23 replies to this topic

[Kor]

Part I http://dragonseason....n-Johanson.aspx

Part II http://dragonseason....on-Part-II.aspx

Part III http://dragonseason....n-Part-III.aspx

Edited by Kor, 24 February 2013 - 08:59 PM.

[Lordkrall]

These guild missions looks more and more interesting ^^

Might be a good time to actually join a real guild and not just sit around in my one-man guild ^^

[Omedon]

A "small guild" gets 10-15 people online?

Well then, we'll be passing on this feature.

Highly disappointed in this sense of scope, as fielding those kinds of numbers would involve our comfy multi-game guild of many years artificially expanding our roster beyond our standards or comfort, something we haven't felt the need to do in any other aspect of GW2 so far.  This basically has the game's "small guild" standards approaching WoW 10-man raiding guild type numbers, beneath which many concepts of less "large group content driven" guilds have always functioned with internal comfort, hoping a game somewhere will play to us.

This set of features is still a net positive for the game, but I'm just personally disappointed that our otherwise functional, family guild is being told we're not large enough for open world content additions, when open world is our favourite thing.

Edited by Omedon, 20 February 2013 - 11:18 PM.

[HawkofStorms]

Omedon, on 20 February 2013 - 10:47 PM, said:

A "small guild" gets 10-15 people online?

Well then, we'll be passing on this feature.

Highly disappointed in this sense of scope, as fielding those kinds of numbers would involve our comfy multi-game guild of many years artificially expanding our roster beyond our standards or comfort, something we haven't felt the need to do in any other aspect of GW2 so far.  This basically has the game's "small guild" standards approaching WoW 10-man raiding guild type numbers, beneath which many concepts of less "large group content driven" guilds have always functioned with internal comfort, hoping a game somewhere will play to us.

This set of features is still a net positive for the game, but I'm just personally disappointed that our otherwise functional, family guild is being told we're not large enough for open world content additions, when open world is our favourite thing.

You can still join in with other guilds doing guild missions.  Thus, open world.  And you still get rewards.  Just your guild doesn't get rewards (I think).

[Omedon]

HawkofStorms, on 20 February 2013 - 11:39 PM, said:

You can still join in with other guilds doing guild missions.  Thus, open world.  And you still get rewards.  Just your guild doesn't get rewards (I think).

I caught that, but it's still a demoralizing design message that "guild starts at 10 concurrent," when there is 5-person instanced content in the game (which we're not interested in ourselves) that a guild could comfortably build around with a 5-7 person concurrency expectation.  Half of a "small guild."

Again, still a net plus for the game, but the subtext is frown worthy for me and mine.

Edited by Omedon, 20 February 2013 - 11:45 PM.

[ShezuTsukai]

No duck season...

Seriously though for small guilds like mine (5) joining an alliance will be important to share in other small guilds' events and have them share in ours. This being said alliance systems need to be in place before guild missions. I think Anet may be releasing these out of order.

[Omedon]

ShezuTsukai, on 21 February 2013 - 12:45 AM, said:

No duck season...

Seriously though for small guilds like mine (5) joining an alliance will be important to share in other small guilds' events and have them share in ours. This being said alliance systems need to be in place before guild missions. I think Anet may be releasing these out of order.

Honestly, as nice as it is that guilds can team up on missions (to a point), again, the ideal situation would be for guilds of nearly ANY size to be able to do guild content without help.

Not to mention, I mean, what does a LARGE guild look like in GW2's "official" vision?  Telling people, through content development, that you potentially need 20+ people concurrently (assuming upon the larger bracket, I'm just making numbers up here)  in GW2 is just such a bass-ackwards approach from everything else!  Not even WoW expects guilds to field more than 25 at a time concurrently for specific content any more.

Edited by Omedon, 21 February 2013 - 01:36 AM.

[ilr]

This always confused me to no end....   Gw1 seemed like the perfect balance, 8 man being ideal, but most stuff (except DOA b/c it's frikken DOA) being completable with 7 or 6 players and 1-2 heroes.   Then they "split the uprights" in reverse here by saying all parties should be 5 players or 10.   ...I don't get it, who's idea was this?

[Omedon]

HawkofStorms, on 20 February 2013 - 11:39 PM, said:

You can still join in with other guilds doing guild missions.  Thus, open world.  And you still get rewards.  Just your guild doesn't get rewards (I think).

Another rebuttal to this, (because it is a good point) to be frank, is that if these mission researches are influence-purchased "consumables," then simply activating it and hoping for help kind of defeats the purpose of the guild that activated it burning its influence on the research, especially in "smaller guilds," where influence is not spent lightly. As a guild leader, I'm certainly not using my guild's slowly, dearly, and proudly  earned influence on something we can't ourselves see completed within the content's intent.  I realize you're not saying that, but that's an extension of the idea.  Sure, outside help and rewards for all that show up are awesome, but if my guild's activating it, my guild should be able to complete it on their own if need be.

