92 replies to this topic

[Eon Lilu]

Quote

What are the plans for expanding guild features? Guild Halls, calendars and things like that.

• Someday there will be Guild Halls but it's not something that is actively being worked on
  
• Will expand on guild features down the road as well

Does anyone else think that there crazy for not working on guild halls, guild functions, social tools and anything around that area all this time?

I mean currently guilds only have a glorified menu screen to work with and you can only talk to players in your guild if you hit represent for that guild, otherwise guild chat doesn't work. The upgrades are poorly structured and take too long to build and do not last long enough for the amount of time it takes to build them.

No other social tools are really in the game unless you count party but tbh it is so basic and sometimes buggy it barely has any use.

Then you have no dungeon group finding tools so maps with dungeons and towns have turned into spamadan ( see kamadan in GW1 ) LFG LFG LFG....every 5 minutes.

From what I can see it is slowing growth of the game, the community and guilds in the game without more guild tools, functions and social tools. After all this is suppose to be a social community driven game right?

I was amazed when Colin said in the interview there not currently working on or even have a team assigned to this sort of thing. I was cool waiting for it because we figured they were working on guilds, guild halls and social tools but apparently there not even currently working on it... So from that were guessing what 3-6 months atleast before we see anything?

Anyone surprised by this? Considering they pushed the social aspect and new social technology so hard during the beta's and devolepment of the game?

Edited by Eon Lilu, 03 November 2012 - 09:16 AM.

[Anzuri]

Yeah pretty surprised thought this would have been a major focus. Honestly I am seeing the community growing further and further apart. The only way I started getting to know a few players was through LFG a few times and doing dungeons, adding those ppl to friends list and then doing dungeons with them.

But once we were done with that dungeon or maybe due to some effect of some moving servers due to how unstable the servers are (yeah i know you can cross server dungeon now but i guess the fact you don't see each other's LFG posts anymore makes you forget to look at friend list idk).

But OP I agree with you I thought they would at least be working on the social aspect. Guess they feel that they will leave that to established guilds and forums such as this whilst they work on pumping content. They do have to compete with the up and coming christmas mass game release season. So I imagine releasing content is on top of their priority list atm to keep people engaged with new things to do.

[Sword Hammer Axe]

I actually agree that they should invest some time on Guild Halls. Was a very important part of GW1 seeing as it made the guild so much closer. Now you practically only hang out with the others if you're in a dungeon or randomly meet them in the world.

[Dark]

Guild Halls and more end game content are the only 2 things i want atm

[Sheepski]

Looking at it from the other side, they will only be able to concentrate on so many things at a time, and they would have had to prioritise.

For me, I feel the community as a whole would prefer more content and game updates than guild halls/functions.

Personally I was also surprised during the live stream and would like more features for guilds and even halls before any major content is introduced, but it's up to them, and any updates/patches etc are welcome.

[matsif]

I would rather have a few new zones of frostgorge quality than a guild hall atm.  Orr is so terrible I refuse to go to it, which leaves me only frostgorge as a top level area.

A guild hall would be nice, but even in GW1 the guild hall was just a convenient spot to unload after a FoW run or something than a "base of operations," at least for the guilds I was in.  I already use Hoelbrak as my base for all of my played characters right now, so I don't really need a guild hall or even player housing (an expansion of the housing instance).

an expansion for the LFG tool and some other tools like a dungeon group finder and such would definitely be welcome though.

[shanaeri rynale]

The guild system is quite frankly shocking and feels like it was tagged on at the end, instead of being an integral feature of the game. Even GW1 6 years ago had a more robust guild system, it's like they did'nt learn a thing.

Want to cull your roster due to inactive players? Tough, no way of telling
Want to see how many of each rank you have? Nope you can't without manually counting.
What's your guilds maximum size? Dunno, does'nt say
How many representing at anyone time? umm Count again.
Can I ally my guild with other like minded guilds and share a chat that was so loved in GW1? Nope, not important.

I can however find out how many armor smiths at 400 I have

Guild members want to play on another server? Lockout for 7 days, AND they cant donate to the guild bank, or get guild buffs too.

Want a place where we can hang out and do events and just chat? Tough.

