Guild Wars 2

I like how some people are trying to imply that 20 to 50 “active” players is a small guild. That is not a small guild at all. That is, at worst, a medium sized guild… A small guild, by definition, is a size on the lower end of the spectrum. In this case, 15 and under.

It doesn’t matter how many people are in a guild. They should all have access to the same content. As it is they do not.

This is not about Ferrarris or the game economy or how easy it was for someone else to blow through guild hall requirements. This is about smaller groups of people not only not having access to features they earned and could use a few weeks ago, but also cannot earn new ones because of seemingly unnecessary and arbitrary changes that were made.

Majic.4801:

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.

Lol, sadly it’s how stuff has been working now… the changes since those Feature Packs show it very well… -_-

GreyWolf.8670:

It doesn’t matter how many people are in a guild. They should all have access to the same content. As it is they do not.

This is not about Ferrarris or the game economy or how easy it was for someone else to blow through guild hall requirements. This is about smaller groups of people not only not having access to features they earned and could use a few weeks ago, but also cannot earn new ones because of seemingly unnecessary and arbitrary changes that were made.

I don’t know how many times I have to say this.

The new system is massively more friendly to small guilds due to the permanent nature of unlocks.

Did you seriously enjoy a system in which you could produce at best buffs for one weekend a month and maybe two failure chances for guild missions a week?

You have sticker shock from the upfront cost of upgrades, but in the overall life span of your guild the new system is massively cheaper for much larger overall benefit for small guilds.

That is a completely inarguable point.

The new system in terms of actually acquiring upgrades is no different than the old. It is easier and faster to progress by having more members actively contributing to it financially. Where you had old upgrades, you can still use them and got massive savings in material costs for having them. Have you seen how much those banner, siege, and bank unlocks cost now? upgrades you already have because you alreadu unlocked them in the old system, and can actually use before unlocking their prerequisites?

If I were a new guild, today, i couldn’t be building a single consumable due to the upgrade level of my structures. My old upgrades were grandfathered in. I can still absolutely produce and use all of them. The only thing anyone at all lost was the broken, old, constant time and influence sink of the old buff system, which, quite frankly, was absolutely unusable by small guilds.

@PopeUrban: That argument is very tired. I could make banners two weeks ago. Now I cannot. I’m done with this as far as you’re concerned.

GreyWolf.8670:

@PopeUrban: That argument is very tired. I could make banners two weeks ago. Now I cannot. I’m done with this as far as you’re concerned.

Yes. You can. Walk in to the guild initiative. Talk to the NPC. You now have a banner for favor.

Do another guild mission, go get more banners.

What you can’t do is get banners for doing nothing and if that’s what you’re complaining about then yes, you’re right. You don’t get guild rewards without investing any effort whatsoever in them any more. I’m sorry you feel that that was a better system.

Your argument is based on the idea that a system of passive rewards was somehow better or more engaging than a system of active rewards, but you phrase it as if you’ve been locked out of something. You haven’t. Stop saying that you have.

You’re mad that it is harder for you to get something that was trivial to acquire before. There is not a single banner that you had the ability to make before that you can’t make without even claiming a guild hall now.

PopeUrban.2578:

I don’t know how many times I have to say this.

The new system is massively more friendly to small guilds due to the permanent nature of unlocks.

Oh, keep repeating what you’ve been repeating for the last 4 days. The last system had permanent unlocks (of a different variety). Until Anet threw it all away with HoT because it suited them. When will they decide to throw it all away again?

End of your argument, really. An argument that lots of people disagree with, anyway. With good reason. So will you stop repeating it? I doubt it…

Ok, I’m offering a solution: Make it so that all adjustments can be bought in the gem store as well as by playing the content. This would satisfy most small guilds and offers Anet some profit too…

Raedwulf.3712:

PopeUrban.2578:

I don’t know how many times I have to say this.

The new system is massively more friendly to small guilds due to the permanent nature of unlocks.

Oh, keep repeating what you’ve been repeating for the last 4 days. The last system had permanent unlocks (of a different variety). Until Anet threw it all away with HoT because it suited them. When will they decide to throw it all away again?

End of your argument, really. An argument that lots of people disagree with, anyway. With good reason. So will you stop repeating it? I doubt it…

The only permanent unlocks in the old system were bank upgrades and a few merchants. All other upgrades required a constant expenditure of influence to actually use. They were not permanent unlocks. You did not simply unlock and guild mission or buff and have the ability to use it. You unlocked the ability to produce consumables, that were consumed, that you had to produce again in a never ending cycle of influence expenditure, and for each unlock you required more and more influence to actually use all of your unlocks at once.

It was a system that became more expensive to actually use the more of it you unlocked, assuming you were using all your unlocks, but your rate of influence gain did not increase according to that cost. it was a system of fixed influence earning with ever-increasing influence cost.

I don’t know how it is possible to dispute that fact.

The new system does not have this problem except for the actual consumables like banners and tactics.

You can actually use all of your upgrades in the new system

You could not use all of your upgrades in the old system. You had to pick and choose between them, based upon the activity level and roster size of your guild

Albadaran.1283:

Ok, I’m offering a solution: Make it so that all adjustments can be bought in the gem store as well as by playing the content. This would satisfy most small guilds and offers Anet some profit too…

I wanted to “LOL” at first, but you may be on to something. The price in mats has to be in the thousands. Guilds could hold RL fundraisers at their local K-Mart. Have some kids? Make mo’money! mo’money! mo’money!

Must remember to have the annoying bell that the Salvation Army uses as well. Along with the bell, a terrible Santa Claus outfit, since it tis the season. People will give you money over fist, to shut off that bell. Guaranteed!

People complaining about complaining . seems legit ….

Atharian.7092:

I like how some people are trying to imply that 20 to 50 “active” players is a small guild. That is not a small guild at all. That is, at worst, a medium sized guild… A small guild, by definition, is a size on the lower end of the spectrum. In this case, 15 and under.

