Guild Wars 2

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

Loocker.4138:

Yes, I know full well that you can do all activities with only 5 people, but the hard part is getting those 5 people together at the right time in the right place without having any outside contact with any of them. Sure I can set the “message of the day” to “Guild mission at 5pm” or whatever, but most people will ignore it and I can’t make promise that I’ll be online then either.

In short: “Active participation” seems pretty good, but it’s not always easy. I much preferred the old system as it allowed a more casual way of building guilds.

If you can’t get 5 people together, then you have a smaller guild than you think (I don’t mean this as a criticism — organizing guilds is harder than herding cats, which is why I’m retired from leadership).

The point I was making is that the old system didn’t require participation — you could fully upgrade a guild without any participation at all. That’s bad for a ‘guild’ (although perfectly fine for a social club).

I can see why lots of people liked that. At the same time, I hope you can see why “more casual” isn’t something that our New Gaming Overlords would be interested in supporting. ANet wants guilds to be active associations of players. It’s better for an MMO if groups band together, because nearly all of the content is more fun with more people.

Again, my recommendation is that instead of banging your head against the GH wall trying to worry about upgrading, join a big guild and do g-mish with them and do treks and bounties as you can (solo, in pairs, whatever) until you feel like you have something more substantive.

Either that, or get more creative about building your guild from scratch — lots of people manage to do it.

Aye, in the end it comes down to preference. Depending on weather you take guilds seriously or just want to mess about with the idea. My point is, the old system allowed for both.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

DeanBB.4268:

What exactly is different than “the old system” that makes it hard to build up a guild?

Loocker.4138:

The fact that the only way to gain favour/experience now is by doing guild missions when you used to be able to gain “influence” by questing alone/purchasing influence.

The old system allowed folks to build up the guild infrastructure without, you know, having a guild.

• You could earn up to 50 influence/day with just a single guild member.
• You could buy all the influence you wanted for gold.

Neither of those mechanisms requires anyone in the guild to participate in ‘guild’ activities.

Loocker.4138:

For guild missions you need an organized group which is rather hard for a new guild with people you don’t know.

You can do every mission with 5 people, except perhaps some of the challenges. They don’t have to be meta or particular super organized, although obviously, at least one person needs to be experienced with the missions and the others have to be willing to follow that person’s lead. (Most missions are also doable with fewer, but I admit it’s a lot more tedious and less fun.)

Loocker.4138:

Since it’s so hard to recruit people with a lvl 0 guild it makes it much harder for new guilds to grow.

While it’s possible to discuss whether “4 people” constitutes a guild or just a circle of friends, I don’t see that it matters much — there are always guild starting from scratch that find ways to accumulate folks.

Or one can do what a lot of small groups do: join a large® guild for the benefits (buffs, scribe station, vendors, nodes, commendations) and use the small-guild for chat (creating a chat channel that turns off the other guilds, as needed).

tl;dr the new guild mechanics are designed to require active participation of a core group, which seems what ANet intended at launch (but just didn’t implement until HoT).

Yes, I know full well that you can do all activities with only 5 people, but the hard part is getting those 5 people together at the right time in the right place without having any outside contact with any of them. Sure I can set the “message of the day” to “Guild mission at 5pm” or whatever, but most people will ignore it and I can’t make promise that I’ll be online then either.

In short: “Active participation” seems pretty good, but it’s not always easy. I much preferred the old system as it allowed a more casual way of building guilds.

Vayne.8563:

Loocker.4138:

Paulytnz.7619:

Ummmm actually no I find this new system better. I am in a 2 person guild with a friend from another game (I don’t care if people want to debate if that is a guild or not either lol). In the old system we could not do the guild missions so our influence income was on the low side and we never got to see the guild mission currency. With this system the guild missions are a little bit more forgiving and influence is a thing of the past. We have a fair bit unlocked with guild upgrades, well considering there is only 2 of us anyway.

Edit: Maybe myself and my friend have not found this an issue as we are hoarders and have been hoarding our extra mats for a long time. It seems that the required items for upgrades that Anet targeted were things that were of low value and in surplus or hoarded away so they have a use now. So since my friend and I had a lot hoarded away already we had headstart sort of. Of course people who never hoarded or saved may have had to work for those same things. Maybe that’s the issue?

Yes, it is still pretty easy for small guilds built up of friends, but for someone trying to build a big guild or play with random users it’s become much harder to get started.
Still, you have a good point.

I have a guild of well over 200 people. We’re at guild level 59 now and have all the upgrades we really care about except the new buff for WvW reward tracks, which we’re working on.

It depends on the type of guild and how much the players like a respect it. Guilds, I find, are a two way street. If the guild gives, then a percentage of people will want to give back. That’s how it’s worked for me anyway.

Yeah, once you have a big guild it’s no problem getting people together, but in the beginning it can be really tough. I used to have a guild of about 100 ppl but it eventually died out once the old members stopped playing. Me and a few others tried to keep it alive, but eventually we gave up. Me and another guy moved over to a new guild and since then we’ve been struggling to get it together.

I guess you could say that it’s my fault but if we had the old system in place I could easily grow it.

DeanBB.4268:

What exactly is different than “the old system” that makes it hard to build up a guild?

The fact that the only way to gain favour/experience now is by doing guild missions when you used to be able to gain “influence” by questing alone/purchasing influence. For guild missions you need an organized group which is rather hard for a new guild with people you don’t know.

Since it’s so hard to recruit people with a lvl 0 guild it makes it much harder for new guilds to grow.

Paulytnz.7619:

Ummmm actually no I find this new system better. I am in a 2 person guild with a friend from another game (I don’t care if people want to debate if that is a guild or not either lol). In the old system we could not do the guild missions so our influence income was on the low side and we never got to see the guild mission currency. With this system the guild missions are a little bit more forgiving and influence is a thing of the past. We have a fair bit unlocked with guild upgrades, well considering there is only 2 of us anyway.

Edit: Maybe myself and my friend have not found this an issue as we are hoarders and have been hoarding our extra mats for a long time. It seems that the required items for upgrades that Anet targeted were things that were of low value and in surplus or hoarded away so they have a use now. So since my friend and I had a lot hoarded away already we had headstart sort of. Of course people who never hoarded or saved may have had to work for those same things. Maybe that’s the issue?

Yes, it is still pretty easy for small guilds built up of friends, but for someone trying to build a big guild or play with random users it’s become much harder to get started.
Still, you have a good point.

I’ve been playing Guild Wars 2 pretty much since launch and after the launch of the “recent” updates I have to say that I really miss the old guild systems. I find it a lot harder to build up your guild and that sucks since they made guilds so much cooler.
Anyway, I just wanted to know if anyone else feels the same way.