefully you can understand the exasperation leaders of small guilds feel right now.

So I’d like to take an opportunity to provide you some background —

Guilds in GW1 — had alot of options when it came to accessing content. Alliances (which is apparently outside of your department.. but since alliances pertain to guilds shouldn’t it be?) was one of those options. It provided better co-ordination, and it did not matter how small each guild in that alliance was — we kept our own rules individually and were allowed to keep our individuality. There were strong bonds of trust, loyality, and friendships. Guild pride was an important thing. It boosted morale for one, and at times kept people playing content, even when that content slowed down. When some guilds from GW1 made the switchover to GW2 we had members at first. But there were a plethora of mechanics already put into place that slowly and surely hampered and ate away at those smaller guilds. The lack of alliances, the ability to represent multiple guilds, a lack of guild features, smaller restricted content access/party size, seperated servers, a lack of a working guesting feature — all were obstacles in many a guild’s way. Surely, I hope you can understand and empathize that this provided considerable challenges. Eventually many individuals became frustrated and moved on. Guild size, of what was once a delightful place, sadly grew dark. People ran off to large guilds, and stayed there, and the rest stopped playing. For lack of a better term — guilds seem to be in a reccessionary phase, just as bad as our real life economy.

Now correct me if I’m wrong, but if i’m understanding you: your position is that small guilds can now have access to some features, but that large guilds should have better access to features, even extra features/rewards — and small guilds cannot. That is certainly not a balanced approach. Your player base is simply not used to that concept. A guild, no matter how small, could accomplish anything they wanted to in GW1 — even if they did not have an alliance to assist them. After a great deal of time you gave us heroes so that 99.9% of content could almost be done solo (not saying it wasn’t quite a challenge but it was doable). Everything became free and fair access.

You have made a small step in the right direction with adding this new content for a smaller guild. So there is kudos for that. But this, sir, does not negate the problem. Guilds of our size still face the impossible dilema. To gain access beyond this gated content — we have to guild hop to a size of a guild that would allow us to do it. This means that being part of a guild is not anything to be prideful of or to maintain a strong bond. It has become that guilds are a means to an end. Merely existing for their ability to unlock that content. Members are merely numbers.

If my friends in larger guilds ask me to come along to a guild mission, I’m currently opting to say – no. Because there is nothing that I can contribute to my own personal guild that says — ‘’we did this together!".. ’’we accomplished something for us’’. I have a greater sense of pride and happiness when I walk into WVW (where I don’t have to join some other guild to do content or to help someone out!) In GW1 if you wanted to do something together as a larger unit — say oh.. Urgoz eg, everyone could still be in their own guilds and be rewarded equally. There was no fuss and no mess.. except for coordinating people. That sir, to me, was a spirit of fairness and equality. It didn’t matter if big 100 man guild could gain access to that content faster than a smaller alliance of 50 could — we could still get to that content and be representing our own guilds at the same time.

Guilds now, feel virtually worthless and a chore, and their only use is for wvw at it’s present state. As it stands now, we will not be doing this guild mission content, as it’s still beyond our reach. We will not compromise our stands to invite just any body for the sole sake of gaining numbers to accomplish it, nor will we demand our friends and old alliance members must be forced to represent us in order to achieve it. And our small guild is not ‘casual’. We spent over 7 years contributing to this franchise — and now, it sort of feels like we’re nothing more than a tiny town of Mom & Pop businesses that got obliterated by Wal Mart.

^ This. All extremely well said. As a small guild leader I can swear that you are not alone in this. I have had numerous discussions with other small guild leaders who echo the same or similar feelings.

Bry.8140:

Skim reading this thread it still seems like small guilds are going to have to join forces to complete the Guild missions??

Depends what you call a small guild.
We are 15 at most and consider ourselves a small guild but we can still run guild missions tiers 1 and 2 very easily, even when we get only 10 players. Tier 1 is also easily doable with 5 people, all this without scouting of course.