Content is important, but giving guilds and the community adequate tools to play and keep together is the key to longevity. All more content does is encorage content locusts who swarm new stuff, devour it and then leave telling everyone how boring it is. Community gives people a reason to stay.

Edited by shanaeri rynale, 03 November 2012 - 03:46 PM.

[Lysander]

I was really disappointed to hear they weren't actively working on Guild Halls. In GW1, it was the social hub of our guild. Everyone would log in and out there. It had a good number of merchants. And it was awesome for the occasional GvG.

Honestly seems that guilds were much more of a footnote, than a focus, and that's very disappointing considering how much was available for guilds in GW1.

[TGIFrisbie]

I don't see the need for a guild hall in a game called Guild Wars that doesn't have Guild Wars.

I also completely and utterly see no need for "player housing".  Off topic but sorta related in my view.

[Jentari]

While I would love to see guild halls and other things for guilds I am willing to wait until they can fix more of the bugs they have in the game.

Add guild halls, maybe give you a choice of 3 or 4 different ones and the ability to add things into the halls such as crafting stations, trainers, repair people, etc.

I am also worried about how guild halls will be added.  I am sure they will require some sort of influence to build/get and the price for them could be at a point that smaller guilds might have trouble even affording them.  Also they need to be added at the same time they add guild battles.

[MFGrady]

Eon Lilu, on 03 November 2012 - 09:06 AM, said:

BAWWWWW

While I don't particular care for guilds (Guilds of any game generally consist of 10% fun/active members and 90% leechers) and by extension Guild Halls, I don't really understand what people mean when they keep asking for "Social tools".

Last I recall, in order to be social you require 3 things:

The ability to communicate (Chat Box)
A place to gather (The game itself, Major Cities)
A reason/topic to communicate (PS, Dungeons, Lore, IRLz)

Now, I understand that people would probably want more content which is less combat oriented (such as mini-games), but you know what would help?

ACTUAL IDEAS

OP, please provide at the very least a barebones example of a "social tool" that is anything other than a LFG tool or dungeon finder.

I personally dislike both because I prefer to do my dumbass check BEFORE entering the dungeon. If people weren't so brainless a LFG tool wouldn't be needed. If I had 1 Gold for every time I saw 5 people shouting in LA all for the same dungeon, I'd have 5 Dusks. People just need to stop being lazy and form their own groups.

[Perm Shadow Form]

*Joins a guild with 100+ members /40 online*
No one ever speaks in guild chat.
Something's wrong here, really wrong.

[Al Shamari]

Perm Shadow Form, on 04 November 2012 - 01:27 AM, said:

*Joins a guild with 100+ members /40 online*
No one ever speaks in guild chat.
Something's wrong here, really wrong.

While personally I agree with most of the points in this topic about lack of tools, etc etc etc... this to me sounds like a guild problem, not a functionality problem.

If you have 40 members of you guild online and no one is talking - that to me just seems like an anti-social guild and has little to do with guild functionality.

[Gremlin]

Its quite surprising when working on a followup to a game that you don't preserve the parts of the old that were perfectly fine.

Its as if every aspect of the new game had to be changed and while change can be good I don't see why the familiar ways for players to gather and plan were not kept.

GW1 players had to team up and they had to do it before leaving the town.
GW2 such groupings are more casual, now at the moment this works out ok most of the time.

I have noticed some areas however where a group event kicks off and I am the only one there.
Dredgehaunt Cliffs and Timberline Falls are almost empty.
I have had to bypass a number of encounters as there are champion creatures occupying areas and I am unable to solo them.

Very surprised this is happening so early in the game Beginning to think we will need to combine a number of servers to increase population or go for AI help as in GW1

[Perm Shadow Form]

Al Shamari, on 04 November 2012 - 01:37 AM, said:

While personally I agree with most of the points in this topic about lack of tools, etc etc etc... this to me sounds like a guild problem, not a functionality problem.

If you have 40 members of you guild online and no one is talking - that to me just seems like an anti-social guild and has little to do with guild functionality.

But there's no real reason to interact with anyone....

[Al Shamari]

MFGrady, on 03 November 2012 - 05:23 PM, said:

While I don't particular care for guilds (Guilds of any game generally consist of 10% fun/active members and 90% leechers) and by extension Guild Halls, I don't really understand what people mean when they keep asking for "Social tools".

