Guild Wars 2

Except why should the game give any major incentives to join a big guild over a small one? Why not let people join whatever type of guild they want? The benefit of a larger guild is having more people to play with, and that should (largely) be enough to justify them for those who want that sort of experience.

I’m not in a guild and don’t plan to be in one any time soon either so this decision doesn’t really affect me either way. But it’s just silly to punish people for preferring to keep their gaming group more tight-knit.

Favor and Aetherium are not a problem, I don’t mind that system, I wish the upgrades were just built around those two than the massive material grind they implemented.

Speaking for a small 7-10 player wvw guild, having our buffs taken away with guildhalls is a major pain the kitten and yes it has affected how we will play the game. Our +5 supply buff is now hidden away behind level 37 guildhall and a dozen other required upgrades.

True some things we have automatically learned from the previous system, such as guild catapults, but hearing the latest cost for scribe schematics is mind blowing. Wvw is already the lowest rewarding area in the game, and they just nerfed the gathering nodes in there as well, we have no choice but to farm pve if we want to get any upgrades done in a timely manner. At least the gvg guilds got their arena upgrade dropped from 2 months to 2 weeks.

It’s just really ridiculous how they went about the guild hall system, and I don’t see them changing anything.

No.

I don’t even care about the kittening guild hall.

I do, however, care that my little bank guild has now been totally blocked from progressing, despite me just having invested 10K on an upgrade to allow me to then work towards the final bank slot upgrade (which I was well on my way to achieving).

This wasn’t instead of buying personal bank/bag slots, BTW, just in case someone accuses me of that.

I had already maxed out my personal bank upgrades and bag slots on two chars.

…and I also care about other small guilds that had acquired various upgrades before and have now had them removed again.

This is not OK.

In fact, it’s insane.

I’m, actually, surprised there isn’t a lot more fuss about it.

There should be.

Shademehr.1397:

I’m in a small guild. Anywhere from 5-10 players on consistantly. We’re up to GH Level 17. A fully built Guild Hall is going to take some time and effort and that’s just the way life is. This isn’t about instant gratification. In fact most of the things in HoT aren’t instant gratification. However, lots of people seem to want everything NOW NOW NOW and not have to work for them.

I can’t expect to own a Ferarri if my bank account is only big enough for a Civic.

No, people already had the Ferrari (or at least the Civic).

Then Anet just took it away and gave some of those people no, reasonable, way to get any kind of car back, at all…

zaxziakohl.5243

Would everyone be happier if all the influence they ever spent was refunded to spend on favor? Or just turned into favor directly?

Just curious. This would obviously help large guilds as well, not just small ones.

No. Why? They’d still find a way to screw the community over by making it a non negotiable exchange rate of one favour to every one hundred or more influence.

They’d leave guilds in the same wrecked state they are now but would have touted the exchange as a feature and a courtesy -no matter how twisted or skewed the result.

Given the quality of their decision making of late I have to wonder why Anet didn’t do just that.

Doctor.5068:

I am not saying people don’t have a right to voice their opinion. What I am saying is, that ppl that complain about not being able to use GH, or the people complaining about the precursor crafting, need to understand that these new features were meant to take a long time and not be completed within the first 2 weeks of launch.

And what you are missing is that most complains are not about that. I haven’t seen even a single complain yet about the favour cap or aetherium gathering speed – and according to anet those should make all the GH upgrades to take months at the fastest possible speed. All the complains i saw were about the GH being a massive resource sink that in no way acknowledges that not all guilds are of the 500 member size.

Doctor.5068:

For those who say they need small guilds for bank storage, you can join 5 guilds at a time. I personally have 1 guild bank, 2 small guilds of friends, a pvp guild, and 1 giant guild. The only guild in that group that expects a GH is the giant guild.

I’m pretty sure that you no longer can get bank upgrades for any new guilds if you don’t have GH first.

The same is true of the WvW upgrades for the small roaming guilds that were an important part of WvW scene before HoT. Except that last case is even worse – old personal guilds can keep their bank upgrades, but old WvW unlocks are all gone and need to be repurchased… which is only available through a guildhall.

zaxziakohl.5243:

Would everyone be happier if all the influence they ever spent was refunded to spend on favor? Or just turned into favor directly?

Nah, favour is the least of the problems. It’s the materials that the upgrades need (or rather the quantity of those materials) that kills any chances of small guilds to even get to the point they already were for years and years.

zaxziakohl.5243:

Would everyone be happier if all the influence they ever spent was refunded to spend on favor? Or just turned into favor directly?

Just curious. This would obviously help large guilds as well, not just small ones.