Does nothing for small guilds imo.. sure you get to play out a few training missions and earn influence.. but that is not the issue the issue is the gated content will still force small guilds to either alliance up and eith have to represent another guild or worse just run it alongside for .. yeah nowt!!
This is yet another knee jerk poorly thought out responcse to the backlash their original lack of thought created…
Sure this isn’t GW1 its GW2 but to not consider what worked previously or what works for other MMO’s but instead stumble along blind to the underlying issues is imo just rank amatuer.

@ Aranel.2837…. well said +1.

Devs.. small guilds can be 1 player or 2 or 3 or… so gated content does not work, especially if you want players in those guilds to spend real coin in game. Why couldnt you of taken a minute to consider content scaling based on numbers.. you know like what you so say utilise in Open World.. then content would be playable for all. Yes guild rewards would and should be scaled in comparioson, but it allows all players from any size guild to play out the content with the understanding that they will still need to put time and effort into the game in order to be able to unlock content… then your training bounties would hold alot more relevance to small guilds…. as it is even when AOw5 and other unlocks are obtained they still wont be able to run the content with any hope of completion unless the small guild is"sufficienly big" or go represent another guild/alliance up often for no reward.

Not to sound rude but.. If your guild is <5 people, I really don’t think it is a guild. Thats a group. At least have 6 people so you can say “we are larger than a max party size.” 5+ is probably enough to do the training style missions, 15+ is fine for regular missions. And I’m not saying you “shouldn’t” have a guild of 1-5, that’s your own choice and nothing wrong with that. but its not easy to manufacture guild missions in a way that fits 5 people and 500 people equally.

These are not what I expected when they say they this would help small guild. Guild Influence are quite easy to obtain but what happen if the said guild got enough influence and do the bounty? They are undermanned and cannot go on with the content. They either resort to getting random players off the street temporary or just give up.

Seriously, they might as well have Guild Trek as a starting Guild Mission rather then bounty or add Guild Merits as rewards for these training.

Qawsada.4251:

These are not what I expected when they say they this would help small guild. Guild Influence are quite easy to obtain but what happen if the said guild got enough influence and do the bounty? They are undermanned and cannot go on with the content. They either resort to getting random players off the street temporary or just give up.

Seriously, they might as well have Guild Trek as a starting Guild Mission rather then bounty or add Guild Merits as rewards for these training.

The largest complaint WAS influence actually. All the small guilds complained they will never be able to afford opening them, and were told by players to simply “buy it then or move”. So people did get what they asked for.

Pretty happy with the planned training mission since I don’t really care for reward and the guild could use the influence boost. Any plans on making other “training” missions for the other types which don’t cost/reward merits?

Geotherma.2395:

The largest complaint WAS influence actually. All the small guilds complained they will never be able to afford opening them, and were told by players to simply “buy it then or move”. So people did get what they asked for.

Part of it. The other part being that the current Bounty Mission is unplayable for a small guild to do being undermanned with a tiny timespan to finish it. I see this as more of a problem compared to the influence price of these guild mission.

Ohoni.6057:

A difference that makes no difference, is no difference. These rewards that you’re so gaga about don’t change the game significantly enough for people to make such a big deal about them.

So that’s another vote for “shut down the commendation store entire?” I mean, if the loot it contains is not important enough that people should care about not having access to it, then it shouldn’t be important enough to care if mega-guilds don’t have access to it either, right?

Exactly, BiS items are obviously not required as rewards then.

Qawsada.4251:

Part of it. The other part being that the current Bounty Mission is unplayable for a small guild to do being undermanned with a tiny timespan to finish it. I see this as more of a problem compared to the influence price of these guild mission.

If you have at least 5 players, try to do it. Unless you are unlucky and get the bounties in Iron Marches and Gendarran, you should be able to do it if you have the waypoints and are organized (which is generally the case with small guilds because you are rarely in a small guild where everyone is a stranger).

And if you fail to get the second boss, you at least get commendations for killing the first.

