Guild Wars 2

I just wanted to pipe in here and provide some clarifications as it appears some people have misconceptions.

1) We never claimed world first KILL. We know as much as everyone here that unless that little gold star appears saying event succeeded that it is not a successful kill.
2) Whenever we make ANY progress, to the next phase, we like to share it with the community so that others may hopefully emulate and get a bit more progress on their attempts (DESO / BG etc)
3) TTS is a community more so than a guild. We have our rep requirements purely for the fact that we need our members talking to each other and working together during our events, that’s the whole point of a community right? If we had enough resources to efficiently manage everyone we would never have closed registrations. Unfortunately due to restrictions within Guild Wars 2 guild system, we need to be able to provide the support our community needs. As mentioned on our website, we will be sending out invites from the 1st of February. Ideally we’d like to have one guild in game with all our members rather than our current 11…

Also slightly off topic, regarding the new world bosses. To be honest, I love Anet to bits for introducing something that’s finally more challenging than Teqatl. Just to provide my opinion on some complaints here.

- I wouldn’t say that Anet specifically catered this content to big guilds. It’s focused on bringing people together and getting them to work together (and it’s working!). I mean Deso and BG are about the same progress as us and they’re server groups. We’re the only big ‘guild’ that I’m aware of that are actively trying to get this down. I know other servers have had progress too due to their server community.
- The problem that I see at the moment isn’t so much the content, but more the player culture. We’ve been hand fed everything up until Teq and Wurm. Not really needing to care about other people and work with other people. We can just rock up and spam 1 win. Unfortunately, this develops a somewhat selfish and entitled culture among the player base (not saying everyone is, but there is a noticable proportion). THIS is what is hurting the server communities and is what is the problem.
- On the note that TTS is ruining other servers, the BG and Deso community didn’t pop up overnight. It took a lot of effort and dedication from the members of their community to be where they are at today. If everyone has the freeload mindset of just joining a server or guild for the sole purpose of looting and getting achievements, then that’s where server communities will fall. TTS became what it is today because like minded people banded together and dedicated time and effort to build a community. Anyone can do it on their own server, it just takes the right people willing to do it. A good example is the WvWvW community now. After the introduction of Season 1, there are now heaps of server WvWvW communities that have popped up and stayed together.
- On a related note, it is really frustrating when people feel like they can do whatever they want in an organised event. The only reason we move overflows is because people just want to do whatever the hell they want and not work together. If more players would be more willing to work with one another regardless of who is in the overflow, we wouldn’t need to find an empty overflow to fill up with people. We’re always open to working with anyone not in TTS, provided that they are willing to work with us. However if your guild of 10 is sitting around the campfire afking and not listening to commanders then we’re just going to have to move and get more willing people because we don’t want to waste the other 140 people’s time due to a small handful. It’s not fair.

tl;dr Try and build communities and work together rather than complaining about it all the time.

PS ANET, please give us a TTS server =D

Also share with any other achievement type. If you happen to have an achievement checked you won’t get the daily notice on reset.

First off, thank you for all the sweet daily updates!

Today when the monthly reset, a similar mechanic was used to check/uncheck what is viewable on the UI. However, the monthly and daily are using the same UI space, so you are unable to view all daily and monthly goals at one time. Can this be changed so they have separate UI areas?

EDIT: Adding some of the great ideas in the comments. Can we please track more than 5 daily tasks…like all of them for those of us that like the additional XP?

Can we also have a UI check list for general achievements so we can easily see what we were working when we log back on?

When the daily/monthly is completed can the UI automatically disappear vs having to manually go uncheck every box?

An on/off switch for personal story on the home UI.

I think the masses have spoken, the small guilds are in agreement that the current system alienates them from the guild mission content.

So what exactly is the Solution you are wondering.
Well the solution is actually in game already.
————————————
GUILD LICENSE
————————————
Yep, The guild license is the key to Making it easier for EVERYONE to experience the content provided with this recent patch.

So here is an example of what I am talking about.

Guild A has 9 players in it.
Guild B has 85 players in it.
& Guild C has 160 players in it.

