The Importance of Supporting Guilds in GW2

[Blaeys.3102]

Yes, this is another discussion about the lack of support for guilds. And, I realize there are a lot of people who enjoy the game without the support of a good guild. I still think this issue needs to be addressed and discussed further.

There are three reasons why Anet needs to do more to support guilds again:

The first is simply that many legacy systems in the game rely on the guild structure to keep them alive. This can be something as concrete as the guild hall/guild missions to the backbone of most WvW zergs, bounty trains (champ trains at one time) and much more.

The second is that many players rely on the social and structural elements of their guilds to enjoy the game. This is most evident in WvW, but it is just as important in PVE. I know in my guild, my first action when I log in is to open the guild roster to see who is on and what they are doing.

The third, and what I believe to be most important, is that a large part of the GW2 open world experience would likely not exist without some rudimentary guild support . The only reason encounters like Tequatl, Triple Trouble, Mordremoth and, most recently, Serpents Ire, are done daily is because structured guilds put in the effort to establish rough strategies and even LFG schedules. At a lower level, maps are kept more alive by the presence of guild groups – doing bounties, group event chains and more. This provides the baseline that every player – guilded or not – can use to successfully do those events. Yes, they would probably still happen without guilds, but it would be WAY less often than it happens now.

With these elements in mind, it seems like Anet would be pouring as many resources as possible into supporting and developing content for guilds – to foster those underlying communities that keep the game as active as it is. Instead, they chose to completely dismantle their guild activity team. The result is a five year gap (yes, five years) since the last new guild mission, a new guild hall that is inferior in pretty much every single way, broken events (Prisoner 1141 has been broken for 1.5 years and every guild race has been bugged for more than 12 months now), lackluster guild hall decorations (when they actually bother to do them at all) and a general sense that Anet just doesn’t really care about these in game communities the way they did when the game came out.

Again, I apologize for the lengthy and ongoing rant – and I realize this isn’t something everyone feels is a huge issue. Guilds have been the glue that keeps GW2 together for me – and for many others I know. Anet needs to reverse their decision from last year and begin actively supporting these communities again. It makes no sense that they haven’t.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

It's possible ArenaNet has metrics that show where they should concentrate their resources. I have no idea.
Hopefully, your suggestions will be addressed in a manner that is mutually satisfactory.

Good luck.

[Galaa.8475]

not trying to start anything. i've been in five guilds in this game in six months. none of them did what they advertise they did. no guild chat, everyone was still doing the solo thing. i dont like being on discord because the chatter gives me a headache. so last month i said why bother with a guild. ive soloed this game so far. i dont raid because of the ego's. i like dungeons, but no one does them. did a couple of frac's. that was fun. soooo....so far so good without the guilds and the stuff that comes with them.

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@Blaeys.3102 said:Guilds have been the glue that keeps GW2 together for me – and for many others I know.

While that's certainly true (and I'm glad you found some good guilds), I'm not sure that guilds should expect or depend on ANet to make things better for guilds.

You're right that social interaction is a big part of an enjoyable gaming experience (for tons of people). ANet knows this so well that they created their GW2 Friendships campaign around it. A love story, a story of friends (and their supporting network), and the tale of an evolving guild, leading to RL friendships. And there's no question that ANet could hardly do less these days to support guilds: all PoF offered was a new guild hall, some decoration management improvements, and little else.

But here's the thing: all ANet can do is give guilds more stuff to do, which will also get stale after running it 80 times. They'd have to add a dedicated team just for guilds... and it still wouldn't improve my chances of finding a good guild... or helping me find suitable members for my guild. Those are things that guilds have to figure out on their own, in the same way that our social clubs in real life have to figure it out on their own.

In short, I agree with the OP's sense that guilds are critical for a lot of players. I don't agree that ANet can or should do more than what they do now. They've provided a huge game with tons of stuff to do. It's up to us to find a way to make our guilds engaging for others.