My standard

10 and less = tiny
20 to 100 = small
200 to 300 = medium
400 to 500 = large
multi sister guilds = huge

btw, what is the source of that definition when you say lower end of spectrum? how you define the lower end of spectrum? did you draw a spectrum graph? base on what info did you used to draw the spectrum graph?

PopeUrban.2578:

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.

(Not sure how this is relevant to the topic, but will react on it anyway.)

Depends really. In an MMO hunting down cosmetic items is a big part of what many players like to do. This MMO is completely skin-bases / about horizontal progression so has those people as target audience.

If you then put most or best skins behind a pay-wall then that does effect the game-play enormously.

Sure you can still get them but by a lot of grinding for gold.

If you happen to like grind, or you are not into skins then the approach they take is great as it does not affect you negatively, maybe even positively. If you however like collecting skins ankitten ot a active gold grinder then it impacts the game enormously. The game-play of going for those skins directly has effectively for the biggest part been removed from the game for you.

HoT did make positive steps here. For example this year’s Halloween skins you could earn in-game, while the only rewards you could really effetely work towards where the Tattered Wings, not the skins. Also precursor-crafting crafting (while it seems that still has some issues), Legendary armor and mats for specific maps are steps in the right direction.

But I can’t say it don’t measurable impact the ability to play, because depending on your preferred game-play is measurably does extremely impact that ability.

One example: Hunting down mini’s is for most mini’s in this game only possible by grinding gold to buy them, or buying them with cash. There are some rewarded for achievements or special content (like Liadri) but even some of them are not viable to go for directly and grinding gold is still your main option.

You can compare that to some other games where most mini’s are available as quest rewards, or from dungeons or cheap vendor sales or mob-drops.

That is a clearly measurable difference and if you happen to prefer directly hunting down mini’s in game by doing quest, killing mobs, doing dungeons then that seriously effects your ability to play as you want.

Going back to the topic.
Like I said, I think that overall halls are fine, for smaller and bigger guilds. Smaller guilds should just focus on one or some elements of the hall instead of expecting to upgrading all, and also expect to have those unlocked in the same time as a large guild takes to fully upgrade the hall (according to Anet 6 to 9 months, while I feel the fastest is more like 2 months, but that’s another discussion).

However, while I did think they were completely fine for smaller guilds before I might have been mistaken there a little. Because there is one element that messes with what I say here, and that is the XP.

Let’s say as smaller guild you want to purely focus on the Work-shop. I did not do the math bas as far as I know, some of the highest tier upgrades are directly or indirectly not available without getting to level 40. But by only leveling the mine and the workshop you will likely not get up to level 40. That would require you to also start upgrading other things effectively removing your ability to focus on specific parts of the hall.

While I think the level system is good for some things, XP seems to go on a good rate and things like guild-hall-expansion should be locked behind a level 40 guild. I also think that they might want to drop the required level for other upgrades giving smaller guilds the ability to focus on parts of the guild-hall.

Basically it should be possible to only unlocks the mine and the Arena, or the mine and the tavern or the mine and the work-station by lowering the required levels for their upgrades. That should help the smaller guilds. But other than this change I think everything is indeed fine for smaller and bigger guilds.

I’m MG in my small and lovely guild and I don’t want a full and free Hall Guild. It’s not that we claim.
On GW1, I was MG in the same small guild and i remember that the hall was very expensive for us. But with the time (and gold coins!), we have bought all the ameliorations. It was possible but slowly -because we have done the choice to be small-.

On GW2, before HoT,create banners or ameliorations required points of influence. We won this points with lot of patience, account’s connexions and many activities (together or alone). But it was possible to be a small guild and to have fun like big guilds,it just took time. No problems. It was our choice for our confort.

Since HoT, the only way to gain points of favor is to play missions guild, that’s sometimes impossible for small guild by lack of online players.
So… do you suggest us to leave our small guild and joining a biggest? It’s your solution? Are you serious? Do you think the fun of this game is to have only big guilds? One model? One gameplay?

Having a guild hall is a privilege. Right. We have bought the extension for it, so we should have the right to obtain it too. No preference about the cost in gold coins, this system existed on GW1 and veterants players knew that. Small guilds must be patients to complete their hall.
But WHY it needs points of favor who can only be won on missions guild? Why only this way?

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.

My guild have 10 active members. We unlocked Arena II two days ago.
What can’t you do?

PopeUrban.2578

The only permanent unlocks in the old system…

You still don’t get it, do you? What people had (not consumables that they’d made, stuff they’d earned & unlocked that allowed them to do other things. such as making those consumables.) has been taken away. They thought it was permanent. Now they have to go through a far bigger grind to unlock AGAIN what they had access to before. And what you claim is “permanent” now could just as easily be taken away in the future, if Anet decide another complete re-vamp of the guild system is necessary (or just funny).

And if you understand nothing else, understand this. I don’t really care about the guild stuff. My own guild consists of me (my Raid Alliance from another game tried GW2, didn’t take to it, and I can’t be bothered to recruit). My GW2 guild has around 20-25 active players. I have no say in what happens with the in-game guild mechanics, mostly because I don’t want any authority (been there, done that). I do care about bad arguments & people not listening.

You can keep can repeating yourself until you froth at the mouth and fall over backwards. And then, a la Monty Python, you can become a candidate for Tory MP. I’m sure you’ll do swimmingly. Those that bother to read the thread know your opinion by know; those that don’t you won’t reach by repeating the same thing over & over. If you see what I mean.

Other players’ opinions differ from yours, and they’re not happy. You won’t make them happier by repeatedly insisting that they’re wrong.

carythanis.7940:

I’m MG in my small and lovely guild and I don’t want a full and free Hall Guild. It’s not that we claim.
On GW1, I was MG in the same small guild and i remember that the hall was very expensive for us. But with the time (and gold coins!), we have bought all the ameliorations. It was possible but slowly -because we have done the choice to be small-.