Guild A has the default tier of guild status, and therefor does not need to update to tier 2, meaning their total influence cost to unlock the guild mission is 10,000.
-
Guild B has the tier 2 guild status, due to needing more members, and has the total influence cost to unlock the SAME guild mission is 20,000 influence.
-
And if you are following the pattern here, Guild C would be 30,000.

So with that in mind, I’m sure some of you are saying, well what is preventing people from exploiting this, and just branching off into a smaller guild to only have to pay 10,000.
Well that’s where the beauty of the license system comes into play. Every time the guild upgrades to the next tier, their missions become locked until they pay the remaining influence needed for that tier.
So going into an example again.

lets say Guild A has an explosion of members and needs to upgrade to tier 2.
They have unlocked their 10,000 influence quest, but now have it blocked again, until they pay 10,000 more influence to get up to the Tier 2 guild fee of 20k Influence for said mission.

Do you see where I’m going with this ? And before you scream at me that its unfair to block players from simply upgrading their numbers, you are missing the point entirely.

This is not meant to be a punishment to deter people from forming larger guilds. It is simply a balance to ensure that every guild pays their due for having a larger license.
Make no bones about it, if guild A went from 9 to 75 players. They would make that 10,000 Influence fee in absolutely no time at all.

I am bringing all this forward, because I know, personally, hundreds of players who feel discouraged that they have to expand their guild… when they formed it due to RL relationships. Or simply want to have a tight nit group of friends.
This should not be discouraged, but embraced. As we ALL have different preferences. And in guildwars 2, the main point of the game is to play it how you want. From the class, to the weapons, to the traits. To how you find your gear.
Crafting, Dungeons, farming, WVW… its all about choice.
And with this recent update, the game has moved away from that level of choice, in favor of the masses. Where you join a guild and become another faceless body in their endless ranks.

I for one, vote that the power be balanced in a more reasonable way. Ensuring that players can always do the things they want. And never feel that they have to abide by some arbitrary ruleset that demands they genuflect to the next big thing, less they fall behind in the content

If you approve this message. Please mark this up and Quote it in your post, that way Anet can see, they have a solution right in front of them. They just have to notice it.

:)

Really it is not whining it is hoping they see the flaw here. Seriously even if you decide “Ok my guild cannot do guild missions I will just help other guilds out.”

You still cannot purchase the new rewards! The new vendor requires commendations from guild missions and gold. You only get commendations from being in the guild that starts the event. I was under the impression if you helped the guild complete the mission you got commendations.

How is a guild that is not large enough to complete guild missions suppose to pull from the world and get others if they do not get rewards for the event to make it worth their time? You as of right now cannot get commendations for the new items unless you are in a large guild.

Even if you are in a large guild if you are not on when the event goes there is no way for you to get the commendations even if another guild launches the event and you participate. So even the people in large guilds should be concerned because if your guild leader has a different schedule for you— you will not get commendations either.

AlietteFaye.7316:

Jski.6180:

Grinding is running the same events over and over purely for leveling up and progression. This is not a true grind in that its something that leads up to progression now if your talking about running guild events over and over this is more true to the idea of a grind. Its like getting mad at part one of a story because you got to read it before you can get to part 2.

I think it’s more equivalent to saying that you would get mad at one part of a story because you would have to read the first part, then take an exorbitantly pointless long time piecing every page together of the second part before being able to read it.

No that would be calling every thing in the game up to the point of guild events “pointless long time piecing every page together.” See to get to the AoW level you must PLAY the game a odd idea right to think you got to play a game to play a game!

@Kane Fire Blade.7482
Sadly you did not use it that way your calling the fact of playing the game is a type of grind. Its this way because to get to the point of AoW is by means of playing the game to get the points. If you call playing the game or getting influence then every thing in this game AND other games are a type of grind heck even breathing to stay alive become defined as a grind.

Martin, Izzy, et al:

Firstoff, thank you for being willing to come out and have a serious discussion with your playerbase. That’s one of the major positives that has set ANet in another class compared to many of the games and developer experiences my guild and I have had over the past decade plus.