[Henry.5713]

Guild systems can be rather hit and miss. The system present in this game is certainly no exception to that rule. Being able to join up to five guilds is a blessing and a curse.It allows you to be part of multiple guilds, play different content with them, meet many friends but also ends up removing the big deal that joining or leaving your guild used to be. The revolving door syndrome is always present.Combine that with the rather casual design of the game which hardly ever requires you to group with others outside of pugs and nobody should be surprised why many seem to have trouble to look for that one guild they'd stay in for years and even move on to other games with.

Guilds certainly come and go just like their members do. The supposed focus on certain content doesn't always represent them well. Many players seem to join up expecting to be invited to frequent runs while they would never bother to start anything themselves. These guilds rarely break up completely, they usually just fade out over time instead as people slowly stop talking and representing.There is always a lot of pressure on the leaders to recruit new members and make things happen. Additional guild content would indeed be nice but nothing really stops you from organizing your own community or guild driven events. There is so much random stuff you can do in this game. I actually enjoy the random shit some people can come up with more than ingame events which quite often are nothing more than a way to gain certain currency or tokens.

[FrizzFreston.5290]

Yeah. If anything I would mostly like some more tools to organize my guild. Making it easier to organize anything as a guild would go longer ways than just extra content for guilds.

I personally believe that the content we have and get is fine as it is. Just that the tools to organize the guild and set goals or plan guild events arent really there and rely on thirdparty sites which, imo, not always perfectly are suited for the task. (And rely on going out of the game which still isnt something that all people like doing)

So far I /we have been using the MotD for my guild to point out what we are working towards/doing later that week. It works in some manner, though not perfectly.

Even decorations have been growing steadily because of it. And while everyone claiming decorations should be cheaper I have been trying to use it as a motivator to get the guild somewhat together and focussed on some goals. (though I havent decided what to do with the 50 ceramic planters we gathered for this spring.)Not that its perfect in any way. But just to illustrate there are options for doing things with your guild. Whether its bounty runs, treasure hunts, world bosses meta events or novice attempts at raids. The one thing that has held us back is the motivation or energy for organisation to do so. For a guild of players that has been playing together for a decade the last few years definitely have been hard to organise when life moves on. But I dont feel that that has entirely to do with just lack of guild support systems and more with lack of motivation to do so.

In GW1, IIRC, there were no guild objectives at all. But because every content needed a party to complete it was much easier to ask and organise the guild. GW2 also has group content, and while its not needed to organise with the guild, it is something you can and should exploit for improving your guild.

[Zedek.8932]

@"Galaa.8475" said:not trying to start anything. i've been in five guilds in this game in six months. none of them did what they advertise they did. no guild chat, everyone was still doing the solo thing. i dont like being on discord because the chatter gives me a headache. so last month i said why bother with a guild. ive soloed this game so far. i dont raid because of the ego's. i like dungeons, but no one does them. did a couple of frac's. that was fun. soooo....so far so good without the guilds and the stuff that comes with them.

Same here, but I figured that out in 2015 already, in a different game. Now here the same thing happened. I am strongly against voice chats, because I do not care about people's life in the background (people talking, doors slamming, mom's comming into the room, the sound of eating and sipping on drinks, bad microphones that add a fat layer of hissing over my sound,...) and in general, as it seems, the today's gaming culture went total downhill. 10 years ago, I really felt there was a culture going on in a guild, it was like the guild leader was the papa or the mama of a group, handed out buff food and all that and we did stuff together and then, respectfully, logged off. Just like a few persons met in a fine café and had a good time.

Today it's more an always-connected mess of annoyed kids that always need to to several things at once for no reason. Watching video on demand ("Netflix") while playing a game with me -- how disrespectful is that? How comes a student or even a worker is "burnt out" today when it's the same 7.5 hours/workday situation than 10 years ago? The smartphone society of a totally oversped world also blends into gaming. No time for nothing, no chatting, people can not and will not read messages longer than 30 characters and when you start a chat about today's politics or economics you will realize how uninformed and straight out dumb the vast majority of today's gamers is.

