Guild Wars 2

The net effect of this thread: more complaints about guild halls.

The only immutable law of the universe is the Law of Irony.

As a solo player within my own guild with myself as the only member what I noticed is that much of what I paid cash money for was suddenly put beyond my reach. As a clan member of a small guild, it does seem that we will have a much more difficult process ahead of us in comparison to the larger guilds.

False.

I run a small guild and our guild hall is far more useful than the old buff/banner system.

At guild level 14, with very little work in the hall we have:

• Some buffs that we don’t have to farm or pay gold to influence for.
• A merchant, bank, guild bank, and anvil we can teleport to from anywhere to clear bags, making several black lion items and old influence costs obsolete.
• The ability to run 5 guild missions a week as much as we want, and even to repeat them to make sure every member gets their rewards without wasting influence.
• Easy to access harvesting nodes.
• Merchants that sell cool extra stuff for commendations.
• Enough space for every single member to establish their own personal housing area.
• Freedom for them tyranny of the influence system, and the assurance that when we get an upgrade we can actually use it, forever.

This system is far far more beneficial to small guilds than the old system. The assertion that it exists only for large guilds is silly. Guild halls actually scale for guilds of all sizes and reward effort and contribution proportionally. Small guilds like mine in the new system progress more slowly, but we can actually progress and use that progression. In the old system there were a lot of upgrades we simply couldn’t use due to the ongoing influence cost. Now we can actually use all of our upgrades.

The “small guilds” complaining about guild hall costs are people that fail to realize that those costs are permanent unlocks that last forever.

Guild halls are in no way unusable or even particularly expensive for small guilds provided you upgrade in a reasonable manner that prioritizes function over “get all the things as quickly as possible”

I and my members get great use out of all the cool stuff in our little tent city every day, wheras in the old system we got, what, an occasional banner and maybe one buff and two guild missions a week that we couldn’t retry if we failed them.

@PopeUrban: You keep saying that as if it were true.

How is it more beneficial for a small guild now than the old system when I could get banners before but I cannot now? Where can we teleport to from anywhere when we cannot get a guild hall?

There were a lot of us asking for scaling Guild Hall construction in the guild hall CDI that happened ages upon ages ago. ArenaNet decided to turn it into yet another sink for the economy in this game which is all about their real world economy. Guild Halls should take work, but they could have designed content around it. They should have designed content around it. You know, content that guilds could do together to get stuff that has nothing to do with the economy to build their guild hall. Keyword: Together.

Guild halls should be about socialization and friendship and fun. You can have that in a hollow shell hall. They decided to make it a massive material and gold and time sink though.

Yuck.

GreyWolf.8670:

@PopeUrban: You keep saying that as if it were true.

How is it more beneficial for a small guild now than the old system when I could get banners before but I cannot now? Where can we teleport to from anywhere when we cannot get a guild hall?

Your definition of “small guild” is literally less than five players if this is the case. I have taken a hall with three players to assist a guild I imagine is what you’re talking about. It was two players.

As per Anet’s definition, a guild is an assemblage of five or more players. Your “guild” is also unable to do dungeons, fractals, or any other group content without outside help. The changes to the guild system were made specifically to close the inconsistancies and loopholes that allowed solo players or “duos” to take advantage of systems designed for and balanced around group play.

What I’m saying is absolutely true. Guild systems were not designed to make solo bank guilds, or provide “duos” with banners and the like in the first place. The revamped system simply reinforces the idea that a “small guild” is intended to be at least a party’s worth of players, and even then is extremely generous with those requirements, allowing use and progress of all systems to be done solo, including guild missions. You will make progress no matter your size, you simply won’t make it as fast. In this respect it is no different than the old system.

If you can PUG for a dungeon, or a fractal, or LFG for a map taxi, you can do the same one time for a guild hall. I’ll personally help you with this if you can’t find anyone else.

You can still get banners. They’re just more expensive. If you had banners unlocked before, go buy them with favor in the guild initiative. If you didn’t, go level a guild hall and a scribe like any size guild also has to.

Again, the difference in the new system is that you have to put in the work wheras in the old system you didn’t have to put in any work and just got influence and the selection of things it provided on top of the rewards you already got for playing content.

That system, as I’ve said repeatedly, was broken and skewed extremely in the favor of guilds with massive player rosters. Now the only thing skewed in the favor of those guilds is progression speed but not the ability to progress or the ability to actually utilize earned upgrades

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Yes. Let’s have every single char in game a member of a huge, anonymous guild where few care if you are there or not or if you get kicked, just so that guild halls can be built.

We get it, you hate large guilds. However, your generalization of large guilds is ignorant and offensive.

DarcShriek.5829:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Yes. Let’s have every single char in game a member of a huge, anonymous guild where few care if you are there or not or if you get kicked, just so that guild halls can be built.

We get it, you hate large guilds. However, your generalization of large guilds is ignorant and offensive.

I’m a member of 2 large guilds. (Maybe you should read the thread so you’ll understand what’s going on instead of making clueless remarks).

DarcShriek.5829:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Yes. Let’s have every single char in game a member of a huge, anonymous guild where few care if you are there or not or if you get kicked, just so that guild halls can be built.

We get it, you hate large guilds. However, your generalization of large guilds is ignorant and offensive.

Likewise it’s offensive for people who are in large guilds to say that people in smaller guilds don’t deserve a hall because they want to be special.

Especially when those smaller guilds have been working on their guild for 3 years or more now and the things they spent years building just up and disappeared a few weeks ago because Anet needed to push people to buy HoTs.

PopeUrban.2578:

What I’m saying is absolutely true. Guild systems were not designed to make solo bank guilds, or provide “duos” with banners and the like in the first place. The revamped system simply reinforces the idea that a “small guild” is intended to be at least a party’s worth of players, and even then is extremely generous with those requirements, allowing use and progress of all systems to be done solo, including guild missions. You will make progress no matter your size, you simply won’t make it as fast. In this respect it is no different than the old system.

If you can PUG for a dungeon, or a fractal, or LFG for a map taxi, you can do the same one time for a guild hall. I’ll personally help you with this if you can’t find anyone else.

You can still get banners. They’re just more expensive. If you had banners unlocked before, go buy them with favor in the guild initiative. If you didn’t, go level a guild hall and a scribe like any size guild also has to.

Again, the difference in the new system is that you have to put in the work wheras in the old system you didn’t have to put in any work and just got influence and the selection of things it provided on top of the rewards you already got for playing content.

That system, as I’ve said repeatedly, was broken and skewed extremely in the favor of guilds with massive player rosters. Now the only thing skewed in the favor of those guilds is progression speed but not the ability to progress or the ability to actually utilize earned upgrades

Funny thing is I don’t recall reading “anywhere” that such changes were being applied to the game when I pre-ordered HOT (4 Copies I might add for the whole family).

Had I known prior, it would have influenced my decision…and saved me a few bucks.

There are some really cool things about the expansion that I do like, but the truth be told I’ve not even bothered to log in for close to a week now because it seems like everything with HOT has slanted or nerfed things in such a way as to funnel players “more towards buying gems”….

I don’t know about the rest of you but I’m over getting into a game just to see my time and investment turned upside down by an industry that can’t even be bothered to include us in the loop before making dramatic changes.

Its time for players to have some protections. We are after all what determines the success or failure of a game.

I like how large guilds are saying the current system is good because it forces people to join their blob guilds. Personally I think people should be in guilds because I dunno.. they enjoy the community? It’s hilarious that you can basically admit that the only reason you have for people to be in your blob guilds for you to leech off is by forcing them to be there and not because they want to be part if your community.

You say if the requirements were lower people would just keep to smaller guilds, I wonder why would they stick to smaller guilds rather than your blob guild?

