Guild Features- what's great / what's missing
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Kuzzi.2198
I have been a leader of a large PvX guild since Beta (oh my, it’s been 3.5 years). This post expresses my impressions with the new content introduced in HoT and opinions about what features are still needed.
Let’s start with the good. No one can deny that HoT has helped breath new life into guilds which had been stale for a while.
- Guild Halls have far exceeded my expectations – they are just phenomenal. Not only do they provide every guild with a home, but also give a set of long term goals to work towards. The upgrades may seem costly, but I think the prices are just right to make each upgrade to the guild hall feel like an accomplishment. The Aetherium and Favor time gates allow large guilds to have a sense of progression for their guild hall expansions instead of just rushing through everything.
- Guild Missions can now be started at any time, for free. This is great. People who don’t make scheduled mission times can now still get their personal rewards by getting a couple guildies to help them out.
- Multi Guild Chat is another awesome feature. It has enabled being and fully participating in multiple guilds at the same time.
- Message of the Day being posted in the chat window is nice QoL feature. I feel like the MotD was often overlooked in the past and now it can be used to relay messages to all members very conveniently.
- New Permissions related to the guild hall and bank access are a nice addition that makes ranks more meaningful.
- PvP Teams are a great addition for PvP guilds and PvP focused members in PvX guilds. The individual stat tracker for each team is sweet.
Thank you for those changes Anet, Guild Wars 2 really is the best MMORPG ever. With all that said, I still think there are quite a few features and minor changes that could really improve guild life even further:
- Admin Lower Ranks permission should be split up into into “Invite Members”, “Kick Members”, and “Change Ranks of Lower Members”. I made this suggestion in a similar post over 3 years ago. Is there a reason why Anet insists on combining these permissions into one?
- Treasury is a great feature. I think we should be able to deposit items directly from our bank though, like we can with crafting. This is a small QoL improvement that could go a long way in helping guilds expand. Furthermore, I think the contributions of members should be tracked in some way. The current treasury log which only tracks the last few dozen donations does not suffice. One easy solution would be to expose the log in the API so guilds that want that information can track it themselves, but of course an in-game tracker would be nicer.
- Ranks are still limited to 10. Especially now with the addition of new permissions, it would be nice to have more ranks available.
- Guild Missions have some mechanics that feel clunky. For one, Guild Rushes now force all members to wait until the mission timer expires before they are awarded their personal reward. This is harsh when everyone in the guild finishes a rush within 5 minutes and then has to hang out for 25 minutes waiting for their chests. PvP missions are currently a pain for large guilds, but they are a brand new feature so I’m sure Anet will make the necessary improvements as they receive player feedback. For example, the requirement of every party having to form an official team feels like overkill. Combine that with a broken search field on the team creation tab and you get a whole lot of overhead before being able to start some simple missions. In addition, missions that end as soon as the goal is met should track individual progress better. In large guilds, all too often players who participate in a mission don’t get personal chests because another team completed the mission before they could receive their ticks.
- Guild LFG that is built on top of the existing LFG system. It would be nice to have an LFG tab in the guild window that would show all the LFG groups that have any of your guildies. Here, they would not have to be split up by dungeons/areas.
- Guild Buffs have been nerfed to only allow one active buff at a time and they have to be manually refreshed with potions. I think this is a very poor implementation. The old way of having multiple active buffs and being affected by everything from the guild you are currently representing was much better. There was a lot of hype about HoT bringing permanent buffs obtainable through the guild hall, but this purchasable potion method leaves a lot to be desired.
- Mail Message Cap should be increased for guild members. I’m sure the 2 message cap is an artifact from an anti gold seller feature, but it makes sending messages 300+ members a huge pain.
- API Features are something I’m very much looking forward to but I’ve already listed those in My API Wishlist so I won’t go into detail. However, I will throw in this shameless plug – check out my guild’s Hall of Fame.
Lastly, although these are not feature requests, I want to point out a couple guild related bugs that will also help improve guild QoL.
- G in Guild Hall crashes the game. I’m sure this has been brought to Anet’s attention, but opening the guild window while visiting any NPC in the guild hall will cause your client to crash.
- Slow Loading Logs are a hurdle for guild management. In particular, some entries under Guild Roster can show up as “…” for up to 15 minutes before they load in.
- Guild Hall Instances… There should not be multiple instances of one guild’s guild hall. We want to see all our guildies who are in the hall.
Are there any important suggestions I missed? Please list them in comments and I will update this post.
(edited by Kuzzi.2198)