On GW2, before HoT,create banners or ameliorations required points of influence. We won this points with lot of patience, account’s connexions and many activities (together or alone). But it was possible to be a small guild and to have fun like big guilds,it just took time. No problems. It was our choice for our confort.

Since HoT, the only way to gain points of favor is to play missions guild, that’s sometimes impossible for small guild by lack of online players.
So… do you suggest us to leave our small guild and joining a biggest? It’s your solution? Are you serious? Do you think the fun of this game is to have only big guilds? One model? One gameplay?

Having a guild hall is a privilege. Right. We have bought the extension for it, so we should have the right to obtain it too. No preference about the cost in gold coins, this system existed on GW1 and veterants players knew that. Small guilds must be patients to complete their hall.
But WHY it needs points of favor who can only be won on missions guild? Why only this way?

There are also small mission doable for a small group of payers. You will make slower progress (however, you said that was not a problem) because you cannot do all missions available. But you can still make progress. or what am I missing?

Devata.6589:

There are also small mission doable for a small group of payers. You will make slower progress (however, you said that was not a problem) because you cannot do all missions available. But you can still make progress. or what am I missing?

Maybe it’s possible to change the configuration of my missions guild. I red some answers and it seems to be configurable (i think i have found, i will see at the next reset). We have a guild level 5.

Before the last reset, i remember i was (1) one pvp mission (2) one ww mission (3) one pve mission. (2) and (3) required 10 people (advice by Arenet). (1) only 3, so we have tried to do the pvp mission… OMG… it was…very painfull, and i have a think for our 4th player who joined us as automatical pick-up…
Actually, now, we have only 2 pve missions guild available. The rush is lock and no pvp or ww missions guild appears. Oo"

(sorry for my english, it’s not my native language)

I am in a small WvW main guild on piken has 4 active players we are all close friends, and we have had a great time with the new GMs, the GH and the GH upgrades ofc we are fairly far behind most other guilds but that doesn’t matter. For our GH we asked a few of our piken friends to help us cap guilded hallow, we had a great hour or so on TS. I think people are trying to rush the content rather than just enjoying at your own pace. Chill out people have fun

Xenesis.6389:

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.

Okay I guess that’s a big guild to you, to me I feel it’s very small since we don’t really do much together. Most of the time it’s 10 MAYBE 15 but that 30 is like asking all active players to come on at the same time.

If that’s big then there are crazy huge guilds with like 100-300 active players on at a time.

But that doesn’t really matter I’ll just go with what you’re saying and say a small guild is 5-10.

Now does that mean there’s a solution? Hardly because if they did upgrades based on guild size then they’d just kick everyone and pay the minimum before adding everyone again.

Then there’s another solution which is to pay rent according to guild size. Now that’s going to kitten a lot of people off.

I can’t see anymore possible or reasonable solutions but I would like to hear proposals.

PopeUrban.2578:

GreyWolf.8670:

@PopeUrban: That argument is very tired. I could make banners two weeks ago. Now I cannot. I’m done with this as far as you’re concerned.

Yes. You can. Walk in to the guild initiative. Talk to the NPC. You now have a banner for favor.

Which NPC would that be? The Guild Requisitioner? He gives a message “This content has been temporarily disabled. Try again later.”

There needs to be a scribe trainer in the GIHQ if that’s going to be the intended location for people that can’t capture a guild hall. There is no way to learn the trade and craft without one.

That would be a start.

Auralae.7482:

PopeUrban.2578:

GreyWolf.8670:

@PopeUrban: That argument is very tired. I could make banners two weeks ago. Now I cannot. I’m done with this as far as you’re concerned.

Yes. You can. Walk in to the guild initiative. Talk to the NPC. You now have a banner for favor.

Which NPC would that be? The Guild Requisitioner? He gives a message “This content has been temporarily disabled. Try again later.”

Then try again later?

Last two times I spoke with him he worked fine.

Complaining that the NPC is down for an adjustment is not the same as claiming “all my ability to use my old unlocks is gone forever”

And, honestly, every single post that parrots the same false assertion, that people can’t use their upgrades, has the same problem.

Sure, be upset that your access is temporarily suspended That’s a legitimate complaint and I agree with you. I’d like to know why he got temporarily disabled as I’ve used him as a source for banners while that horribly untested scribe is missing key components to actually produce banners. (Which, incidentally, is a far larger issue that actually blocks a production method for several things including tactics and decorations in addition to banners.)

However, this is just like when they temp disabled karma vendors or various other things. It’s as likely he’s being rewords to be even cheaper as it is he’s headed for the scrap heap. They didn’t go to the trouble of adding the NPC just to delete him a week later.

Using a temporary outage as a justification to rage against the entire system is just plain short sighted and silly.

GreyWolf.8670:

There needs to be a scribe trainer in the GIHQ if that’s going to be the intended location for people that can’t capture a guild hall. There is no way to learn the trade and craft without one.

That would be a start.

There’s no reason to learn the trade and craft without a guild hall. If you had upgrades from the old system, you buy them with favor, or any guild member can buy the consumable versions with guild commendations, regardless of unlock status, and do so far more frequently given -every guild_ has the ability to run at least three missions a week for commendations without a single upgrade. The only guild-centric things scribe makes that are exclusive to scribe are decorations, which are useless without a guild hall, and whos acquisition is heavily tied to guild hall upgrades. The other stuff is the backpack, which isn’t the point of leveling any profession, or tradable consumables so expensive they’re not worth crafting in the first place for the buffs they give.

If you’re a new guild without previous unlocks, then you already have HoT and thus the ability to acquire a guild hall.

The funny thing is, the non-scribing options are actually far easier, cheaper, and faster ways to acquire these consumables than crafting them with a scribe. I know this because I am a scribe.