Geotherma.2395:

Not to sound rude but.. If your guild is <5 people, I really don’t think it is a guild. Thats a group. At least have 6 people so you can say “we are larger than a max party size.” 5+ is probably enough to do the training style missions, 15+ is fine for regular missions. And I’m not saying you “shouldn’t” have a guild of 1-5, that’s your own choice and nothing wrong with that. but its not easy to manufacture guild missions in a way that fits 5 people and 500 people equally.

You might not but small guilds of friends & family will and do on a more regular basis than you might think add to that there are many tight knit small guilds of <10 players… not everyone like to be a number or spend most of their ingame time making their guilds look desperate with the endless spam churn. just so they can keep the influence levels up… that is not a guild to me that is a group of anyones and everyones who when they have grown bored of the content will likely just upsticks and go elsewhere, looting as much from the guild stash as they can
As for content sclaing they already do it and they already adjust player levels to match map environments, look at how Fracs or dungeons work, all the tools are in game already but no.. they chose to gate it up tight and for that it deserves to fall on its own sword because imo all content should be accessable and have the feasability to be completed even soloed, that’s what difficulty scaling and lefvel adjustments are for.. the only thing they have to work out is the scaling of rewards based on guild /group size and toon levels taking part.
To gate content is one bad egg but to then throw a smoke screen up bourne out of a knee jerk reaction to the oodles of negative feedback its gotten them in an effort to try and silence the critics is quite simply amateurish and futile.

Getting unlocks is a trial enough and sure this might help speed that up a little but then the gates close and your back to watching from the sidelines while faceless 500 guilds play it out for you.. or you simply forget about your guild and rep another in order to see the content for yourself.. not a very game friendly solution imo… but like I have said before the only way to make ANET wake up is when enough small guilds dissapear off to other MMO’s that cater for all not some.

The problem with guild missions is that they should have just called them missions and not packaged them as activities specifically for guilds. Doing so only tells guilds that can’t meet the requirements that they’re not real guilds from the dev’s point of view. Once you’ve been rejected by the devs, you can pretty much assume you will not meet the requirements of any future guild content, so quit or merge.

Raiding is normally a guild activity in MMOs, but they don’t call it that. Furthermore, an outsider of the guild still gets rewarded on the same level as everyone else. Guild missions should have been like that, fully rewarding people who are participating the entire time, rather than requiring them to represent or get nothing. If outsiders aren’t going to get the same rewards for doing the same thing, then the content should have been instanced. Normally, this type of content wouldn’t require a guild, but rather, a raid group. People outside of that group would normally get nothing, but the average MMO doesn’t feature scaling along with a “loot for participating” system. With the way it’s set up, requiring representation is basically going back to the old tagging system, which I can see why they would want to do that, but since guilds can already be a massive zerg, I don’t know why’d they care about the few extra people.

Guild missions should have been sold as “raid” content that anyone could start, but obviously a guild would be the best for, in the same way dungeons can be PuG’d but a static group is best. In this system, the item to start the content would have been tied to something like karma, where anyone could go and get one, then find a mass of people to do it, similar to how raid rifts are done in Rift.

ArenaNet’s problem however was that they specifically needed content for guilds, with people complaining guilds were useless and all, so they wanted to directly sell it as such. It would have been better however if this content didn’t revolve around guilds but rather simply benefited from it. If they actually wanted benefits for being in a certain guild, they should have gone with bonuses/rewards for how long you’ve been with the guild / how much influence you’ve contributed.

Lastly, considering they said guild missions were tested with around 30 people, requiring more than 10 people for any mission is going on the extreme side. 10 is generally considered now to be the standard smaller raid size so a guild of 10 should be enough.

Healix.5819:

The problem with guild missions is that they should have just called them missions and not packaged them as activities specifically for guilds. Doing so only tells guilds that can’t meet the requirements that they’re not real guilds from the dev’s point of view. Once you’ve been rejected by the devs, you can pretty much assume you will not meet the requirements of any future guild content, so quit or merge.