That wouldn’t fix the issue. A small guild would still not be able to generate any more favor after that. The problem is the gap between the one person required to start a guild and the ~10+ that they seem to be intended for now.

Starting a new guild now stinks. Who wants to join a guild that has zero perks and won’t have them for months because it requires a set amount of players before you can even generate resources?

The issue really is very simple.
1. Guilds spent weeks and months getting upgrades, buffs and guild missions
2. Come HoT all this was wiped out and replaced it with large cost in materials and cost, estimated to be around 20,000 gold

They didn’t add cool stuff that could be ADDED onto what guilds already had, they wiped it, dressed it up in new buildings and called it extra content.

Additionally. the guild XP is such that you need to pretty much upgrade everything to progress further up, thus making the actual cost higher because you need to spend resources on stuff you don’t want just to get the stuff you do.

or if you like analogies

You spend 3 years buying furniture, white goods etc for your apartment. One day you find the government has come in, confiscated the lot and left you with an empty apartment. Further more there’s a note on the floor telling you, you’ll now have to work for 5 more years to get your stuff back..

That’s why guilds(not just small ones) are miffed at the changes

Atharian.7092:

The issue is pretty straight forward, you jerk. We had loads of stuff we worked towards before the expansion came out. Then the expansion hits and we lose… What did we lose again? Oh, right. EVERYTHING. All of that time and effort, for nothing at all.

Well people did ask in quite a lot of detail for guild halls. There was even a CDI.

But Anet seems to have something of a habit of giving people what they ask for… with a twist. Like the M. Night Shyamalan of MMO devs. They could have mostly left the guild design alone and added guild halls. Instead, they added guild halls and revamped the whole system, even “correcting”/clarifying their stance on guild sizes in the process.

I should say though, some of the time they have plain listened and done a really good job. Or done a really good job without needing to listen at all. It’s just every so often, they go a little crazy with their tweaking and don’t consult anyone outside of their team until the system is too far developed to change. And as we’ve learned from the past, their policy is to be pretty close-mouthed while in the development. The problem is, during that process they often seem to lose touch with the playerbase. The remnants of trying to listen are there, but the isolation of the development has iterated them into something that only vaguely resembles what was asked for.

Will this fix those who didn’t receive map completion rewards?

Specifically Those characters that had 100% Central Tyria completion before HoT not receiving map completion rewards for any Hot Zone after release.

No official acknowledgement has been given for the 100% completion/no rewards issue. I’m wondering if the rewards issue and the missing progress bugs are related and/or are being confused… would really like some confirmation…

if not I guess we will see in …. 8 hours.

Okay so we received an official response that it is being worked on and all the missing rewards (Magus Falls and Dry Top/Southsun/Silverwastes) will be given retro-actively.

What I don’t understand, is why couldn’t anybody from arenanet write this on the OFFICIAL forum of this game….. Why is reddit so special to them?

The issue is pretty straight forward, you jerk. We had loads of stuff we worked towards before the expansion came out. Then the expansion hits and we lose… What did we lose again? Oh, right. EVERYTHING. All of that time and effort, for nothing at all.

Pandgami.6745:

I get it Guild Halls are ridiculously expensive and almost impossible for small guilds to obtain and upgrade.

That was the point from the very start. People knew it was gonna be expensive so why all the complaining?

The complaining largely stems from the fact all the perks which small guild EARNED before HoT were taken away by HoT and replaced by mechanics locked behind the doors of the Guild Hall which small guilds are largely locked out from!

PopeUrban.2578:

Kamara.4187:

PopeUrban.2578:

What I’m saying is absolutely true. Guild systems were not designed to make solo bank guilds, or provide “duos” with banners and the like in the first place. The revamped system simply reinforces the idea that a “small guild” is intended to be at least a party’s worth of players, and even then is extremely generous with those requirements, allowing use and progress of all systems to be done solo, including guild missions. You will make progress no matter your size, you simply won’t make it as fast. In this respect it is no different than the old system.

If you can PUG for a dungeon, or a fractal, or LFG for a map taxi, you can do the same one time for a guild hall. I’ll personally help you with this if you can’t find anyone else.

You can still get banners. They’re just more expensive. If you had banners unlocked before, go buy them with favor in the guild initiative. If you didn’t, go level a guild hall and a scribe like any size guild also has to.

Again, the difference in the new system is that you have to put in the work wheras in the old system you didn’t have to put in any work and just got influence and the selection of things it provided on top of the rewards you already got for playing content.