Kamara.4187:

PopeUrban.2578:

What I’m saying is absolutely true. Guild systems were not designed to make solo bank guilds, or provide “duos” with banners and the like in the first place. The revamped system simply reinforces the idea that a “small guild” is intended to be at least a party’s worth of players, and even then is extremely generous with those requirements, allowing use and progress of all systems to be done solo, including guild missions. You will make progress no matter your size, you simply won’t make it as fast. In this respect it is no different than the old system.

If you can PUG for a dungeon, or a fractal, or LFG for a map taxi, you can do the same one time for a guild hall. I’ll personally help you with this if you can’t find anyone else.

You can still get banners. They’re just more expensive. If you had banners unlocked before, go buy them with favor in the guild initiative. If you didn’t, go level a guild hall and a scribe like any size guild also has to.

Again, the difference in the new system is that you have to put in the work wheras in the old system you didn’t have to put in any work and just got influence and the selection of things it provided on top of the rewards you already got for playing content.

That system, as I’ve said repeatedly, was broken and skewed extremely in the favor of guilds with massive player rosters. Now the only thing skewed in the favor of those guilds is progression speed but not the ability to progress or the ability to actually utilize earned upgrades

Funny thing is I don’t recall reading “anywhere” that such changes were being applied to the game when I pre-ordered HOT (4 Copies I might add for the whole family).

Had I known prior, it would have influenced my decision…and saved me a few bucks.

There are some really cool things about the expansion that I do like, but the truth be told I’ve not even bothered to log in for close to a week now because it seems like everything with HOT has slanted or nerfed things in such a way as to funnel players “more towards buying gems”….

I don’t know about the rest of you but I’m over getting into a game just to see my time and investment turned upside down by an industry that can’t even be bothered to include us in the loop before making dramatic changes.

Its time for players to have some protections. We are after all what determines the success or failure of a game.

The argument that ingame economic decision are made from the lens of encouraging people to buy gems is just plain wrong due to the basic nature of the gem exchange.

Specifically, the more people that buy gems and convert them to gold, the cheaper it becomes to buy gems with gold.

No amount of nerfing gold gain or increasing gold costs encourages or rewards converting gems to gold.

PopeUrban.2578:

Kamara.4187:

PopeUrban.2578:

What I’m saying is absolutely true. Guild systems were not designed to make solo bank guilds, or provide “duos” with banners and the like in the first place. The revamped system simply reinforces the idea that a “small guild” is intended to be at least a party’s worth of players, and even then is extremely generous with those requirements, allowing use and progress of all systems to be done solo, including guild missions. You will make progress no matter your size, you simply won’t make it as fast. In this respect it is no different than the old system.

If you can PUG for a dungeon, or a fractal, or LFG for a map taxi, you can do the same one time for a guild hall. I’ll personally help you with this if you can’t find anyone else.

You can still get banners. They’re just more expensive. If you had banners unlocked before, go buy them with favor in the guild initiative. If you didn’t, go level a guild hall and a scribe like any size guild also has to.

Again, the difference in the new system is that you have to put in the work wheras in the old system you didn’t have to put in any work and just got influence and the selection of things it provided on top of the rewards you already got for playing content.

That system, as I’ve said repeatedly, was broken and skewed extremely in the favor of guilds with massive player rosters. Now the only thing skewed in the favor of those guilds is progression speed but not the ability to progress or the ability to actually utilize earned upgrades

Funny thing is I don’t recall reading “anywhere” that such changes were being applied to the game when I pre-ordered HOT (4 Copies I might add for the whole family).

Had I known prior, it would have influenced my decision…and saved me a few bucks.

There are some really cool things about the expansion that I do like, but the truth be told I’ve not even bothered to log in for close to a week now because it seems like everything with HOT has slanted or nerfed things in such a way as to funnel players “more towards buying gems”….

I don’t know about the rest of you but I’m over getting into a game just to see my time and investment turned upside down by an industry that can’t even be bothered to include us in the loop before making dramatic changes.

Its time for players to have some protections. We are after all what determines the success or failure of a game.

The argument that ingame economic decision are made from the lens of encouraging people to buy gems is just plain wrong due to the basic nature of the gem exchange.

Specifically, the more people that buy gems and convert them to gold, the cheaper it becomes to buy gems with gold.

No amount of nerfing gold gain or increasing gold costs encourages or rewards converting gems to gold.

With admin privileges and a couple of key strokes I’m sure any of that can be altered just like in every other MMO that has admin functions for economy adjustments..
not to mention there is nothing balancing, devaluing, or adjusting those dollars they are taking in. Its pure profit.

Nah, we’ll just do it with 9 people. It’ll just take a bit longer.

Pandgami.6745:

I get it Guild Halls are ridiculously expensive and almost impossible for small guilds to obtain and upgrade.

That was the point from the very start. People knew it was gonna be expensive so why all the complaining?

The complaining largely stems from the fact all the perks which small guild EARNED before HoT were taken away by HoT and replaced by mechanics locked behind the doors of the Guild Hall which small guilds are largely locked out from!

The issue is pretty straight forward, you jerk. We had loads of stuff we worked towards before the expansion came out. Then the expansion hits and we lose… What did we lose again? Oh, right. EVERYTHING. All of that time and effort, for nothing at all.

Atharian.7092:

The issue is pretty straight forward, you jerk. We had loads of stuff we worked towards before the expansion came out. Then the expansion hits and we lose… What did we lose again? Oh, right. EVERYTHING. All of that time and effort, for nothing at all.

Well people did ask in quite a lot of detail for guild halls. There was even a CDI.

But Anet seems to have something of a habit of giving people what they ask for… with a twist. Like the M. Night Shyamalan of MMO devs. They could have mostly left the guild design alone and added guild halls. Instead, they added guild halls and revamped the whole system, even “correcting”/clarifying their stance on guild sizes in the process.

I should say though, some of the time they have plain listened and done a really good job. Or done a really good job without needing to listen at all. It’s just every so often, they go a little crazy with their tweaking and don’t consult anyone outside of their team until the system is too far developed to change. And as we’ve learned from the past, their policy is to be pretty close-mouthed while in the development. The problem is, during that process they often seem to lose touch with the playerbase. The remnants of trying to listen are there, but the isolation of the development has iterated them into something that only vaguely resembles what was asked for.

ehm… here are just my 2 cents but what if Anet would just make a third smaller guild hall which is cheaper to upgrade but also 1/4 of the size? Same size arena but everything else would be smaller. Even though I’m part of a 1 man guild I would still keep my large hall but at least the 6 man guilds and such can get easier acces to certain features.

Leaa.2943:

I don’t want a fully upgraded guild hall, but as a small wvw guild i want a arena in our guildhall so that we can use it for the purpose it is there. I certainly don’t want to merge in to a big guild, that is ridiculous, i am in a guild with a certain aim, and joining a blobby guild with milions of people having to share the arena with them, well sorry that is not working for us, we want to have the arena to be able to invite other guilds to fight with us when ever we want and the enemies are avaiable, not when the arena might be free and not full of 300 members that create lag.

At this point this will take ages for us to get a fully upgraded arena, and we are punished because we are small with a aim, a aim that the guild halls are meant to be used for.

This is imho the correct attitude towards guild-halls for smaller guilds but with one exception.

Smaller guilds should indeed imho focus on parts of the hall. PvP or WvW or Decorations (scribing) or PvE. You could go for more, but on a way longer term.

However, you should see that in the same scope as for a big guild to build up the full hall (what according to Anet takes 6 to 9 months). And then I think t’s easily doable.

Also don’t think it’s per definition much easier for bigger guilds then for smaller guilds. Even when trying to set up a real good community of people with bigger guilds, you will always have people who will not be so invested in the guild and rather sell their mats then donate them to the guild-hall.

In fact, if you happen to have a smaller guild that exist mainly of people who grind a lot (and so have many mats) it might even be easier to build up the guild-hall.

