I’m the leader of a small guild (20 people). It’s been quite difficult to gather the influence to build towards guild bounty, which is the easiest to do with a small number of people. Next, we chose to go for rush, because that’s also doable with a small guild. However, I just found out that there’s a certain order in which you need to unlock it, meaning that I now have to build towards economy level 6 and then guild trek before I can build rush. Nobody ever does trek to my knowledge, as it gives no individual rewards. I’m very frustrated that I need to waste so much ‘precious’ influence in a small guild, to get to the missions that we can actually complete. Why is this order in place, and even more important: why is a guild forced to unlock trek??
When Guild Missions first were added to the game, lots of guild did Trek:
it was new
it was fun
it helped earn influence for the guild.
It’s been a long time since that release, so treks are no longer new. They are just as fun for some of us (forces you to test your knowledge of the world, if you don’t use the wiki or Dulfy.net), but they do get old quickly.
More importantly, nowadays guild commendations are considered the primary reason to do missions (since a lot of guilds have plenty of influence/commendations), so the idea of doing a for-the-guild-only mission has become outdated.
In short, it made sense at the time.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
I don’t see them changing the order for this. There’s no way you can rally your guild members to help do Trek a couple of times, so that you can unlock the upgrades for the better missions?
As a side note, if you have enough people to successfully complete a rush (15 people have to complete it), you should have enough to get through at least two of the puzzles and at least a couple of the challenges.
Thank you, I understand that it used to make sense way back. Now I feel like it just disadvantages small and/or new guilds. Anyone else feel this way?
This was pointed out at the time the system was introduced. Guild missions were set up to challenge larger guilds. Small guilds already had (and continue to have) content that works for smaller groups, but there was nothing (at the time) in the game that was especially designed for bigger groups.
With a really good group, you can do pretty much all the puzzles, rushes, and even the challenges with 5-6 people. 10-15 can manage comfortably, as long as a few people know what to do; only a few challenges require more than that. And now that these have been around for a while, they are really easy for 40+ people (although I’ve seen larger guilds manage to …misstep on a couple of the challenges).
I think this an OK balance and I’d even like to see more a little bit more of the game that isn’t easily available to everyone (not a lot, just a few more things like Liadri, SAB, a large-group challenges).
In the meantime, Guild Bounty Training is a great way to build influence up quickly. Two people can manage most of the bounties, especially if they call for help.
John Smith: “you should kill monsters, because killing monsters is awesome.”
Thank you, I understand that it used to make sense way back. Now I feel like it just disadvantages small and/or new guilds. Anyone else feel this way?
Quite the opposite. Treks should really be the first ones on the unlock queue, as they are the easiest source of merits. They may be useless if you have enough people in the guild to run other types of guild missions with ease, but for truly small guilds they are useful.
As a side note, if you have enough people to successfully complete a rush (15 people have to complete it), you should have enough to get through at least two of the puzzles and at least a couple of the challenges.
You don’t need 15 people for Rushes – it needs to be run 15 times, but it doesn’t require those runs to be performed by different players.
Actions, not words.
Remember, remember, 15th of November
do you actually need to unlock it, or is it just the merit requirement? With doing bounty weekly, I actually decided to take my time and get everything to level 6 before I unlock anything
I don’t see them changing the order for this. There’s no way you can rally your guild members to help do Trek a couple of times, so that you can unlock the upgrades for the better missions?
As a side note, if you have enough people to successfully complete a rush (15 people have to complete it), you should have enough to get through at least two of the puzzles and at least a couple of the challenges.
A tier 3 trek can be completed with just 3 people.
Which is pretty nice if you are a small guild and you need merits …
You don’t need 15 people to complete a rush. The rush could be completed 15 times by a single person as well in the extreme case.
You don’t need 15 people for Rushes – it needs to be run 15 times, but it doesn’t require those runs to be performed by different players.
Unless it’s changed since the last time my guild tried to have people run it more than once, I believe you’re wrong. Each person who completes the rush gets counted once. Repeat completions don’t count towards the 15. So, you do have to 15 different players participating to not fail the Rush, BUT you can get random players to help and have their completion count.
