Guild Wars 2

When I search the forums I get zero results for “small guild”? Really? So there are no more small guilds? Seriously, have the designers decided that there is simply no place for small guilds in the game? That’s fine, I just wish they’d make it a little more blatant. I have been fairly evangelical about this game for the past three years. And, for the most part, I have stayed in a small guild with friends and family. We’re lucky to have more than five guildies on at one time. But we like that.

So, finally, we decided to work on a guild hall. I’m just speechless. Epic fail is an overstatement, as we did manage to get down at least one maw. But it seems pretty obvious that five average players can’t progress through this phase. And that’s fine. If I suck that bad at the game I should find another game, right?

I complained about it in LA and got some very friendly responses, including the suggestion that we find another guild to help us. And I appreciated that advice, but does it make sense? Should a small guild have to get the help of another guild just to get a guild hall? Again, after three years, maybe I’m playing the wrong game.

Look – I like being in a small guild. But if the direction of the game is to purposefully move away from that, fine. Just make it clear so I can move on.

You can peruse the Stickies in various sub-forums regarding ‘Searching’ on the forums.

Or…just try the HoT sub-forum; there are several threads on the topic.

Good luck.

The search function is broken. Use either the information in the red stickied thread above or try using something like this site: Tim’s Guild Wars 2 Forum Search

It makes perfect since. If you have 200 people its easier to get donations. If you have 5, well they will have to give 40 times as much. I don’t like it one bit, but its logical.

Bigger guilds will do better. The take control mission is able to be done with 5 people, its just not balanced for that. Honestly, people like to solo arah, that doesn’t mean everyone could.

Wait till you see scribe requirements, and what it cost to get guild decorations. Small guilds (like ours) are quite beaten up on this end, but you have the option of growing.

All that being said, if you would like help with the take control mission, I would think most of my guildies would be happy to help.

We did it with 5. We tried Lost Precipice and could’nt do it. We then adjusted some builds and played around with our team set up and went straight for Gilded Hollow instead. Instant success.

It’s not always easy for a team of 5, but it is definetly doable. Condition damage felt essential, especially with something than can dish it out as aoe, like an ele/tempest or reaper. If you are struggling, a strong support toon in the party will help keep people buffed and alive.

Sadly, most of my guild has dissipated now, leaving me to mostly fund the hall and occasionally some others log in and contribute, which means the hall is now a very long term work in progress to build up

I think having mobility masteries like jumping mushrooms and lean gliding is huge in the lost precipice take down. Or larger groups that can spread out to accommodate a lack of mobility.

Yeah I agree that Anet has pretty much ignored smaller guilds with the GH design. And even if the capture of one is possible with 5 people(we had 6 if I remember correctly) it’s surely not balanced.

The upgrading however seems to be surprisingly balanced, since my small guild with 30 or so members(less than 10 actually active) leveled up the same, or faster, pace than some large guilds I know. With that it’s just a matter of putting the GH to a higher priority than your own personal wealth I guess.

Does it make sense. Well yeah, it makes sense to get help. I’ve personally helped a number of smaller guilds capture their guild hall.

To put it from a gameplay perspective, five guys walk into Mordremoth territory, a dragon who’s already destroyed the entire pact fleet and you think you should just be able to take over a modrem controlled area on your own, totally?

From a story point of view, it makes perfect sense, unless you think you’re the only guild in the world. But we know other guilds exist.

The entire story of core Guild Wars 2 was talking about disparate factions coming together to tackle something they couldn’t do alone. How does getting some help not make sense.

Even when you get the guild hall, the cost of upgrading it is huge.

So let me ask you a couple of questions.

How will five people joining a bigger guild who continue to play together negatively affect your gaming experience, keeping in mind you didn’t have a guild hall at all till now?

Why wouldn’t your guild merge with a larger guild and keep your own voice chat and do things together anyway. You can be in up to five guilds after all.

You could join a guild together, make use of the ammeneties of a guild hall and still play the way you’ve always played.

Hell many guilds don’t even have a rep requirement anymore.

But from a strictly financial point of view, I wonder what it would do to the servers if thousands of 2, 3, 5 man guilds all had 1 person in the guild hall at the same time and the server had to spawn those maps?