Now, this comes with common sense: a guild that can barely get 10 people online shouldn't spend forever buying a 20+person mission and expect to complete it alone, they'd be silly to buy it in the first place, but honestly, I think guild missions should start at 5 people.

And timing us is another huge turnoff, but I'll not get into that.  Feature's good, but I wish my guild (who are a REAL guild, regardless of what others might say to our humble but comfortable numbers) could partake in it to a degree that justifies activating the mission ourselves.

Edited by Omedon, 21 February 2013 - 01:52 AM.

[atreoo]

ShezuTsukai, on 21 February 2013 - 12:45 AM, said:

No duck season...

Seriously though for small guilds like mine (5) joining an alliance will be important to share in other small guilds' events and have them share in ours. This being said alliance systems need to be in place before guild missions. I think Anet may be releasing these out of order.

This is spot on for smaller guilds. I have always been a fan of smaller tight knit guilds in any game. I resisted at first and eventually joined a guild with 500 people almost constantly and usually around 100 people online constantly. Ive been surprised at how well it is ran and is very friendly. I never do pugs and always have people for any kind of game play you like. Give one a shot you may like a bigger guild in this particular game. It seems they have not prepared well enuff for smaller guilds and the content.

[Omedon]

ShezuTsukai, on 21 February 2013 - 12:45 AM, said:

Seriously though for small guilds like mine (5) joining an alliance will be important to share in other small guilds' events and have them share in ours.

Except for the fact that a guild activates the research, not the "alliance," and it seems that only the activating guild gets the actual full-on reward.

So rotations would need to be established.  And the guild whose turn it is would need to hope to have the research ready and the people present to fulfil their part in the bargain, not to mention the people present on the night it's their turn so that they're not going "*pop*, alliance! go forth and earn our guild some rewards! Go! We'll watch" All of this happening in and among small guilds, that usually steer clear of this kind of gross organization.  

These are extreme examples, but who are we kidding, among MMOgamers, this is inevitable. Draaaaaamaaa!

The solution is to follow the very idea of GW2: guilds, like players, shouldn't need each other, we should benefit from each other, but not need each other.  This means small guilds having events they can do without help.  ACTUAL small guilds, not "10 people concurrent" guilds being called "small."

Edited by Omedon, 21 February 2013 - 03:53 AM.

[Illein]

Curious to see if those mentioned Bounty Hunt Encounters have any sort of raid mechanics behind them or are basically dumbed down to the most basic of DPS Races in order to stay within the 15 Minute mark for all 5 of them.

I can really relate to some of the worries in this thread as I've probably spent at least 75 % of my time in MMORPGs in a smaller guild - usually built around 10 people who were blowing through content together and really got to know each other over the years.

That said, ever since before Guild Wars 2 launched I sort of knew that I'd want to be part of a larger guild for it - simply out of practicality and to get to know something new. Quickly turned out that there really are a whole range of benefits to it. Starting with WvW a bigger group of people interested to play together there, makes a huge impact on your server's moral and performance, it's a lot easier to share very time consuming activities for those people in charge and you rarely have no person on to either level with, do dungeons or fractals with.

I also wondered why so many people in Guild Wars 2 clung to their small guilds, especially for WvW as there really didn't seem to be much of a benefit to it. Usually in bigger guilds (say ours with about ~200 people left in it, after we booted ~200 inactive ones the last week) you still have about 30 people you know and maybe 10 people who you really do a LOT with. It's quite natural I think that there will always be a bit of a clique metality and it's not the end of the world. Hell - chances are you won't like every last of those 100-500 people but you know what? You don't need to.

Anyway, so if you really don't want to join a bigger guild for reasons of your own, why not bundle together with people in similar situations and try to tackle these missions along-side of them and share the bounty.

You don't necessarily need an Alliance-System for that to work either, hell you just hop on Teamspeak with them, each in their own channel if you really feel like your guild's intimacy is affected and then each one does his job with a modicum of communication between leaders. Don't let the lack of a system discourage you to work together.

Regarding the Interview: I still don't get why it's called "on the upcoming February update" when it talks about everything but. I mean it's all clairvoyancy of the future and wishful thinking of the things they are going to implement save for the Guild mission info and the fact that the Commander Tome won't be accountbound.

Hope the second(third?) part of that interview will be a bit more about the current stuff going on and not what their 5 year plan looks like Kudos anway, was a great read despite that little tidbit of criticism.

PS.: I don't really see the problem with 10 players being declared a "small" guild in GW 2 - I mean seriously, 5 players are a party. If they do guild related content, it seems quite natural that it would at LEAST be 1 step above party content you can do already.

<10 players in your guild being online is not a guild, it's the inner circle of a friendslist with its own chat

Edited by Illein, 21 February 2013 - 07:27 AM.

[Gli]

These guild missions sound like they're going to be the exact opposite of what I was hoping for. Instead of getting guild-exclusive content, it's going to be content my guild isn't going to be able to tackle so other people will have to do the heavy lifting. No thanks.

