Guild Wars 2

I’ve played the game since release, played gw1 a ton too. Love both games.

With gw2 there has always been this issue I had with it since release. I feel like there is a lot less guild pride when compared to other MMOs. Not as much to set your guild apart. A few things I think can cause this

1. Nothing to show for a guild’s accomplishment. My guild’s been here since about release. We’ve done everything. People at max fractals, legendary weapons, max upgraded, world bosses, etc. However there is nothing that we as a guild can show for it.

2. Size. My guild noticed that guild pride started going down a lot past 100 people. It caused people to feel like the guild was more of a LFG system. Only exception being WvW heavy guilds.

3. The reward and progression system. It just isn’t that good. It doesn’t take too long to get fully upgraded and you can also buy influence.

4. Lack of in game items that are cosmetically pleasing and shows your guild.

I’d like to see players feel more proud of their guild. To feel special when they’re in one that is well experienced. Just make guilds feel more…important.

So here are my ideas

1. Guild Halls/Structures/Towns. I know this has been mentioned a lot. It can DO SO MUCH for this game’s endgame progression and can easily be added to with future releases. How? These guild structures don’t have to house everything a City would have. However you can add trophies, merchants, anything from towns, portals, etc. Whatever you feel is fit. Once you figure out what you want in there you start adding onto them. So lets take the cosmetic side of guild halls. You can set “themes” just like Gw1. These themes can be unlocked from doing ingame stuff (you can also sell them on the gemstore too just like armors). I think a good number would be about 10 themes in game at the very least. Then you can start selling more on the gemstore which would skyrocket your profits for the gemstore. If there’s one thing people loving spending real money on, its their guild/organizations in game. Then you can apply this to other things. Give players a chance to maybe start customization specific things. Like the inside of a tavern and different furniture setups of the inn/tavern/pub in the guild hall/town. Then you can do NPCs and can change/buy different looks, npcs, and races. Maybe a centaur merchant. Maybe elonian. Maybe lionguard or grove merchant. The customization opportunities, additonal progresson opportunities, and gemstore profits opportunities are ENORMOUS for this.

2. There needs to be an influence drain on something. I mean right now some guilds have an absurd amount of influence. I recommend to tie in so an endgame upgrade. So maybe once you get to architecture 5 you unlock the guild hall above and the more you “upgrade” it to its full capacity the more influence gets drained. I mean right now my guild has 1,200,000 influence. The only time we felt influence was designed well was while we were upgrading. Then again when you introduced guild missions (but that barely put a dent in it compared to our supply/demand). Since then we never felt influence was scarce or barely pay attention to it. The same goes with merrits. We were short while upgrading, but we’ve been near/at max for a while now. So now if you guys ever add in any influence upgrades or things tied into influence with no drain, it will barely make an impact on us progression wise because we have an absurd amount of it.

3. Rewards. Right now buffs are not a good reward for guilds. Don’t get me wrong their useful, but their effects aren’t readily observed by the players so it impacts them less. For example MF. When we activate our buffs, I don’t notice a big difference. I have 109% MF without the buff and I don’t feel like my drops changed. Blues and greens here and there, but most items that are worth something to me (Exotics, rares, etc) are dropped in things that aren’t affected by MF like chest and boxes. Flags again are something we don’t feel is worth wasting build ques on. We’d rather just continually building guild wide buffs. So maybe rewards like hiring a “specilist” vendor for 46 hours that unlocks a vendor that could sell gear, could offer something of value to us. Maybe a few laurel items at reduced cost, maybe things we use constantly and could affect those (like something that reduces waypoint cost) etc.

4. Items. Right now most of the items that display guild emblems look pretty poor. The guild commendation items are awesome, but again don’t display the emblem. The armors just look like beginner’s armor (in the cast of heavy and I think light), medium looks OK. But none of the looks make you look like an experienced play, you know what I mean? Being in any of the dungeon armors or anything else makes you just look better in the game and in a game where cosmetics is a huge part of endgame its no surprising they’re not popular. Here’s my advice, offer emblem sporting items; but they don’t have to be the center piece of the armor. Maybe they’re on the pectoral muscle like a badge. Maybe on one sleeve. Maybe on a piece of clothing hanging from the waste.

5. Emblems. You guys can expand so much on this. You can start offering emblems, borders, and icons with stuff in game. People.Will.Buy.Them! Gemstore too, another way to increase profits in the gemstore. Here’s one way you could do it. So right now you can use the world boss item to spawn world bosses. Maybe you can create an item when used in certain areas that only happen with certain actions met. For example maybe when T5 of the Dry Top Sandstorm is up then you can go to a certain area in dry top. When you use an item it could transport you to a special instance that has a special vendor for this area and for achieving dry top T5. It can also be made into a blocked off area like Kiel’s ship. Now of course this doesn’t promote guilds working together so maybe you can make it so that half way to the sandstorm (15 mins in about) the game detects how many people in your guild are in the instance. If you have 10 people or more and T5 is reached, they your guild has the ability to use a special vendor or get into this special area.

Just my thoughts, but basically I just want guilds feel more epic, more rewarding, and to feel more pride/loyalty when in a guild that has done a lot in the game. As of right now pride and loyalty depends heavily (if not entirely) on the community and if they have friends in the guild.