But overall I think depending of the size of your guild you should have another attitude towards guild-halls. Also don’t forget that mat prices will start dropping once the bigger guilds have their hall fully upgraded.

piza.9310:

ehm… here are just my 2 cents but what if Anet would just make a third smaller guild hall which is cheaper to upgrade but also 1/4 of the size? Same size arena but everything else would be smaller. Even though I’m part of a 1 man guild I would still keep my large hall but at least the 6 man guilds and such can get easier acces to certain features.

The real functions from the guild-hall come from the upgrades, not from the size. So that does not seem to be a very fair trait.

But maybe a smaller guild-hall that also has 1/4th of the available upgrades? Then again, you now already have the ability to only take 1/4th of the upgrades. So that possibility already exists.

Kamara.4187:

PopeUrban.2578:

Kamara.4187:

PopeUrban.2578:

What I’m saying is absolutely true. Guild systems were not designed to make solo bank guilds, or provide “duos” with banners and the like in the first place. The revamped system simply reinforces the idea that a “small guild” is intended to be at least a party’s worth of players, and even then is extremely generous with those requirements, allowing use and progress of all systems to be done solo, including guild missions. You will make progress no matter your size, you simply won’t make it as fast. In this respect it is no different than the old system.

If you can PUG for a dungeon, or a fractal, or LFG for a map taxi, you can do the same one time for a guild hall. I’ll personally help you with this if you can’t find anyone else.

You can still get banners. They’re just more expensive. If you had banners unlocked before, go buy them with favor in the guild initiative. If you didn’t, go level a guild hall and a scribe like any size guild also has to.

Again, the difference in the new system is that you have to put in the work wheras in the old system you didn’t have to put in any work and just got influence and the selection of things it provided on top of the rewards you already got for playing content.

That system, as I’ve said repeatedly, was broken and skewed extremely in the favor of guilds with massive player rosters. Now the only thing skewed in the favor of those guilds is progression speed but not the ability to progress or the ability to actually utilize earned upgrades

Funny thing is I don’t recall reading “anywhere” that such changes were being applied to the game when I pre-ordered HOT (4 Copies I might add for the whole family).

Had I known prior, it would have influenced my decision…and saved me a few bucks.

There are some really cool things about the expansion that I do like, but the truth be told I’ve not even bothered to log in for close to a week now because it seems like everything with HOT has slanted or nerfed things in such a way as to funnel players “more towards buying gems”….

I don’t know about the rest of you but I’m over getting into a game just to see my time and investment turned upside down by an industry that can’t even be bothered to include us in the loop before making dramatic changes.

Its time for players to have some protections. We are after all what determines the success or failure of a game.

The argument that ingame economic decision are made from the lens of encouraging people to buy gems is just plain wrong due to the basic nature of the gem exchange.

Specifically, the more people that buy gems and convert them to gold, the cheaper it becomes to buy gems with gold.

No amount of nerfing gold gain or increasing gold costs encourages or rewards converting gems to gold.

With admin privileges and a couple of key strokes I’m sure any of that can be altered just like in every other MMO that has admin functions for economy adjustments..
not to mention there is nothing balancing, devaluing, or adjusting those dollars they are taking in. Its pure profit.

With admin priveledes and a couple keystrokes they could send also charge your preferred payment method thusands of dollars, sell your personal details to a number of direct avertising firms, or delete everything on your account, strip you naked, and jump your characters off a fatal cliff.

Yet they don’t.

If the basis of your argument is “well they could do something underhanded” that’s not really much of an argument.

Do you apply the same logic to every service which you pay for and every product you buy, or is it reserved for this one specifically?

PopeUrban.2578:

Kamara.4187:

PopeUrban.2578:

Kamara.4187:

PopeUrban.2578:

What I’m saying is absolutely true. Guild systems were not designed to make solo bank guilds, or provide “duos” with banners and the like in the first place. The revamped system simply reinforces the idea that a “small guild” is intended to be at least a party’s worth of players, and even then is extremely generous with those requirements, allowing use and progress of all systems to be done solo, including guild missions. You will make progress no matter your size, you simply won’t make it as fast. In this respect it is no different than the old system.

If you can PUG for a dungeon, or a fractal, or LFG for a map taxi, you can do the same one time for a guild hall. I’ll personally help you with this if you can’t find anyone else.

You can still get banners. They’re just more expensive. If you had banners unlocked before, go buy them with favor in the guild initiative. If you didn’t, go level a guild hall and a scribe like any size guild also has to.

Again, the difference in the new system is that you have to put in the work wheras in the old system you didn’t have to put in any work and just got influence and the selection of things it provided on top of the rewards you already got for playing content.

That system, as I’ve said repeatedly, was broken and skewed extremely in the favor of guilds with massive player rosters. Now the only thing skewed in the favor of those guilds is progression speed but not the ability to progress or the ability to actually utilize earned upgrades

Funny thing is I don’t recall reading “anywhere” that such changes were being applied to the game when I pre-ordered HOT (4 Copies I might add for the whole family).

Had I known prior, it would have influenced my decision…and saved me a few bucks.

There are some really cool things about the expansion that I do like, but the truth be told I’ve not even bothered to log in for close to a week now because it seems like everything with HOT has slanted or nerfed things in such a way as to funnel players “more towards buying gems”….

I don’t know about the rest of you but I’m over getting into a game just to see my time and investment turned upside down by an industry that can’t even be bothered to include us in the loop before making dramatic changes.

Its time for players to have some protections. We are after all what determines the success or failure of a game.

The argument that ingame economic decision are made from the lens of encouraging people to buy gems is just plain wrong due to the basic nature of the gem exchange.

Specifically, the more people that buy gems and convert them to gold, the cheaper it becomes to buy gems with gold.

No amount of nerfing gold gain or increasing gold costs encourages or rewards converting gems to gold.

With admin privileges and a couple of key strokes I’m sure any of that can be altered just like in every other MMO that has admin functions for economy adjustments..
not to mention there is nothing balancing, devaluing, or adjusting those dollars they are taking in. Its pure profit.

With admin priveledes and a couple keystrokes they could send also charge your preferred payment method thusands of dollars, sell your personal details to a number of direct avertising firms, or delete everything on your account, strip you naked, and jump your characters off a fatal cliff.

Yet they don’t.

If the basis of your argument is “well they could do something underhanded” that’s not really much of an argument.

Do you apply the same logic to every service which you pay for and every product you buy, or is it reserved for this one specifically?

or delete everything on your account, strip you naked, and jump your characters off a fatal cliff.

Yet they don’t.

Lol. Not your best example of what they won’t do to you, since they did do it to one guy. He “deserved” it, but still. ANet will do it if they decide to. :P
Character stripped naked by ANet, jumped off cliff, then deleted

Just a flesh wound.3589:

PopeUrban.2578:

Kamara.4187:

PopeUrban.2578:

Kamara.4187:

PopeUrban.2578:

What I’m saying is absolutely true. Guild systems were not designed to make solo bank guilds, or provide “duos” with banners and the like in the first place. The revamped system simply reinforces the idea that a “small guild” is intended to be at least a party’s worth of players, and even then is extremely generous with those requirements, allowing use and progress of all systems to be done solo, including guild missions. You will make progress no matter your size, you simply won’t make it as fast. In this respect it is no different than the old system.

If you can PUG for a dungeon, or a fractal, or LFG for a map taxi, you can do the same one time for a guild hall. I’ll personally help you with this if you can’t find anyone else.

You can still get banners. They’re just more expensive. If you had banners unlocked before, go buy them with favor in the guild initiative. If you didn’t, go level a guild hall and a scribe like any size guild also has to.

Again, the difference in the new system is that you have to put in the work wheras in the old system you didn’t have to put in any work and just got influence and the selection of things it provided on top of the rewards you already got for playing content.

That system, as I’ve said repeatedly, was broken and skewed extremely in the favor of guilds with massive player rosters. Now the only thing skewed in the favor of those guilds is progression speed but not the ability to progress or the ability to actually utilize earned upgrades

Funny thing is I don’t recall reading “anywhere” that such changes were being applied to the game when I pre-ordered HOT (4 Copies I might add for the whole family).

