Guild Wars 2

More and more the game seems only for those who are willing to spend ten hours a day farming materials or willing to pull out the wallet and buy your way to progress.

Free to play in a nut shell.

I agree with OP. Just want to add how WvW-only guild ugrades require tons of materials that are only dropping in PvE maps.

Yup

Game went F2P and adopted the full F2P model even in it’s paid expansion

+1 to the OP, many good points and constructive criticism with ideas for fixes. I hope Anet reads it and take it to heart. WvW got royally screwed this expansion. It reminds me of Blizzard’s treatment to their PvP playerbase and how royally they screwed up Ashran during their latest expansion.

Not only that, they gambled with their PvE playerbase. Usually MMO’s don’t dare push their casual playerbase away as it’s usually their bread & butter and the segment that spends most money. I hope Anet knows what they are doing. But in my opinion someone there made a bad miscalculation.

Spending $400k and dev resources on the smallest segment of their game while neglecting the rest just does not seem like sound business decision. Wrong priorities in my opinion.

Guild Halls aren’t meant for small guilds. Sure they made it so a group of 5 can capture it, but the upgrade are costly. This was done so you can only earn them if you’re willing to invest into your guild. It’s not fair for small guilds to get cheaper upgrades over larger guilds.

Here’s what I would recommend. Either you expand your guild and bring in more members who are willing to help upgrade, or join a larger, more established guild.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Guild Halls aren’t meant for small guilds. Sure they made it so a group of 5 can capture it, but the upgrade are costly. This was done so you can only earn them if you’re willing to invest into your guild. It’s not fair for small guilds to get cheaper upgrades over larger guilds.

Here’s what I would recommend. Either you expand your guild and bring in more members who are willing to help upgrade, or join a larger, more established guild.

Its not fair for smaller guilds to be cut off from game either…

Its not really up to you or some anet developer to say how big guild is suppose to be. Specially in a game that has been running for several years without making artificial restrictions on guild size.

There is no real reason to only allow very large guilds with a lot of members to enjoy the game.

Obviously no one understands that NO guild was meant to unlock everything in the Guild Hall within the first week or even first 3 weeks. The Guild Hall is a LONG TERM investment, which means small guilds NEED to spread the cost out over MONTHS and not look at weeks. That is how it’s set up currently and I highly doubt it will change.

As for the issue with the Arena 2 upgrade, did you not stop to think that only basics would be available to those without the expansion…it’s actually makes sense that you would need the expansion in order to use higher level upgrades.

It’s a real shame they yoinked your guild buffs and threw them behind a huge gold sink and pay wall. That 3 years you spent building up your guild and earning all those buffs? Gone. I’m surprised they didn’t take vaults away too.

p2w means you are forced to pay i havnt felt a NEED to pay for anything unless i wanted too its NOT VERY HARD to earn gold and turn it into gems its actually easy fairly fun .

Not going to disagree with your observations, but the solution is not to put so much focus on the Gall Halls. Think about it. Guild Halls and the new Legendaries are where this gold sink is. As you pointed out the end result of all the hard work for these upgrades isn’t really of great value. Obtaining the Hall is still not that difficult, the upgrades are clearly a gold sink.

All F2P games funnel players to the cash shop. Do you really believe the only fun/value in the game comes from Guild Hall amenities and new Legendary Crafting? Be rational. I evaulted long ago that Legendarily weapons in general are not worth the effort given their nominal stat increase. Legendary armor is going to be for the top 10% of PvE players who focus on Raids during their time in game. If you must have these things to find any fun in the game and you don’t want to grind then I would agree it’s time to move on from GW2.

I think they provide plenty of content for the asking price of the expansion but for the end-game (Guild Hall upgrades [time gated so I do classify this as end-game], Raids and of course Legendarily) if you want to delve into the end-game content it absolutely has been designed to send you to the gem store with mastercard in hand often or to spend a lotof time in game grinding. This is a sustainable business model.

Goldrock.9076:

p2w means you are forced to pay i havnt felt a NEED to pay for anything unless i wanted too its NOT VERY HARD to earn gold and turn it into gems its actually easy fairly fun .

http://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki

- dragonhunter
- druid
- reaper
- scrapper
- tempest

That is just an example.

Outside of PVP, it is not P2W. But more like pay, pay again for gems to gold, to enjoy the game.

Mortifer.2946:

Goldrock.9076:

p2w means you are forced to pay i havnt felt a NEED to pay for anything unless i wanted too its NOT VERY HARD to earn gold and turn it into gems its actually easy fairly fun .

http://metabattle.com/wiki/MetaBattle_Wiki

- dragonhunter
- druid
- reaper
- scrapper
- tempest

That is just an example.

