Guild Wars 2

Based on this article: http://dragonseason.com/Front/tabid/124/EntryId/210/Lunch-with-Colin-Johanson-Part-I.aspx (Thanks to omlech on reddit)

Colin said this:

What can we expect from guild missions?

Colin: It’s really spread out all over the game and it depends on which type of mission you’re doing. There are actually five completely different types of missions and based on which one it is – bounty hunts, for example, is the really basic one, that’s the one that you can get right off the bat when [February’s] release first goes out. You actually have to unlock all the other missions types, so it’s literally going to take months for your guild to build up enough influence to unlock all of them. It’s really a progression here, […] it’s on the whole unlock tree just like any of the other guild abilities, so you make your way down all that stuff and you’ll use influence to kick off missions as well. So, finally, you’ll have a use for that giant pile of influence. Some guilds are probably going to tear through really quickly cause they’ve got huge piles of it but it is going to take a while. With bounty hunts, you can pick which tier of bounty hunts you go on and it randomly generates bosses in different zones that get spawned because the bounty hunt started and it spreads your guild out all over the place. If you do a really big bounty hunt it will actually spread your guild across five different zones, where there is a boss in each and you have, say, 15 minutes to kill all five of them. So, you actually have to split your guild into five different groups and send them to all the maps and find them to take them out.

So perhaps the dev meant to say the last one required AoW 5.

EDIT: Added this too as it is relevant to smaller guilds too:

Some of us have small guilds, we don’t have 500 members and some challenges could prove quite hard. Are we going to see any collaboration mechanisms set in place?

Colin: Our hope will be that [collaborations] will kinda dynamically come out of this as sort of emergent gameplay. The bounties, for example, have different tiers so there’s a small tier that you can do – even small guilds can get those – you’ve got three bosses in three zones so maybe 10-15 people can do that, a small guild, and you can pick which tier you want to kick off based on how many people you’ve got online. Maybe one of the things that will come out of that is “our guild is going to do the tier 3 bounty which takes a lot more people to do, so let’s get 3 guilds together and our guild will kick one off and you’ll help us do ours and then you’ll kick one off and we’ll help us do yours” and the 3 guilds all work together to accomplish [it]. I think that kind of emergent gameplay hopefully will come out of that for sure. We don’t really know what to expect just because it is so hard to test internally to see what guilds are going to do [when all this goes] live. So, some of this is going to [emerge] when we put it out and we’re just going to see how guilds interact with it and what they do and then it will help us determine what other features and additions we need to work on.

Regardless my point is that it’s really difficult to run a big guild and keep your members a) logging in b) joining TS c) taking part in game events. Surely you must see that organising a guild with ten people would be a cake walk compared to guild with a hundred?

If you have 1000 people, you only need half of them to log in one day to get like 800 influence. You don`t have to organize anything. Smaller guild of say 3-5 ppl will need to do hell of a lot events and dungeons a day to get a comparable number.

Skylightmoon.1079:

Astralporing.1957:

Genophix.3098:

Yeah I agree with concerns here, it does seem a little unfair but on the flip side maybe this is what we need. Surely a focus of Guild Wars 2 is to being a strong guild? This kind of thing would give players a reason to seek out other players to join their ranks.

Quite the opposite. This practically kills casual guilds, encourages people transfer from smaller to bigger ones, and discourages everyone from joining smaller guilds. It also runs contrary to the original suggestion that this content is aimed at both smaller and bigger guilds – it isn’t.

Dude thats not discouraging people from joining small guilds. People don’t usually join a small guild over a large guild anyways. So don’t place the blame on this. Small guilds constantly spark into existence, usually by noobs, and its usually late in the game, like now. They also usually only last a few weeks anyway because of the slow member recruitment.

To counter your point, the small guild I am a member of has been in existence since pre-release and consists of a close-knit group of friends. We’re not interested in growing large, because that’s rather counter to the point of it being a guild of friends. Likewise, it seems counter-intuitive for us to all go join a bigger guild in order to play guild events together. What would be nice is for the guild events to tier in a way that doesn’t exclude us altogether.