Had I known prior, it would have influenced my decision…and saved me a few bucks.

There are some really cool things about the expansion that I do like, but the truth be told I’ve not even bothered to log in for close to a week now because it seems like everything with HOT has slanted or nerfed things in such a way as to funnel players “more towards buying gems”….

I don’t know about the rest of you but I’m over getting into a game just to see my time and investment turned upside down by an industry that can’t even be bothered to include us in the loop before making dramatic changes.

Its time for players to have some protections. We are after all what determines the success or failure of a game.

The argument that ingame economic decision are made from the lens of encouraging people to buy gems is just plain wrong due to the basic nature of the gem exchange.

Specifically, the more people that buy gems and convert them to gold, the cheaper it becomes to buy gems with gold.

No amount of nerfing gold gain or increasing gold costs encourages or rewards converting gems to gold.

With admin privileges and a couple of key strokes I’m sure any of that can be altered just like in every other MMO that has admin functions for economy adjustments..
not to mention there is nothing balancing, devaluing, or adjusting those dollars they are taking in. Its pure profit.

With admin priveledes and a couple keystrokes they could send also charge your preferred payment method thusands of dollars, sell your personal details to a number of direct avertising firms, or delete everything on your account, strip you naked, and jump your characters off a fatal cliff.

Yet they don’t.

If the basis of your argument is “well they could do something underhanded” that’s not really much of an argument.

Do you apply the same logic to every service which you pay for and every product you buy, or is it reserved for this one specifically?

or delete everything on your account, strip you naked, and jump your characters off a fatal cliff.

Yet they don’t.

Lol. Not your best example of what they won’t do to you, since they did do it to one guy. He “deserved” it, but still. ANet will do it if they decide to. :P
Character stripped naked, jumped off cliff, then deleted

I was specifically referencing that (hilarious) event actually.

The issue really is very simple.
1. Guilds spent weeks and months getting upgrades, buffs and guild missions
2. Come HoT all this was wiped out and replaced it with large cost in materials and cost, estimated to be around 20,000 gold

They didn’t add cool stuff that could be ADDED onto what guilds already had, they wiped it, dressed it up in new buildings and called it extra content.

Additionally. the guild XP is such that you need to pretty much upgrade everything to progress further up, thus making the actual cost higher because you need to spend resources on stuff you don’t want just to get the stuff you do.

or if you like analogies

You spend 3 years buying furniture, white goods etc for your apartment. One day you find the government has come in, confiscated the lot and left you with an empty apartment. Further more there’s a note on the floor telling you, you’ll now have to work for 5 more years to get your stuff back..

That’s why guilds(not just small ones) are miffed at the changes

Would everyone be happier if all the influence they ever spent was refunded to spend on favor? Or just turned into favor directly?

Just curious. This would obviously help large guilds as well, not just small ones.

zaxziakohl.5243:

Would everyone be happier if all the influence they ever spent was refunded to spend on favor? Or just turned into favor directly?

Just curious. This would obviously help large guilds as well, not just small ones.

That wouldn’t fix the issue. A small guild would still not be able to generate any more favor after that. The problem is the gap between the one person required to start a guild and the ~10+ that they seem to be intended for now.

Starting a new guild now stinks. Who wants to join a guild that has zero perks and won’t have them for months because it requires a set amount of players before you can even generate resources?

GreyWolf.8670:

zaxziakohl.5243:

Would everyone be happier if all the influence they ever spent was refunded to spend on favor? Or just turned into favor directly?

Just curious. This would obviously help large guilds as well, not just small ones.

That wouldn’t fix the issue. A small guild would still not be able to generate any more favor after that. The problem is the gap between the one person required to start a guild and the ~10+ that they seem to be intended for now.

Starting a new guild now stinks. Who wants to join a guild that has zero perks and won’t have them for months because it requires a set amount of players before you can even generate resources?

I wouldn’t say that a small guild wouldn’t be able to generate any more favor. Its just very difficult. I was able to do the guild trek (easy, 5 locations, 15 minutes) on my own last week, which netted us 300 favor. We could probably do the medium, 15 location trek with 3 people, but I haven’t been able to test that since I couldn’t actually get anyone else to fricking log on. I don’t mind slow. I don’t mind working toward something over a long period of time. I just wish I had more options beyond the ‘go recruit people you don’t know.’

I will agree that starting a guild, or being a small guild, now does stink. It was hard to recruit for small guilds prior to HoT, now it’s almost impossible. People want the bonuses, not the growing pains involved with getting them.

QTwo.6824:

As a solo player within my own guild with myself as the only member what I noticed is that much of what I paid cash money for was suddenly put beyond my reach. As a clan member of a small guild, it does seem that we will have a much more difficult process ahead of us in comparison to the larger guilds.

Actually, being in the same boat as part of a small family guild, I’ve found it much easier, since I have zero interest in the new regime and no longer bother with it at all.

Quite liberating, really.

I’m in a small guild. Anywhere from 5-10 players on consistantly. We’re up to GH Level 17. A fully built Guild Hall is going to take some time and effort and that’s just the way life is. This isn’t about instant gratification. In fact most of the things in HoT aren’t instant gratification. However, lots of people seem to want everything NOW NOW NOW and not have to work for them.

I can’t expect to own a Ferarri if my bank account is only big enough for a Civic.

Doctor.5068:

I am not saying people don’t have a right to voice their opinion. What I am saying is, that ppl that complain about not being able to use GH, or the people complaining about the precursor crafting, need to understand that these new features were meant to take a long time and not be completed within the first 2 weeks of launch.

And what you are missing is that most complains are not about that. I haven’t seen even a single complain yet about the favour cap or aetherium gathering speed – and according to anet those should make all the GH upgrades to take months at the fastest possible speed. All the complains i saw were about the GH being a massive resource sink that in no way acknowledges that not all guilds are of the 500 member size.

Doctor.5068:

For those who say they need small guilds for bank storage, you can join 5 guilds at a time. I personally have 1 guild bank, 2 small guilds of friends, a pvp guild, and 1 giant guild. The only guild in that group that expects a GH is the giant guild.

I’m pretty sure that you no longer can get bank upgrades for any new guilds if you don’t have GH first.

The same is true of the WvW upgrades for the small roaming guilds that were an important part of WvW scene before HoT. Except that last case is even worse – old personal guilds can keep their bank upgrades, but old WvW unlocks are all gone and need to be repurchased… which is only available through a guildhall.

zaxziakohl.5243:

Would everyone be happier if all the influence they ever spent was refunded to spend on favor? Or just turned into favor directly?

Nah, favour is the least of the problems. It’s the materials that the upgrades need (or rather the quantity of those materials) that kills any chances of small guilds to even get to the point they already were for years and years.

zaxziakohl.5243

Would everyone be happier if all the influence they ever spent was refunded to spend on favor? Or just turned into favor directly?

Just curious. This would obviously help large guilds as well, not just small ones.

No. Why? They’d still find a way to screw the community over by making it a non negotiable exchange rate of one favour to every one hundred or more influence.

They’d leave guilds in the same wrecked state they are now but would have touted the exchange as a feature and a courtesy -no matter how twisted or skewed the result.

Given the quality of their decision making of late I have to wonder why Anet didn’t do just that.

No.

I don’t even care about the kittening guild hall.

I do, however, care that my little bank guild has now been totally blocked from progressing, despite me just having invested 10K on an upgrade to allow me to then work towards the final bank slot upgrade (which I was well on my way to achieving).

This wasn’t instead of buying personal bank/bag slots, BTW, just in case someone accuses me of that.

I had already maxed out my personal bank upgrades and bag slots on two chars.

…and I also care about other small guilds that had acquired various upgrades before and have now had them removed again.

This is not OK.

In fact, it’s insane.

I’m, actually, surprised there isn’t a lot more fuss about it.

There should be.