Outside of PVP, it is not P2W. But more like pay, pay again for gems to gold, to enjoy the game.

Given the last time they balanced professions we ended up with the guardian symbol exploit and the engineer piercing grenade bug, I know better than to go into sPVP after a patch. I’ll wait for balancing, but…. LOL! Let’s hope they are just the top builds because people want to try the new specializations in PVP…

SamTheGuardian.2938:

Not going to disagree with your observations, but the solution is not to put so much focus on the Gall Halls. Think about it. Guild Halls and the new Legendaries are where this gold sink is. As you pointed out the end result of all the hard work for these upgrades isn’t really of great value. Obtaining the Hall is still not that difficult, the upgrades are clearly a gold sink.

All F2P games funnel players to the cash shop. Do you really believe the only fun/value in the game comes from Guild Hall amenities and new Legendary Crafting? Be rational. I evaulted long ago that Legendarily weapons in general are not worth the effort given their nominal stat increase. Legendary armor is going to be for the top 10% of PvE players who focus on Raids during their time in game. If you must have these things to find any fun in the game and you don’t want to grind then I would agree it’s time to move on from GW2.

I think they provide plenty of content for the asking price of the expansion but for the end-game (Guild Hall upgrades [time gated so I do classify this as end-game], Raids and of course Legendarily) if you want to delve into the end-game content it absolutely has been designed to send you to the gem store with mastercard in hand often or to spend a lotof time in game grinding. This is a sustainable business model.

Absolutely incorrect. The dramatic damage the Guild Hall changes have done to WvW guild abilities is devastating. Guilds that focus on WvW and don’t touch PvE are now completely screwed.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Guild Halls aren’t meant for small guilds. Sure they made it so a group of 5 can capture it, but the upgrade are costly. This was done so you can only earn them if you’re willing to invest into your guild. It’s not fair for small guilds to get cheaper upgrades over larger guilds.

Here’s what I would recommend. Either you expand your guild and bring in more members who are willing to help upgrade, or join a larger, more established guild.

Smaller guilds shouldn’t be punished for being smaller, or told “deal with it”.
Guild Hall progress should have been gated behind TIME, not GOLD. Make it so any guild from 5 people to 500 can do it, but the minimum is say, 5 months to get to max, but overall gold it takes is under $1000 gold. Make it so the resources needed for the Guild Hall upgrades for each type are reliant upon materials gathered from each type. (WvW upgrades should only require WvW materials, and so on and so forth with the rest)

This game has prided itself on a system that allowed even the smallest guilds to be viable for as long as the game has been online. This is a huge slap in the face to the smaller guilds.

Also, it’s all good and well to tell someone to “just start recruiting” however have you not noticed how hard it is to recruit these days? This game turned into WoW overnight with the new Guild Hall system that means higher level guilds are more attractive to players looking for a guild. They are more likely to join a massive high level guild where they might be asked to contribute 2 gold a day to upgrades, instead of a smaller guild where they might be asked to go out of pocket for thousands of materials at a constant rate.

Personally, I’ve spent about $100 on game gold to purchase materials for our upgrades. We have other players contributing, but it’s hugely disheartening to feel as though the greatest efforts of the few are barely getting us anywhere. We are currently focused now on getting our Scriber up and WvW upgrades to viability, but the Scribing costs thousands of Coarse Sand. This is BS.

Lacuda.8543:

Let’s face it:
Heart of Thorns is a goldsink. Not just any kind of optional goldsink that doesn’t hinder gameplay; it’s a mandatory goldsink that is bankrupting small guilds and likely has brought in a ton of revenue to the gem store in the form of buying gold.

And judging by the 20% increase in gem→gold prices over the last 3 days it seems to be working.

I think it is crap that they changed the whole guild system. Many guilds had tons of influence built up that they had earned. Why shouldn’t guild halls have been available to be purchased right away with influence? After all, many guilds have existed for 3 YEARS. Now they have instituted a cynical system that saps the loot that guild members have earned. These guild members who donate can later be kicked from said guild and what do they have to show for their donation???? I really can’t stand the new guild system. Anet is always wasting time and development reworking stuff instead of creating content.

Lacuda.8543:

Also, it’s all good and well to tell someone to “just start recruiting” however have you not noticed how hard it is to recruit these days? This game turned into WoW overnight with the new Guild Hall system that means higher level guilds are more attractive to players looking for a guild. They are more likely to join a massive high level guild where they might be asked to contribute 2 gold a day to upgrades, instead of a smaller guild where they might be asked to go out of pocket for thousands of materials at a constant rate.

