Guild Wars 2

Why are there so many restrictions on the in game mail system? Often I try to use in game mail to send out a general mailer to all guildies regarding upcoming events and not only do these have to be sent one at a time, but the game will often throw up a dialog about “excessive mailing” which delays the process. The max character limit is also annoying. There is also no way to upgrade this aspect of the game. In terms of in game mail being useful to guild officers and leaders the current design is asinine and unacceptable. If I am misunderstanding the intended purpose of in game mail please correct me, but it seems being able to share a weekly mailer for a select group of guild mates should be very straightforward and supported by this system. It’s been this way since launch, can we ever expect improvements? Thanks.

Another another aspect I would like to mention; When you send mail to a player you send to an account, e.g. AccountName.2353 however when you receive mail only the character name that the play was on when mail was sent is displayed. Please explain the rational of this design? Why has this not been retooled? Is everyone really too swamped to address the little details?

You can use the new MotD to inform all Guildies at once, in a bit over 2 weeks. That should be helpful.

Good luck.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

You can use the new MotD to inform all Guildies at once, in a bit over 2 weeks. That should be helpful.

Good luck.

Yeah, it’s really not the same thing at all. For example we’re hosting a sPvP tournament and have 10 guild members out of total who need to RSVP for an event we’re holding. They each need to be mailed a generic mailer and each need to respond to that. As implemented it’s VERY difficult both ways. Sending the general mailer has to be done one at a time, on receiving confirmation back there is no user account name stamped anywhere. Is it really reasonable that the sender would know all of a players alts?

I’ve named one of many scenarios where a subgroup of guildies may need to communicate. In game mail is useless for this purpose when that in fact should be it’s sole purpose.

I think what the OP means is they’d like to see the mail system be more convenient for communicating with their guild. It’s already a very useful system; it’s just restrictive enough to make it useless as a tool for guilds with more than 20 people.

However, there are some compelling reasons why those restrictions are in place: to prevent spamming, to cripple gold sellers, to hurt illicit coin launderers, etc. So any new system would have to take that into account. And unfortunately, there aren’t any easy-to-implement solutions. Anything that involves removing per-minute limits benefits gold sellers and launderers; anything that increases the character limit adds some stress to data management (admittedly, not that much, but it’s still something else to worry about on ANet’s end).

Accordingly, I think your best bet is to ask ANet to adjust the guild panel to meet these typical guild communication needs, rather than trying to over-turn the existing limits on mail. For example, add some sort of “I’m planning on attending” system to the guild panel.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

I think what the OP means is they’d like to see the mail system be more convenient for communicating with their guild. It’s already a very useful system; it’s just restrictive enough to make it useless as a tool for guilds with more than 20 people.

However, there are some compelling reasons why those restrictions are in place: to prevent spamming, to cripple gold sellers, to hurt illicit coin launderers, etc. So any new system would have to take that into account. And unfortunately, there aren’t any easy-to-implement solutions. Anything that involves removing per-minute limits benefits gold sellers and launderers; anything that increases the character limit adds some stress to data management (admittedly, not that much, but it’s still something else to worry about on ANet’s end).

Accordingly, I think your best bet is to ask ANet to adjust the guild panel to meet these typical guild communication needs, rather than trying to over-turn the existing limits on mail. For example, add some sort of “I’m planning on attending” system to the guild panel.

Yes, spamming just anyone should be filtered. HOWEVER. If you are an officer in a guild (for context of gw2 a member of guild that can kick and invite members ) then you should have no restrictions on mass mailing fellow guild members. They delay is ridiculous, infuriating and just god awful design. You have no CC option. You have no subscriber option. Honestly it’s a very, very, very restrictive system that is near useless. It’s only use is to send very short Tweet like messages and attach non account bound items for friends. It’s potential uses are 10x that. It needs to be revamped. What would be idea is social media type of situation where each player has a a wall and users can subscribe to feeds. But this must be done in-game or it would still be useless.

If ANet wanted to build something outside game, a first-party solution for GW2 like GuildWork.com would be great. They could make it freemium so it matches the guild’s model and becomes another revenue stream. Just give us something.

ANet isn’t likely to want to build a system themselves (look at how much trouble they have doing the TP interface; I can’t imagine they’d manage anything close to a social media level of polish). They also don’t want to depend on too many 3rd party solutions, because it hampers their ability to grow the game.

The company is just big enough that we definitely expect such things from them, but they really just have the one franchise — that means they can’t really afford the bells and whistles that other publishers can afford to bring to their games.

tl;dr I think we aren’t going to see many changes to mail. However, we will see more changes to the guild panel, so consider proposing things that will help make that tool able to cover some of the same requirements.