No one is arguing that every teeny tiny guild should be able to complete all events; tjat they should be “handed out on a platter”. Not at all. But for even the first group of Guild Events to be gated behind the fifth tier of a non-PvE upgrade track? That seems a little over-the-top. Why not have at least some which are a tad more accessible?

A lot of arguments here are falling flat because they are supporting their points with no accessibility. This is completely wrong. Everyone can participate in the guild missions, whether you are in the guild that kicked it off or not. You still get rewards and everything, you just don’t get to be in the “Spotlight”.

I can see it now. A 5 man guild, err party, kicks off a Mission. They begin to do it and 20 Randoms flood in and complete nearly the entire event for the guild. What a lot of QQing that would bring.

As I have said, if gaining 10k influence is “extremely difficult”, as some has described it, then you are barely larger than a party, much less a full fledged guild. These are “Guild” Missions. My guild, less than 15 actives, has generated nearly 5k influence in the last 48hrs. My Guild isn’t a “small guild”, it is an “Incredibly Tiny” Guild. Often times, we have to pug the last spot in our party.

If a Guild wants to do Guild content, it should first be large enough to actually gather a Presence. If a guild can all fit into the same party, then they already have their Guild Missions. It’s called Dungeons.

TottWriter.8591:

To counter your point, the small guild I am a member of has been in existence since pre-release and consists of a close-knit group of friends. We’re not interested in growing large, because that’s rather counter to the point of it being a guild of friends. Likewise, it seems counter-intuitive for us to all go join a bigger guild in order to play guild events together. What would be nice is for the guild events to tier in a way that doesn’t exclude us altogether.

Post of the day. “This” is exactly what I have. I have a very very small guild with friends that I have been gaming with for years. It is my guild and I don’t really want to be forced to join a large guild to participate in guild events.

This should be open to every guild in game, not gated behind Art of War 5. As the guild master for my guild, I purchased the first slot of the guild bank. I also bought the first tier of Politics so we could drop the occasional banner. In preparation for the upcoming Guild Missions I started to bank influence. To date I have 3.7k. Not alot I know, but with only a few members in my guild its the best that I can do.

Now I have to bank 36k influence to get AoW5 and then more to undertake the first bounty mission. Am sad to say that this will NEVER happen for my little guild.

And once again they snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Just once I would like them to release a big patch that doesn’t disappoint at the last minute. Can you image what being married to Anet would be like. “Next week I am going to make you your favourite, an extra hot Chilli!”… and when the day arrives, “oh, by they way it’s vegetarian”

Ah well, maybe they just like writing the “we are sorry, in retrospect it was a mistake” blog posts.

Your dungeon-argument is somewhat flawed, Gisei. If guilds are supposed to be bigger than say 5, then there is no sense in making it possible to create a guild all by yourself.
They should’ve been a system for creating guilds similar to WoW or something like that, then!

Gisei.5749:

A lot of arguments here are falling flat because they are supporting their points with no accessibility. This is completely wrong. Everyone can participate in the guild missions, whether you are in the guild that kicked it off or not. You still get rewards and everything, you just don’t get to be in the “Spotlight”.

You neither get the full amount of rewards, as in, lacking the guild-specific rewards, nor can you kick off the event but are relient on another guild out there starting a guild mission you want to play right when you want to play it.

Your reasoning fails. Try harder.

Booning.5476:

Ah well, maybe they just like writing the “we are sorry, in retrospect it was a mistake” blog posts.

Well, at least they shoudl’ve that routine down by now. But first we’ll get some flak that we’re overreacting because we don’t have enough information, just to find each and every fear be confirmed a few days later. The “we could’ve done better and will learn from this for the future”-post will come 7-14 days after the patch, if ever.

This is the wrong way to save WvW.

Try again.