Exactly, why would anyone join small guild with no upgrades? You have to be very poor or very stupid (not talking about guilds from real life family or firends), and you if you are small guild struggling, you probably dont want to recruit poor and stupid members.

The game is punishing players who join smaller guilds because they have to spend more per member on guild hall and have less to spend on personal items. So small guilds end up with members who have weaker equipment, who can not do endgame content because they are spending all their in game money on upgrading guild hall.

After some time there will be guilds that have maxed upgrades. New members will spend nothing upgrading those guilds. ZERO. None. Yet, they will still enjoy all the benefits of maxed up guild hall. How is that fair to players who have spend fortunes on trying to upgrade their own small guilds?

Smooth Penguin.5294:

It’s not fair for small guilds to get cheaper upgrades over larger guilds.

I disagree. Upgrades for a guild should be based on percentages that directly relate to a guild’s size or activity level. What’s not fair is for small guilds to carry the same weight as much larger guilds.

And I think it’s a bad idea overall to discourage smaller guilds. The world is big enough (or should be) for both types of groups.

What’s not fair is making players give up their hard earned loot. The passive influence system was so much better than this monstrosity.

Coyote.7031:

It’s a real shame they yoinked your guild buffs and threw them behind a huge gold sink and pay wall. That 3 years you spent building up your guild and earning all those buffs? Gone. I’m surprised they didn’t take vaults away too.

Probably only didn’t because, then, where would they have put all our stuff?

Surprised they didn’t mail it all back to us with a “Here’s your stuff, but don’t worry, you can buy your guild bank back, when you get your guild hall!” message attached.

The thing is, we’re all being treated like we have paid the bare minimum for all this, over the last 3 years.

But, some of us haven’t.

Some of us haven’t been playing for the full 3 years and/or have been pretty free in supporting the game, financially, with the idea that, as we progress, we will find it easier to support ourselves, or even make some of it back.

So, to now find that that will be virtually impossible, especially in certain areas, is very disappointing.

They should have left the regular way of building up guilds as it was, via influence.

It was a good, fair (if slow, for smaller guilds), system.

Smaller guilds were probably already paying more real money to do it, anyway, as they were more likely to give-in and purchase influence with gold, to speed up the process.

Then, the guild hall should have been offered beyond all that original progress and stuff acquired – as an added extra for the bigger guilds that already had everything.

Most smaller guilds would have been more than happy, if we had just stayed with the previous system, until we had completed it and had kept any upgrades we already had.

Especially if, for example, we could have just been given relatively easy ways to improve the Guild Initiative Headquarters in Lion’s Arch, slightly and make that our guild’s “home”.

Or, maybe, been given another little building, somewhere, appropriate to the size of our guild.

But, even without that, just not taking what we already had, or our means to progress further, away would have been OK.

I mean, really, when I think about it, I have actually paid to lose more than I have, personally, gained from this xpac.

How can that possibly be OK?

@Celtic Lady
" Upgrades for a guild should be based on percentages that directly relate to a guild’s size or activity level. " – kick everyone from your guild, leave only ~6 players > upgrade your guild > invite players you’ve kicked.
Influence was the best system. It’s so sad that ANet chose guilds for their gold sink.

I agree with you OP. There’s so much wrong with this expansion that I honestly regret buying it. I expected something like Gw2’s launch, not endless grinds and gated content.

Guild hall costs are hilariously gold hungry, every single upgrade is hundreds of gold alone. Not to mention that each section is split into 2! I can’t express my surprise when my guild finished Arena 1 and realized we couldn’t even use it. We needed to grind out Arena 2 also!

One of our guild mates tried to do scribing, only to realize how insane the costs are and how much materials you require just to make anything of value. And then of course, banners being locked away behind that is just so gross. Like fractal rewards, stacking them behind masteries? What kind of game takes things you already had access to and then reintroduces them as new rewards?

Dragonstand and Tangled Depths are some of the worst maps I’ve ever seen created. TD having an hour and a half wait for the meta to start and only repeatable events running is mind numbingly awful, while DS requires a 2 hour investment just to begin, god forbid your map fails the fight, you get absolutely nothing.

Pvp balance is back to an all time low, with most of my team being disgusted with the power creep of elite specs. I honestly can’t fathom how we got back to this so quickly after the Ele nerf. Passive healing, passive defenses, evades and blocks and immunes for days with so much aoe spam, my game can’t even load the effects. Anet just doesn’t seem to learn when it comes to pvp.