Raiding is normally a guild activity in MMOs, but they don’t call it that. Furthermore, an outsider of the guild still gets rewarded on the same level as everyone else. Guild missions should have been like that, fully rewarding people who are participating the entire time, rather than requiring them to represent or get nothing. If outsiders aren’t going to get the same rewards for doing the same thing, then the content should have been instanced. Normally, this type of content wouldn’t require a guild, but rather, a raid group. People outside of that group would normally get nothing, but the average MMO doesn’t feature scaling along with a “loot for participating” system. With the way it’s set up, requiring representation is basically going back to the old tagging system, which I can see why they would want to do that, but since guilds can already be a massive zerg, I don’t know why’d they care about the few extra people.

Guild missions should have been sold as “raid” content that anyone could start, but obviously a guild would be the best for, in the same way dungeons can be PuG’d but a static group is best. In this system, the item to start the content would have been tied to something like karma, where anyone could go and get one, then find a mass of people to do it, similar to how raid rifts are done in Rift.

ArenaNet’s problem however was that they specifically needed content for guilds, with people complaining guilds were useless and all, so they wanted to directly sell it as such. It would have been better however if this content didn’t revolve around guilds but rather simply benefited from it. If they actually wanted benefits for being in a certain guild, they should have gone with bonuses/rewards for how long you’ve been with the guild / how much influence you’ve contributed.

Lastly, considering they said guild missions were tested with around 30 people, requiring more than 10 people for any mission is going on the extreme side. 10 is generally considered now to be the standard smaller raid size so a guild of 10 should be enough.

The 30 people was for the largest guild bounty, which differs from the lower teir guild bounties only in organization (and slightly more guild reward) in the 30 man guild event, for the singular member its probably exactly the same as for a 10 man in tier one. in fact probably easier.

it was essentially designed around 10 man and scales higher for larger guilds (to a point)
Also its not really a raid type progression, its really a guild type activity, less than half of the events revolve primarily around killing, and its more of a thing for guilds to do together in the open world. Even the aquiring of influence rewards guilds for working together, Or sacrificing wealth for the guild, or both.

btw it can be completed by less than 10, it depends on skill of the players, and a bit of luck (which also effects larger guilds)

Truth is though its not content for 3 people to do alone easily, its not meant for 1 man, the entire point of the content is its something for larger groups.

And im going to say it, if you have a 1 man guild, thats not really a guild, you can expect them to make content based around that idea.
3 man groups, you can be a guild, but your a guild who already cant do content alone, why would you expect content designed for more people to be designed so you can 3 man it.

that said, i do think now with the current philosophy, they should add a rudimentry alliance feature, or at the very least allow you to see/talk in multiple guilds without having to switch all the time.

Ideally they could allow guilds that are alligned to share events if they all have the requisite event flag built. That would allow people to play together without having to marry people, i wouldnt be surprised if this type of tech isnt currently in the engine.

It’s a problem with many variables. You have
1. Different types of players (hardcore-casual)
2. Different sizes of guilds.
3. Guild hopping
4. Servers influence.

How do you support small guilds but allow for guild hopping and try prevent exploitation?

I think the answer has to be alliances of small guilds to get merit. And time limits on accounts.

Allow the guilds to activate the mission but set a limit on rewards the player gets. Similar to the way they have chest and map bosses. You can get it only once a day.

Guilds in the alliance could get credit once a day or something. To prevent member swapping and influence exploitation.

This would mean that you would need to have a new guild mission style. Alliance missions. And a new guild mechanic to allow alliances. Maybe with a cool down to prevent alliance swapping.

How do you support small guilds but allow for guild hopping and try prevent exploitation?

I think the answer has to be alliances of small guilds to get merit. And time limits on accounts.

Allow the guilds to activate the mission but set a limit on rewards the player gets. Similar to the way they have chest and map bosses. You can get it only once a day.