Hey Vayne. I do appreciate the feedback, truly. I guess my question is if the need to ask for help from another guild makes sense in the game design? If it does, that’s fine. I would just rather do it with my friends. This isn’t international politics. And if the game is about bringing tens or dozens of people together to get things done, fine. It’s simply not what I want to do. That’s totally cool. The good news is that there are plenty of places where you can enjoy this game without needing so much assistance. And, of course, there are other places to go. I think I may have just needed to vent, which I why I started the thread.

Personally, I’m not that sold on these huge, extremely expensive guild halls for any guild. They’re pretty, but the benefits seem pretty marginal to me and what benefits there are are behind a sky high price wall. You might double check with your guildies if y’all really need a guild hall, or if the LA one is sufficient. Or you might capture a hall just to have a private place to gather and not worry about the other stuff to much.

Kolinkar.4167:

Hey Vayne. I do appreciate the feedback, truly. I guess my question is if the need to ask for help from another guild makes sense in the game design? If it does, that’s fine. I would just rather do it with my friends. This isn’t international politics. And if the game is about bringing tens or dozens of people together to get things done, fine. It’s simply not what I want to do. That’s totally cool. The good news is that there are plenty of places where you can enjoy this game without needing so much assistance. And, of course, there are other places to go. I think I may have just needed to vent, which I why I started the thread.

Oh believe me, I understand the need to vent.

The whole game design question brings up the question of why it was designed that way, something players often don’t ask. It seems to me, and I could be completely wrong, that the less guild maps spawned at one time, the more efficiently the servers will run. From a game design point of view, that’s pretty important. I don’t know that that’s the answer, but I do know that more people are complaining about lag spikes now than before, so it’s a valid reason not to allow everyone and his brother to have a guild hall. But it’s all just speculation on my part. I could be completely wrong on this.

Anyway if you want help, it’ll probably only take a person or two. You won’t need a million people. Two people with experience and five of your own should be able to do it easily.

So far I’ve been a part of taking two guild halls with 5 man teams. Both times it took a bit of luck as well as a bit of timing but we managed to be successful 2 out of 3 tries. If you don’t want to get outside help you just need to have the 5 people participating from your guild be on their game and have the appropriate gear.

I will also say that the difficulties for a small guild don’t end after the taking of the guild hall. The guild I’m in has 5 active members so collecting hundreds of silverwaste shovels has been the biggest time sink for us. A larger guild definitely has the advantage here. Keep up hope because you can still make good progress. I’m sure we’re well behind many other guilds but we’re set to hit level 40 with the favor gained next week. Enjoy the journey!

Also make sure everyone is using food and utlities, If you’re having trouble surviving try mango pies.

Thanks Vayne – you are just one of the reasons I like this game. We’ll probably give it another shot. I’m a weirdo in wanting a game to be more fun than challenge. LOL. I should probably go back to Ms PacMan. Thank you so much to everyone that replied!

Well honestly, there are some decent upgrades on the light end of maps, like guild portal, repair. If I remember correctly it wasn’t excessively hard to build up to scribing stations for bank access.

@ Vayne.8563: I don’t think the instance thing is to bad. We observe a behavior where our guild hall has to grow after so many people enter, we are forced to taxi to a new instance. We haven’t hit the second wall because we just don’t have the manpower, but I imagine the multiple instances are of less impact because they scale for what is needed only.

Randulf.7614:

We did it with 5. We tried Lost Precipice and could’nt do it. We then adjusted some builds and played around with our team set up and went straight for Gilded Hollow instead. Instant success.

It’s not always easy for a team of 5, but it is definetly doable. Condition damage felt essential, especially with something than can dish it out as aoe, like an ele/tempest or reaper. If you are struggling, a strong support toon in the party will help keep people buffed and alive.

Sadly, most of my guild has dissipated now, leaving me to mostly fund the hall and occasionally some others log in and contribute, which means the hall is now a very long term work in progress to build up

We got Lost Precipice with 5. I know other people have done it as well. Part of it is just up to luck. We had one maw spawn so far away that we would run out of time just running there.

