Guild activities

When guild halls were first released, my guild had so many people show up for the taking of the hall, we scaled it up beyond belief and failed at taking it for two hours. We've had our guild to level 69 (nice!) for what seems like forever. We've run guild missions every week without fail since they were released. The high point was having Gaile Gray herself join us on a Save Our Supplies run, back before the challenges were instanced.

Now? It seems like a struggle. I've got over 2000 guild commendations. We still run every week, but its getting harder and harder. We're now having to skip missions just because we aren't having enough people show up to do them. For a game called Guild Wars, the guild content seems to have been added, then forgotten.

I'm not trying to jump on the reddit bandwagon of "ded game lol". It just makes me kind of sad.

Yeah I don't quite understand why Guilds are dead content, but at this point it's been this way for so long I don't think it will ever get changed. There should at least be guild challenge versions of more world bosses or something.

I Blame Sons Of Svanir, Door Breakers and Jormag.

I never understood the reasoning behind abandoning guild missions. Among other things, done properly, they could be used to introduce actual difficult content to open world - and provide the organization needed to do it. Something changed -for the worse imo - in the months after HOT launched with Anet shifting focus from guilds to instanced content.

Sometimes I think the mistake was in labelling a few specific things as guild content. In every other MMO I've played (not many, but still) there's nothing labelled as guild content, just group content and guilds are one way to find groups for that. GW2 has loads of group content, and many guilds will do it together, so I don't think there's a lack of things for guilds to do, just a lack of things which are specifically labelled as for guilds.

Having said that I would like some other ways to get guild commendations. I'm still working on getting all the guild mini pets and have more trouble getting commendations than crystalline ore because although I'm in 2 guilds who run the missions I can't always be online at the right time so I often miss them, and then that's it for the week.

The fundamental problem, as with many other aspects of this game, is Anet's "Develop & Abandon" philosophy. Instead of developing the game broadly and deeply as they properly should, anything that does not directly impact gameplay is forgotten as soon as the next patch comes out. This is why bandits have been building a bridge to a mystery portal in Brisban literally ever since the game began, why Fort Salma still hasn't been rebuilt after years, why there are still Mordrem in the Iron Marches, why we still don't have working auto-targeting, and many other issues I could name. It's a terribly flawed model, and one that hinders GW2 in so many ways that some days, I'm amazed the game is still running.

@EricTheViking.2968 said:the guild content seems to have been added, then forgotten.I've mentioned this in the past, too. It's sad.

@Blaeys.3102 said:I never understood the reasoning behind abandoning guild missions.

Indeed. Anet abandon the idea of fun repetitive content in favour of the short-term novelty of Living Story maps. It's as if they expect [the people who buy gemstore stuff] to leave the game between episodes. Maybe that's the case.

If those guild puzzles were opened up to be a kind of group JP, I'd certainly play them more. Having them once a week and not available during any week really makes it wasted content.

As far as I remember, there is no Guild-Team at the moment. The updates we get for this content are rather limited and can be stripped-down to:

• adding decorations of LS Episodes & Festivals (e. g. Joko Statues, Winter Wonderland objects, ... etc.)
• adding an option to an NPC / add an already existing item to a vendor (e. g. Guild Cape)
• change a single parameter (e. g. change duration of the Tavern buffs from 24h to infinite)

Those are rather simple tasks which require very little effort and resources. For a part of the content that is so highly frequented, it is a disappointing fate. There have been plenty of ideas over the years about refreshing/reviving guild-content. But as long as the team organization remains as it is, we only have those three options.

In addition, what ever changes are done can never interfere with the gemstore in a negative way. That is why we cannot have crafting-stations or certain vendors added to the guildhalls. They sell access to the convenience sections. If the guildhall offers too much convenience, those access-items lose their worth.

-

If those are the only changes we can expect, we may have to change our perspective. How can we make our wishes come true, by just working around those rather narrow restrictions? Looks impossible on the first view, but I gave it a try anyway:

adding decorations of LS Episodes & Festivals

• Fireworks Launcher from Dragon Bash 2019
• Dune Roller from Grothmar Valley. The object from the Iron Legion demolition derby, where you can interact with a parking roller and pick a legion. We could use the entire guildhall as a rampage-zone. We can utilize the decorations from the Beetle Races to create arenas and make the guildhalls roller-friendly. It does not matter that the Dune Roller itself is rather buggy. There is nothing to break in the guildhalls.
• Aspects from the Festival of the Four winds.

adding an option to an NPC / adding an already existing item to a vendor

• Cultivated Seeds added to the rotation of Sigurlina Jonsdottir (Guild Trader). Like the ascended recipes, the seeds rotate daily and are limited to three purchases in total from the entire range.
• Provisioner Tokens sold for Guild Commendations, with a daily cap of course. Either sold by the Guild Commmendation Trader or just added to the range of the existing Provisioner NPCs.
• Commander Tags sold by Davis the Survivor in the War Room. You can lock the offers behind certain War Room upgrades. For example adding the Commander's Compendium upon completing WvW Guild Claiming: Stonemist Castle and Catmander's Compendium upon unlocking the last possible upgrade in the War Room (= when the War Room is complete). Reduce the required gold & badges, balance it with Guild Commendations.
• adding access to the Guild Storage to Gamli Aðalsteinnson (Tavern Proprietor) in the Guild Initiative Headquarters for all guilds. Gamli is already there and later becomes the Tavern Proprietor if your guild claims a guildhall. But at the moment, the Guild Storage cannot be accessed for ascended meals by guilds without a guildhall. A good decision back in Heart of Thorns, but with the introduction of Chef 500, it is just annoying. Creating a personal guild is rather easy, but to get a storage for our ascended food, we currently have to ... claim a guildhall & build the Tavern. (see below)

change a single parameter

• Remove the guild-only restriction from Guild Races, Guild Puzzles and Guild Challenges. Allow us to recruit volunteers via LFG and mapchat. Allow us to invite strangers to the events, which is already possible, but remove the reward-lock. Whoever participates in the event gets the full personal reward. No matter if the player's guild is currently running the mission or not.

• Expand the guild slots with the Gemstore. The first 5 slots are for free. Who needs more, can purchase additional slots for a few gems. If the above mentioned Guild Storage access gets done, more people will think about creating a personal guild. If there is a chance to keep the current guilds and get that extra slot, people may consider purchasing it. Just do not make the price too high, you know how the community reacts by now.

I have not given up on guild-content yet. We also run the Guild Missions weekly. Sometimes with a squad of 10, sometimes with 1-2 members only. New missions and more content would be great. But if the resources are that limited, I would be already fine with a couple of those above. Some may appear easy from my perspective and impossible to the developers. If there was a team or at least a single person addressed with guild stuff, we could talk about what can be done. But for the moment, we can only guess.

Note: I did not add the guild-decoration limit to my list although it fits to the change a single parameter section. It is a rather complicated topic. An increase of the limit would automatically harm players with older/weaker computers. Certain GC drivers and systems also have a very special idea of loading guild decorations. Although I personally dislike the limitations as well, I will never ask for an increase of the decoration limit.

[EDIT] That was quick. Thank You!