Will they be any different from regular, exisiting large-scale dynamic events if you ignore the influence required to start them and the guild rewards at the end? If not, who cares anyway?

[FoxBat]

I think the "point" of starting at 10+ is just like Colin said, to give (larger) guilds things to do together. Right now there's tons of things for 5-man groups to do as is. Also as mentioned an influence sink, this is again not an issue for guilds that can rarely field 10 players (you're missing alot more bonuses for your guild than guild mission rewards right now as is.) There's likely limits on how well these things scale, so a choice to make even more 5-man content is likely going to come out of other potentially larger content.

On the other hand, if there are unique personal rewards gated by guild missions (like those screenshots implied of guild armor that didn't look ass), well that might become a difficulty for small guilds, providing a major incentive for people to find larger ones. At least one can hope that like existing guild armor, you can use stuff bought in one guild when repping another (and displaying their emblem in turn.)

Edited by FoxBat, 21 February 2013 - 01:40 PM.

[Guardian of the Light]

You know I just thought of something.... This is still open world content and in the situations where guilds are trying to open up Balthazar or trying to beat some hard event chain they usually spam in LA that they're doing so to get some Puggies to join.

Now imagine how many guilds are going to want extra players in tackling tough guild missions..... I foresee a lot of LA chat spam with this especially when it just releases.

[AsgarZigel]

@Omedon:

I'm in a small guild with maybe 6 active members too, so I can understand where you are coming from, but to be fair there is already a lot of content aimed at five man groups (dungeons and fractals), while there isn't really anything PvE-wise aimed at large organized groups. (There isn't really much coordination needed for the big events after all)
It would have been nice if the guild missions would scale down to 5-man groups and maybe they will later on, if ANet gets enough feedback, but I do understand the decision. Yes, five-man-guilds exist, but not every guild is that small and there should be stuff for the bigger guilds as well imo.

Also don't forget that there is more Flame and Frost Open World stuff added, even though the Prelude didn't make the best of impressions. But there will be at least something new for everyone.

[Illein]

http://dragonseason....on-Part-II.aspx

Part two is up now and has some real gems in it, especially if you think crafting is useless right about now

What I am most curious about from that second part is if they increase the difficulty of Ascalon Catacombs - reworking every last boss encounter - will the reward go up too?

I sincerely doubt it, given their reluctance to give people proper rewards for their efforts, but I really don't see why anyone would bother with AC any more after they've "overcome the challenge" of completing it once or twice, if it's just gonna be 4g in 1.5 hours now instead of 45 minutes or something.

What worries me a little: That "What class is OP"-Chart they're talking about, I sure hope that's not the only thing they go by, because I sure don't feel like rerolling to the FotM every month just because it is apparently OP that particular time. Otherwise we'd see nothing but bunker eles running around right now

Edited by Illein, 22 February 2013 - 08:54 AM.

[Illein]

Ah the OP stays up to date - that's great.

The third part was kinda hard to read. I wish they'd have made an interview with the head of the commerce team, because they sure would have had all the answers to the actual questions according to him.

The Precursor Situation is utter failure, sadly. From "Don't expect it in THIS patch" 2 days prior to the November 26th update to "Not actively working on" 3 months later.

Great.

[Lordkrall]

Well, lets keep in mind that they never actually said they were actually working on anything.
The only thing they have ever said is that they have people LOOKING at it.

[Illein]

Lordkrall, on 25 February 2013 - 11:37 AM, said:

Well, lets keep in mind that they never actually said they were actually working on anything.
The only thing they have ever said is that they have people LOOKING at it.

Well they certainly did say it in exactly these words 3 months ago ;D

https://forum-en.gui...recursors/first

"I am definitely working on the precursor scavenger hunt, but like others have said, things like this take time and I want to get it right. Not to mention, it’s not the only thing on my plate. Please do not expect to see the precursor scavenger hunt in the next patch. I may be awesome, but I am still only human and this is a fairly large amount of work to get done and done right. Please be patient!" ~ Linsey Murdock, Game Designer.

But yeah, they were talking about the design I guess - the choice of words is shitty imho either way.

[Lordkrall]

Ah true.
They should have been extremely clear such as in: "I am currently LOOKING at EVENTUAL POSSIBILITIES of a scavenger hunt that MIGHT get into the game at SOMETIME in the FUTURE",

After all they really need to be that stupidly clear in order to stop people from assuming things ^^

[Gli]

Lordkrall, on 25 February 2013 - 12:41 PM, said:

After all they really need to be that stupidly clear in order to stop people from assuming things

When someone says in 'stupidly clear' wording that something specific is actually being worked on, people aren't really 'assuming things', they've been led to expect something.

[Illein]

In the plainest of English it says "We're working on it, don't expect it tomorrow" (which was the day before November Patch day)

So yeah, it's rather clearly not what they meant - as they have made a point of saying lately, that it is not even worked on yet, merely gathering ideas.

Which basically translates to "Maybe in half a year at best"

[Khalija]

Closing this as we already have the Q&A here on Guru and this would just fracture the discussion even more.