On another note, if this goes through as-is I can see people selling AoW5 guilds ingame for X amount of gold becoming a thing. (Invite the buyer, transfer leadership to the buyer, seller leaves)

Looks like this is where large server multi-guilding comes in. This can promote larger server community guilds which can bring the server community together. See it’s not all bad right?

It’s a dumb idea to put a PvE feature in a PvP category. Wrong move on this one, Anet. You might be wanting to encourage more people to do WvW with this, but you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink. People that don’t do WvW aren’t going to all the sudden do it. People are just going to get kitten off (small guilds in particular) that they have to waste guild influence to get it.

Or join a larger guild with everyone in your smaller guild to access that content. That’s also on the table. I belong to more than one guild myself. It’s not like you have to limit yourself to only one guild.

Missywink.7162:

TottWriter.8591:

To counter your point, the small guild I am a member of has been in existence since pre-release and consists of a close-knit group of friends. We’re not interested in growing large, because that’s rather counter to the point of it being a guild of friends. Likewise, it seems counter-intuitive for us to all go join a bigger guild in order to play guild events together. What would be nice is for the guild events to tier in a way that doesn’t exclude us altogether.

Post of the day. “This” is exactly what I have. I have a very very small guild with friends that I have been gaming with for years. It is my guild and I don’t really want to be forced to join a large guild to participate in guild events.

This should be open to every guild in game, not gated behind Art of War 5. As the guild master for my guild, I purchased the first slot of the guild bank. I also bought the first tier of Politics so we could drop the occasional banner. In preparation for the upcoming Guild Missions I started to bank influence. To date I have 3.7k. Not alot I know, but with only a few members in my guild its the best that I can do.

Now I have to bank 36k influence to get AoW5 and then more to undertake the first bounty mission. Am sad to say that this will NEVER happen for my little guild.

this
What gets me is that Colin said the bounty missions are the very first ones that anybody can do or some such- will find the quote now. edit: no need it is just up- thread.

I have 4226 Influence banked and we have researched:
Pol 1 ,
Economy 2,
Architecture 3
That represents a lot of work for a guild with 4 members.
We did not bother with AoW because we are a PvE guild and gain no benefit from that tech tree whatsoever.

I am not expecting to do 20 man or 100 man content with my guild but I would have liked to at least see some of the content that release with this patch.
As it stands now all we can do is join in on some other Guild’s Mission.

Content for smaller guilds are also needed.
Either that or they should have put a minimum Guild size from the start, not everyone wants to be in a huge Guild with a bunch of random strangers.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Each guild mission type becomes available through an upgrade that is researched in the guild tech tree. The first one is Guild Bounties, which does require Art of War level 5.

now im sure that Arena dont play this game , the most kitten idea ever , I have small guild we like WWW but we dont need ART of STUPID WAR , now we have to use our small amount of Influence to make this crap that we never gonna use…gg Arena

What’s even worse is that if people see this post and queue up what little Influence they have on AoW upgrades in prep for Feb 26, and ANet decides that they agree with the community about this issue and changes it last-minute to be less strict. Those guilds may have just wasted their Influence that could have been spent on Missions.

Quite a pickle.

Well, if people don’t want to join a separate larger guild along with their smaller one to access the content for free, there’s always paying 20g per 10k influence.

IMO, not a bad investment for content.

Edit: Art of War guild missions might be for WvW only. Nothing to lose here for PvEers.

And you thought smaller guilds trying to recruit people didnt already have a difficult enough time..

im in a small casual guild (7 people) and we had more than enough influence for Art of War lvl 5. quit your whining.

nerva.7940:

im in a small casual guild (7 people) and we had more than enough influence for Art of War lvl 5. quit your whining.