However, I’d just like to calmly and quietly drop a friendly reminder about incentive structures and their impact on the game environment, the social dynamics of the game world, and destructive consequences that can come from poorly designed incentive structures.

This is a long, analytical post. My goal in making it is to shed some light on structural problems and more importantly the perceptions of stakeholders that have been overlooked. My intent is to take both ANET and the players of this gaming community seriously not because I like hearing myself talk, but because I believe there’s something here that’s worth fighting for, and that we’re facing a problem that can’t be fixed without some in-depth analysis and thought.

I have been the GM of the same small guild of four IRL friends who have known each other for now over twenty years, including at least seven different MMOs over the past decade.

I also do real-life work on large scale incentive structure and policy design (hey, who says gamers can’t be smart, right?) and just wanted to quietly drop a couple of friendly warnings about some things I’m now observing ANet coming out and doing in this latest patch.

When you’re designing incentive structures for large groups of people in competitive environments, which all MMOs are, one of the things that it’s crucial to do is make sure several people on the design team are able to put on their “economist” hats and think about how the people interacting with that incentive structure are going to behave in order to narrowly maximize rewards for the absolutely lowest amount of effort possible. This is what folks will do; it’s common sense and basic policy design. At the same time, it’s also crucial to have people in the same room wearing their “equity and human dignity” hats and thinking about whether this min/maxing behavior is going to break anything: legal systems, social systems, etc. Finally, you also must have someone in the room with their eye on the bigger picture of what you’re trying to accomplish not just in terms of the narrow intervention, but its impact on the broader picture.

For the first time observing this game evolve, I’m concerned that all three of those sets of people were not present at the table.

In concrete terms, here is what I’m observing:

Problem One: This Mechanic Has Created Unfair-Feeling “Classes” of Guilds

The new “Guild Missions” system has been rolled out and advertised primarily, on ANet’s end, as a way to (a) allow guilds to be play-relevant, (b) allow large numbers of people to play together in organized, coherent ways, © provide a dump for large amounts of existing guild influence in large/wealthy guilds, and (d) provide a series of long-term goals for guilds generically to work for.

As a general design strategy, this looks clean and efficient, because it provides content for a missing chunk, creates long term goals, and allows people to play together.

Here’s the problem with this analysis: nobody put their “economist” cap on and considered what actual behaviors would result from this given reward-maximizing and absolute-effort-minimizing behavior. To summarize, here is what players will actually do as a result of this system, including the reasoning behind it:

(1) Players will attempt to access this new content as rapidly as possible. People play games to access content.

(2) Rapidly accessing the content will require large amounts of influence quickly.

(3) Because there is no per capita/per player check or mechanic baked into the system, there is an instant inequity created between large guilds (who have the influence bankroll to immediately begin researching and working on this content) compared to medium and particularly small guilds, including mine which consists of four players, which will not see that kind of influence for a very long time.

(4) This creates a blatant situation where some people are able to access content and some are not.

(5) This creates feelings of (i) anger over the unfairness, (ii) a sense that players need to choose between their friends and accessing content, (iii) a sense that small guilds are not acceptable, (iv) a sense that small guilds are not viable, leadin to (v) small guilds rapidly being emptied or broken up, (vi) and many players abandoning their guilds to join larger ones.

It is crucial for MMO developers to understand that their games live or die by access to content and the long-standing social interactions formed.

(post 1/4)

Lisanna.9048:

Jski.6180:

Kane Fire Blade.7482:

My Final Statement here since this is just going no were!

Why Was the First Guild mission type put in AoW it is seen as PvP guild content witch I agreed with PvP guilds got what they needed PvE guilds got what they needed. You now placed PvE content at the end of AoW it seems super stupid!

Small PvE Guilds are now being forced to GRIND to get this new content cause most would never have touched AoW upgrades before that being the case they need 75000 Influence to get the first Guild Mission type. My guild has a total of 100+ members 40+ active pulling an average of 900+ influence a day, We are a PvE Guild so never bothered wasting influence on AoW, Meaning that we wont unlock it for 90 days so 3 months. This is then pushing of all the upgrades that are any use for a guild.

