Learning the hard way

[Leo.3428]

I am thinking of creating a guild that helps beginners find same-level players, progress together and try harder content without veterans helping. The spirit is to discover everything as when the game launched and nobody could guide anybody. I have a few questions:

• Does such a guild exist already? Search results bring only irrelevance.
• Does guild mechanics allow for a quick turnaround? Most members would quickly move to a veteran guild or create their own.
• Is this a bad idea, for reasons I am blind to, being a beginner?

[Lexi.1398]

Where do you define "beginner"?Is a beginner a lv80 who did nothing but map completion so far? New to game completely and not even max level? A lot of content done but not really good at any of it and wants to learn so they can take on the endgame?

I considered myself a new player for a good 4 months at least.

I would think the pre-lv80 group to be very small simply because you level very fast in gw2.

And re: guild mechanics, a person can be in 5 guilds at once, so switching to a new guild is as easy as pie. I would wonder about the freindships made though xD

[Danikat.8537]

I don't know if a guild like that already exists. I know there's several aimed at helping new players but usually they have a mix of new and veteran players.

Guild mechanics do allow for a quick turnaround as long as you keep up recruiting. Guilds start with a maximum of 50 members and can get up to 500 members. Adding or removing members only takes a couple of clicks (guild members can leave the guild at any time, or anyone with the necessary permissions can kick them out) and there's no limit on how many people can be added or removed at once. The only difficult part is recruiting enough new people to keep your numbers up if you're removing people once they reach a certain point.

Also I strongly recommend you tell people when they join what your 'cut off point' is and keep it in the guild message. Many people find being kicked from a guild distressing, especially if it's one they like and get along with and especially if they don't know why they were kicked. Having a reminder and maybe talking to each member before they 'graduate' would help a lot with that.

I don't think it's a bad idea, but I think it could be difficult to manage and I think you'll need to put a lot of thought into what the rules are. For example would you allow new players who used their level 80 boost on their first character, but still want to play through the story and do map completion on that character? Would you allow ones who played the first part of HoT and PoF to unlock gliding and the raptor mount for convenience? Would you allow them to use their glider and raptor when playing with the guild? Are people allowed to talk about spoilers in guild chat? And what is and is not a spoiler?

What about people who are genuinely new but either read a lot about the game in advance or just pick things up very quickly? Every so often I see topics on this forum from people who have had the game for a few weeks or months and consider themselves very new and uninformed but they're asking something so technical and advanced I couldn't possibly answer after 7 years playing casually.

Also if you have high turn-over in the guild that could make it difficult for members to get to know each other and means the 'tone' of the guild might change a lot. It's entirely up to you of course but if it was me I'd consider inviting some members to stay on as mentors. Make sure it's people who understand what you're trying to achieve, and will help with that - for example toning down their own attacks so they're not wiping everything out before newer players get a chance. (Or maybe having a dedicated character who they'll delete and remake when they're too high level?) That way you have a core group to set the tone for the rest of the guild and support you as the leader.

Overall I don't think it's a bad idea, but I do think it will be a lot of work for you, especially at first when you're trying to both recruit and play with the existing members.

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

We once tried a similar path, a couple of years ago. We did not focus on beginners, but wanted our community without restrictions of the meta. When you walk around Tyria you always meet these people, some of them are highly skilled and/or very motivated. The problem is, filtering your recruits. The more restrictive your selection is, the harder it will be to find members. A lot of people who join the game find a mentor or friends who help them, want to exclude them as well? There are players who read guides and the manual, so they know more than a fresh noob. Same goes for returners. We have a group of people who bought the game in 2012 and left right after official release or after finishing PS. ... It goes on and on.

In our case, after a few weeks we "accidentally" invited a few farmers. They did rely on full-meta-builds (gear, rotations, strategies) but were comfortable playing with us. They were nice people, so we kept them. So in the end, we changed our guild-objective: Play as you want. Which applies for everyone, no restrictions and no forced builds.

In your case, you could go for: "Open minded gameplay. We absolutely encourage our members to try new ways of playing the game, away from the traditional routes and builds. We believe that our members deserve to experience the game without being spoiled with content or strategies." That is common sense for the majority of players. No one likes to get spoiled. If you have people with more knowledge in your guild, they will know that they have to hold back with their knowledge on others. If you want to go double-safe, you can run a conversation with players who want to join and point out the main objective of your guild. Some people do not read guild-descriptions/party-descriptions.

Constantly rotating members is no problem, we do not have penalties here (except for guildbank access). But how do you plan to lead the guild? You will gain experience sooner or later. I am a bit skeptical to be honest. You can build a guild from scratch with newbies, but if you really want to maintain the status "beginners guild," you may have to wipe the entire thing every few months and start from scratch. That can be very frustrating.

Anyway, the concept looks interesting. Good luck!

[Leo.3428]

@Lexi.1398, @Danikat.8537, @"HnRkLnXqZ.1870" - A deep thank-you for your help and suggestions. Let me try to elaborate on the idea in the light of your input:

There is indeed no single definition of "beginner." I envision the guild to be home to many different groups each focused on a particular aspect of discovery within a particular level of knowledge of the game mechanics.

For instance some may be close to map completion but have never tried a dungeon or tried once but ran away after a bad PUG experience - among those, some are not quite ready for dungeons but are willing to try and try again, some master their profession better and are used to world bosses, some watched a bunch of play-through videos and are spoilery. That would be three groups.

Some are still leveling their first character and want to explore the maps extensively in parallel to the personal story, but they would like to share the awe of discovery with a small community of adventurers, possibly roleplaying along the way.

Some are level 80 and want to try WvW but don't want to jump into blobby zergs just yet. They would like to be a roaming group that learns along the way - the hard way of course, because it will be very punishing.

Sure, friendships may not last long in such a guild. In some cases though, they may live on into later guilds and endeavors.

My intention is to pass on the leadership to newer members and leave the guild once I don't feel like a beginner anymore (just a vague feeling, we all keep learning). And the cycle would repeat on each "generation."

Danikat, your idea of special spoiler-free mentors is very interesting though and I will let it brew. I would just not call them mentors, because mentors teach, and the guild is all about discovering with no guidance. Their role would be more about preventing tyrants from taking over and other inconveniences that I cannot fathom yet.

You all gave me a lot of food for thought which I will digest slowly :)

[mindcircus.1506]

@"Leo.3428" said:

• Is this a bad idea, for reasons I am blind to, being a beginner?

A "progression guild". Cool idea. Hope you can find the people for it.

[Danikat.8537]

I think you're right that mentors is the wrong word for it.

I was thinking something a bit like the officers in a more conventional guild, but officers sounds too formal to me. They keep the conversation going in guild chat, will introduce new member and make sure everyone understands how the guild works and how to behave with each other and will speak up if someone is going against the rules (and potentially can kick them if necessary). They're also the ones most likely to be willing to stop what they're doing to help another guild member if necessary.