Shademehr.1397:

I’m in a small guild. Anywhere from 5-10 players on consistantly. We’re up to GH Level 17. A fully built Guild Hall is going to take some time and effort and that’s just the way life is. This isn’t about instant gratification. In fact most of the things in HoT aren’t instant gratification. However, lots of people seem to want everything NOW NOW NOW and not have to work for them.

I can’t expect to own a Ferarri if my bank account is only big enough for a Civic.

No, people already had the Ferrari (or at least the Civic).

Then Anet just took it away and gave some of those people no, reasonable, way to get any kind of car back, at all…

Iozeph.5617:

Given the quality of their decision making of late I have to wonder why Anet didn’t do just that.

Well, the current exchange rate is 200 to 1 actually (10k influence for 50 favour), isn’kitten

Favor and Aetherium are not a problem, I don’t mind that system, I wish the upgrades were just built around those two than the massive material grind they implemented.

Speaking for a small 7-10 player wvw guild, having our buffs taken away with guildhalls is a major pain the kitten and yes it has affected how we will play the game. Our +5 supply buff is now hidden away behind level 37 guildhall and a dozen other required upgrades.

True some things we have automatically learned from the previous system, such as guild catapults, but hearing the latest cost for scribe schematics is mind blowing. Wvw is already the lowest rewarding area in the game, and they just nerfed the gathering nodes in there as well, we have no choice but to farm pve if we want to get any upgrades done in a timely manner. At least the gvg guilds got their arena upgrade dropped from 2 months to 2 weeks.

It’s just really ridiculous how they went about the guild hall system, and I don’t see them changing anything.

PopeUrban.2578:

Kamara.4187:

PopeUrban.2578:

Kamara.4187:

PopeUrban.2578:

What I’m saying is absolutely true. Guild systems were not designed to make solo bank guilds, or provide “duos” with banners and the like in the first place. The revamped system simply reinforces the idea that a “small guild” is intended to be at least a party’s worth of players, and even then is extremely generous with those requirements, allowing use and progress of all systems to be done solo, including guild missions. You will make progress no matter your size, you simply won’t make it as fast. In this respect it is no different than the old system.

If you can PUG for a dungeon, or a fractal, or LFG for a map taxi, you can do the same one time for a guild hall. I’ll personally help you with this if you can’t find anyone else.

You can still get banners. They’re just more expensive. If you had banners unlocked before, go buy them with favor in the guild initiative. If you didn’t, go level a guild hall and a scribe like any size guild also has to.

Again, the difference in the new system is that you have to put in the work wheras in the old system you didn’t have to put in any work and just got influence and the selection of things it provided on top of the rewards you already got for playing content.

That system, as I’ve said repeatedly, was broken and skewed extremely in the favor of guilds with massive player rosters. Now the only thing skewed in the favor of those guilds is progression speed but not the ability to progress or the ability to actually utilize earned upgrades

Funny thing is I don’t recall reading “anywhere” that such changes were being applied to the game when I pre-ordered HOT (4 Copies I might add for the whole family).

Had I known prior, it would have influenced my decision…and saved me a few bucks.

There are some really cool things about the expansion that I do like, but the truth be told I’ve not even bothered to log in for close to a week now because it seems like everything with HOT has slanted or nerfed things in such a way as to funnel players “more towards buying gems”….

I don’t know about the rest of you but I’m over getting into a game just to see my time and investment turned upside down by an industry that can’t even be bothered to include us in the loop before making dramatic changes.

Its time for players to have some protections. We are after all what determines the success or failure of a game.

The argument that ingame economic decision are made from the lens of encouraging people to buy gems is just plain wrong due to the basic nature of the gem exchange.

Specifically, the more people that buy gems and convert them to gold, the cheaper it becomes to buy gems with gold.

No amount of nerfing gold gain or increasing gold costs encourages or rewards converting gems to gold.

With admin privileges and a couple of key strokes I’m sure any of that can be altered just like in every other MMO that has admin functions for economy adjustments..
not to mention there is nothing balancing, devaluing, or adjusting those dollars they are taking in. Its pure profit.

With admin priveledes and a couple keystrokes they could send also charge your preferred payment method thusands of dollars, sell your personal details to a number of direct avertising firms, or delete everything on your account, strip you naked, and jump your characters off a fatal cliff.

Yet they don’t.

If the basis of your argument is “well they could do something underhanded” that’s not really much of an argument.

Do you apply the same logic to every service which you pay for and every product you buy, or is it reserved for this one specifically?

You are very naïve if you think anet won’t adjust the rates manually to make money. Like I have said before, if everyone quit buying gems with gold today and I wanted to buy a million gold with real money, the gold would be there. To think otherwise is just foolish.

Except why should the game give any major incentives to join a big guild over a small one? Why not let people join whatever type of guild they want? The benefit of a larger guild is having more people to play with, and that should (largely) be enough to justify them for those who want that sort of experience.

I’m not in a guild and don’t plan to be in one any time soon either so this decision doesn’t really affect me either way. But it’s just silly to punish people for preferring to keep their gaming group more tight-knit.

zaxziakohl.5243:

Would everyone be happier if all the influence they ever spent was refunded to spend on favor? Or just turned into favor directly?

Just curious. This would obviously help large guilds as well, not just small ones.

As already pointed out, that would solve much. Also, they kind of did it, you can exchange influence for favor at Guild Initiative Headquarters. But be warned, the rate is 200 influence for 1 favor (as someone pointed above) and limited to minimum of 10,000 if I recall right, that can leave us with leftovers of 9,000 influence or less (one of the guild I’m in has around 6,000 influence that we can’t exchange at all -_-).

Blaine Tog.8304:

Why not let people join whatever type of guild they want?

Well, since NPE and the big Feature Packs the signal was already coming… They have changed the ideology from “play as you wish” to “play as we think you should play” >.> Just check several changes done since that Feature Pack, NPE is the clearer example.

Ok, back on topic…

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

PopeUrban.2578:

Kamara.4187:

PopeUrban.2578:

Kamara.4187:

PopeUrban.2578:

What I’m saying is absolutely true. Guild systems were not designed to make solo bank guilds, or provide “duos” with banners and the like in the first place. The revamped system simply reinforces the idea that a “small guild” is intended to be at least a party’s worth of players, and even then is extremely generous with those requirements, allowing use and progress of all systems to be done solo, including guild missions. You will make progress no matter your size, you simply won’t make it as fast. In this respect it is no different than the old system.

If you can PUG for a dungeon, or a fractal, or LFG for a map taxi, you can do the same one time for a guild hall. I’ll personally help you with this if you can’t find anyone else.

You can still get banners. They’re just more expensive. If you had banners unlocked before, go buy them with favor in the guild initiative. If you didn’t, go level a guild hall and a scribe like any size guild also has to.

Again, the difference in the new system is that you have to put in the work wheras in the old system you didn’t have to put in any work and just got influence and the selection of things it provided on top of the rewards you already got for playing content.

That system, as I’ve said repeatedly, was broken and skewed extremely in the favor of guilds with massive player rosters. Now the only thing skewed in the favor of those guilds is progression speed but not the ability to progress or the ability to actually utilize earned upgrades

Funny thing is I don’t recall reading “anywhere” that such changes were being applied to the game when I pre-ordered HOT (4 Copies I might add for the whole family).

Had I known prior, it would have influenced my decision…and saved me a few bucks.

There are some really cool things about the expansion that I do like, but the truth be told I’ve not even bothered to log in for close to a week now because it seems like everything with HOT has slanted or nerfed things in such a way as to funnel players “more towards buying gems”….

I don’t know about the rest of you but I’m over getting into a game just to see my time and investment turned upside down by an industry that can’t even be bothered to include us in the loop before making dramatic changes.

Its time for players to have some protections. We are after all what determines the success or failure of a game.

The argument that ingame economic decision are made from the lens of encouraging people to buy gems is just plain wrong due to the basic nature of the gem exchange.

Specifically, the more people that buy gems and convert them to gold, the cheaper it becomes to buy gems with gold.