What’s true for you is not true for every other guild, nor does it mean anything to new guilds. Many people won’t be able to fully enjoy February’s patch.

was i wrong to assume these missions would be of varying difficulties? like having easy ones for people who have Level 1 Art of War versus ones you do from Level 3 Politics. to me that would just make so much more sense.. more sense than i’ve seen from Anets decisions when implementing new stuff like this in the last few months.

nerva.7940:

im in a small casual guild (7 people) and we had more than enough influence for Art of War lvl 5. quit your whining.

A lot of the complaints are from people who have the influence but would rather use it for things they actually do. If the guild has no interest in WvWvW then using influence for this is not reasonable.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

Each guild mission type becomes available through an upgrade that is researched in the guild tech tree. The first one is Guild Bounties, which does require Art of War level 5.

Wow, just wow. That is just really, really, really bad game design. I won’t even argue the issue, it’s so obviously horrid.

I don’t know what else to say. Disappointed in you guys times infinity?

I actually feel like I was punched in the gut and then kicked in the head for good measure.

ORGH The amount of whine and WOE is me is over the top.

Everybody sit down and relax this is what we know.

1. There different events that have different difficulties and need for numbers. Bounty was a Multi-zone event so chance’s are you will need to be in a BIG guild for it to work.

2. The different events size might coincide with different levels of the tree. A 5 man event will need tier 1 and 20 man event needs tier 5.

3. There is no talk about it only being in the Art of War tree. Only that the Bounty one will be in that tree.

4. It is something to work towards. It is a thing that will take effort and planning from your guild. IT is not meant to be a easy way for you to get loot. Yes your 2 man guild will have a hard time doing things and that is why there is the multi-guild function.

5. It is a very short passage so keep your impotent nerd rage in check until we actually know the entire picture and stop being so dam reactionary.

6. The people complaining about having to go into the wvw tree when they don’t wvw. I have to do kitten Dungeons for my monthly and Fractals for ascended gear.

IN the end relax and let’s see what happens before you blow the top of your head off in pure anger.

Waage.2047:

ORGH The amount of whine and WOE is me is over the top.

Everybody sit down and relax this is what we know.

1. There different events that have different difficulties and need for numbers. Bounty was a Multi-zone event so chance’s are you will need to be in a BIG guild for it to work.

2. The different events size might coincide with different levels of the tree. A 5 man event will need tier 1 and 20 man event needs tier 5.

3. There is no talk about it only being in the Art of War tree. Only that the Bounty one will be in that tree.

4. It is something to work towards. It is a thing that will take effort and planning from your guild. IT is not meant to be a easy way for you to get loot. Yes your 2 man guild will have a hard time doing things and that is why there is the multi-guild function.

5. It is a very short passage so keep your impotent nerd rage in check until we actually know the entire picture and stop being so dam reactionary.

6. The people complaining about having to go into the wvw tree when they don’t wvw. I have to do kitten Dungeons for my monthly and Fractals for ascended gear.

IN the end relax and let’s see what happens before you blow the top of your head off in pure anger.

Not to mention that big guilds should be rewarded in some manner as well. All in all however, there is a reason why the ability to represent different guilds exist.

Our smallish guild has art of war unlocked so it doesn’t affect us in terms of needing to grind out influence, but I can empathise with others regarding this choice, truly baffling.

Even more so since Art of War (barring the 2 guild siege engines) only provides buffs for fortifications held. Even small guilds who enjoy WvW can miss out on Art of War completely if they don’t plan to hold/upgrade any fortifications and still be effective and have fun.

Yargesh.4965:

nerva.7940:

im in a small casual guild (7 people) and we had more than enough influence for Art of War lvl 5. quit your whining.

A lot of the complaints are from people who have the influence but would rather use it for things they actually do. If the guild has no interest in WvWvW then using influence for this is not reasonable.

The amount of whinny crude you have to listen to is impressive. 99% of my time is WvW and these are the things that i need to get outside of wvw from pve.

I have to do dungeons for monthly, I have no magic find in art of war, I need money for siege (wvw dose not pay enough), i need fractals for ascended, i have to do temples for exotic gear, i have to do dungeons for exotic gear and so on and so fourth.