Last I recall, in order to be social you require 3 things:

The ability to communicate (Chat Box)
A place to gather (The game itself, Major Cities)
A reason/topic to communicate (PS, Dungeons, Lore, IRLz)

Now, I understand that people would probably want more content which is less combat oriented (such as mini-games), but you know what would help?

ACTUAL IDEAS

OP, please provide at the very least a barebones example of a "social tool" that is anything other than a LFG tool or dungeon finder.

I personally dislike both because I prefer to do my dumbass check BEFORE entering the dungeon. If people weren't so brainless a LFG tool wouldn't be needed. If I had 1 Gold for every time I saw 5 people shouting in LA all for the same dungeon, I'd have 5 Dusks. People just need to stop being lazy and form their own groups.

It would be good to read all the replies in a thread before making certain assumptions and not simply the opening post, just so you know.

As has already been stated in this thread, there is really no way of telling whether or not several of your members have been active within the last week or month. Thus furthering the problem of 10% "fun and active members" and 90% "leechers". In Guild Wars, it was possible to tell who had been on a day ago as compared to hadn't logged in for over several weeks, yet in Guild Wars 2 we don't even have this? Yet, we do have the ability to see peoples' crafting skills, why?

Yes, we could gather in major cities, but if I'm holding a guild specific event, why should I need to resort to a crowded major city in order to do such a thing? Why can't we have a place to call our own, a private place to just goof around in.

You can't even seem to organize the player list in your guild? Say I want to view all my officers, etc. I can't without scanning through the whole list.

I also think that members that aren't representing the guild should simply "appear offline", because what's the point of showing them on the guild roster if they can't communicate with the rest of the guild, they aren't going to represent you in events, etc. Flawed system in my opinion to simply have them showing "online" but "not representing" almost like out of mockery.

Also, a working LFG function doesn't rid you of the "dumb ass check". I'm personally not for an automated 'dungeon finder' in which it groups you with a team and, bam you're in the dungeon. What I'm for is a tool like the eventually implemented in Guild Wars in which you can open up an UI box and see exactly who is looking for a party for 'such and such' in a specific area, their profession, their level and how many other members are in their team. You can then ask to join that party, or ask them to join yours. You can then do your "dumb ass check" and decide whether to proceed with whatever you were wanting to do. The LFG function we have right now is actually so bare bones it serves no function, in fact most people don't even realize it's there because it's tucked away in the contacts panel.

Perm Shadow Form, on 04 November 2012 - 01:45 AM, said:

But there's no real reason to interact with anyone....

If this is the defense you're going to choose, I guess there's no real reason to act with anyone in real life either? Right? I interact with my guild to develop a friendship, to have fun. We joke around and just get plain stupid at times. I develop a friendship with people and form groups to do dungeons with. I alert my guild when certain massive events are up (such as Jormag, etc) so we can do them as a group and share our findings. I loan my guild members gold, knowing that in the future they would do the same from me.

Then again, maybe I just play MMORPGs because I like the "massively multi-player" aspect of it.

Edited by Al Shamari, 04 November 2012 - 01:55 AM.

[wez33]

The major cities except LA are nearly always dead this is what worries me

[Valkaire]

Al Shamari, on 04 November 2012 - 01:52 AM, said:

snip

Technically you can organize your roster... Click "Roster" and then click the up/down arrows over the guild ranks, or the achievement points, or the names, or the offline/online symbol, or the profession symbol.... You get the point. I'm okay with the representing system. People have guilds of real-life friends or old friends, I realize that and that's okay for me. It doesn't stop me from sending them a whisper asking if they want to do content and they'll represent us when we're doing something like WvW or when they aren't spending time with other, older or closer friends. I personally like that it shows if they're online even if they aren't representing.

Perm Shadow Form, on 04 November 2012 - 01:45 AM, said:

But there's no real reason to interact with anyone....

I have around 100 members in my guild, around 30-40 active normally. There's always something going on in guild chat. Whether it's members talking about sPvP, organizing stuff in WvW, calling out for group leveling, dungeons, jumping puzzles or even just talking about random things for the sake of conversing. What you're talking about is a guild problem, not a platform problem.