No amount of nerfing gold gain or increasing gold costs encourages or rewards converting gems to gold.

With admin privileges and a couple of key strokes I’m sure any of that can be altered just like in every other MMO that has admin functions for economy adjustments..
not to mention there is nothing balancing, devaluing, or adjusting those dollars they are taking in. Its pure profit.

With admin priveledes and a couple keystrokes they could send also charge your preferred payment method thusands of dollars, sell your personal details to a number of direct avertising firms, or delete everything on your account, strip you naked, and jump your characters off a fatal cliff.

Yet they don’t.

If the basis of your argument is “well they could do something underhanded” that’s not really much of an argument.

Do you apply the same logic to every service which you pay for and every product you buy, or is it reserved for this one specifically?

You are very naïve if you think anet won’t adjust the rates manually to make money. Like I have said before, if everyone quit buying gems with gold today and I wanted to buy a million gold with real money, the gold would be there. To think otherwise is just foolish.

They don’t adjust the ingame economy to encourage gem purchases they add stuff to the gem store

That’s why black lion tickets, outfits, and other such annoying crap exists, and why rewards in the game are so quickly outpaced by more gem store shinies. Anet’s model to drive gem purchases assumed people that want gem store items more often buy gems with money than gold. They’ve gone on record several times stating that gems to gold conversion has an extremely negligable effect on the ingame economy because of the low ratios that result from how that exchange works.

You can track gems to gold conversion rates easily on a number of sites, and any adjustment that didn’t jibe with player patterns would be easily and quickly recognized.

The fact is the current economic rates were adjusted to curb gold inflation, because ensuring that the various services and rates of ingame gold gain are inline with how anet feels people should be earning based on intended play patterns are far more important to the long term health of the game than the rate at which people buy gold with gems.

Whether you feel their intended play patterns and rates of gold acquisition are valuable or fun is a whole different matter, but this really is a game design issue, not a real world financial one, for arenanet.

Assuming anything else, with the massive amount of public data that we keep track of as players would be foolish.

Shademehr.1397:

I’m in a small guild. Anywhere from 5-10 players on consistantly. We’re up to GH Level 17. A fully built Guild Hall is going to take some time and effort and that’s just the way life is. This isn’t about instant gratification. In fact most of the things in HoT aren’t instant gratification. However, lots of people seem to want everything NOW NOW NOW and not have to work for them.

I can’t expect to own a Ferarri if my bank account is only big enough for a Civic.

This is SO FAR from what is being discussed in this thread that the wrongness is making my head hurt.

Here’s what happened: I owned a ferrari, but then the city said that my garage was only suitable for a civic, and that I could earn back the ferrari if I jumped through a bunch of hoops.

Now everyone is saying that I should be happy there’s a Civic in my garage, because there’s no way one person deserves to own a Ferrari, and that I shouldn’t feel entitled to my Ferrari. And I’m like, “Yo, this Civic doesn’t even have a motor in it.”

And you’re like, “So greedy, wanting everything NOW NOW NOW. GO EARN YOUR MOTOR.”

And I have no idea why people think that’s even appropriate.

PopeUrban.2578:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

PopeUrban.2578:

Kamara.4187:

PopeUrban.2578:

Kamara.4187:

PopeUrban.2578:

What I’m saying is absolutely true. Guild systems were not designed to make solo bank guilds, or provide “duos” with banners and the like in the first place. The revamped system simply reinforces the idea that a “small guild” is intended to be at least a party’s worth of players, and even then is extremely generous with those requirements, allowing use and progress of all systems to be done solo, including guild missions. You will make progress no matter your size, you simply won’t make it as fast. In this respect it is no different than the old system.

If you can PUG for a dungeon, or a fractal, or LFG for a map taxi, you can do the same one time for a guild hall. I’ll personally help you with this if you can’t find anyone else.

You can still get banners. They’re just more expensive. If you had banners unlocked before, go buy them with favor in the guild initiative. If you didn’t, go level a guild hall and a scribe like any size guild also has to.

Again, the difference in the new system is that you have to put in the work wheras in the old system you didn’t have to put in any work and just got influence and the selection of things it provided on top of the rewards you already got for playing content.

That system, as I’ve said repeatedly, was broken and skewed extremely in the favor of guilds with massive player rosters. Now the only thing skewed in the favor of those guilds is progression speed but not the ability to progress or the ability to actually utilize earned upgrades

Funny thing is I don’t recall reading “anywhere” that such changes were being applied to the game when I pre-ordered HOT (4 Copies I might add for the whole family).

Had I known prior, it would have influenced my decision…and saved me a few bucks.

There are some really cool things about the expansion that I do like, but the truth be told I’ve not even bothered to log in for close to a week now because it seems like everything with HOT has slanted or nerfed things in such a way as to funnel players “more towards buying gems”….

I don’t know about the rest of you but I’m over getting into a game just to see my time and investment turned upside down by an industry that can’t even be bothered to include us in the loop before making dramatic changes.

Its time for players to have some protections. We are after all what determines the success or failure of a game.

The argument that ingame economic decision are made from the lens of encouraging people to buy gems is just plain wrong due to the basic nature of the gem exchange.

Specifically, the more people that buy gems and convert them to gold, the cheaper it becomes to buy gems with gold.

No amount of nerfing gold gain or increasing gold costs encourages or rewards converting gems to gold.

With admin privileges and a couple of key strokes I’m sure any of that can be altered just like in every other MMO that has admin functions for economy adjustments..
not to mention there is nothing balancing, devaluing, or adjusting those dollars they are taking in. Its pure profit.

With admin priveledes and a couple keystrokes they could send also charge your preferred payment method thusands of dollars, sell your personal details to a number of direct avertising firms, or delete everything on your account, strip you naked, and jump your characters off a fatal cliff.

Yet they don’t.

If the basis of your argument is “well they could do something underhanded” that’s not really much of an argument.

Do you apply the same logic to every service which you pay for and every product you buy, or is it reserved for this one specifically?

or delete everything on your account, strip you naked, and jump your characters off a fatal cliff.

Yet they don’t.

Lol. Not your best example of what they won’t do to you, since they did do it to one guy. He “deserved” it, but still. ANet will do it if they decide to. :P
Character stripped naked, jumped off cliff, then deleted

I was specifically referencing that (hilarious) event actually.

Greed has no bounds, which is why regulations are applied sooner or later. In fact its already happened in some nations that recognized their people were being taken advantage of. My example is forsaken world. The game milks the heck out of players.

Funny thing is the game is in fact a product of China. While the players of China are protected from many of the fleecing game mechanics in Forsaken World, those same rules don’t apply to their U.S. or Euro markets…Which are bending players over the cash register at every turn….

“Free to play games” have turned into a one trick pony that always leads the player down a path of walls and obstacles that strongly encourage players to open their wallets.

Which is another gripe of mine. When you actually purchase a game up front you shouldn’t find trash mechanics like that in the back bone of the games economy.

I don’t blame Anet for this. I loved GW1 and with GW2 they created a beautiful world with many amazing new concepts. They have my respect here.

However I do blame those that hijacked the game out from under them. Their history and hand is all over the vampiric squeeze towards the paywall….

On the same note I realize you are a huge fan and you don’t agree with any negative remark made towards the game. I respect that, but by the same token I am entitled to my views and opinion, and I strongly feel that I’m either close or on the right track till proven otherwise.

And by the way the entire world watches the NY exchange market daily, yet year after year there are always those that are being indited for insider trading. And a games economy doesn’t even need a person at the keyboard to monitor it. A running script can keep fluctuations within a set parameter while increasing or decreasing inflation and sinks to just an individual. I’m not saying Anet/NCsoft is doing that. But I am saying it is not beyond the capabilities of what can be done with code.

