Hello, Guild Wars 2 community! My name is Miles and i’m from Russia. First of all, i want to apologise for my bad english further in the text. Now to the topic.
I have this idea in my head for a pretty long time already, but only now i decided to share it with the community. Anyway, i’ve been playing GW2 for almost a year now, witnessed Guild Missions update, new awesome locations like Bazaar of the Four Winds, but since then alot of time passed and there were no further guild updates or anything like that. Now i hear almost every day people wants new guild features, new locations, etc, etc. I started to think – what Anet could possibly add to the guilds and/or Tyria? Firts thought – guild halls, but everyone knows that Anet already have this planned, and lets face it – it’s probably not big enough for a good guilds update. And then i thought about “Guild City”.
Imagine this – Zhaitan defeated, alot of lands lies in ruins, but the other elder dragons didn’t showed up yet. What could united races, orders and guilds of Tyria do, before dragons attack again? We can rebuild what we’ve lost!
Add new location – for example, some small village, destroyed by Zhaitans forces. This small village, in time, will become a big city, where guilds have guild houses, traders, new events, npc’s, activities, etc. But if we want this village turn into the awesome city – we need to put alot of time, effort, guild merits, gold and guild influence in it.
Here’s the example:
Stage 1: location added into the game with event “Clear the village of the remaining risen forces”, all players and guilds go there, wiping all undeads. It can be a big and hard chain of events with some cool new world boss at the end.
Stage 2: all risens are dead (again) and players got new task – collect resources to rebuild main infrastructure of the village. Special npc appeare in the village, who accept donations with any kinds of wood, ores, gold and even karma. That should be a big amount of resources needed to complete this stage, so players wont finish it in one day (we’re building a city after all, remember?). After this stage is complete – the main thing is begin: land claiming.
Stage 3: every guild can claim a piece of land around the village for a certain amount of gold, merits and guild influence ( big enough amount, so 1-2 person guilds couldnt claim all the free lands). After your guild claimed the land – you can build guild house on that land. Now your guild work together, gathering resources for a new awesome guild house. Again – big amount of resources, we dont want to finish our home in 1 day. On this stage some new events can be added – defend the village from bandits, protect your guild caravans with resources from raiders and stuff like that. Stage 3 ends when, let’s say, 10 guilds finish their guild houses (and it will take alot of time).
Stage 4: first guilds are settled in our beatiful village and the place is growing fast, new buildings appear, travelers from all over the Tyria come here to look (and maybe stay) at newly-formed “Guld City”. New merchants appear in the city, guild banks and traders, even Black Lion opened their doors here! On this stage more events will appear – city is growing, but for now is poorly defended, and that will attract more dangerous people and even monsters. Main focus to the guilds now will be – reinforce the city. Eliminate threats around the city, protect travelers, gather resources to build a wall around our settlement. In time – our city will be surrounded with wooden walls, that we will be able to upgrade ( with the help of all guilds, of course) to stone walls. And who knows, maybe even Lions Arch will send some Lionguards to help defend the city.
Guild City Concept
This stage is not the last, but i think you guys get the idea – after walls we can build other upgrades, unlocking new merchants, Mystic Forge, some mines with ore nodes, maybe even field to play Kegbrawl! The possibilities is almost endless. With every upgrade our town will change a little, new houses will be build, maybe we even expand our city with another wall, unlocking new land for Guild Houses inside the “outer circle” of the village.
“But what about my own guild?”, – you say. “I don’t want to spend all resources on the city upgrades, i want my guild to grow stronger! Why do we even need Guild House?”. Good question, my dear sir! Let’s add Guild Achievements system, for example. With every achievement your guild will unlock some upgrades, that you still need to build, gathering resources and stuff. For every achievement your guild get – a new awesome banner appear inside your guild house – so every player can see what you and your comrades achieved! Every new player, who visits the town, will see guild houses, make a tour around the city, will stare at colorful big banners of the best guilds and hopefully will be able to choose guild he likes.