Getting in new members to small guilds! This has now become harder as players are leaving small guilds to join large guilds that already have the influence to unlock most of the new content! So small guilds are getting smaller, Getting new members again even harder as now having to go out and find members that will join a guild that can’t already start doing guild missions, Would you join a guild now that could not?

So in nearly all cases for small guilds to move forward now so they can grow to become great guilds they need to grind, Oh wait didn’t Anet say they want Guild Wars 2 to have no grinding? That is right! In there manifesto for the game they said they wanted to get rid of grinding so why add it in now?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU1JUwPqzQY

This is there Manifesto go to 1:20 and you can see all about having content NOW and NO grind!

So why has it come this way grinding and the killing of small guilds?

Just because you call it a grind dose not mean it is a grind. Your calling things that do not fit the idea of a grind at all your simply using it as a buzz word.

Then explain to us your definition of grinding since this does not fit

Grinding is running the same events over and over purely for leveling up and progression. This is not a true grind in that its something that leads up to progression now if your talking about running guild events over and over this is more true to the idea of a grind. Its like getting mad at part one of a story because you got to read it before you can get to part 2.

Kane Fire Blade.7482:

My Final Statement here since this is just going no were!

Why Was the First Guild mission type put in AoW it is seen as PvP guild content witch I agreed with PvP guilds got what they needed PvE guilds got what they needed. You now placed PvE content at the end of AoW it seems super stupid!

Small PvE Guilds are now being forced to GRIND to get this new content cause most would never have touched AoW upgrades before that being the case they need 75000 Influence to get the first Guild Mission type. My guild has a total of 100+ members 40+ active pulling an average of 900+ influence a day, We are a PvE Guild so never bothered wasting influence on AoW, Meaning that we wont unlock it for 90 days so 3 months. This is then pushing of all the upgrades that are any use for a guild.

Getting in new members to small guilds! This has now become harder as players are leaving small guilds to join large guilds that already have the influence to unlock most of the new content! So small guilds are getting smaller, Getting new members again even harder as now having to go out and find members that will join a guild that can’t already start doing guild missions, Would you join a guild now that could not?

So in nearly all cases for small guilds to move forward now so they can grow to become great guilds they need to grind, Oh wait didn’t Anet say they want Guild Wars 2 to have no grinding? That is right! In there manifesto for the game they said they wanted to get rid of grinding so why add it in now?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FU1JUwPqzQY

This is there Manifesto go to 1:20 and you can see all about having content NOW and NO grind!

So why has it come this way grinding and the killing of small guilds?

Just because you call it a grind dose not mean it is a grind. Your calling things that do not fit the idea of a grind at all your simply using it as a buzz word.

A lot of arguments here are falling flat because they are supporting their points with no accessibility. This is completely wrong. Everyone can participate in the guild missions, whether you are in the guild that kicked it off or not. You still get rewards and everything, you just don’t get to be in the “Spotlight”.

I can see it now. A 5 man guild, err party, kicks off a Mission. They begin to do it and 20 Randoms flood in and complete nearly the entire event for the guild. What a lot of QQing that would bring.

As I have said, if gaining 10k influence is “extremely difficult”, as some has described it, then you are barely larger than a party, much less a full fledged guild. These are “Guild” Missions. My guild, less than 15 actives, has generated nearly 5k influence in the last 48hrs. My Guild isn’t a “small guild”, it is an “Incredibly Tiny” Guild. Often times, we have to pug the last spot in our party.

If a Guild wants to do Guild content, it should first be large enough to actually gather a Presence. If a guild can all fit into the same party, then they already have their Guild Missions. It’s called Dungeons.

AnthonyOrdon.3926:

A few missions haven’t even been completed by our internal testers yet (but they came extremely close).