Kamara.4187:

PopeUrban.2578:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

PopeUrban.2578:

Kamara.4187:

PopeUrban.2578:

Kamara.4187:

PopeUrban.2578:

What I’m saying is absolutely true. Guild systems were not designed to make solo bank guilds, or provide “duos” with banners and the like in the first place. The revamped system simply reinforces the idea that a “small guild” is intended to be at least a party’s worth of players, and even then is extremely generous with those requirements, allowing use and progress of all systems to be done solo, including guild missions. You will make progress no matter your size, you simply won’t make it as fast. In this respect it is no different than the old system.

If you can PUG for a dungeon, or a fractal, or LFG for a map taxi, you can do the same one time for a guild hall. I’ll personally help you with this if you can’t find anyone else.

You can still get banners. They’re just more expensive. If you had banners unlocked before, go buy them with favor in the guild initiative. If you didn’t, go level a guild hall and a scribe like any size guild also has to.

Again, the difference in the new system is that you have to put in the work wheras in the old system you didn’t have to put in any work and just got influence and the selection of things it provided on top of the rewards you already got for playing content.

That system, as I’ve said repeatedly, was broken and skewed extremely in the favor of guilds with massive player rosters. Now the only thing skewed in the favor of those guilds is progression speed but not the ability to progress or the ability to actually utilize earned upgrades

Funny thing is I don’t recall reading “anywhere” that such changes were being applied to the game when I pre-ordered HOT (4 Copies I might add for the whole family).

Had I known prior, it would have influenced my decision…and saved me a few bucks.

There are some really cool things about the expansion that I do like, but the truth be told I’ve not even bothered to log in for close to a week now because it seems like everything with HOT has slanted or nerfed things in such a way as to funnel players “more towards buying gems”….

I don’t know about the rest of you but I’m over getting into a game just to see my time and investment turned upside down by an industry that can’t even be bothered to include us in the loop before making dramatic changes.

Its time for players to have some protections. We are after all what determines the success or failure of a game.

The argument that ingame economic decision are made from the lens of encouraging people to buy gems is just plain wrong due to the basic nature of the gem exchange.

Specifically, the more people that buy gems and convert them to gold, the cheaper it becomes to buy gems with gold.

No amount of nerfing gold gain or increasing gold costs encourages or rewards converting gems to gold.

With admin privileges and a couple of key strokes I’m sure any of that can be altered just like in every other MMO that has admin functions for economy adjustments..
not to mention there is nothing balancing, devaluing, or adjusting those dollars they are taking in. Its pure profit.

With admin priveledes and a couple keystrokes they could send also charge your preferred payment method thusands of dollars, sell your personal details to a number of direct avertising firms, or delete everything on your account, strip you naked, and jump your characters off a fatal cliff.

Yet they don’t.

If the basis of your argument is “well they could do something underhanded” that’s not really much of an argument.

Do you apply the same logic to every service which you pay for and every product you buy, or is it reserved for this one specifically?

or delete everything on your account, strip you naked, and jump your characters off a fatal cliff.

Yet they don’t.

Lol. Not your best example of what they won’t do to you, since they did do it to one guy. He “deserved” it, but still. ANet will do it if they decide to. :P
Character stripped naked, jumped off cliff, then deleted

I was specifically referencing that (hilarious) event actually.

Greed has no bounds, which is why regulations are applied sooner or later. In fact its already happened in some nations that recognized their people were being taken advantage of. My example is forsaken world. The game milks the heck out of players.

Funny thing is the game is in fact a product of China. While the players of China are protected from many of the fleecing game mechanics in Forsaken World, those same rules don’t apply to their U.S. or Euro markets…Which are bending players over the cash register at every turn….

“Free to play games” have turned into a one trick pony that always leads the player down a path of walls and obstacles that strongly encourage players to open their wallets.

Which is another gripe of mine. When you actually purchase a game up front you shouldn’t find trash mechanics like that in the back bone of the games economy.

I don’t blame Anet for this. I loved GW1 and with GW2 they created a beautiful world with many amazing new concepts. They have my respect here.

However I do blame those that hijacked the game out from under them. Their history and hand is all over the vampiric squeeze towards the paywall….

On the same note I realize you are a huge fan and you don’t agree with any negative remark made towards the game. I respect that, but by the same token I am entitled to my views and opinion, and I strongly feel that I’m either close or on the right track till proven otherwise.

I don’t know if you’ve checked my post history, but I agree with a large number of negative points about the game.

Attempting to discredit me as a “white Knight” whos feedback and opinions are thus valueless doesn’t address the point, nor does using a completely separate game and company to back up yours.

They do push people to open their wallets, and they do so by a quite frankly overpriced gem store which sucks most of the art assets and rewards from being avaliable ingame to being microtransactions. The amount of new “rewards” added to the gem store compred to the rewards added to the base game is, quite frankly, a disgustingly heavy amount of lean on the cash shop for a game that just released a fifty dollar expansion. RNG cash shop boxes are a similarly disgusting and predatory microtransaction tactic that only persists because poeple are dumb enough to buy them.

However!

Anet does a great job of having their overblow microtransactions set up in such a way that they don’t measurable impact the ability to play and succeed in the game itself, which is why it’s one of the only games that I still tolerate despite the heavy handed lean on the gem store.

However, the assertion that the ingame economy is balanced around gems to gold conversion is flat out wrong.

define irony: small guilds complaining about being denied content, and then larger guilds are now complaining in many, many threads about the costs of scribing their precious ‘large guild’ shinys.

Sounds like large guilds thought they were going to get handed everything right off the bat. Sounds like they should make more friends and absorb more people to grind out the scribing skills…

PopeUrban.2578:

Kamara.4187:

PopeUrban.2578:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

PopeUrban.2578:

Kamara.4187:

PopeUrban.2578:

Kamara.4187:

PopeUrban.2578:

What I’m saying is absolutely true. Guild systems were not designed to make solo bank guilds, or provide “duos” with banners and the like in the first place. The revamped system simply reinforces the idea that a “small guild” is intended to be at least a party’s worth of players, and even then is extremely generous with those requirements, allowing use and progress of all systems to be done solo, including guild missions. You will make progress no matter your size, you simply won’t make it as fast. In this respect it is no different than the old system.

If you can PUG for a dungeon, or a fractal, or LFG for a map taxi, you can do the same one time for a guild hall. I’ll personally help you with this if you can’t find anyone else.

You can still get banners. They’re just more expensive. If you had banners unlocked before, go buy them with favor in the guild initiative. If you didn’t, go level a guild hall and a scribe like any size guild also has to.

Again, the difference in the new system is that you have to put in the work wheras in the old system you didn’t have to put in any work and just got influence and the selection of things it provided on top of the rewards you already got for playing content.

That system, as I’ve said repeatedly, was broken and skewed extremely in the favor of guilds with massive player rosters. Now the only thing skewed in the favor of those guilds is progression speed but not the ability to progress or the ability to actually utilize earned upgrades

Funny thing is I don’t recall reading “anywhere” that such changes were being applied to the game when I pre-ordered HOT (4 Copies I might add for the whole family).

Had I known prior, it would have influenced my decision…and saved me a few bucks.

There are some really cool things about the expansion that I do like, but the truth be told I’ve not even bothered to log in for close to a week now because it seems like everything with HOT has slanted or nerfed things in such a way as to funnel players “more towards buying gems”….

I don’t know about the rest of you but I’m over getting into a game just to see my time and investment turned upside down by an industry that can’t even be bothered to include us in the loop before making dramatic changes.

Its time for players to have some protections. We are after all what determines the success or failure of a game.

The argument that ingame economic decision are made from the lens of encouraging people to buy gems is just plain wrong due to the basic nature of the gem exchange.

Specifically, the more people that buy gems and convert them to gold, the cheaper it becomes to buy gems with gold.

No amount of nerfing gold gain or increasing gold costs encourages or rewards converting gems to gold.

With admin privileges and a couple of key strokes I’m sure any of that can be altered just like in every other MMO that has admin functions for economy adjustments..
not to mention there is nothing balancing, devaluing, or adjusting those dollars they are taking in. Its pure profit.