That system, as I’ve said repeatedly, was broken and skewed extremely in the favor of guilds with massive player rosters. Now the only thing skewed in the favor of those guilds is progression speed but not the ability to progress or the ability to actually utilize earned upgrades

Funny thing is I don’t recall reading “anywhere” that such changes were being applied to the game when I pre-ordered HOT (4 Copies I might add for the whole family).

Had I known prior, it would have influenced my decision…and saved me a few bucks.

There are some really cool things about the expansion that I do like, but the truth be told I’ve not even bothered to log in for close to a week now because it seems like everything with HOT has slanted or nerfed things in such a way as to funnel players “more towards buying gems”….

I don’t know about the rest of you but I’m over getting into a game just to see my time and investment turned upside down by an industry that can’t even be bothered to include us in the loop before making dramatic changes.

Its time for players to have some protections. We are after all what determines the success or failure of a game.

The argument that ingame economic decision are made from the lens of encouraging people to buy gems is just plain wrong due to the basic nature of the gem exchange.

Specifically, the more people that buy gems and convert them to gold, the cheaper it becomes to buy gems with gold.

No amount of nerfing gold gain or increasing gold costs encourages or rewards converting gems to gold.

With admin privileges and a couple of key strokes I’m sure any of that can be altered just like in every other MMO that has admin functions for economy adjustments..
not to mention there is nothing balancing, devaluing, or adjusting those dollars they are taking in. Its pure profit.

I like how large guilds are saying the current system is good because it forces people to join their blob guilds. Personally I think people should be in guilds because I dunno.. they enjoy the community? It’s hilarious that you can basically admit that the only reason you have for people to be in your blob guilds for you to leech off is by forcing them to be there and not because they want to be part if your community.

You say if the requirements were lower people would just keep to smaller guilds, I wonder why would they stick to smaller guilds rather than your blob guild?

PopeUrban.2578:

What I’m saying is absolutely true. Guild systems were not designed to make solo bank guilds, or provide “duos” with banners and the like in the first place. The revamped system simply reinforces the idea that a “small guild” is intended to be at least a party’s worth of players, and even then is extremely generous with those requirements, allowing use and progress of all systems to be done solo, including guild missions. You will make progress no matter your size, you simply won’t make it as fast. In this respect it is no different than the old system.

If you can PUG for a dungeon, or a fractal, or LFG for a map taxi, you can do the same one time for a guild hall. I’ll personally help you with this if you can’t find anyone else.

You can still get banners. They’re just more expensive. If you had banners unlocked before, go buy them with favor in the guild initiative. If you didn’t, go level a guild hall and a scribe like any size guild also has to.

Again, the difference in the new system is that you have to put in the work wheras in the old system you didn’t have to put in any work and just got influence and the selection of things it provided on top of the rewards you already got for playing content.

That system, as I’ve said repeatedly, was broken and skewed extremely in the favor of guilds with massive player rosters. Now the only thing skewed in the favor of those guilds is progression speed but not the ability to progress or the ability to actually utilize earned upgrades

Funny thing is I don’t recall reading “anywhere” that such changes were being applied to the game when I pre-ordered HOT (4 Copies I might add for the whole family).

Had I known prior, it would have influenced my decision…and saved me a few bucks.

There are some really cool things about the expansion that I do like, but the truth be told I’ve not even bothered to log in for close to a week now because it seems like everything with HOT has slanted or nerfed things in such a way as to funnel players “more towards buying gems”….

I don’t know about the rest of you but I’m over getting into a game just to see my time and investment turned upside down by an industry that can’t even be bothered to include us in the loop before making dramatic changes.

Its time for players to have some protections. We are after all what determines the success or failure of a game.

DarcShriek.5829:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Yes. Let’s have every single char in game a member of a huge, anonymous guild where few care if you are there or not or if you get kicked, just so that guild halls can be built.

We get it, you hate large guilds. However, your generalization of large guilds is ignorant and offensive.

Likewise it’s offensive for people who are in large guilds to say that people in smaller guilds don’t deserve a hall because they want to be special.

Especially when those smaller guilds have been working on their guild for 3 years or more now and the things they spent years building just up and disappeared a few weeks ago because Anet needed to push people to buy HoTs.

DarcShriek.5829:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Yes. Let’s have every single char in game a member of a huge, anonymous guild where few care if you are there or not or if you get kicked, just so that guild halls can be built.

We get it, you hate large guilds. However, your generalization of large guilds is ignorant and offensive.

I’m a member of 2 large guilds. (Maybe you should read the thread so you’ll understand what’s going on instead of making clueless remarks).