Edited by Valkaire, 04 November 2012 - 02:01 AM.

[Al Shamari]

wez33, on 04 November 2012 - 01:54 AM, said:

The major cities except LA are nearly always dead this is what worries me

Because there's really no reason to go there. Everything in Lion's Arch is centralized. It's where everyone congregates, it's where events are based. It has the most functionality of all the major cities, thus it's the only "hub". All the other cities are race-centric, where as Lion's Arch is open to all. It's the central home of Tyria. It shouldn't be worrying, it's only logical.

Valkaire, on 04 November 2012 - 01:58 AM, said:

Technically you can organize your roster... Click "Roster" and then click the up/down arrows over the guild ranks, or the achievement points, or the names, or the offline/online symbol, or the profession symbol.... You get the point.

Ya'got me! Kudos, I kind of simply zoned out on that. I specifically meant more so the "default" organization that Guild Wars had, where you had officers and the leader higher up, then in descending order of activity, the members listed below.

Edited by Al Shamari, 04 November 2012 - 02:00 AM.

[Desild]

wez33, on 04 November 2012 - 01:54 AM, said:

The major cities except LA are nearly always dead this is what worries me

From a crafting prespective, Rata Sum has a better positioning of both crafters, bank and black lion trader. They are all very close as oposed to Lion's Arch, where the bank is on the other side of the distrtic the black lion trade is.

When you want to craft or trade, Rata Sum is the city to go.

[Al Shamari]

Desild, on 04 November 2012 - 02:02 AM, said:

From a crafting prespective, Rata Sum has a better positioning of both crafters, bank and black lion trader. They are all very close as oposed to Lion's Arch, where the bank is on the other side of the distrtic the black lion trade is.

When you want to craft or trade, Rata Sum is the city to go.

This is entirely true, and you will see people going to Rata Sum for this alone. But, as far as congregation, all the racial cities really serve no purpose with Lion's Arch being - and was always meant to be - the central hub of Tyria.

Edited by Al Shamari, 04 November 2012 - 02:04 AM.

[Mordachai1977]

Al Shamari, on 04 November 2012 - 01:52 AM, said:

You can't even seem to organize the player list in your guild? Say I want to view all my officers, etc. I can't without scanning through the whole list.

Yes, you can. You can sort your guildroster by name, rank, and several other options if you click the top of the corresponding column. However, this resets when you log out, i believe.

wez33, on 04 November 2012 - 01:54 AM, said:

The major cities except LA are nearly always dead this is what worries me

Two reasons why LA is much more populated:

1:  It houses the asuragates to everywhere, including WvW.
2: If you need to craft, sell, buy, use the mystic forge..whatever.. If you are in the higher level area's its a lot cheaper to go back to la through the heart of the mists.

The racial cities are a good place to pass through when you are in the area, but the majority of people will always congregate in the center, which is LA

[Al Shamari]

Perm Shadow Form, on 04 November 2012 - 01:45 AM, said:

But there's no real reason to interact with anyone....

Pulled from another thread, but I don't know how you can say that when you say such things as:

Perm Shadow Form, on 04 November 2012 - 01:07 AM, said:

They should improve party search ...
World wide Dungeon LFG system.I hate spending 15 silver just to visit all dungeons to see if anyone is playing it.

Other than that, we'll see, don't have much hopes though, they already said they're not planing to make groups larger than 5 any time soon ... difficulty will remain pretty much the same.

I don't see how you can see that there's no basis for communicating with anyone, or really the need for better communication tools when you so blatantly make a complaint about almost this exact topic in another thread.

You should never ask a troll if they're trolling, but, are you trolling?

Mordachai1977, on 04 November 2012 - 02:08 AM, said:

Yes, you can. You can sort your guildroster by name, rank, and several other options if you click the top of the corresponding column. However, this resets when you log out, i believe.

Not sure if you saw my above post about this? Does this set the "default" view for the roster? Or is this only a personal view function? Just curious. As I said before, I did zone out on this functionality when I made the post you quoted.

Edited by Al Shamari, 04 November 2012 - 02:15 AM.

