The problem people have here is that guilds have yet to have any guild centered content at all, in a game called Guild Wars. You can get bonuses, gear that show off your guild, talk with your friends, or have a nice bank, but no content geared specifically towards your guild. No Guild vs Guild, nothing literally gated by saying you have to be in a guild together. Guild missions and, of course, their rewards was the first thing we have seen where a guild could make something and do it for the benefit of a guild, in content created specifically guild focused.
Now, I do see a disconnect here. There are large rewards for doing these missions, so ANet gated this towards taking time to unlock the missions themselves. I don’t think this is necessarily the best way of handling this issue.
Consider this option. Instead of having a high barrier of entry for unlocking these events per guild, you could have a low barrier of entry and have high costs for upgrading the guild specific rewards for members. For example, you could make Guild Bounty unlock at a much lower influence cost, then have separate upgrades that add the two rares to the reward. Another upgrade would add the chance of a precursor, at a relatively high cost. In addition, make these costs combinations of both guild merits earned through these events and influence.
How does this change the perception? For large guilds, they unlock all the rewards pretty fast. They can make a lot of the events, have a lot of members getting merits, and have the extra influence to get higher tier rewards. Smaller guilds still take a while to get to the nice rewards, like a chance at a precursor, but what do they get to do now? While working towards it, they are participating in those missions. They are able to participate in content that feels personal to them. I think a structure like this would calm a little of the storm and make people much happier.