It saddens me to think back to the game when I first started playing and looking at it’s state now. It boggles my mind how quickly they tossed away their manifesto and went full f2p ideology. I’m expecting massive changes, otherwise it’s going to start hemorrhaging population when people get fed up of being nickle and dimed.

krzysiek.9061:

@Celtic Lady
" Upgrades for a guild should be based on percentages that directly relate to a guild’s size or activity level. " – kick everyone from your guild, leave only ~6 players > upgrade your guild > invite players you’ve kicked.
Influence was the best system. It’s so sad that ANet chose guilds for their gold sink.

I tend to think this wouldn’t happen nearly to the degree people say it will. The logistical nightmare of getting hundreds of people back into your guild once you’ve kicked them for any length of time is fairly prohibitive. Besides, suggestions have already been made to make this less likely to happen.

FogLeg.9354:

Exactly, why would anyone join small guild with no upgrades? You have to be very poor or very stupid (not talking about guilds from real life family or firends), and you if you are small guild struggling, you probably dont want to recruit poor and stupid members.

Or very kind and/or generous.

Which, of course, some people (I think they call those people psychopaths?) view as the same thing.

Being punished for being kind, in games, is always a great design choice. ><

“A crafting profession is one that any player can pick up and within a few days or a few weeks, make their way to the max.”
Well it’s true that normally any player can pick up a craft, but they stated form the beginning scribing was really build around guilds. So I do not see that as a problem.

The ability to level it fast is also not a requirement imho. If I look to WoW, I did a very long over leveling the engineering craft and that was basically my road to max level.

I don’t know the future required mats, but things like Oil you can get by farming seeds. Now those seeds go to the Guild-Hall itself but once the hall it completed you can use the seeds for crafting. The only real expensive part is the gold you have to pay for things like a basic chair. 50 silver.. That is a lot considering you do not need 1 chair but more like 60, and 15 tables, and..

But overall I don’t think that (eventually) you don’t need the complete guild to pay to level a scriber. They might have to pay to get the decorations.

Overall I like the new Guild-Hall system. The only change I would like to see for smaller guilds, is lowering the required guild level for upgrades. So a smaller guild can focus on PvP or WvW or scribing (decorations) or.. That is now impossible because by only doing all available WvW upgrades you will run into a problem where you can’t do upgrades because your guild-level is to low.

People donating and working together on a hall also creates more of a community, it bounds people more to a guild. Something that was missing.

Celtic Lady.3729:

krzysiek.9061:

@Celtic Lady
" Upgrades for a guild should be based on percentages that directly relate to a guild’s size or activity level. " – kick everyone from your guild, leave only ~6 players > upgrade your guild > invite players you’ve kicked.
Influence was the best system. It’s so sad that ANet chose guilds for their gold sink.

I tend to think this wouldn’t happen nearly to the degree people say it will. The logistical nightmare of getting hundreds of people back into your guild once you’ve kicked them for any length of time is fairly prohibitive. Besides, suggestions have already been made to make this less likely to happen.

logistical nightmare? Donate the required mats (for a 6 man guild) on the guild-bank. Make an alt guild and invite everybody there. Kick everybody from main guild. Do the upgrades, invite them back.

Not that it matters. Having to pay more for exactly the same thing is extremely unfair.

In addition to that bigger guilds usually also have a higher percentage less active members (and with less active I also mean, those less willing to donate, not just those online less). So now guilds would be forced to kick members who do not donate enough.

No, this system of mats bases on members is unfair and hard to balance right.

In my honest opinion smaller guilds just have to focus on elements of the hall. Just focus on getting everything to tier 1, or getting one element maxed out. And expect to do that in the same amount of time that it takes bigger guilds to max out the complete hall (so 6 to 9 months according to Anet.. While I have my doubts about that).

I’m surprised the larger WvW guilds are so complacent about these changes. They have lost 100’s of 1000’s in guild influence, all their effort put into obtaining all the buffs and other advantages they worked on for 3 years, all of it wiped out. If that is not a huge slap in the face to people for 3 years of support I don’t know what is?

Even in a small guild it was something to be able to put up a few buffs and +5 supply to help out the server, it was never about glory or recognition.

1 month in and I have still to see one guild able to put any buffs up in WvW.

The very least Anet could have done is to have converted guild influence into some form of new guild hall advancement to give everyone a fair chance, not simply scrap it and start from scratch.