Raedwulf.3712:

PopeUrban.2578

The only permanent unlocks in the old system…

You still don’t get it, do you? What people had (not consumables that they’d made, stuff they’d earned & unlocked that allowed them to do other things. such as making those consumables.) has been taken away. They thought it was permanent. Now they have to go through a far bigger grind to unlock AGAIN what they had access to before. And what you claim is “permanent” now could just as easily be taken away in the future, if Anet decide another complete re-vamp of the guild system is necessary (or just funny).

And if you understand nothing else, understand this. I don’t really care about the guild stuff. My own guild consists of me (my Raid Alliance from another game tried GW2, didn’t take to it, and I can’t be bothered to recruit). My GW2 guild has around 20-25 active players. I have no say in what happens with the in-game guild mechanics, mostly because I don’t want any authority (been there, done that). I do care about bad arguments & people not listening.

You can keep can repeating yourself until you froth at the mouth and fall over backwards. And then, a la Monty Python, you can become a candidate for Tory MP. I’m sure you’ll do swimmingly. Those that bother to read the thread know your opinion by know; those that don’t you won’t reach by repeating the same thing over & over. If you see what I mean.

Other players’ opinions differ from yours, and they’re not happy. You won’t make them happier by repeatedly insisting that they’re wrong.

You totally have a right to your opinion. However, stating as fact something that is absolutely untrue as the central basis to this type of argument is something I’m not going to shut up about because that misinformation seems to spread like wildfire.

Some people have very valid arguments or preferences. Some people don’t like permanent unlocks or working for their upgrades in the new system. Some people don’t like that they have to do guild missions to get stuff now. Those are opinions. People don’t like that guild and guild halls require direct effort now. That’s fine. I understand that certain people preferred the passive and effortless system we had previously.

The WvW players have the best legs to stand on. Their ability to actually acquire and use the entire tactics system is extremely slanted toward not doing wvw related activites because wvw rewards weren’t revamped along with the tactics and scribing systems.

Stating that you lost access to old upgrades is not an opinion. It’s is a straight up false statement. If its your only beef with the new system, than you’re upset for literally no reason.

Well, we’ve got somewhere, Pope. However, it seems to be you stating as fact that the new system is better for small guilds, whereas many other posters state as a fact that it isn’t. So maybe your facts are, like theirs, just an opinion?

And as I’ve already said, I’ve no real interest in the guild mechanics. I have a guild hall, courtesy of assistance from my bigger guild (they get to see what the other guild hall looks like first hand! ). It’ll take me forever to get anywhere with it, since there’s only me to progress it. Such is life. I never did anything much with my own guild under the old mechanics. Beef? Not me, guv!

Raedwulf.3712:

Well, we’ve got somewhere, Pope. However, it seems to be you stating as fact that the new system is better for small guilds, whereas many other posters state as a fact that it isn’t. So maybe your facts are, like theirs, just an opinion?

And as I’ve already said, I’ve no real interest in the guild mechanics. I have a guild hall, courtesy of assistance from my bigger guild (they get to see what the other guild hall looks like first hand! ). It’ll take me forever to get anywhere with it, since there’s only me to progress it. Such is life. I never did anything much with my own guild under the old mechanics. Beef? Not me, guv!

From a purely factual standpoint, it is though. I’ve pretty meticulously laid out why. Influence costs scaled up as you unlocked things, but earning did not. Your ability to use your upgrades depended heavily on having larger guild populations and more highly active players on a daily basis.

The new system’s permanent unlocks only require an initial investment.

Look at it this way. Your guild starts with maybe 25 people, you do a bunch of upgrades via influence, then all but 5 people quit, and of those five only two play daily and the other 3 only on weekends.

In the old system, your “small guild” can’t use its upgrades unless they constantly dumped gold in to influence every week forever.

In the new one, your “small guild” can happily use all of the upgrades they helped earn.

Will it take a small guild longer to earn the unlocks? Yes. However this was true of the old system as well, in in terms of the old system it was actually worse as progress past a certain point was gated by merits, which you had to get from 2 target bounties, which were absolutely impossible to do with less than 8 players in most circumstances, and furthermore failing those bounties actually cost you influence.

In the new system the “easy” level missions are toned down to be achievable by 1-5 players depending on mission, and the zero cost design allows multiple attempts so you’re not “stuck” when failing a few times because you ran out if inf or merit and now can’t progress until next week. The upgrade costs are still fixed (just as they were in the influence system) but with the changed from merits to favor and the new free guild mission system, actual barriers to progress for small guilds were removed.

These are all statements of fact, not opinion.

Under the old system, the influence to get +5 supply was easily maintained by one player logging regularly. Multiple players did it in the past. The grind to unlock it was able to be done by a group of five or less in a very reasonable amount of time.

And to be honest, this is the only upgrade a small havoc guild really cared about. Everything else is a nice to have but not a priority.

The material cost under the new system to unlock +5 is am incredibly onerous burden for a guild of five to ten, which is how large most havoc guilds are. I am counting active players, not players who are on your roster and barely play at all or with the guild.

For this situation, it is definitely worse.

I had a guildie tell me we should be set on mitral ingots for a while because he had 1000. I told him that will get just one major upgrade we need.

The material wall is extremely high.

PopeUrban.2578:

From a purely factual standpoint, it is though. I’ve pretty meticulously laid out why. Influence costs scaled up as you unlocked things, but earning did not. Your ability to use your upgrades depended heavily on having larger guild populations and more highly active players on a daily basis.

{snip}

These are all statements of fact, not opinion.

Ummm… No, they’re not really. Banner A cost X. Much better Banner B cost Y. Think, oh, XP banner vs Heroes banner or something. The item costs were fixed, not scaled. Those are facts. They had nothing to do with the guild size. If you’d unlocked the pre-requisites & you had the influence, you could buy them.