[Mordachai1977]

shanaeri rynale, on 03 November 2012 - 03:35 PM, said:

The guild system is quite frankly shocking and feels like it was tagged on at the end, instead of being an integral feature of the game. Even GW1 6 years ago had a more robust guild system, it's like they did'nt learn a thing.

Want to cull your roster due to inactive players? Tough, no way of telling
Want to see how many of each rank you have? Nope you can't without manually counting.
What's your guilds maximum size? Dunno, does'nt say
How many representing at anyone time? umm Count again.
Can I ally my guild with other like minded guilds and share a chat that was so loved in GW1? Nope, not important.

I can however find out how many armor smiths at 400 I have

Guild members want to play on another server? Lockout for 7 days, AND they cant donate to the guild bank, or get guild buffs too.

Want a place where we can hang out and do events and just chat? Tough.

Content is important, but giving guilds and the community adequate tools to play and keep together is the key to longevity. All more content does is encorage content locusts who swarm new stuff, devour it and then leave telling everyone how boring it is. Community gives people a reason to stay.

I agree that the GW1 guild/alliance system was better in most/all aspects. Unfortunately, this isnt GW1. Some things you have to learn to deal with.

I agree, its hard to keep tabs on who is and who isnt active. However, it is not impossible. My guild currently has around 200 members and the leadership knows quite well who is active, who is on vacation, who is unable to log in often and who is just unactive to start with. We know this because we dont just claim to be a community, we actually are. We know our members, they arent just names on a list. Some guilds/communities just recruit everyone they see and then complain when they cant keep track.

If guildmembers want to sample a different server, tough luck indeed. This wasnt implemented to harass guilds though, it was an implementation to try and balance the servers a bit and at some point they will completely close off the free transfers.  besides, if your guildies are scattered across all servers, what point does the guild have anyways? I would assume a tightknit guild stays together.

As for hanging out together as a guild, a guildhall isnt really needed for that. Yes, they would be appreciated when they arrive but in the meantime its just as easy to find a spot in some less traveled area. We have quite a few of such guild/alliance gatherings. Heck, during halloween we camped out at godlost swamp to hold an event and there were people who sought us out and participated, a few even applied, and we had to kill the behemoth twice because he interrupted our party. Fun was had by all.

All in all, having more tools for communication wont make people social. Social people will find a way to be social.

Al Shamari, on 04 November 2012 - 02:13 AM, said:

Not sure if you saw my above post about this? Does this set the "default" view for the roster? Or is this only a personal view function? Just curious. As I said before, I did zone out on this functionality when I made the post you quoted.

I did not, the person who replied before me must have done so at the same time as i did... im just quite slow at 3 am;)

To answer your question, its a temporary, personal view function. (at least it was the last time i used it), meaning that you can use it once to check what you want to check, but it will revert to the current state of being a jumbled mess as soon as you log out, or zone, or close the screen in some cases.

Edited by Mordachai1977, 04 November 2012 - 02:35 AM.

[riken]

i miss being able to scrimmage against other member of your guild for training purposes...

[SevereEpicz]

What do you do at guild halls? this is my first mmo, so I dont really know much about em.

[Valkaire]

SevereEpicz, on 04 November 2012 - 02:51 AM, said:

What do you do at guild halls? this is my first mmo, so I dont really know much about em.

In GW1 guild halls were an instance for your guild or whoever was a "guest" of your guild. Almost like a mini-town just for your guild. It was used both as a hub for your guild to enter GvG and as a map for GvG.

Edited by Valkaire, 04 November 2012 - 02:54 AM.

[Royale]

GUILD wars 2 u would think they would focus on guilds

[SevereEpicz]

Valkaire, on 04 November 2012 - 02:53 AM, said:

In GW1 guild halls were an instance for your guild or whoever was a "guest" of your guild. Almost like a mini-town just for your guild. It was used both as a hub for your guild to enter GvG and as a map for GvG.

sounds pretty good, i dont get why they wouldnt add or even be working on it if if was in the first game

[Tellia]

i am a little disappointed that guild halls are not being worked on. they were a big thing in the 1st game, and i think anet had to know just how much their players would like them to return. even if it couldnt be done for launch, they should have been working to get halls in asap afterwards. but now they say they arent working on it at all...its a real shame.