Devata.6589:

In addition to that bigger guilds usually also have a higher percentage less active members (and with less active I also mean, those less willing to donate, not just those online less). So now guilds would be forced to kick members who do not donate enough.

No, this system of mats bases on members is unfair and hard to balance right.

Exactly this. People should see the full picture from both sides before posting “solutions”

Yes, I’m reminded on a daily basis of why John Smith was added to Anet. He seems to have played a larger impact in HoT than actual game designers. This seems to be the direction Anet is going though; make money without actually giving content/enjoyable gameplay.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Guild Halls aren’t meant for small guilds. Sure they made it so a group of 5 can capture it, but the upgrade are costly. This was done so you can only earn them if you’re willing to invest into your guild. It’s not fair for small guilds to get cheaper upgrades over larger guilds.

Here’s what I would recommend. Either you expand your guild and bring in more members who are willing to help upgrade, or join a larger, more established guild.

Ohh shhh.. you don’t have a clue what your talking about.. small guilds will always have to contribute more in every way than a larger guild has to .. difference is ANET couldn’t be bothered or lacked the ability to think up a suitable system in order to make one of the most sought after features inclusive for all.. no what we were handed was an insanely imbalanced one size fits all or GTFO of game system.
No one is saying small Guilds should get it easy but the amount of cost and effort should of been balanced – what we got was nothing short of pillaging of all the efforts players put in prior to HoT and then further stinging them to the point of utter boredom and bankruptcy after it went live.
It it’s a complete hash of anything player or guild friendly unless your prepared to become a faceless number in crowd of anybody’s.. other MMO’s must be licking their lips in anticipation rather than worrying how many of their own player base will leave to join GW2.

I posted this before, but I’ll post this again. I played a great many MMO since my first in 2003, including games where guilds could have access to better stuff at higher guild levels. NONE of them had a design as asinine as this. By far most of them had a system in place that allowed even small guilds to progress, with requirements proportionate to their size.

I mean seriously… by far most people do NOT play in huge guilds, on the whole they prefer playing with a small group of friends and/or relatives. I think there may even be statistics from research on average guild size available, and 500+ ain’kitten At least not for Europe, Australia/NZ and the US.

And when even the truly HUGE guilds are complaining about ridiculous material costs, it’s fairly obvious that something is badly wrong with the whole system.

Bloodstealer.5978:

Ohh shhh.. you don’t have a clue what your talking about.. small guilds will always have to contribute more in every way than a larger guild has to .. difference is ANET couldn’t be bothered or lacked the ability to think up a suitable system in order to make one of the most sought after features inclusive for all..

How can this be done? Got an example system? Just don’t say the mats required will be based on activity or guild size/members because that won’t work at all. If you have some other method that doesn’t involve the number of guild members then go ahead and post it.

Broom.2561:

By far most of them had a system in place that allowed even small guilds to progress, with requirements proportionate to their size.

Requirements proportionate to guild size won’t work. Find another solution

Devata.6589:

Celtic Lady.3729:

krzysiek.9061:

@Celtic Lady
" Upgrades for a guild should be based on percentages that directly relate to a guild’s size or activity level. " – kick everyone from your guild, leave only ~6 players > upgrade your guild > invite players you’ve kicked.
Influence was the best system. It’s so sad that ANet chose guilds for their gold sink.

I tend to think this wouldn’t happen nearly to the degree people say it will. The logistical nightmare of getting hundreds of people back into your guild once you’ve kicked them for any length of time is fairly prohibitive. Besides, suggestions have already been made to make this less likely to happen.

logistical nightmare? Donate the required mats (for a 6 man guild) on the guild-bank. Make an alt guild and invite everybody there. Kick everybody from main guild. Do the upgrades, invite them back.

Not that it matters. Having to pay more for exactly the same thing is extremely unfair.

In addition to that bigger guilds usually also have a higher percentage less active members (and with less active I also mean, those less willing to donate, not just those online less). So now guilds would be forced to kick members who do not donate enough.

No, this system of mats bases on members is unfair and hard to balance right.

In my honest opinion smaller guilds just have to focus on elements of the hall. Just focus on getting everything to tier 1, or getting one element maxed out. And expect to do that in the same amount of time that it takes bigger guilds to max out the complete hall (so 6 to 9 months according to Anet.. While I have my doubts about that).