There is a metric ton i need to do in PvE to get stronger in WvW so do not give me this crying attitude about how horrible it is that you have to spend some influence in something you do not do all the time. Do you think us WvW guys where happy when we had to find jumpingpuzzles or do dungeons??

No, but a lot of us did them any way because it showed us part of the game we might not have done and that is what this system is there for. Show them the Art of war and maybe get them to try out some WvW. The Jumping puzzle monthly made me want to see all of them and if it was not because i lead wvw a lot at the moment i would do them all.

@Waage I considered that we are missing information, but Anthony clearly states that the first Mission type requires Art of War level 5. If researchig Guild Bounties isn’t a requirement for the next Mission types, why would it be labelled as the first.

Toxyn.9608:

@Waage I considered that we are missing information, but Anthony clearly states that the first Mission type requires Art of War level 5. If researchig Guild Bounties isn’t a requirement for the next Mission types, why would it be labelled as the first.

I think “first” means the “first to select from”. The “second type” and “third type” likely does not need Art of War (unless Anet has no common sense).

Waage.2047:

ORGH The amount of whine and WOE is me is over the top.

Everybody sit down and relax this is what we know.

1. There different events that have different difficulties and need for numbers. Bounty was a Multi-zone event so chance’s are you will need to be in a BIG guild for it to work.

2. The different events size might coincide with different levels of the tree. A 5 man event will need tier 1 and 20 man event needs tier 5.

3. There is no talk about it only being in the Art of War tree. Only that the Bounty one will be in that tree.

4. It is something to work towards. It is a thing that will take effort and planning from your guild. IT is not meant to be a easy way for you to get loot. Yes your 2 man guild will have a hard time doing things and that is why there is the multi-guild function.

5. It is a very short passage so keep your impotent nerd rage in check until we actually know the entire picture and stop being so dam reactionary.

6. The people complaining about having to go into the wvw tree when they don’t wvw. I have to do kitten Dungeons for my monthly and Fractals for ascended gear.

IN the end relax and let’s see what happens before you blow the top of your head off in pure anger.

Colin: It’s really spread out all over the game and it depends on which type of mission you’re doing. There are actually five completely different types of missions and based on which one it is – bounty hunts, for example, is the really basic one, that’s the one that you can get right off the bat when [February’s] release first goes out. You actually have to unlock all the other missions types, so it’s literally going to take months for your guild to build up enough influence to unlock all of them. It’s really a progression here, […] it’s on the whole unlock tree just like any of the other guild abilities, so you make your way down all that stuff and you’ll use influence to kick off missions as well. So, finally, you’ll have a use for that giant pile of influence. Some guilds are probably going to tear through really quickly cause they’ve got huge piles of it but it is going to take a while. With bounty hunts, you can pick which tier of bounty hunts you go on and it randomly generates bosses in different zones that get spawned because the bounty hunt started and it spreads your guild out all over the place. If you do a really big bounty hunt it will actually spread your guild across five different zones, where there is a boss in each and you have, say, 15 minutes to kill all five of them. So, you actually have to split your guild into five different groups and send them to all the maps and find them to take them out.

1 There are different levels of bounty hunts yes, and big bounty hunts are for big guilds- read the bolded part- AoW 5 is not right of the bat by any stretch.

2 We hope so- so far it doesn’t really look like that if the most basic mission requires AoW 5

4 No one as far as I know has a problem with having something to work towards. The problem is rather that it leaves the small guilds in a position where they have to use what influence they have on stuff that does not benefit them at all just to have access to content. This is wastefull and makes no sense.

5 as far as I can see these are legitimate concerns not nerdrage.

6 I don’t like that either that is why I do not do a monthly- however you are not required to spend influence gained over time to complete or not to complete a monthly, you either do so or not. This has nothing to do with this discussion.

I’m so worried now!! Even if I bought the influence it would take longer than a week just because of upgrade times to get it to lvl 5 !!!