There were a lot of us asking for scaling Guild Hall construction in the guild hall CDI that happened ages upon ages ago. ArenaNet decided to turn it into yet another sink for the economy in this game which is all about their real world economy. Guild Halls should take work, but they could have designed content around it. They should have designed content around it. You know, content that guilds could do together to get stuff that has nothing to do with the economy to build their guild hall. Keyword: Together.

Guild halls should be about socialization and friendship and fun. You can have that in a hollow shell hall. They decided to make it a massive material and gold and time sink though.

Yuck.

As a solo player within my own guild with myself as the only member what I noticed is that much of what I paid cash money for was suddenly put beyond my reach. As a clan member of a small guild, it does seem that we will have a much more difficult process ahead of us in comparison to the larger guilds.

Vayne.8563:

Eponet.4829:

So, you want to promote cesspool guilds that are so large that no one cares about each other?

In a “cesspool” guild people wouldn’t contribute and they wouldn’t have a guild hall anyway. How about promoting the idea that more than five guys can be friends. I know I have at least 20-30 friends in my guild that I play with all the time. Today we got the guild hall, built the tavern and mine and got to level 10.

Doesn’t mean we’re a cesspool or that we don’t care about each other. I’m sorry to see you have such a cynical outlook on guilds.

When someone doesn’t post a quote, assume they’re replying to the origional post, not to you.

It was a direct response to

Guild halls are suppose to be meant mainly for large guilds. Why? Incentive.
Let’s be honest in a large guild, if a person gets kicked not many people are gonna care. If its a higher up or an officer there may be some drama but people get over it. If its someone of the lower ranks the people kicking and many of the other members wouldn’t really care. This is the downside of a large guild who don’t have the emotional/personal incentive of a small guild.

That doesn’t sound like a group in which all the people involved are friends. What they described, a large guild in which no one cares about each other, that people are joining because of the extrinsic incentives rather than because they enjoy the presence of the others in it is exactly what a cesspool guild is.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.

It’s not the new system that’s the problem. It’s the fact that they took away any way for the individual to contribute as an individual.

A single player cannot really contribute on a regular basis in a meaningful way towards the main currency (favor). Everything favor related pretty much requires a group.

Previously, with influence, any player was able to contribute towards the guild they were representing simply by playing the game “their way”. This was done specifically so players didn’t feel forced into any specific mode of play. Yet this has been forgotten and taken away. Players must now participate in specific events, that guilds will host at specific times, that will be in the GUILDS preferred mode of play.

Good bye player diversity.

Guilds are supposed to be a united group of individual players, not a mindless hive mind mob. Yet they removed any aspect of the individual in guilds. The mix of individuals is what makes a guild what it is. Removing that removes the spirit of the guild, and makes being in a guild a job, instead of a joy.

Pandgami.6745:

tl;dr GH meant for large guilds not for small guilds

If that were true then they wouldn’t have made it a recommended minimum of 5 players to capture a guildhall now would they.

The old guild system was fine, you could be a bank guild, a family guild, a small group of friends guilds, a well tuned gvg guild, a massive zerg sized guild that only pve’s or only wvw’s, it did not matter, everyone had decent access to guilds and the upgrades, everyone could join whatever they wanted and be happy.

The heavy restrictions on guild halls now is because anet is trying to stretch content at the same time burn a lot of material out of game. If they really wanted a system to hold back guilds then use more of the time gating, not the insane material gathering which makes it much more difficult for every other type of small guild.

If the system doesn’t bother you then fine good for you, enjoy it. Doesn’t mean the system created was any good, and doesn’t mean it can’t use some tweaks to get better.

At the end of the day though, anet will not listen in regards to this, so this is all pointless.

I love having goals to slowly work towards as a guild, I really do. We worked hard for our MAXED out guild together and had fun together doing so.

Now we lost most of our abilities, need to re-earn them. But we can’t re-earn them just by playing any more since influence is gone. We need to actively farm junk to just get back to previous levels. That’s the problem. Its not whining about how hard it is (its not hard anyway, its just boring as snap), its a valid complaint that we’ve lost major progress. Large guilds are able to re-earn the stuff quick. Good for them, I am happy for them.
Us small guilds, we can’t earn it back quick. That is why we are upset. We (my guild) don’t want to earn guild halls and newest shinies as fast as large guilds, we don’t want you to nerf the levels or anything like that. We just want at least some of our most used abilities, or their new equivalent (since they just delete old abilities to give um a new name and changed usage [it’d be like requiring repurchase of commander tags because they added squad upgrades to it]), back. How hard is it to get that through people’s skulls? We want our building cheap siege that we’ve had for YEARS back, we want our buffs that we’ve kept up for YEARS back and yes we are impatient, but this is because we ALREADY HAD them for YEARS.
We want to earn our guild hall and features, butdeleting everyone’s progress and calling it “new” is complete bull. (we are very happy we still have all our bank upgrades, this is an example of good grandfathering)

(I capitalized some words to help bring them message across because I got sick of people posting this kind of bull all over the forums. Sorry for those who’s feelings are hurt by this, have a friendly face )

Vayne.8563:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Yes. Let’s have every single char in game a member of a huge, anonymous guild where few care if you are there or not or if you get kicked, just so that guild halls can be built.