And so larger guild leaders should.. you wanna become a group of numbers then that’s up to you to recruit properly and managed it effectively/efficiently.
No one forced those guilds to become weighted down with inactives and spongers.. so absolutely they should be booted.
Do you take employment so you can either stay at home and do nothing or venture into work but do nothing all day long yet at the same time expect to be rewarded just cos you signed the job acceptance forms??… no you would be handed your exit papers in a heart beat cos no one likes to support dead weights no matter what…. that’s a responsibility that comes with running something whether in a game guild or RL.
Sure there are always a few exceptions to that for genuine reasons but if they are online and not contributing.. then its boot time!

Using a large guilds inability to organise themselves and get every player to contribute is no excuse when comparing the imbalance that has been handed to small guilds, where the time and efforts just to get back to where they were pre HoT is insanely out of sync if not near impossible for some… and those new players wanting to start guilds.. . enjoyable New Player Experience my backside.

maddoctor.2738:

Broom.2561:

By far most of them had a system in place that allowed even small guilds to progress, with requirements proportionate to their size.

Requirements proportionate to guild size won’t work. Find another solution

It worked just fine in other games. I don’t really see the problem. If games 10+ years old managed, GW2 should be able to do the same. Exploiting the system could be easily prevented too… grow too fast after completing upgrades? Tsk, your upgrades just went unavailable till you pay the surplus due.

The end goal should not be a grindfest, it should be something that comes naturally as the guild does things together. And I’m not talking guild missions, though those could still be used to gain bonuses for your guild’s growth. People who e.g. prefer to just explore, do story missions or craft should still be able to contribute.

Honestly, they should never have done away with the influence system. The new system is a huge slap in the face for ‘play how you want to play’.

Broom.2561:

I don’t really see the problem.

And here we have a problem. And it’t not about exploiting, it’s about making it worse for large guilds to get the upgrades. Large guilds have more players that are not playing, or are inactive, or don’t want to contribute towards guild upgrades than smaller guilds. So you are saying you want to base the requirements on what? Guild members? So the larger the guild, the more heavy investments the leadership team of said guild has to do? What comes next? Kicking those who don’t contribute?

Bloodstealer.5978:

No one forced those guilds to become weighted down with inactives and spongers.. so absolutely they should be booted.

Right. So much older guilds that started in other games and came to GW2 will kick their longtime friends and guild members because they decided for RL reasons to stop playing the game for an extended period of time. You want to add extra drama, kicking, and even exploiting of mechanics, into the mix. What happened to play how you want?

Bloodstealer.5978:

Devata.6589:

Celtic Lady.3729:

krzysiek.9061:

@Celtic Lady
" Upgrades for a guild should be based on percentages that directly relate to a guild’s size or activity level. " – kick everyone from your guild, leave only ~6 players > upgrade your guild > invite players you’ve kicked.
Influence was the best system. It’s so sad that ANet chose guilds for their gold sink.

I tend to think this wouldn’t happen nearly to the degree people say it will. The logistical nightmare of getting hundreds of people back into your guild once you’ve kicked them for any length of time is fairly prohibitive. Besides, suggestions have already been made to make this less likely to happen.

logistical nightmare? Donate the required mats (for a 6 man guild) on the guild-bank. Make an alt guild and invite everybody there. Kick everybody from main guild. Do the upgrades, invite them back.

Not that it matters. Having to pay more for exactly the same thing is extremely unfair.

In addition to that bigger guilds usually also have a higher percentage less active members (and with less active I also mean, those less willing to donate, not just those online less). So now guilds would be forced to kick members who do not donate enough.

No, this system of mats bases on members is unfair and hard to balance right.

In my honest opinion smaller guilds just have to focus on elements of the hall. Just focus on getting everything to tier 1, or getting one element maxed out. And expect to do that in the same amount of time that it takes bigger guilds to max out the complete hall (so 6 to 9 months according to Anet.. While I have my doubts about that).

And so larger guild leaders should.. you wanna become a group of numbers then that’s up to you to recruit properly and managed it effectively/efficiently.
No one forced those guilds to become weighted down with inactives and spongers.. so absolutely they should be booted.
Do you take employment so you can either stay at home and do nothing or venture into work but do nothing all day long yet at the same time expect to be rewarded just cos you signed the job acceptance forms??… no you would be handed your exit papers in a heart beat cos no one likes to support dead weights no matter what…. that’s a responsibility that comes with running something whether in a game guild or RL.
Sure there are always a few exceptions to that for genuine reasons but if they are online and not contributing.. then its boot time!

Using a large guilds inability to organise themselves and get every player to contribute is no excuse when comparing the imbalance that has been handed to small guilds, where the time and efforts just to get back to where they were pre HoT is insanely out of sync if not near impossible for some… and those new players wanting to start guilds.. . enjoyable New Player Experience my backside.