This is disgusting I’m actually hugely disappointed what if people leave my guild for a more established guild!!!!

This can’t happen!!! It’s terrible!!!!

CameronJames.4897:

I’m so worried now!! Even if I bought the influence it would take longer than a week just because of upgrade times to get it to lvl 5 !!!

This is disgusting I’m actually hugely disappointed what if people leave my guild for a more established guild!!!!

This can’t happen!!! It’s terrible!!!!

At least you have two of the most successful movies in history under your belt.

Sorry, I had to. lol

Just because Art of War currently only has PvP related upgrades and bonuses attributed to it does not make it the “PvP” line of guild upgrades. The Art of War is the art of killing stuff, at least at the core. It thus makes sense for guild missions such as guild bounties to be under the Art of War line of upgrades. If there was a diplomatic guild mission it would similarly make sense for it to be in the politics line and a trade-based mission to be in the economics line.

As for small guilds not having upgrades. Our guild has a total of 20 members. A load of which stopped logging in after about a month. We have 6-7 active members, members who play at least once a week. We have all the upgrades except politics tier 5. It is not hard, nor impossible for small guilds to get enough influence to get all the upgrades, you just have to approach your influence gain and expenditure with some thought. You just need to do stuff as a guild. Leveling alts? Level together. Do dungeons or pvp or WvW together. Influence quickly tallies up even with just 3 people in a group roaming in WvW or leveling. Only use what upgrades you really need. Be smart about using the influence you’ve earned. Make use of your influence bonuses, don’t waste them. Make sure you log in 20 characters, 5 per account, each day to get the points for just logging in.

I think this update will be a load of fun, even for small guilds.

edit Just wanted to add, the guild has not used gold to buy any influence. It was all gained through doing content.

I would love to see the design rationale for this…..

Without a doubt this should be toned down a step and content should have been phased in availability at the various tiers especially if the requirement is in a PvP centric tree.

CameronJames.4897:

I’m so worried now!! Even if I bought the influence it would take longer than a week just because of upgrade times to get it to lvl 5 !!!

This is disgusting I’m actually hugely disappointed what if people leave my guild for a more established guild!!!!

This can’t happen!!! It’s terrible!!!!

If they leave your guild over this then where they worth keeping in the guild?? I am in a wvw guild and there is a big wvw guild that is more active and more successful then us in the same time zome and more well know on the same server.

They take a lot of potential members, but we still get people into our guild and we do fine. Yes it might hurt you, but if they leave where they worth it?? I know how it is to having to close down a guild and merge your renaming members into a bigger one.

I have done so before and it sucked, but sometimes guilds die. It is said, but it is the nature of a MMO.

Heijincks.9267:

Toxyn.9608:

@Waage I considered that we are missing information, but Anthony clearly states that the first Mission type requires Art of War level 5. If researchig Guild Bounties isn’t a requirement for the next Mission types, why would it be labelled as the first.

I think “first” means the “first to select from”. The “second type” and “third type” likely does not need Art of War (unless Anet has no common sense).

That is what i see it as. This is the first of the KILLING type or the Art of war guild missions.
The Gold rush is the first of the Economy guild missions and so on.

It is how i see it how i think it will be, but even if it is not and you need the Art of War 5 then that is no big deal. It is something to work towards and do as a guild. A thing to make you all work closer together.

This idea is a bad one.

I lead a pretty big guild, but we’re a PvE guild. We’ve never bothered with WvW and as a result, have spent all of our points in other things. Even for a guild our size it will take a lot of time to build the influence to get art of war 5. Perhaps even a month. I can’t imagine what a grind it will be for smaller guilds.

For shame, Anet. This was a terrible idea, and shame on you for hiding it from all your press so as to avoid the backlash you knew you’d get.