I’m sorry but you don’t need to be in a guild of 500 where no one cares to have and upgrade a guild hall. There’s a huge difference between 5 and 500. 50 is between those numbers and some of the closest knit groups I’ve been in have been 50 man guilds.

I’m in a guild of 200 with 100 reguilars and a core of about 30-50 people who are very close and very welcoming. We go out of our way to help new people integrate into the guild, and some of them stay and become core members, if they like what they see.

Those people who choose to be part of the family are in fact part of the family. The idea that 50 people can’t be friends in an MMO is simply misguided.

I have a ton of friends on my guild and a few people I’m very close with. I’m not sure why you think you have to limit your guild to five to have friendships.

That was a sarcastic rejoinder to the OPs post where he said Let’s be honest in a large guild, if a person gets kicked not many people are gonna care. If its a higher up or an officer there may be some drama but people get over it.

(It’s also where the other poster’s comment about cesspool guilds is coming from)

Context Vayne, context.

Doctor.5068

The hypocrisy, it is real. The small guilds crying on the forums are the vocal minority. Just like everything else you see on the forums. People that are happy with how things are running are not going to say so on the forums. That is why every post on the forum is someone crying about something. I agree with OP about GH. People that CHOOSE not to be in a large guild need to accept that they won’t have the same access as those who do.

Much of the complaining I’ve read is that small guilds which had -prior to the launch of Heart of Thorns- unlocked and were enjoying/sharing the benefits of having leveled their guilds have now had many of those features taken and locked behind the new guild hall system.

And that now, following the path of least resistance as many players do, some are jumping ship from smaller guilds to larger less personal guilds in order to continue receiving those benefits- thus gutting the smaller communities even further.

I don’t know about you, but where I come from that’s something worthy of complaining about as it has deprecated their efforts – gold, influence, hours/days played etc. I don’t know of any game, or activity in life for that matter, where people appreciate having their achievements and the monuments to those achievements destroyed in such an arbitrary fashion.

This isn’t about the poor man wanting what the rich man has. It’s about the poor man who’s worked hard for what he has, then having it taken. And what has been given in turn is something akin to this;

‘We never intended for you to have an even chance. Of course, you’ve put in the time and effort but that wasn’t our fault. You see, we’d explained but your intelligence is such that we should have explained better how sorry your lot in life actually is so that you could in turn understand and know your place. We’re sorry for your inadequacies, but that’s just how the cookie crumbles. Forthwith, we’re taking your accrued and ill-gotten benefits.

We know there will be a period of upheaval as your inferior intellects strain to comprehend the grandiosity of our new business model. Don’t worry. We’ll wait for you. Guild Wars Two isn’t going anywhere.

Finished reading? All done cogitating? Good!

Now, we aren’t utterly heartless. We know your prior efforts and expenditures, however misguided and misinformed, have benefited us in the past, and to mark that appreciation -if you’ll take a moment to come over here- you’ll see that we’ve added some new products to our company store(the benefits we’ve just taken from you) as a courtesy and convenience to you, our loyal citizenry!

It’s a rougher road, a longer path, but what fun is life without goals? Right?

So turn that frown upside down, campers! Dwelling in the past just gives you an unbecoming, frowny face. And nobody wants that, do they? Happy days are ahead! Now get out there and earn, earn, earn! That jungle won’t liberate itself!’

At best, it’s just another remarkably short sighted decision by Anet. At worst it’s a calculated and malicious attempt(as with the changes to dungeons and fractals) to take one more bit of personal agency away from a user experience that in the past was lauded for giving the players the freedom to pursue adventure and reward however they wished.

To say it even simpler; Guild Wars Two has devolved from

‘Have fun! Play how you want! It’s a big, wide gloriously beautiful world!’

to

‘Go where we say or don’t. It’s your choice.<shove> But, don’t make the ‘wrong’ one. And don’t cry to us after you do and we say that we told you so.’

So, you want to promote cesspool guilds that are so large that no one cares about each other?

I get it Guild Halls are ridiculously expensive and almost impossible for small guilds to obtain and upgrade.

That was the point from the very start. People knew it was gonna be expensive so why all the complaining?

Noooope.