Well for example, we are an international PvX guild, we want all types of players. Yeah we ask all members to donate and help along if they can, but we don’t kick somebody because they might have a play-style that does mean they simply are not able to donate a lot. He might be very helpful in other ways, like helping people with JP’s or organizing events or making sure we also have activity on times most people are offline, might be active in chat or on TS and so on.

Not all game-styles earn you a lot of materials, but that does not mean those people are not a good addition to the guild.

That’s is exactly the same in a company. You still might want security while when looking at the revenue they generate it is 0.

So no.. larger guild leaders should not (depending on the type of guild).

“Using a large guilds inability to organise themselves and get every player to contribute is no excuse when comparing the imbalance that has been handed to small guilds,” What imbalance. If we take the company example here. Bigger companies, with more employees that make more money also tent to have bigger offices with better / more advanced tools. As small guild you simply have to focus on elements.

Balancing everything around the weakest link is a really bad idea. Sure then everybody can do everything, but it would also result in extremely boring content.

maddoctor.2738:

Broom.2561:

By far most of them had a system in place that allowed even small guilds to progress, with requirements proportionate to their size.

Requirements proportionate to guild size won’t work. Find another solution

But it would be a great way of punishing large guild and systematically ensuring that large guilds are avoided. Actually no this is a great system. You get like 200 people, make a 5 man guild, get all 200 people to send their mats to those 5 people and bang you have all your upgrades in no time. Obviously after your upgrades are done you invite the other 195 people into the guild cause at that point size doesn’t matter anymore.

Broom.2561:

maddoctor.2738:

Broom.2561:

By far most of them had a system in place that allowed even small guilds to progress, with requirements proportionate to their size.

Requirements proportionate to guild size won’t work. Find another solution

It worked just fine in other games. I don’t really see the problem. If games 10+ years old managed, GW2 should be able to do the same. Exploiting the system could be easily prevented too… grow too fast after completing upgrades? Tsk, your upgrades just went unavailable till you pay the surplus due.

The end goal should not be a grindfest, it should be something that comes naturally as the guild does things together. And I’m not talking guild missions, though those could still be used to gain bonuses for your guild’s growth. People who e.g. prefer to just explore, do story missions or craft should still be able to contribute.

Honestly, they should never have done away with the influence system. The new system is a huge slap in the face for ‘play how you want to play’.

“People who e.g. prefer to just explore, do story missions or craft should still be able to contribute.”

Like it was you mean? Well that did not create much of a community feeling. Sure I would have liked it much better that when instead of requiring mats, it would require tasks (I hope we still get that for decorations). Want to build WVW, claim a camp, then a tower, then a keep, then SM. Want some PvE upgrade defeat Teq as a guild-spawn. While that would likely be a bigger problem for smaller guilds than this mats grind.

In fact, that might be the reason we have mats instead of such tasks, to have a method also smaller guilds can do.

CureForLiving.5360:

maddoctor.2738:

Broom.2561:

By far most of them had a system in place that allowed even small guilds to progress, with requirements proportionate to their size.

Requirements proportionate to guild size won’t work. Find another solution

But it would be a great way of punishing large guild and systematically ensuring that large guilds are avoided. Actually no this is a great system. You get like 200 people, make a 5 man guild, get all 200 people to send their mats to those 5 people and bang you have all your upgrades in no time. Obviously after your upgrades are done you invite the other 195 people into the guild cause at that point size doesn’t matter anymore.

But there was a solution about that (not a good one):

Exploiting the system could be easily prevented too… grow too fast after completing upgrades? Tsk, your upgrades just went unavailable till you pay the surplus due.

I’d be more interested to know what kind of system other games use because the “it’s been done better” isn’t exactly a valid argument for discussion.

maddoctor.2738:

Broom.2561:

By far most of them had a system in place that allowed even small guilds to progress, with requirements proportionate to their size.

Requirements proportionate to guild size won’t work. Find another solution

It would work very well, you not liking it doesn’t make it not viable.

Leodon.1564:

Yes, I’m reminded on a daily basis of why John Smith was added to Anet. He seems to have played a larger impact in HoT than actual game designers. This seems to be the direction Anet is going though; make money without actually giving content/enjoyable gameplay.

I don’t understand that either. Economics is work, not fun.

Kraggy.4169:

maddoctor.2738:

Broom.2561:

By far most of them had a system in place that allowed even small guilds to progress, with requirements proportionate to their size.

Requirements proportionate to guild size won’t work. Find another solution

It would work very well, you not liking it doesn’t make it not viable.