This is all my dreams and thoughts, of course. The whole concept need tons of tweaks and stuff. I’m not a game-designer, and maybe this is really hard (or even impossible) to relise in the game, but i still wanted to share this idea with you guys.
Just imagine the big city, that YOU build with your friends, guildmates and other guilds from your server. All achieved with hard work and unity. Isn’t that the spirit of Tyria?
I want to thank everyone, who finished reading this text and didnt fell asleep, i really hope you’ll like this idea of mine.
Sincerely, MilesRed.
I like this idea! i think guild halls should be somewhere neutral. As far as i know nowhere in Tyria is safe. I think the best location to have guilds halls would be in The Mists. In this new living event there would be unexplored islands and we have to discover them and explore them, take part in events and such, and at some point be able to claim a piece of land to build our own guild hall.
Would be awesome if the different islands had different themes, different events, different lore and different everything, but in some way it all connects.
Zoid, you just answered my chief objection to the idea. The Mists allow for infinite land grabs.
If it were somewhere in Tyria, it would have to be instanced because there simply isn’t enough real estate for every guild to claim a piece without turning the world into Trantor or Coruscant. Nor would I (or the game’s cooperative design) countenance limited numbers of people able to have a guild area and everyone else having to stare in envy.
If it were somewhere in Tyria, it would have to be instanced because there simply isn’t enough real estate for every guild to claim a piece without turning the world into Trantor or Coruscant. Nor would I (or the game’s cooperative design) countenance limited numbers of people able to have a guild area and everyone else having to stare in envy.
Cant’ agree with that – let’s pretend that Divinitys Reach is our “Guild City”, and your guild can claim any house there to rebuild into guild house (1 per guild of course). How much buildings in there? Hundreds? I dont think any server have more than 100 big guilds, so there will be plenty of space for everyone.
And about envy – come on, man. It’s MMO – everyone is showing off their cool armor, legendary weapon and stuff. Why i can’t show off with my cool guild house?
If it were somewhere in Tyria, it would have to be instanced because there simply isn’t enough real estate for every guild to claim a piece without turning the world into Trantor or Coruscant. Nor would I (or the game’s cooperative design) countenance limited numbers of people able to have a guild area and everyone else having to stare in envy.
Cant’ agree with that – let’s pretend that Divinitys Reach is our “Guild City”, and your guild can claim any house there to rebuild into guild house (1 per guild of course). How much buildings in there? Hundreds? I dont think any server have more than 100 big guilds, so there will be plenty of space for everyone.
And about envy – come on, man. It’s MMO – everyone is showing off their cool armor, legendary weapon and stuff. Why i can’t show off with my cool guild house?
But how many big buildings are there? Let’s assume that guilds want these houses for guild meetings and such and therefore need big spaces.
What about all Charr or all Sylvari guilds? I can imagine they’re are probably some of those. I’d say more will be on the more major role play servers as a way to organize role playing. Divinity’s Reach is the only city that really has buildings and isn’t already crowded. Lion’s Arch does have plenty of buildings, but it’s already the center of everything already.
It being in the Mists solves a number of things.
1. Too many large guilds having the desire to have their housing in the same city causing overflows as the guild houses will probably be where guild members go to just chill out. Instead of Lion’s Arch.
2. Arguments over which guild should get which building.
3. Reducing loading times in general for Lion’s Arch as people are off doing other things. Gathering materials for making their guild house. Gathering materials for upgrading their guild house. Gathering materials to upgrade their guild city. Maybe things could be added, like crafting locations or a trading post or a bank if people build them there. Another sink for excess materials. Perfect for the account bound ascended stuff that are easy obtainable that those not going for ascended gear would probably love to have a use for rather than just destroying it because they can’t even sell it to merchants.