Waage.2047:

No, but a lot of us did them any way because it showed us part of the game we might not have done and that is what this system is there for. Show them the Art of war and maybe get them to try out some WvW. The Jumping puzzle monthly made me want to see all of them and if it was not because i lead wvw a lot at the moment i would do them all.

Ignoring Dungeons and jumping puzzles requirements in Monthlies, which I agree with you about, thats really nothing to do with this and not the same at all.

You have to do those things to complete your monthly or daily, you don’t have to complete the Art of War tree to be effective in WvW since it only really benefits those who chose to claim fortifications, a smallish guild can “skirmish” around in WvW protect Dolyaks and take points without ever claiming a keep for their guild.

As I say, our smallish guild has this so its not a worry for us, but that doesn’t stop me empathising with others since as a design choice its pretty daft, I’m seeing a lot more reasoned concern than crying in this thread, at least until your first post

I hate the fact theese missions are upgrades and not a new category of content for guilds.

It should not be limited by that. =/

But what does that mean “The first one is Guild Bounties”?
Does that mean there’s an order to unlock the missions or that we won’t see the other guild mission modes in the coming patch?
Or are the other guild missions tied to the other upgrade trees?

Waage.2047:

ORGH The amount of whine and WOE is me is over the top.

Everybody sit down and relax this is what we know.

1. There different events that have different difficulties and need for numbers. Bounty was a Multi-zone event so chance’s are you will need to be in a BIG guild for it to work.

2. The different events size might coincide with different levels of the tree. A 5 man event will need tier 1 and 20 man event needs tier 5.

3. There is no talk about it only being in the Art of War tree. Only that the Bounty one will be in that tree.

4. It is something to work towards. It is a thing that will take effort and planning from your guild. IT is not meant to be a easy way for you to get loot. Yes your 2 man guild will have a hard time doing things and that is why there is the multi-guild function.

5. It is a very short passage so keep your impotent nerd rage in check until we actually know the entire picture and stop being so dam reactionary.

6. The people complaining about having to go into the wvw tree when they don’t wvw. I have to do kitten Dungeons for my monthly and Fractals for ascended gear.

IN the end relax and let’s see what happens before you blow the top of your head off in pure anger.

You don’t seem to understand the issue at all. To even touch the new Guild system, your guild first needs to unlock the Art of War tree all the way to Tier 5. It sounds like the new progression system itself is going to be pretty onerous, which is another issue entirely that we don’t have enough info on to make a judgement.

Obviously this will mean nothing to guilds so large that they have unlocked every tree, nor medium sized WvW centric Guilds that mad the AoW tree their priority. However, it’s a major kick in the teeth to probably the vast majority of guilds, those that have had no need to have unlocked anything in the WvW tier to date and for whom the 36,500 influence needed to unlock a tree they have no other use for might as well be a million influence!

Of course, guilds could always spend 63 Gold to buy the influence, which may be what Arenanet is hoping for, as a way to drive guild members to buy gems for gold for influence? (The guilds for whom 63 gold is no big deal are also likely to be the same guilds for whom 36K influence isn’t a big deal either).

Krag.6210:

But what does that mean “The first one is Guild Bounties”?
Does that mean there’s an order to unlock the missions or that we won’t see the other guild mission modes in the coming patch.

Are the other guild missions tied to the other upgrade trees?

Apparently, the new Guild Missions are their own progression tree, but the prerequisite to even start down that path is to have T5 in Art of War.

I’m getting a really bad feeling about the entire Guild Mission system…

Coming from a small guild I’ll have to say this annoys the hell out me. We don’t WvW and were looking forward to guild missions. I hope they look at this and change it. New Content should be new content. Not a forced Upgrade system that small guilds will have a hard time doing.
It’s almost like your punishing smaller guilds. Or is this ANETs Sad way of adding a horribly executed raid type system?

I’m in a small guild as well and we don’t have AoW unlocked either as we focus more on the PvE aspects of the game. Knowing that AoW is required will be a huge let down to my guild. Anet should really reconsider making an entirely new tree or moving the tier down some for the requirement (at the very least for the starter guild missions).