Whether you think that’s better or worse than the system now? That’s opinion.

If you were a small guild, and you had & you did… You can’t now. Anet took that away. You’ve got to go through a huge grind to unlock the ability to purchase those consumables now; consumables that you had access to before. Now, once you’ve done that, it might well be that the cost for the consumable is the same whether you’re small or huge; X number of Y materials. But for Banner B, which you had access to prior to HoT, you have a kittening great wall to climb over to get the access that you had already unlocked once… Hard for a small guild.

Now that I understand your point a bit better, I think nothing has really changed. Instead of the wall of “I have access to this but need X amount to make it”, we have a wall of “I need X amount to access this, and then I can make it”. That isn’t easier for a small guild, it just puts the same effort in a different, earlier place. If you see what I mean?

Raedwulf.3712:

PopeUrban.2578:

From a purely factual standpoint, it is though. I’ve pretty meticulously laid out why. Influence costs scaled up as you unlocked things, but earning did not. Your ability to use your upgrades depended heavily on having larger guild populations and more highly active players on a daily basis.

{snip}

These are all statements of fact, not opinion.

Ummm… No, they’re not really. Banner A cost X. Much better Banner B cost Y. Think, oh, XP banner vs Heroes banner or something. The item costs were fixed, not scaled. Those are facts. They had nothing to do with the guild size. If you’d unlocked the pre-requisites & you had the influence, you could buy them.

Whether you think that’s better or worse than the system now? That’s opinion.

If you were a small guild, and you had & you did… You can’t now. Anet took that away. You’ve got to go through a huge grind to unlock the ability to purchase those consumables now; consumables that you had access to before. Now, once you’ve done that, it might well be that the cost for the consumable is the same whether you’re small or huge; X number of Y materials. But for Banner B, which you had access to prior to HoT, you have a kittening great wall to climb over to get the access that you had already unlocked once… Hard for a small guild.

Now that I understand your point a bit better, I think nothing has really changed. Instead of the wall of “I have access to this but need X amount to make it”, we have a wall of “I need X amount to access this, and then I can make it”. That isn’t easier for a small guild, it just puts the same effort in a different, earlier place. If you see what I mean?

No, you don’t have to go through a grind to unlock them if you already had them unlocked. That’s the central point of misinformation I keep seeing.

The acquisition method is only changed for guilds that didn’t already have access to these consumables.

If you had them unlocked previously, you walk in to the guild initiative, and hand the NPC some favor, though one poster has said that NPC is temporarily disabled, that’s how I have been spending all of the excess favor we don’t use for hall upgrades because it’s actually cheaper and faster than making them via the new scribing system, and that level of cheap and easy actually can’t be obtained by new guilds who hadn’t unlocked them in the old system.

It’s actually more slanted toward players with old unlocks having a permanent advantage compared to new players that have to either scribe or use the commendation trader.

The costs I mention are, specifically, for buffs and guild missions. banners haven’t changed in terms of how they scale with income, although they have been made more expensive across the board and tied to influence so that having a larger guild doesn’t equate to being able to generate more banners with favor. The favor cap is universal, and it doesn’t care how big your guild is. The old influence method directly translated to more banners, more often, because you had more guild members. If you had a banner unlocked before you still have it unlocked for purchase with favor at the guild initiative HQ in LA. You only need to do upgrades if you want to build it via scribing like a new guild would.

Additionally, the scribing method requires a fixed materials cost, meaning that no matter the size of your guild, if you want to scribe more banners, you need to spend a corresponding amount of resources. This scales linearly with the contribution of resources.

This means having a larger guild doesn’t automatically equate to using more banners more often. Doing so increases your cost, but also increases the required expenditure on a per member basis. The influence system didn’t require expenditure past a certain point. Influence was just generated from thin air just for having guild members tag up and play the game. once your membership hit a certain point, you were simply generating enough to roll out banners and buffs without any effort or coordination.

The new system requires effort, coordination, or both to acquire consumables and upgrades. It caps favor gain specifically to level the playing field between guild sizes for favor based purchases, and it requires hard materials to level the cost/benefit ratios for scribed consumables. if you want to constantly run banners for a large guild in multiple places and zones, you are paying more, and earning the same. In the influence system you were paying more, but you passively gained influence just for having enough people to need to do so.

In effect, all banners now work like the high tier ones that previously required merits. You can only generate a limited number for “free” per week because of the caps on favor gain. The rest, you need to pay for, either as an individual with commendations, or as a group with resources.

You have not, however, lost access to any upgrades you previously had. The only thing you need to get hall upgrades for are the ability to scribe them, which is actually new and thus requires advancement in the new unlock system.

If you had progress toward an unlock and hadn’t yet completed it, yeah, you don’t have that progress any more, and will never get it back. I suggest saving the inf to convert it to resonance later to speed up banner ques when you gain access to the new thing that you didn’t have before through scribing.

As for the wvw systems, yeah, that was mismanaged and is unfair in its material requirements compared to the actual income of playing wvw.

As per several other comments… why in the world do people who are happy with how things are bother to come onto the forums to complain about people who are wishing for updates that would not affect the game experience of those who are already happy?

Honestly, it can only benefit you if things are changed to meet the complaints. You won’t face people complaining about the same thing all the time, for one. And then you won’t need to take the effort to complain about people complaining any more.

Swift.1930:

As per several other comments… why in the world do people who are happy with how things are bother to come onto the forums to complain about people who are wishing for updates that would not affect the game experience of those who are already happy?

Honestly, it can only benefit you if things are changed to meet the complaints. You won’t face people complaining about the same thing all the time, for one. And then you won’t need to take the effort to complain about people complaining any more.

Often it isn’t about what’s better for a single poster. it would be better for me, personally, if I could unlock every skin in the game and every dye color just by logging in today.

It would, however, be horrible for the game as a whole.