With admin priveledes and a couple keystrokes they could send also charge your preferred payment method thusands of dollars, sell your personal details to a number of direct avertising firms, or delete everything on your account, strip you naked, and jump your characters off a fatal cliff.

Yet they don’t.

If the basis of your argument is “well they could do something underhanded” that’s not really much of an argument.

Do you apply the same logic to every service which you pay for and every product you buy, or is it reserved for this one specifically?

or delete everything on your account, strip you naked, and jump your characters off a fatal cliff.

Yet they don’t.

Lol. Not your best example of what they won’t do to you, since they did do it to one guy. He “deserved” it, but still. ANet will do it if they decide to. :P
Character stripped naked, jumped off cliff, then deleted

I was specifically referencing that (hilarious) event actually.

Greed has no bounds, which is why regulations are applied sooner or later. In fact its already happened in some nations that recognized their people were being taken advantage of. My example is forsaken world. The game milks the heck out of players.

Funny thing is the game is in fact a product of China. While the players of China are protected from many of the fleecing game mechanics in Forsaken World, those same rules don’t apply to their U.S. or Euro markets…Which are bending players over the cash register at every turn….

“Free to play games” have turned into a one trick pony that always leads the player down a path of walls and obstacles that strongly encourage players to open their wallets.

Which is another gripe of mine. When you actually purchase a game up front you shouldn’t find trash mechanics like that in the back bone of the games economy.

I don’t blame Anet for this. I loved GW1 and with GW2 they created a beautiful world with many amazing new concepts. They have my respect here.

However I do blame those that hijacked the game out from under them. Their history and hand is all over the vampiric squeeze towards the paywall….

On the same note I realize you are a huge fan and you don’t agree with any negative remark made towards the game. I respect that, but by the same token I am entitled to my views and opinion, and I strongly feel that I’m either close or on the right track till proven otherwise.

I don’t know if you’ve checked my post history, but I agree with a large number of negative points about the game.

Attempting to discredit me as a “white Knight” whos feedback and opinions are thus valueless doesn’t address the point, nor does using a completely separate game and company to back up yours.

They do push people to open their wallets, and they do so by a quite frankly overpriced gem store which sucks most of the art assets and rewards from being avaliable ingame to being microtransactions. The amount of new “rewards” added to the gem store compred to the rewards added to the base game is, quite frankly, a disgustingly heavy amount of lean on the cash shop for a game that just released a fifty dollar expansion. RNG cash shop boxes are a similarly disgusting and predatory microtransaction tactic that only persists because poeple are dumb enough to buy them.

However!

Anet does a great job of having their overblow microtransactions set up in such a way that they don’t measurable impact the ability to play and succeed in the game itself, which is why it’s one of the only games that I still tolerate despite the heavy handed lean on the gem store.

However, the assertion that the ingame economy is balanced around gems to gold conversion is flat out wrong.

No I didn’t look up your post history, but yes I did assume you were a “white Knight” having ran into other post by you on the forum. To be quite frank I had to take pause when I read an actual negative statement from you concerning the game LOL.

First I never said I believed the entire game wrapped around gem/gold exchange. I do however strongly feel that with HOT players are being “squeezed harder” making purchasing gems to exchange for gold more attractive.

My mention of “another game” was an example of regulation and non regulation being applied to a player base and how it differs in a positive and negative way.

When I just started playing GW2, which wasn’t that long ago. I blew a pretty penny fast tracking my avatars. I was crazy in-love with the game. Especially with WvW.

My investment extended to purchasing it for friends and family (x7 all together).
It was something we could all do together as a family.

The significance’s of this need was made even more personal because after this year my eldest son will be leaving home to go off to collage. So yes my tiny family makes a very tiny guild, and while Anet may have had their reasons to change things to the way they have, their reasons don’t usurp the very real reason of why I was originally sold on the game and purchased then pre ordered it. To say I’m disappointed with the changes that HOT brought to the table is an understatement.

I wasn’t looking for the worlds help when I invested in GW2 for all of us, I was simply looking for fun things that we could engage in, and accomplish as a family.

They need to up the aetherium cap and balance the upgrade costs based on the time it takes to produce. The mine upgrades should just be for high tier stuff and if you want upgrades completed faster.
I.e a very basic arena should be capable without too much of a grind. Add arena size, capacity and structures as things that would require more people/farming.

Kamara.4187:

I wasn’t looking for the worlds help when I invested in GW2 for all of us, I was simply looking for fun things that we could engage in, and accomplish as a family.

Sorry, but that’s not how ArenaNet thinks you should play the game.

You are still quite free to play it their way, however.

But only their way.

I’m in a small guild and maybe about 30 that regularly do events with us and we wrecked the GH fee/claiming with about 20-25 people.

I consider that a small guild, and it was really no trouble for us. 100G for 25 people is like 2 of the easiest dungeon runs a day for 3 days. Favors idk how we got, and I contributed 0 to that so they still accomplished it with 1 less person.

The claiming itself was easy also. 3 groups of 8 or 4 groups of 6 roaming around an area and you’re good.

Not trying to be rude but if you couldn’t do this that means you are either in a smaller guild or not trying at all. That being said, how small is your guild for you to find this hard?

The upgrades themselves are a bit tougher as they require more gold and farming, but we’re grinding them as we speak so no complaints here.

mulzi.8273:

define irony: small guilds complaining about being denied content, and then larger guilds are now complaining in many, many threads about the costs of scribing their precious ‘large guild’ shinys.

Sounds like large guilds thought they were going to get handed everything right off the bat. Sounds like they should make more friends and absorb more people to grind out the scribing skills…

First thing first, can you show me the threads that large guilds are complaining about scribing cost because I certainly did not read any scribing threads with people proclaiming they are of guild of whatever size. That led me to another question, are you trying to spread hate?

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Vayne.8563:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Yes. Let’s have every single char in game a member of a huge, anonymous guild where few care if you are there or not or if you get kicked, just so that guild halls can be built.

I’m sorry but you don’t need to be in a guild of 500 where no one cares to have and upgrade a guild hall. There’s a huge difference between 5 and 500. 50 is between those numbers and some of the closest knit groups I’ve been in have been 50 man guilds.

I’m in a guild of 200 with 100 reguilars and a core of about 30-50 people who are very close and very welcoming. We go out of our way to help new people integrate into the guild, and some of them stay and become core members, if they like what they see.

Those people who choose to be part of the family are in fact part of the family. The idea that 50 people can’t be friends in an MMO is simply misguided.

I have a ton of friends on my guild and a few people I’m very close with. I’m not sure why you think you have to limit your guild to five to have friendships.

That was a sarcastic rejoinder to the OPs post where he said Let’s be honest in a large guild, if a person gets kicked not many people are gonna care. If its a higher up or an officer there may be some drama but people get over it.

(It’s also where the other poster’s comment about cesspool guilds is coming from)

Context Vayne, context.

Vayne needs more sleep and less forum time. My bad. lol

Eddie Mo.7169:

I’m in a small guild and maybe about 30 that regularly do events with us and we wrecked the GH fee/claiming with about 20-25 people.

I consider that a small guild, and it was really no trouble for us. 100G for 25 people is like 2 of the easiest dungeon runs a day for 3 days. Favors idk how we got, and I contributed 0 to that so they still accomplished it with 1 less person.

The claiming itself was easy also. 3 groups of 8 or 4 groups of 6 roaming around an area and you’re good.

Not trying to be rude but if you couldn’t do this that means you are either in a smaller guild or not trying at all. That being said, how small is your guild for you to find this hard?

The upgrades themselves are a bit tougher as they require more gold and farming, but we’re grinding them as we speak so no complaints here.

News flash 30 isn’t a “small” guild, that’s a normal mid sized guild, or what would be considered a big guild in wvw 25+, 5-10 people is a small guild. The cost or effort to claim is not the problem with guild halls, it’s the massive grind for upgrades that’s obviously much easier on bigger guilds.