So please, do not force more group activities in video games as long as it has loosely any rules around it. Got turned off by the fact you can be in 5 guilds at the same time. What the heck is that nonsense all about? That is just another perfect example of the "always everywhere" attitude I was refering to in the previous paragraph. No dedication to anything, just having several things at the go at once. Switching to Guild 1 because of their nice guild hall, then say "kthxbye" and switch to Guild 2 because of their Fractals or whatnot, then switch to Guild 3 because they have a certain global buff activated. How is real socializing supposed to work with this throw-away mentality that is being empowered by Snapchat and such?

Excelsior and good day.

[Danikat.8537]

Honestly the only thing I think guilds need to have is a shared chat channel, which they've already got. That's what enables guild members to talk to each other no matter what they're doing and therefore get to know each other, and (along with the message of the day) enables them to plan activities that take more organisation to start than just inviting whoever is online at the time.

But those activities can be anything, not just things specifically designated as guild only activities. I've never played another MMO that had anything like guild missions and never seen anyone consider it a problem because guilds would get together to do dungeons, open-world quests, hold parties, role-play, do PvP together...basically play the whole game as a group rather than only meeting up for things the developers had labelled as guild content and then going back to playing solo or with other people.

The way I see it anything that can be done by 2 or more people together is content for guilds, which is the vast majority of stuff in the game. The OP even listed some examples of big meta events which aren't officially guild content (especially Serpent's Ire which doesn't even have a guild version), but guilds still get together to do them. PvP and WvW guilds are another example. On EU there's also a guild for people who help others do jumping puzzles and mini dungeons for the daily, at least 1 guild that organises group map completion events, guilds for people who speak unsupported languages (I know of Russian, Italian, Dutch and Finnish ones and I'm sure there's others) and guilds for people with the same real-life interests.

I do also know of several guilds who basically get together once a week in their guild hall, do the guild missions and then go their separate ways again. But IMO the problem there isn't that there isn't anything else for them to do, it's that they're limiting themselves to only doing things with guild in the name together and looking for other people to do everything else with.

[Talindra.4958]

Totally agree... Not much has been done for guild .. many guilds are becoming slow. Our guild still practice guild mission weekly.. there's no updates .. less and less ppl participating. Guild hall already upgrade to max. Guild decorations ?? Done enough ... No new feature no build improvement.. I don't know .. I wish there's more update for guild focus activities or events. Eg Players get more guild currency participating certain new living story event representing guild. Higher guild lvl get more points . Etc etc and update for reward purchasable with guild currency.. asc armour/weapons..guild infusion ?? etc

[Blaeys.3102]

I agree that guild missions, in their original form, probably wouldn't make sense in the current game.

What I do think would make sense would be some kind of minimal structure to drive and maybe even reward guild activity across the game.

As a rudimentary example - we have daily achievements for individuals and small groups (fractal dailies). What if they changed the guild missions system to resemble a weekly guild achievement category, with the rewards mirroring those in missions now (commendations, favor, etc). It could include things like:

• Complete six bounties in POF maps with at least three guild members present
• Defeat Mordremoth. At least three guild members must be present
• Complete Serpent's Ire. At least three guild members must be present
• Complete 10 dynamic events in Queensdale in 30 minutes. At least three guild members must be present.

Then give guilds a way to trigger the larger events through their guild halls (similar to how the guild trigger flag for TT, Tequatl, Karka Queen works now).

The same would work in WvW (similar to the system now, only in an achievement rather than mission interface).

The idea is to not only refresh guild missions/content, but to also direct guild activity in ways that support larger community activities. The guild doing Serpent's Ire means more individual players have a greater chance of success in that event in a given week.

The point of my original post is that none of this will ever happen because no one is paying attention to potential guild focused improvements (even ones as simple as the above). We need a team with some guild-focused responsibilities - and, while I believe it should be a dedicated team, I could see it rolled in with something else. Anything other than the abandonment model currently in use.