I’m really hoping that this was just another PR misstep resulting from a coy, confusing answer from a developer.

I guess it is possible that Guild Bounties will be the first, and only, Guild Mission type introduced this month and that one happens to be tied to Art of War, while the other Mission Types are tied to the other current trees.

That will be better than T5 AoW gating the entire new system, but then we have to wonder why they would promote the other mission types if they aren’t going to be available with the pending update? We also could question their judgement for deciding that the one gated by the least used tree should be the first to be introduced?

Please let this be a misunderstanding, so I can be only marginally disappointed with Arenanet, rather than being disappointed to the 100th power…

Kraggy.4169:

A total fail on two counts, both mentioned many times above:

1) requiring ANY of the guild trees to be at level 5

Even not-so-small guilds may not have level 5 in anything if it doesn’t unlock something they’ve seen having a value until now

2) using the PVP tree when many players/guilds never touch PVP content

Fine, you want to encourage PVP but using a huge stick like this won’t do that, it’ll simply turn people off.

This is probably the reason they’ve gated off the new content this way — to encourage players to be more active in PvP. It’s probably the same reason that monthly achievements were dependent on WvW participation for so long. In the real world, this is called social engineering.

Despite what the defenders of this are going to say (it’s optional — you don’t have to do it), this is just another example of ANet failing to live up to their own design philosophy. “Play the game the way you want to play it” rings pretty hollow when it’s become clear you’re supposed to play the game the way THEY want you to play it. And that includes PvP.

Lol, most guilds which deserve being called a guild have everything maxed for months already, so I dont understand the fuss.
If your guild is too small just buy influence from the NPC.

Waage.2047:

Toxyn.9608:

@Waage I considered that we are missing information, but Anthony clearly states that the first Mission type requires Art of War level 5. If researchig Guild Bounties isn’t a requirement for the next Mission types, why would it be labelled as the first.

Heijincks.9267:

I think “first” means the “first to select from”. The “second type” and “third type” likely does not need Art of War (unless Anet has no common sense).

That is what i see it as. This is the first of the KILLING type or the Art of war guild missions.
The Gold rush is the first of the Economy guild missions and so on.

It is how i see it how i think it will be, but even if it is not and you need the Art of War 5 then that is no big deal. It is something to work towards and do as a guild. A thing to make you all work closer together.

Colin: It’s really spread out all over the game and it depends on which type of mission you’re doing. There are actually five completely different types of missions and based on which one it is – bounty hunts, for example, is the really basic one, that’s the one that you can get right off the bat when [February’s] release first goes out.

No, it seems that the bounty missions are the easiest to unlock at Art of War level 5 I don’t even want to know what the requirements for the rest are.

I don’t think there’s much more I could add that hasn’t already been said. This is ridiculous, and yet one more reason for players not to join small guilds or to start new ones. For a new system that is supposed to be, at least partially, about encouraging the social aspects of the game, pushing people to be faceless members of a crowd is not the way to go.

bri.2359:

If this helps reduce the number of ridiculously small guilds, and medium sized guilds with poor representation, then I am all for it.

Game has been out for 6 months. If your guild has not researched all the tiers by now, regardless if your guild is PvE only, then stop building all those useless MF banners and enforce rules of representation to get the influence to do research. If that is not to your liking, then stop whinging about being gated from content.

The clue is in the title of the game, people, and seems Anet is looking to consolidate the player base. I say this is about time …

Two rather foolish assumptions here. The first is that everyone who plays the game is a PvP enthusiast. Patently false to the point of absurdity. Second, everyone who is playing the game now and all their guilds, were around at launch. Again, absurd. Perhaps you work at ANet where such ridiculous conclusions seem to be at home.

But I did want to thank you for promoting a spirit of fascism within guilds. Your recommendations for guilds to crack down on representation and stop building the the guild items THEY find the most valuable, is most welcome.