Yeah ! That’s the spirit ! Keep on this path please

I think that players should be able to manually downscale further by five to seven levels lower than the default down scaling. I very much so like the design of the down scaling system in this game. However, sometimes I feel as though it doesn’t work as well as it should. I think that default down scaling should still take place, but players should be able to adjust the down scaling to make the content harder for themselves, and be rewarded for doing so.

I am not sure if everyone is aware, but I remember reading if you are a relatively low level, lets say 25, and you manage to kill or help kill a level 35 enemy, by killing this enemy your “passive magic find” is increased just for this enemy. Basically, by killing an enemy that is higher level than yourself, your chance to find rare items is increased. I like this system, and it feels like you can be greatly rewarded for using your own skills to take down a challenging higher level enemy.

As a result, adding the option to downscale yourself would be like adding a “hard mode” of sorts for players who enjoy that extra challenge. I would love to go back and venture through the lower level zones again, but even with the current down scaling system content can commonly seem trivial.

It goes without saying, also, that currently there are some issues with the loot table that would need to be addressed along with the adding a system of this kind.

I would like to see an inability to waypoint, if you are engaged with a boss. Too many times the strategy to down a boss is “Run back if you are downed!” I’d like to see people learn the encounters, and not run at them from the waypoint, until the boss is downed.
It doesn’t feel like I’ve accomplished anything important, when I die and run back 5 times.

…regardless of origin.

In a roundabout way, this is actually already possible. Currently the most economic way to travel (barring on foot) is to queue for and travel to a WvWvW zone; take the asura gate to Lion’s Arch; take another asura gate to the capitol city nearest your final destination (if not LA); and then teleport to your final location – the fee for which will now be substantially lower than had you just ported from you initial location.

^that is a problem. People are queuing for WvWvW with no intention of participating in WvWvW, which screws with queue times. I’ve noticed a lot of people in the WvWvW zones just AFKing at the zone-in location… I’m sure the above mentioned travel method doesn’t account for all of those folks, but I have a feeling a good portion of them ported to the WvWvW zone, and tabbed out during the loading screen – then got distracted and either never returned, or returned after a long delay.

Meanwhile, folks who actually want to participate in WvWvW are stuck in queue.

Sooo… since we can already travel to capitol cities for free using that method; just cut the busy work out of it and let people port directly to any location within a capitol city, from any location in Tyria, for no charge. That will help reduce WvWvW queue times, and chop a chore out of traveling.

…

As a side suggestion, adjust the cost of teleportation so that it is reflective of the process of first porting to a capitol city an no charge; then porting to the final destination, so that folks aren’t traveling to capitol cities for the sole purpose of economic travel… cities have overflow servers, so that isn’t a huge issue, but it’s still busywork and should therefore be eliminated.

Ljungen.6781:

… but in DAOC atleast on my server we had a gentlemen´s agreement not to raid relics at nighttime

This, so this. I really wish Vizu would understand/evaluate what all this does to the WvW COMMUNITY overall (on those servers Vizu is fighting with).

It’s been ages since DAOC. So basically, for the new generation of players, GW 2 is the first “proper” WvW -game they see. It means that for majority of players this is the first time they experience the WvW as a form of PvP. The current situation is severely demoralizing the new population interested in WvW, it drives them away from WvW – and fast. They feel WvW against Vizu is unbalanced, they feel cheated, they feel like they can’t win, they feel whatever they do is in vain. They don’t want to buy upgrades since it’s seems to be waste of silver. Vizu just man vs. doors everything to ground at nights. Morale drops rapidly and no one just bothers..

This hurts the COMMUNITY overall. And everyone who understands WvW knows that community is the hearth of WvW. In the end that is what gives good fights, memorable alliances and rivals alike. So.. do you want to show what WvW can be for the next generation? Or do you want to drive them away from the WvW for good.

DAOC veterans/guilds understand how the overall score goes and don’t really sweat that much about it.. they just enjoy the fights at daytime and are done with it. The overall score means really nothing, no need to look at it that much. Actually I think most serious WvW guilds/players on FS would prefer to fight two Vizus. It’d give them much much more interesting fights at daytime.