From the wiki:
“Multiple successful runs do count towards the 15, it does not have to be 15 unique guild members.”
When Guild Missions first were added to the game, lots of guild did Trek:
it was new
it was fun
it helped earn influence for the guild.
It’s been a long time since that release, so treks are no longer new. They are just as fun for some of us (forces you to test your knowledge of the world, if you don’t use the wiki or Dulfy.net), but they do get old quickly.
More importantly, nowadays guild commendations are considered the primary reason to do missions (since a lot of guilds have plenty of influence/commendations), so the idea of doing a for-the-guild-only mission has become outdated.
In short, it made sense at the time.
I’m forced to disagree — it never made sense for a small guild to have to open things that they did not believe would be useful for them. It was explained by A-Net at the time as a time gate for bigger guilds who had lots of influence already stored and ready to spend. It meant that it took guilds at least a month to be able to open puzzles, even if that was one of the things that the guild would have most enjoyed doing.
I have a very large sense of trepidation waiting to see what they have in mind for small guilds with the expansion and the ability to build guild halls.
I don’t think the influence is a big deal. You’ll probably have more problem with not enough people doing the mission.
being a guild leader isn’t easy. I watch my guild leader spend half of his online time just recruiting or organizing guild. And if the guild leader or officer isn’t active, the guild usually go down hill.
We haven’t really had an issue with influence (only ever like 4 people active in my guild, though not even that now). Our issue is that the only thing we have unlocked is the bounties, and 4 of us aren’t lucky enough to kill the champs for them. I wish we had access to Guild Trek, but we don’t due to lack of merits.
hmph
Don’t look at me like that. Whatever you’ve heard, it’s probably not true.
4 can do some of the bounty combinations but not all of them. It helps if everyone has different characters with builds to cover different challenges from various targets. Sometimes you are just going to be unlucky with the search.
It might be possible if everyone in the group memorize every single bounty route. Which is quite hard to do. I have a hard time memorizing 1 route.
You can also pre search a few bounties and hope you get lucky and get the one you needed. I’m not sure how many of the bounties it is possible to kill with 4 people.
You can also try opening a public bounty, I seen people do that before. Open up lfg and say public guild bounty, anyone welcome.
If you really want to unlock rush/trek etc. My advice is find other guild in the position too and help each other out. People can join multiple guild so that shouldn’t be a problem.
You can solo Guild Trek tier 1 Easy for 5 Merits + 400 influence.. do it yourself as guild leader for a small boost to your guild merits/influ (assuming you have world map done so can visit all the locations) Trek might not give individual rewards but it has it’s uses to boost your merits easily In fact i think Trek is a good thing for smaller guilds, since it provides an easy merit boost without needing extra members to help
If they changed Trek to give any commendations, Guilds would start doing them. Commendations are the only reason for Guilds with maxed influence to do Guild Missions any longer (sans the social activity itself, of course).
We go out in the world and take our chances
Fate is just the weight of circumstances
That’s the way that lady luck dances
Treks are actually very useful for a small guild as they don’t require many people and are easy to do. They don’t need to be part of your weekly guild missions, obviously, since they don’t reward individual rewards – including commendations – but if you’re a small guild then they’re useful for building influence, which will let you get to other guild missions (such as rush) and higher tiers easier.
Dear ANet writers,
Stop treating GW2 as a single story. Each Season and expansion should be their own story.
I don’t mind doing Trek at all. In fact, I’d love to, it sounds fun and I’ve never done it before. I just don’t see why forcing an unlock order upon guilds makes sense. We should just be allowed to build towards whichever we think is the easiest to complete and the most wanted by our guild members. If nobody in my guild wants to do Trek, I’m not going to do it alone just to gather the influence to eventually unlock Rush, which we already had ready until I found out I needed to spend another 100k influence to build economy and Trek first. At least it should be made more clear that there is a specific order. I never came across these restrictions because I naturally built towards Bounty first.