MMOs are not about the experience of single players exclusively. They are about how those experiences add value to and interact with the experiences of all of the other players, both new and old.

This is why people have forum discussions about things, and they’re often pretty productive and occasionally useful to developers.

If every player of an MMO got what they thought they wanted, that MMO would be dead in a week. Players are selfish and often uncaring or ignorant of the long term consequences of their personal desires on the overall health of the game.

It all seems quite transparent to me. I understand the dynamics of a large guild and a small guild differ greatly but its all based on the same principals. Large guilds didn’t get that way by half assing it, they had to recruit and even to some extents make it worth a players while to join (I have been in a few guilds over the 3 years I’ve played). Guilds seem to be just 1 gold away from anyone who is anyone from creating one. So what. Just cause you can make one doesn’t mean you know how to manage one. If you are a small guild and you are having troubles building your hall (Home) for your family then you have 1 of 2 options …. get out there and put the work into growing your family or stop complaining about it. If you want to keep your family small then you are going to have to accept the time its going to take you to get to where the large guilds already are. This topic has been covered over and over … so instead of complaining on the forums use your time to get out there and work for what you want.

PopeUrban.2578:

Swift.1930:

As per several other comments… why in the world do people who are happy with how things are bother to come onto the forums to complain about people who are wishing for updates that would not affect the game experience of those who are already happy?

Honestly, it can only benefit you if things are changed to meet the complaints. You won’t face people complaining about the same thing all the time, for one. And then you won’t need to take the effort to complain about people complaining any more.

Often it isn’t about what’s better for a single poster. it would be better for me, personally, if I could unlock every skin in the game and every dye color just by logging in today.

It would, however, be horrible for the game as a whole.

MMOs are not about the experience of single players exclusively. They are about how those experiences add value to and interact with the experiences of all of the other players, both new and old.

This is why people have forum discussions about things, and they’re often pretty productive and occasionally useful to developers.

If every player of an MMO got what they thought they wanted, that MMO would be dead in a week. Players are selfish and often uncaring or ignorant of the long term consequences of their personal desires on the overall health of the game.

Aye, and I understand that; my point isn’t that everyone should be given everything for free (not like $60 USD is free, but this is, after all, an MMO), but rather that when something would not ruin the game on a whole is suggested, why should someone who is cozy and happy in his/her own gamespace go out of his/her way to create a rant?

(I mean, three years of Guild Wars 1 and three years of Guild Wars 2 and I didn’t even start to add my voice to the forum conversations until a couple of weeks ago, when Heart of Thorns made a gigantic mess by being more of a replacement than an expansion.)

PopeUrban.2578:

Raedwulf.3712:

PopeUrban.2578:

From a purely factual standpoint, it is though. I’ve pretty meticulously laid out why. Influence costs scaled up as you unlocked things, but earning did not. Your ability to use your upgrades depended heavily on having larger guild populations and more highly active players on a daily basis.

{snip}

These are all statements of fact, not opinion.

Ummm… No, they’re not really. Banner A cost X. Much better Banner B cost Y. Think, oh, XP banner vs Heroes banner or something. The item costs were fixed, not scaled. Those are facts. They had nothing to do with the guild size. If you’d unlocked the pre-requisites & you had the influence, you could buy them.

Whether you think that’s better or worse than the system now? That’s opinion.

If you were a small guild, and you had & you did… You can’t now. Anet took that away. You’ve got to go through a huge grind to unlock the ability to purchase those consumables now; consumables that you had access to before. Now, once you’ve done that, it might well be that the cost for the consumable is the same whether you’re small or huge; X number of Y materials. But for Banner B, which you had access to prior to HoT, you have a kittening great wall to climb over to get the access that you had already unlocked once… Hard for a small guild.

Now that I understand your point a bit better, I think nothing has really changed. Instead of the wall of “I have access to this but need X amount to make it”, we have a wall of “I need X amount to access this, and then I can make it”. That isn’t easier for a small guild, it just puts the same effort in a different, earlier place. If you see what I mean?

No, you don’t have to go through a grind to unlock them if you already had them unlocked. That’s the central point of misinformation I keep seeing.

The acquisition method is only changed for guilds that didn’t already have access to these consumables.

If you had them unlocked previously, you walk in to the guild initiative, and hand the NPC some favor, though one poster has said that NPC is temporarily disabled, that’s how I have been spending all of the excess favor we don’t use for hall upgrades because it’s actually cheaper and faster than making them via the new scribing system, and that level of cheap and easy actually can’t be obtained by new guilds who hadn’t unlocked them in the old system.

You keep repeating that and it’s not true. My guild and many other guilds like mine had +5 supplies unlocked and it’s gone now unless we get a guild hall and grind out all the upgrades to get it back. I can try talking to that temporarily disabled npc till I’m blue in the face, he won’t be giving me back my upgrade even though I had it unlocked.

So maybe instead of repeating your “upgrades aren’t lost” mantra, how about you start reading what other people are saying to you? Not every player wants banners!

Also, not every player wants to have to grind some pve maps to get the materials needed for upgrading guilds halls (silverwastes shovels, anyone?). That’s why the old influence system was superior to what we have now – you could play the content you enjoyed and were still able to upgrade your guild. Now, if you don’t like pve, you’re out of luck. And you keep acting as if the players who complain about the new system were unreasonable.

Guild halls could have been a nice addition to GW2, but instead we got a system that seems to be purely designed to be a gold and time sink.

Guild halls aren’t just for large guilds.
If they were, then I’d imagine there would be an actual requirement to pertaining the hall like “you need 100 members participating to obtain the guild hal”
Alot of the things in the guild hall are cosmetic, just because you have a huge guild does not mean you will have a fully upgraded hall.
Small guilds can do exactly what big guilds do, only it might take them 10x longer, but it can be achieved, time willing.