I mentioned already many cases that it won’t work and why it’s not viable at all. Very specific examples. I explained why it’s not viable, you are saying that it is but don’t offer much to prove it. And anyway I asked multiple times for more specific examples of how this system, or any other “better” systems in other games, work. Talking about what I like or not isn’t an argument, nor it promotes discussion.

maddoctor.2738:

Requirements proportionate to guild size won’t work. Find another solution

Fine, you will not like it, but it will still work:

• all contribution to guild hall is tied to the player account. This means every time you put materials into upgrades your account gets “guild points” (based on their value in TP). This value is visible to all guild members

• players may be part of many guilds but their GP only apply to one guild (you can pick which one)

• if player leaves the guild, all his GP is reduced from overall guild upgrade points. In case of important member of smaller guild, a lot of guild upgrades may be lost. It wont be 100% of your contributed materials, but high enough, lets say 90%

• if new player joins the guild (or assigns the GP to current guild), these GP can be used instead of upgrade materials to pay for guild upgrades

• number of maximum guild members is equal to the guild level. Level 2 guild can only have 2 members, and those 2 need to pay for enough upgrades to reach level 3 before they can add another member. Level 20 guild can have 20 members, level 40 guild 40 members. After reaching maximum upgrades, guild can continue to raise its level to increase number of members (each extra member slot will cost more materials/GP)

The benefits compared to current system:

• guilds will grow naturally
• instead of throwing materials away into endless hole, everyone is raising their account value when contributing to guild upgrades
• people can easily switch guilds, start new guilds, merge or split guilds
• guild size and guild level are now same thing

Well, I think the current problem is purely a lack of maps. The maps are too complex, which is fun for a week, but after that you really begin to want more different themes and maps…

FogLeg.9354:

• all contribution to guild hall is tied to the player account. This means every time you put materials into upgrades your account gets “guild points” (based on their value in TP). This value is visible to all guild members

Players don’t like DPS meters, now you want a guild hall contribution meter. As if someone’s value is based on how many materials they give for their guild.

• if player leaves the guild, all his GP is reduced from overall guild upgrade points. In case of important member of smaller guild, a lot of guild upgrades may be lost. It wont be 100% of your contributed materials, but high enough, lets say 90%

Can’t you imagine the trolling and abuse of a system like this? Let’s say that a person breaks guild rules, is offensive against guild members but has contributed a lot for the guild hall, the guild will be punished for kicking them? Troll paradise.

And still, you want the game to keep track of what anyone donated, in case they leave the guild the upgrade their materials were used on will be lost? And the materials (hard earned some times) will be lost too? So all my effort will go to waste if a guild officer decided to suddenly kick me because he doesn’t like me?

• if new player joins the guild (or assigns the GP to current guild), these GP can be used instead of upgrade materials to pay for guild upgrades

And if he leaves the upgrades will be cancelled. How is that going to work? Have you ever been in a large community and seen how often people come and go? Sometimes they go for external reasons and then come back. Why add this extra complexity?

• number of maximum guild members is equal to the guild level. Level 2 guild can only have 2 members, and those 2 need to pay for enough upgrades to reach level 3 before they can add another member. Level 20 guild can have 20 members, level 40 guild 40 members. After reaching maximum upgrades, guild can continue to raise its level to increase number of members (each extra member slot will cost more materials/GP)

Ever heard of friends playing together or guilds coming from other games? With a suggestion like this probably not. It might be news to you, but guilds and communities might last way longer than the lifetime of a specific game.

• guilds will grow naturally

Pointless

• instead of throwing materials away into endless hole, everyone is raising their account value when contributing to guild upgrades

And then we get all the mess of what happens if people leave, wasted contribution for petty reasons, troll paradise and a many other problems.

So yeah, it wouldn’t work. Try harder

maddoctor.2738:

Broom.2561:

By far most of them had a system in place that allowed even small guilds to progress, with requirements proportionate to their size.

Requirements proportionate to guild size won’t work. Find another solution

Yes they do and many other MMO’s have had such systems in place for years.. just takse someone to utilise a bit of creative thinking and know a bit about what an MMO’s is and how they work when balanced a whole lot better than what we have had pushed out with this expac – binkers off please and try thinking outside that little box.

maddoctor.2738:

Broom.2561:

By far most of them had a system in place that allowed even small guilds to progress, with requirements proportionate to their size.

Requirements proportionate to guild size won’t work. Find another solution

Care to elaborate …. cos imo it does and many other MMO’s have had such systems in place for years.. ..