Not to mention if it’s in the cities, then NONE of the Living Stories can EVER touch that city. Because what if a building that’s changed was a guild’s house? I’d hate to cut off one possible route for a Living Story to take just for a guild house. That I’ll probably just run by without giving it much thought.
Good point, Seera, thats why my idea is just a concept and need alot of work put into it to become something doable. But still – let me explain a little further:
We have a location with the size of a Divinitys Reach. Lets say its a big forest, with a small destroyed village in the center of the map (size compared to a Home Instance district in the Divinitys Reach). On the “land claiming” stage around this village (but really close to it at first) will appear claimable pieces of lands (not houses). Lets say there will be 3 types of lands: small (small guilds with <50 people can afford), medium (for the 50+ people guilds) and big (for the 100-150+ guilds and higher). And after your guild bought this land – maybe there will be an option of what type of building you want: charr-themed, human-themed, sylvari-themed etc. It can look strange, i get it, but if you do this right – it can be pretty cool. For example around sylvari-theme guild will appear some beatiful gardens and npc-houses, around charr-themed – some blacksmiths and maybe some factorys. Theres not really that much only one race guilds, so i dont think the city will become mix of gardens and factorys.
Maybe some themes will be available only on certain types of claimable land. For example in the forest land – all-norn guild can build norn-themed guild house, and some hunting grounds will appear in the forest around the guild. If sylvari build it – forest will become even more beatiful, with flowers, lake and stuff like that.
And why Living Story cant touch city? Anet changing Lions Arch almost with every celebration update, why not our city too? I dont think any guild will cry if their guild house will become covered in snow on Wintersday.
City? no, village? yes. if each guild grabs a piece of land like lion’s arch ANET will have to invest way to much money on servers. therefore it has to be more suitable.
What i think ANET could do is make another instanced zone, with a good variety of Land for guilds to claim. each piece of land gets preset size, and guilds can buy this land according to guild size and build their town there. if guild becomes dead, the land goes neutral and is up for land auction which other guilds that need more land can claim it. The whole zone will have the travel portals, so you could check out the towns and villages of other guilds and trade some guild based items.
I always thought more game mode like “The Sims” or “Farmville” would be good for the game. Anything besides the (kill x #) equation we have now.
I played Horizons (now called Istaria) for a few years before I went to WoW. Horizons was much smaller than GW2. It introduced in-the-world player housing. You could buy a lot, then plan it out and any crafter could come apply building materials to turn the plans into useable buildings. Lots were set out in subdivision areas, essentially.
The land grabs, camping, griefing, and flaming were beyond compare. This was a non-PvP game, all players being cooperative against a bigger threat. The community was friendly. Sound familiar?
I believe there are far more than 100 guilds in this game, and that a major feature should not be available only to a select few.
LotRO did it best, though not perfectly. They created housing areas, with a whole little town of houses in each one, whether you went for human or dwarf or elf or hobbit style architecture. When all the houses were bought in one area, a new instance was made. You’d talk to the gatekeeper to choose an instance to enter. It was tricky to get one instance for one guild since any player could hop in and dump the 2 gold or so on a lot to claim it (hence not perfect) but it meant infinite choice, as many houses there as people were there to claim, and no cluttering up a world meant to be wild.
Another non-perfect part was that if you didn’t pay rent/mortgage each couple of weeks, you lost the lot. All your decorations went into escrow for free retrieval but you were sol if someone else bought your house in the meantime so you could no longer be with your guild. I absolutely loathe major game investments being taken away just because I was gone an extra week, or even demanding continuing payment to hold on to them.
This is a game, designed around the core principles of ditching all the unfun parts of other games. It’s also meant to be something you can take a break from without losing progress. Any player or guild housing will have to be reliably permanent once purchased. So it can’t be taken away and put up for auction simply because people are absent — which in turn means it can’t be part of the main world, or we’ll have an abandoned cityscape.
The Mists continues to be a lovely solution to this.