Like many already mentioned in this post, you have to go and work harder if you want to compete with the large guilds’ upgrading speed. Otherwise, if you don’t care about competitions, you can simply take it slow. Apparently, a lot of the guilds want to compete with large guilds’ upgrading speed, in that case, prepare to burn pockets. It is no different from pre-HOT influecen, large guilds will always have more influence gain than smaller guild.

Of course, there are also many people who insist they are entitled to certain upgrades because they had it pre-HOT. Yes, you are indeed entitled, they are not removed but converted to scribing upgrade. You do not have to unlock them again unlike the new guilds which have to pay mats to upgrade it. Things that you are not entitled to are things that don’t exist pre-HOT like the scribe, the passive +5 buffs (is passive not active). The game has moved on, you can complain all you want and demand for things but deep down inside, you know that it is not gonna happen.

Most importantly, if you want the GMs to give you unlimited golds, unlimited resources cheat, god mode, etc. I think you are playing the wrong game.

I bought myself a guild charter thinking I’d get it just far enough to get storage out of it. Personally I don’t want a hall, at all I’m happy with my single solo guild being based in lions arch. How ever, in order to get my storage, I have to build a hall. to build the hall I have to do a mission once a week.
let me state again. I don’t want a hall. My complaint if I may add to this discussion is that I am required to build one in order to build a market, in order to get storage. I don’t want a guild hall, I don’t want a market or an arena, or any other of those perks.
Perhaps while we’re discussing peoples preferences we might acknowledge that some of us want some simple things that for us as individuals makes the games interesting to us and that we’re happy to let your bigger guilds get the bigger perks out of it.
I like to run the mission, I don’t mind that its one mission per week per account in the guild. I like to have an extra space with a few vendors that are already accessible to me. I want to put on my guild armor with my guild emblem and run around the world mental roleplaying my own game, my way. I want to put banners up in my little lions arch pseudo hall and play. I just want my guild bank access without having to build all the extra stuff I don’t want.

malachi.7503:

I bought myself a guild charter thinking I’d get it just far enough to get storage out of it. Personally I don’t want a hall, at all I’m happy with my single solo guild being based in lions arch. How ever, in order to get my storage, I have to build a hall. to build the hall I have to do a mission once a week.
let me state again. I don’t want a hall. My complaint if I may add to this discussion is that I am required to build one in order to build a market, in order to get storage.

Making personal storage very expensive and difficult to get was certainly deliberate. A lot of people (including me) have guilds that only exist to hold all our stuff, which is not the intended purpose of guild storage. I got it mostly for free, just playing by myself when I was between real guilds. Now the deep cave upgrade requires 100g and 2000 favor on top of everything else needed to get that far. That would have been onerous for my current small guild, forget doing it solo. Better to farm for more character slots.

Well. I am in a guild of 50 people. 10-30 online a day, Only 7 or so people have donated. We are a level 14 guild already.

I am in another guild from pre HoT for missions; there are 237 people. It is level 21.

I think my ‘small’ guild (as told by everyone who asks about it when advertising) is doing pretty kitten well thank you very much. Sure we don’t have everything unlocked. But like with influence based stuff pre-HoT. It takes time. People have to think about that.

Had worked our way up to a few boosts and had guild catapults going, no left over influence.

Can Pope tell me how I go about gaining influence and getting guild catapults now? Bear in mind we had these before, don’t play pve, and don’t have enough players to trigger and complete guild missions (and not interested if they are pve based).

As I see it the new guild system is just one big gate, much like the rest of the H0T expansion (with a nice bugged to hell story at the end).

Ill have you know my 2 man guild is working on our guild hall right now. And with a little work and time, it will be upgraded the way we see fit. Yeah maybe it will take 80x longer, but it will happen. So guild halls for everyone!

Small guilds aren’t the only ones complaining about guild halls. Large guilds complain about them, too. Why?

Because some of the requirements really are annoying and because everyone knows that in any large group of people, a small minority do all the work and the larger majority does nothing.

So, what do they do? Complain about things because if only 10 people in a group of 100 are really contributing, then it feels like a small guild. Or they force a tax on their non-officer members and the members leave because they want to use their money and items to do other things. Then the large guilds come and complain on the forums or in-game chat about losing members.

Either way, both sides are doing their fair share of complaining.

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?

Guild halls are suppose to be meant mainly for large guilds. Why? Incentive.
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. If its someone of the lower ranks the people kicking and many of the other members wouldn’t really care. This is the downside of a large guild who don’t have the emotional/personal incentive of a small guild.

Smaller guilds are a tightly knit unit that have grown strong bonds as they have grown attached to the other members as there only a few so its easy to know everyone and be friends with them. And you could have a fully upgraded guild too if you pulled enough money which was not hard to earn pre-HoT. So why join a large guild when you can be a small guild with your close friends? Benefits from the large guilds.

Large Guilds have numbers and vast amount of resources to back up their large numbers/presence. With the old guild system the incentive of repping and earning influence for large guilds meant 24 hour buffs like exp, karma, harvesting, wvw upgrades, etc. But even small guilds could accomplish this feat pretty easily if they earned enough and farmed things and did events together which they most likely did as they would do everything together.

With the new guild system the only way to keep members from constantly leaving (or at least to constantly recruit to fill those that left) is the guild hall and its various upgrades. So of course large guild will get those upgrades and flesh out their guild hall easier and faster than the small guilds.

If you really want a fully upgraded guild hall and those buffs and stuff, merge into a big guild. If you don’t like them or how they conduct things, leave. Otherwise don’t complain about a system that was clearly intended from the very beginning to benefit to large guilds hold their communities together. Guild Halls are suppose to represent the effort of hundreds of players and their dedication to the guild as a whole.

tl;dr GH meant for large guilds not for small guilds

Sorry my guild in GW1 was a small guild 10 ppl or so yet we had a guild hall with every vendor in it.