Khisanth.2948:

Randulf.7614:

We did it with 5. We tried Lost Precipice and could’nt do it. We then adjusted some builds and played around with our team set up and went straight for Gilded Hollow instead. Instant success.

It’s not always easy for a team of 5, but it is definetly doable. Condition damage felt essential, especially with something than can dish it out as aoe, like an ele/tempest or reaper. If you are struggling, a strong support toon in the party will help keep people buffed and alive.

Sadly, most of my guild has dissipated now, leaving me to mostly fund the hall and occasionally some others log in and contribute, which means the hall is now a very long term work in progress to build up

We got Lost Precipice with 5. I know other people have done it as well. Part of it is just up to luck. We had one maw spawn so far away that we would run out of time just running there.

Yeah, we had a couple of spawn point that were far away. Doesn’t sound so bad until you have to do it, right? Again, it just seems very unfriendly to small guilds.

Kolinkar.4167:

Thanks Vayne – you are just one of the reasons I like this game. We’ll probably give it another shot. I’m a weirdo in wanting a game to be more fun than challenge. LOL. I should probably go back to Ms PacMan. Thank you so much to everyone that replied!

You’re not weird. I want this game to be more fun than challenge too. I don’t mind the occasional challenge, but some stuff like raids just wears me down. I don’t have the energy for it.

Seriously if you need help, message me in game. You can never have too many friends.

Kolinkar.4167:

Yeah, we had a couple of spawn point that were far away. Doesn’t sound so bad until you have to do it, right? Again, it just seems very unfriendly to small guilds.

nope. the event itself scale and it scale in a way that it become more brutal.
doing with 5 is perfectly fine, i helped people did it with 5, it is relatively easy.

If you don’t mind spending more time on it, do it with a group of 5. If you want to go in and have a decent chance of success in 1 try, take a group of 7 to 9.(so it won’t scale up) Our (tiny) guild formed an alliance with another tiny guild, and claimed with a group of 9,(for our) then with a group of 8.(for theirs) With those numbers it was a fun fight, and doable in 1 try.
You may want to form alliances with one or more small guilds anyway, to have help doing guild events.(Though easy bounties and treks are doable with a very small number, guild events are determined by RNG. And you may not always have any options that are good for a very small group..)
And yeah, it stinks that Anet made it this way. I know I wouldn’t mind a smaller guild hall that could only support a guild max size of 20 or so and be cheaper. And guild events should always offer options for very small groups. I don’t see why there’s RNG involved. Why can’t we just choose what we want? The different difficulties offer different reward levels. So why can’t a small guild choose the easy options which are better suited for a small number of people?

we managed to take lost precipice with 6 people, and came kitten close to taking it with 4 (only reason we failed with 4 was because we didnt all have updraft gliding yet, once we did we ended up having a couple other people that wanted to come help)

so it’s doable with 5 people,

feel free to message me in game if you want some help claiming your GH

also keep in mind that you can afford to not kill a couple of maws, so if one spawns across the other side of the map from where you are you may want to skip it and get your party to a spot in the map that you can easily/quickly reach most areas so you can get to the next one

also ensure 1/2 of your party have some good hard CC for the maws

Or, post here what you want to do specifically and ask if there are others wanting the same thing. Players have always found ways of circumventing poor design.
I bet there are plenty of smaller guilds struggling with the same issue.

Why not organize a joint guild hall hunt over a period of time and try to get everyone interested and willing to contribute, their own guild hall along with yours. You get it, they get it, and you might make some friends along the way.

Don’t quit if it isn’t easy or if people don’t see it here right away. Enough numbers will work for everyone involved.

I’ve been the only active member in a small guild for some time. Just before HoT came out I managed to persuade the guild leader via FB message to log in and give me leadership rank.
A few weeks after HoT was released I found 3 people to give me a hand to capture a LP Guild Hall.
Since then I have solo upgraded the guild to level 38 (so far), and still have roughly the same amount of gold as I had after paying the initial 100.

It can be done.

My small guild has lost precipice, lost most of the players after that… Too much work to rebuild what most of us already built with cash/gem shop sales.

Now there is just 2 of us, and we que PvP all day wondering who’s gonna drop out of the game first lol