Currently you can only get the Guild Chest once per week. I see no reason for that to change. What should change is that everyone that participates gets a chest. So say I’m in a mega-guild. My guild has plenty of resources and manpower to start a mission, we do, everyone chips in, everyone gets their chest, everyone’s happy. If I think helped out in someone else’s guild mission within that same week, I shouldn’t get an additional chest.

Now on the other hand, say I’m not in a mega-guild, and for whatever reasons my guild doesn’t have the resources to launch a guild mission. I should still be able to find, over the course of a week, at least one active guild mission, one where maybe they have the resources to launch it but not to complete it on their own. I jump in and help, I get a chest for my efforts, but then if I do the same later in the week I get nothing.

Now, alliances are good, if only for coordination. I made a suggestion on that forum as to how I thought they could work, but any sort of system would be good for helping multiple small guilds to join up, but an alliance system is not strictly necessary to resolve this, nor would an alliance system alone be the solution for this. The core solution is to give full participation credit to all who participate, regardless of guild affiliation.

Small, medium, and Large guilds should all have a way to get the same amount of commendations.

Have 3 Tiers of rewards with a max cap of One Commendation.

Tier one – 1/3 of a commendation (can do this 3 times a week)
Tier two – 2/4 of a commendation (can do this 2 times a week)
Tier three – 1 commendation (can do this 1 time a week)

Basically have smaller guilds do their missions more times to get the same rewards. This way it would make it pointless for larger guilds to do the smaller missions when they can get more efficient results from the higher tiers.

Then have some new mystic forge recipes to make the full commendation and you would be set.

So have those in small guild do more work than those in larger guilds for the same reward ? (You can talk about organization, but generally, it’s only a fraction of a big guild that has to bother with that).

And as of right now, every guild (as long as they have the influence) can get the commendations. The problem lies in the merit points because you actually have to complete the bounty to get them, while the commendations are acquired when you kill a bounty, even if your guild fails the mission.

So our small Guild is starting the Art of War to get access to these new training missions. I wonder why the members completing these bounty hunts will not be rewarded like members of larger guilds with commendations so that they have access to the same rewards as those large guild members? It seems to me that they slapped this together in a quick manner without really reading the concers of the small guilds out there. Yes the influence costs were high for the original content, but not all of the small guilds will strive to get to 30 or more members to get access to the rewards and what the large guild members have access to.
Commendations need to be added (at a smaller reward level of course) for the individual members just like the larger guild missions. We are small and tigh knit, but it would be nice that our members get a reward for participating in the guild content just like the members of the larger guilds., and of course the chance of a gold or higher(**) upon completion of the bouny hunt.

To be honest all this is falling on deaf ears.. its blatantly obvious that if you have a guild of < 10-15 members ANET have no desire to consider you part of the content structure.. so we either have to drift and rep for other larger guilds, ignore the content or just leave the game. This only served to show me that they simply lack decent creative ideas .. I mean you only have to look at other content that has been implemented… Karka event was a mess from start to finish, implementation of game wide culling, and a living story that has taken 8+ many weeks to get knowhere in particular.. except to fix a few signposts, collect a fewmomentos and some not so random spawning items on a not so random scavenger hunt – not exactly a great advert to build a game off imo. And now with gated content they have further annoyed another chunk of their playerbase.
All I can say is.. its such a far cry from how they worked their magic in developing GW1…. but hey ho for me its now become just something to do when I have some free time, I wont be spending another penny in this game going forward, which is a shame cos it started out as an attractive option in the MMO market.

It’s funny that a small guild such as my own of 7-8 people is having a hard time, and will continue to have a hard time even with these training missions.

I mean let’s look at this guild:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Destiny%27s_Edge

From the lore. Count the number of people. 6. Minus one. I guess Destiny’s Edge isn’t going to be doing Guild Missions either lol.

This update did nothing. Thats great.

Well, one thing this newest patch did was put a halt to the griping about Guild Missions. That’s too bad, really. Player titles can be fixed with a toggle. Lag can be fixed by moar hamsters on the wheels. But Guild Missions cannot be fixed without direct developer intervention.

Wonder, if they’ll ever decide to address that.