PopeUrban.2578:

Auralae.7482:

PopeUrban.2578:

GreyWolf.8670:

@PopeUrban: That argument is very tired. I could make banners two weeks ago. Now I cannot. I’m done with this as far as you’re concerned.

Yes. You can. Walk in to the guild initiative. Talk to the NPC. You now have a banner for favor.

Which NPC would that be? The Guild Requisitioner? He gives a message “This content has been temporarily disabled. Try again later.”

Then try again later?

Last two times I spoke with him he worked fine.

Complaining that the NPC is down for an adjustment is not the same as claiming “all my ability to use my old unlocks is gone forever”

And, honestly, every single post that parrots the same false assertion, that people can’t use their upgrades, has the same problem.

Sure, be upset that your access is temporarily suspended That’s a legitimate complaint and I agree with you. I’d like to know why he got temporarily disabled as I’ve used him as a source for banners while that horribly untested scribe is missing key components to actually produce banners. (Which, incidentally, is a far larger issue that actually blocks a production method for several things including tactics and decorations in addition to banners.)

However, this is just like when they temp disabled karma vendors or various other things. It’s as likely he’s being rewords to be even cheaper as it is he’s headed for the scrap heap. They didn’t go to the trouble of adding the NPC just to delete him a week later.

Using a temporary outage as a justification to rage against the entire system is just plain short sighted and silly.

What makes you think that I haven’t tried multiple times over different days? I have yet to see him working. There is a Reddit thread from 11 days ago asking why he’s disabled. The wiki previously listed the options he gives as having the disabled message. Now, the wiki simply lists nothing and he is still disabled.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Guild_Requisitioner

I have yet to see proof that banners and other previously attainable consumables are still available to a guild without needing HoT for the guildmaster. If there are non-HoT guildleaders without guild halls who have been able to access the requisitioner, I hope they post so I can figure out why I can not.

Simple reply to this thread – GW1 Guild Halls…….of course those that didn’t play GW1 won’t know what I’m talking about, but devs should. Let’s keep some integrity here.

Devata.6589:

carythanis.7940:

I’m MG in my small and lovely guild and I don’t want a full and free Hall Guild. It’s not that we claim.
On GW1, I was MG in the same small guild and i remember that the hall was very expensive for us. But with the time (and gold coins!), we have bought all the ameliorations. It was possible but slowly -because we have done the choice to be small-.

On GW2, before HoT,create banners or ameliorations required points of influence. We won this points with lot of patience, account’s connexions and many activities (together or alone). But it was possible to be a small guild and to have fun like big guilds,it just took time. No problems. It was our choice for our confort.

Since HoT, the only way to gain points of favor is to play missions guild, that’s sometimes impossible for small guild by lack of online players.
So… do you suggest us to leave our small guild and joining a biggest? It’s your solution? Are you serious? Do you think the fun of this game is to have only big guilds? One model? One gameplay?

Having a guild hall is a privilege. Right. We have bought the extension for it, so we should have the right to obtain it too. No preference about the cost in gold coins, this system existed on GW1 and veterants players knew that. Small guilds must be patients to complete their hall.
But WHY it needs points of favor who can only be won on missions guild? Why only this way?

There are also small mission doable for a small group of payers. You will make slower progress (however, you said that was not a problem) because you cannot do all missions available. But you can still make progress. or what am I missing?

Well, for a start, a “small group” of players isn’t just one player alone, is it?

Previously, I could (slowly) level my bank guild, by just playing normally, on my own.

Now I can’t; simple as that.

Not only that, but I have just lost the 10K influence I had already spent on an upgrade and the other 2.5 – 3K (maybe slightly higher) influence I was on, which I intended to use to build the final bank upgrade.

It’s just gone.

Maybe some people don’t care?

Maybe some people don’t think anyone should be able to build up a guild alone, in this game?

Even though it’s a game where you can join up to 5 guilds, simultaneously.

So, being able to do so shouldn’t (and didn’t) stop anyone joining bigger guilds, as well.

But, either way, that is the situation we are in and some of us are less than impressed.

ETA: You know what?

I’m just sick of this kitten in games, lately.

I came here from WoW, where I spent months fruitlessly trying to persuade them to reinstate things like LFR difficulty and rewards, personal loot and flying at max level.

I’m sick of being expected to beg for things we had previously and that were removed for no good reason and to the detriment of the game, as a whole.

It’s NOT OK and it is also not the job of people like me to have to try to make developers see sense, when they appear to have lost the plot entirely.

This is not why we play games.

Tigaseye.2047:

You know what?

I’m just sick of this kitten in games, lately.

[sip]

I’m sick of being expected to beg for things we had previously and that were removed for no good reason and to the detriment of the game, as a whole.

It’s NOT OK and it is also not the job of people like me to have to try to make developers see sense, when they appear to have lost the plot entirely.

This is not why we play games.

I feel your pain and I totally agree… devs everywhere from every game or software, not this game only, seems to be messing up stuff and making things non-sense and complicated instead “progressing” or “evolving” and calling “dumb features” as “modern way”. It’s a trend nowadays unfortunately… (no offense directed to anyone btw)

Sungtaro.6493:

The material wall is extremely high.

That seems to be the major complaint actually, and I tend to agree.

SkyShroud.2865:

The game has moved on, you can complain all you want and demand for things but deep down inside, you know that it is not gonna happen.

People have been complaining and demanding like an expansion, as well Guild Halls for years, don’t they?

To give some perspective to the time investment, not gold. 100 Silverwastes shovels is required for mining excavation 2 which you need to unlock to increase aertherium capacity large enough to build war room 2.

My guild averages 5 shovels per 2 hours, well, a little less. That forty hours just for the shovels.

We are a wvw guild. We used to spend 90% of our time in wvw. We now spend less than half our time in it so we can grind to get back what we had before HoT released.

Well, not quite. If they don’t fix scribe, we will have permanently loss the ability to make guild catapults because making them makes zero economic sense right now.